Russian soldiers tell BBC they saw fellow troops executed on commanders' orders
Four Russian soldiers have exposed the horror and brutality of conditions on their side of the front lines in Ukraine, with two men telling the BBC they saw soldiers being executed on the spot for refusing orders.
One man told a documentary team he saw a soldier executed on the order of his commander, who was made a "Hero of Russia" in 2024.
"I see it - just two metres, three metres... click, clack, bang," he said.
Another soldier, from a different unit, says he saw his commander shoot four men himself.
"I knew them," he says of the soldiers executed. "I remember one of them screaming 'Don't shoot, I'll do anything!'"
One of them also says he saw 20 bodies of fellow soldiers lying in a pit after being "zeroed" by comrades. The term "zero" is Russian military slang for executing your own.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7gw3l395ro
Nothing says Russian like executing your own troops in the middle of a war!