A Russian deserter has claimed Putin’s troops play with the severed heads of Ukrainians like they are footballs, and recalled rumours of one ex-convict fighter accused of cannibalism
A Russian soldier who was tortured by his own troops has told how his comrades kicked the severed heads of Ukrainian troops as if they were footballs.
Qualified primary school teacher Ilya Elokhin, 34, served in Vladimir Putin’s army before fleeing the war to Armenia. His macabre duty as a military clerk was to photograph corpses and describe the fatal injuries they received. “They brought in Ukrainians, Germans, French,” he said. “The dead Ukrainians would be brought in, unloaded from the car, and kicked around. If a person was too decomposed, they would tear off his head and play. I saw it all.”
He spoke of one soldier who was a freed convict – with the call sign Ivanych – who was accused of cannibalism involving the dead soldiers. He also told how Russian soldiers were executed by their own side, for example escapees and those who refused to follow orders.
Deserter Elokhin’s duty had been to “dig through the guts of dead, decomposed people” to find lost army tags, then register the details of the fallen soldiers. Afterwards, the bodies were taken to Donetsk to be stored in morgues.
He served with military unit 71443 in the occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine. This is part of the so-called ‘Somali’ battalion, under “brutal” commander Mikhail Tolstykh, where Elokhin said he faced bullying and abuse.
He was “forced to do all the paperwork” for his commanders who “humiliated him, beat him, and threatened him with assaults and ‘zeroing out’”, according to Vot-Tak TV. Soldiers who defied their commanders or tried to escape were brutally beaten by Putin’s troops.
“A hole two to three metres deep was dug next to the headquarters building,” the report stated, citing Elokhim. “It was dug by those who later ended up in it, and guarded by soldiers with machine guns.
“In addition to Elokhin’s defenders, those who most often ended up there were those who tried to escape or did not want to follow orders. Before being put in the hole, they were tied to a chair, doused with water, beaten with a stun gun and a stick.”
Some were “zeroed out” on the spot. They were led “behind the wall [of the headquarters building] and shot… In this way, they shot at least four fighters”.
Financial scams were also carried out to steal money from ordinary fighters. Elokhin was the sixth out of 50 who successfully escaped, fleeing into exile.
The report went on: “They threatened to throw him out of the window, beat him with a stun gun….waking him up at night with an electric shock to his heels and sending him to fill out paperwork. At that time, they were drinking or sleeping.”
Elokhin was quoted as saying: “They put a skirt and a black mask on me. I tried to find it on the Internet, BDSM, I think it’s called. They took pictures of me.
“They called it black humour, laughed and asked me not to take it to heart.” Before the war, Elokhim, from Perm in Russia, worked as primary school teacher, hotel administrator and ballroom dancing coach.
He was anti-war from the start, and after being called up he made plans to escape. Before fleeing he had entered around 1,500 dead Ukrainian soldiers into the Russian database, he said.