It’s difficult to imagine a grimmer story than that of the POW detention center attack, but the graphic video of sexual mutilation and murder takes this war’s atrocities to a horrifying new level. In the video, first posted on pro-Russian Telegram accounts—apparently as a threatening message to Ukrainian mothers not to send their sons to war—Russian soldiers can be seen abusing a man in a Ukrainian camouflage uniform who has been bound and gagged. The prisoner is beaten and kicked; then, his pants are ripped apart, and his genitals are sliced off, held up for the camera, and thrown away. (While some clips from the video have been made available on various news sites, I came across only one—to which I will not link—that shows the actual mutilation.) The victim is then shot dead, and his body is dragged through the street on a rope.

Several reliable sources, including a reporter from the Bellingcat investigative group, have said that the video is most likely genuine and not manipulated in any way. The main perpetrator can also be seen in a Russian TV clip, filmed in June, showing pro-Russian separatists and Chechen units working together. (He has since been identified as Vitaly Aroshanov.) Notably, Russia has yet to issue any official comment on this horrific video. And there are other records. According to the Kyiv Post, “Further [Russian Telegram] posts include photos of the body of a Ukrainian soldier with severed hands and his head planted on a fence.”

It is worth noting that back in March, the Russian propaganda machine went into overdrive when the head of a Ukrainian volunteer frontline mobile hospital, Gennadiy Druzenko, said on Ukrainian television that he had directed his staff to “castrate captured Russian soldiers,” whom he described as “cockroaches, not people.” Russian media erupted in self-righteous outrage: “An apotheosis of hatred,” declared the website Bloknot in a typical flourish. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation announced that it was going to open a criminal case against Druzenko, who was also “set to be put on Russia’s international wanted list.” This, despite the fact that the medic quickly apologized, blamed his words on “emotions,” and categorically stated that the hospital “does not castrate anyone and is not going to.”