“Meat Storms” and Silent Killings: Former Russian Soldiers Break Ranks as Ukraine War Drags On

As the Russia-Ukraine conflict moves deeper into its fifth year since the February 2022 invasion, startling testimonies from four former Russian servicemen have surfaced, offering a grim and deeply unsettling portrayal of life inside Moscow’s war machine.

Their accounts, shared with the BBC, describe a battlefield not only marked by fierce combat, but also by alleged internal brutality, coercion and punishment for dissent.

What has particularly caught the attention of analysts is that such stark narratives had not prominently emerged during the prolonged course of the war.

For years, reporting largely focused on frontline engagements, territorial shifts and geopolitical maneuvering.

These recent disclosures, if substantiated, add another disturbing dimension — one that speaks of alleged internal executions, torture and forced assault tactics within Russian ranks.

As with all wartime accounts, investigators say only time and independent verification will determine the full truth and the real scale of losses.

Executions and “Zeroing”

One of the soldiers claimed he witnessed a comrade being put to death on the direct instruction of his commanding officer — an officer who was later decorated with Russia’s highest honour and named a “Hero of Russia” in 2024.

He described seeing roughly twenty bodies lying in a trench after what soldiers allegedly referred to as being “zeroed,” a slang term for executing their own men.

Another former serviceman recounted identifying corpses after his commander personally shot four soldiers. He vividly remembered one of them pleading for mercy moments before the fatal shots were fired.

The “Meat Storm” Tactic

Several accounts described a tactic informally referred to as “meat storms” — waves of infantry allegedly sent repeatedly across heavily defended Ukrainian lines with minimal support.

According to one soldier, the aim was to exhaust Ukrainian ammunition and drone capacity, allowing later waves to advance toward objectives.

One witness, a former teacher named Ilya from Kungur in the Ural region, said he had been mobilised in May 2024 after authorities arrived at his family home.

Of the 78 men drafted alongside him, he claimed none survived. Overwhelmed and fearful, he said he initially sought to avoid direct combat and was assigned to cataloguing the dead.

For refusing to participate in active fighting, he alleged he was humiliated and abused. He claimed some who resisted orders were subjected to electric shocks, deprived of food and later pushed into frontline assaults without weapons.

In the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk — part of the broader Donbas industrial belt — Ilya said he witnessed four men executed at close range by a superior.

The Donbas, comprising the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, remains central to Moscow’s military objectives and a sticking point in stalled peace negotiations.

Threats and Makeshift Prisons

Another former serviceman, Denis, described commanders relentlessly dispatching successive human waves toward Ukrainian defences.

Dima, 34, who had lived in Moscow with his family and worked as an appliance repairman before being drafted in October 2022, alleged he was threatened with imprisonment if he declined mobilisation.

Assigned to the 25th Brigade, Dima accused his commanding officer — later publicly decorated — of ordering fatal punishments against subordinates.

In January 2025, families of some deceased soldiers reportedly wrote to President Vladimir Putin seeking an inquiry into the allegations.

Dima said he chose to join a paramedic unit despite lacking formal medical training, hoping to avoid taking lives.

After later declining to dispatch men into high-risk assaults, he claimed he was detained by military police and confined in an improvised detention facility, where he endured weeks of abuse.

A former Russian officer with 17 years of service described hearing of internal “liquidation” missions allegedly aimed at eliminating surviving officers after failed operations.

He said such practices were unlike anything he had encountered in his earlier career.

Mounting Casualties and Diplomatic Deadlock

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has estimated that more than 1.2 million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the invasion began on 24 February 2022.

The report further suggested that daily casualties in 2025 ranged between 900 and 1,500. Moscow does not routinely publish detailed casualty figures, and wartime statistics from all sides remain contested.

Meanwhile, the third round of trilateral negotiations concluded recently without progress. Moscow continues to press Kyiv to relinquish control over Donbas territories — a condition Ukraine has firmly rejected.

A Narrative Emerging Late

Observers say the emergence of these testimonies at this stage of the conflict is striking. For much of the war, strict information controls and patriotic messaging dominated domestic discourse within Russia.

The appearance of such accounts now raises questions about morale, internal command culture, and the long-term human cost of the conflict.

Yet, as analysts caution, wartime narratives are complex and often difficult to independently verify. The fog of war obscures facts on all sides.

What ultimately transpired across countless battlefields — and how many soldiers perished in total — may only become fully clear years after the guns fall silent.

(With BBC Inputs)

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