Relatives of Russian servicemen in the far-eastern Primorsky Krai have filed complaints with the military prosecutor's office about sexualized violence and blackmail in a local military unit, the Moscow Times reports.
The publication quotes lawyer Maxim Chikhunov, according to whom commanders in military unit No. 21634 in the village of Sergeevka detained soldiers who left their unit without permission in makeshift "cells". There, they were subjected to sexual violence in order to hand over their military awards to their superiors.
In one of the videos, which was released last week, a soldier says that a commander raped him with a sex toy and injured his already injured eye after he refused to pay 300,000 rubles (about $3,800).
A screenshot from a post on social media shows that another soldier from the unit was later sent to Ukraine, where his commanders kept him locked in a trench.
Another report describes how an officer tried to execute his subordinate who tried to film the violence. The soldier survived only because another serviceman secretly emptied the magazine of his gun, the posts state.
According to the lawyer Chihunov, "large-scale investigations" have been launched, but new reports of abuses continue to emerge at the same unit in Sergeevka.
It is not yet clear whether criminal charges have been brought against any of the officers responsible. The Russian Defense Ministry has not commented on the case.
Since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, independent media and human rights organizations have repeatedly reported that violence, coercion, and extortion are widespread in the Russian army, especially among mobilized soldiers and those returning from the front.