{"id":37106,"date":"2025-10-31T03:11:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T03:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/war-in-ukraine\/russian-commanders-execute-soldiers-who-refuse-to-fight-in-ukraine-verstka-investigation\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T03:11:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T03:11:30","slug":"russian-commanders-execute-soldiers-who-refuse-to-fight-in-ukraine-verstka-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/war-in-ukraine\/russian-commanders-execute-soldiers-who-refuse-to-fight-in-ukraine-verstka-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian commanders execute soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine \u2013 &quot;Verstka&quot; investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An investigation by an independent Russian publication indicates that Russian commanders order the execution of their soldiers who refuse to fight against Ukraine at the front.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/unn.ua\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.unn.ua%2Fimg%2F2025%2F10%2F31%2F1761878112-2390-large.webp&amp;w=720&amp;q=75\" alt=\"Russian commanders execute soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine \u2013 &quot;Verstka&quot; investigation\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The command of the Russian army tortures, executes, or deliberately sends to their death soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine. This is stated in an investigation by the independent publication &quot;Verstka,&quot; which documented over 150 confirmed cases of murders and tortures, with 101 Russian officers identified as involved. This is reported by The Guardian, writes UNN.<\/p>\n<p>Details<\/p>\n<p>Journalists, relying on testimonies from soldiers, relatives, and video footage, report that commanders appointed &quot;shooters&quot; to eliminate refuseniks, dropped grenades from drones on their own troops, and disguised the bodies of victims as combat losses. Some soldiers were thrown into pits, tortured, forced to fight to the death, or extorted for money to avoid &quot;suicide missions.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Part. Proof of a crime against humanity: Russia uses drones to hunt civilians &#8211; UN investigation<\/p>\n<p>The investigation also shows that such practices, which originated in penal battalions composed of former prisoners, have now spread to regular army units. In the first half of 2025, the main military prosecutor&#039;s office of the Russian Federation received about 29,000 complaints, of which more than 12,000 were about abuse by their own command.<\/p>\n<p>Despite numerous pieces of evidence, almost none of the officers have been punished. Sources of &quot;Verstka&quot; in the military prosecutor&#039;s office say that in Russia, there is effectively a ban on investigating crimes committed by commanders at the front \u2013 under the pretext of &quot;not obstructing combat operations.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Part. A Russian soldier tried to surrender, but was killed by his own drone \u2013 Southern Defense Forces<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An investigation by an independent Russian publication indicates that Russian commanders order the execution of their soldiers who refuse to fight against Ukraine at the front. The command of the Russian army tortures, executes, or deliberately sends to their death soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine. This is stated in an investigation by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-war-in-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}