The video below shows a Russian soldier hit by a Ukrainian drone asking his comrade to finish him off by shooting him in the head, and he obliges, giving him a quick death.
The footage starts with three Russian soldiers running along a rural path when a Ukrainian suicide drone hits and explodes one of them.
The injured soldier quickly signaled to his colleague to shoot him in the head by repeatedly pointing at his head. The other immediately aimed his rifle at him and ended his misery.
According to independent investigators, the “mercy killing” happened in a fiercely contested location in Robotyne in the region of Zaporizhzia, southern Ukraine.
It was also suspected that the soldiers might be fleeing after a failed assault, judging by the trainers they were wearing in the video. This unfortunate footage came after a sadder one showed the moment a soldier quickly said his last prayer before a drone killed him off.
Polish defense consultant Konrad Muzyka opined that the footage showed a “lack of counter-drone operations and evacuation of the wounded”, saying “It is possible that the guy killed asked to be killed if wounded”.
According to Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, many Russian soldiers lost their lives, especially in the first year of the war, due to “weak availability of field hospitals and poor combat medicine”. It was also alleged that Russia had a high ratio of Killed in Action (KIA) to Wounded in Action (WIA) casualties.
Just like Ukraine has been accused of kidnapping and forcefully conscripting unsuspecting civilians into the army, Russia too has been accused of poorly treating their military personnel, sending conscripts to die in “human wave” style frontal assaults on entrenched enemy positions, and going as far as executing soldiers who failed to carry out orders.