A Russian general promoted by Putin sent his wife a photo of severed ears taken from Ukrainian POWs. She said they reminded her of beer snacks. RFE/RL has the messages.

The abuse of Ukrainian prisoners of war — beatings, torture, and extrajudicial killings — has been documented throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion. What has been harder to document is the chain of command behind it: who is informed and who issues the orders. Through an archive of personal messages, photographs, and videos obtained from a source within the Ukrainian military, journalists now have rare insight into Russian war crimes in Ukraine. In a new investigation, journalists at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative projects Skhemy and Sistema examined the private correspondence of Russian General Roman Demurchiev. They found that he had boasted to close contacts and fellow service members about torturing, executing, and desecrating the bodies of Ukrainian military personnel, including prisoners of war. The archive spans 2022 to 2024 and reveals not only Demurchiev’s own conduct but also the complicity of his superiors, up to the commander of a combined-arms army numbering in the tens of thousands. Meduza summarizes RFE/RL’s findings.