UKRAINE Footage has appeared online that allegedly shows the brutal hazing of a Bashkir soldier within the Russian army. He was thrown into a deep pit by his fellow soldiers, while they threw rocks at him and fired shots right in front of his feet. During the incident, they also insulted him because of his ethnic origin and demanded that he speak Russian.
The footage was reportedly found on the phone of a captured Russian soldier by Ukrainian fighters from the Bashkort unit. The circumstances under which the video was recorded, as well as the identities of the people shown in it, could not be independently verified. The Bashkirs are a Turkic people living primarily in Russia’s Bashkortostan, and some of them speak Bashkir alongside Russian.
