Body mutilation is standard operating procedure committed by Russians against those they have dehumanized.
AUG 28
During the Reagan Administration, I was a very young man in Angola gathering information on the Soviets and Cubans who were attempting to destabilize the region and supporting acts of terror against its free people. One of the more remarkable men I met was the Vice President of free Angola. He traveled to the United States to meet the President and even had Thanksgiving dinner at my home. Later, during so-called “peace negotiations,” he was seized by the Communists, castrated in front of his family, and ultimately executed.
During that same season, I had the opportunity to interview the son of a tribal leader who had been recruited by the Russians, promised an education, and sent to Patrice Lumumba “University” in Moscow. There, he was trained in Soviet terrorism and subversion. Upon his return to Africa, he engaged in acts of violence so grotesque they defy comprehension: cutting off the lips of his victims, castrating them, and cannibalizing body parts before their families while they still lived.
I receive a great deal of criticism on this page and on my Substack from Russian advocates. Their tactics are always the same—ad hominem attacks, propaganda, disinformation, and claims of superiority. When confronted with Russian atrocities, they violently change the subject.
This week I have been haunted by flashbacks to that season in sub-Saharan Africa: Russian-funded atrocities, human “necklaces,” horrific mutilations, and cruelty that Americans often seem unwilling to acknowledge. The recent story of a Ukrainian prisoner of war who watched as his comrades were tortured—eyes gouged out, ears, lips, and nose cut off, castrated, and dumped into a pit—is a level of horror no human was ever meant to fathom.
But my message to the world is this: these tactics are standard operating procedure for the Muscovite military machine. They are not one-offs. They are taught in Russian schools of terrorism. They are promoted by Russian commanders. They are celebrated by Russian leadership. They are encouraged against Ukrainians.
Putin, aided by American pundits like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens (who famously said, “F— Ukraine”), has dehumanized the victims of Russian aggression—just as the Third Reich first dehumanized the Jewish people before torturing, experimenting on, and murdering them. The Russian military now takes dehumanization and brutality to their logical conclusion.
Here is the simple truth – when political leaders and popular commentators demonize a people, speak of them with contempt, ultimately denying their very identity, or supporting those who do — this leads to the dehumanization of their victims. If people are no longer human – if they are less than animals – soldiers will treat them this way. And that is exactly the goal.
Every day brings a new horror from the Russians. No evil is too dark. No inhumanity too diabolical. There are no limits for the man honored by President Trump in Alaska, nor for his merchants of death.
Often, the truth is too much for the American mind. If these stories are true, there are implications for the way Americans talk, speak and act as individuals and a nation. These documented stories of Russian kidnapping, child murder, elderly rape and body mutilation are disruptive to the comfort of Americans living free from a Ukrainian reality in which nearly every single citizen of Ukraine has some friend, relative, or someone they know about who has become a victim of Russian rapes, tortures and murder.
I tell stories of faith and courage and beauty and hope in Ukraine. I film them. I let the beautiful people of Ukraine speak for themselves. But I also remind that Russian inhumanity and brutality happens every day in Ukraine.
We need the whole picture. All of it.
An Extraordinary Story of Survival
Today’s “whole picture” includes the story of a Ukrainian National Guard fighter, identified as Vladyslav, who endured severe torture at the hands of Russian troops. Believing they had killed him after cutting his throat, they discarded his body in a pit—yet he survived, according to accounts from Sergii Ryzhenko, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Clinical Hospital, and reports by Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne.
“When someone’s throat is cut and they are bleeding out, there is little chance of survival. He held on until the end, but what sets him apart is that he was confident until the very end that everything would be fine,” said Ryzhenko.
The video I am sharing above is Preston Stewart’s precise, brief report on Vladyslav. It summarizes the extraordinary story already reported in the press: this amazing Ukrainian prisoner of war, whose throat was cut and body thrown into a pit, somehow crawled his way to safety after witnessing his friends castrated and mutilated beyond recognition.
Thanks for your commentary Preston. Readers make sure too subscribe to Preston’s excellent coverage of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
Here is the video :
DW Phillips is a constitutional attorney, a filmmaker, and journalist who directs Ukraine Story, a foundation for documentary reporting.
“Every day brings a new horror from the Russians. No evil is too dark. No inhumanity too diabolical. There are no limits for the man honored by President Trump in Alaska, nor for his merchants of death.”
That is why these vermin filth must get nothing for their atrocities.
Except a fucking rope.