Russian veterans tell all: ‘Meat storms’, executions, and pipeline attacks in Ukraine
Russian military veterans have described the grinding horrors of war against Ukraine. The former soldiers appear in a new BBC documentary named The Zero Line: Inside Russia’s War.
They claim to have witnessed summary executions by Russian commanders as well as massed human wave attacks referred to as ‘meat storms’.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2021. It soon descended into stalemate with NATO countries, including the UK, arming Ukraine. Some sources put the number of total casualties at 1.8 million. A US-led peace deal is currently being thrashed out as fighting continues.
The soldiers told the BBC that the practice of executions was known as ‘zeroing’. One alleged he saw a Russian commander – later decorated valour – order the death of another soldier:
I see it – just two metres, three metres… click, clack, bang.
Another veteran from a different unit said he saw the same officer execute four men:
I knew them. I remember one of them screaming, ‘Don’t shoot, I’ll do anything!
The veterans also reported apparent mass graves:
20 bodies of fellow soldiers lying in a pit after being “zeroed” by comrades.
Meat waves
The interviewees described:
how they were tortured for refusing to take part in assaults they describe as verging on suicide missions. Russian troops call these attacks “meat storms” as waves of men are sent across the front line relentlessly to try and wear down Ukrainian forces.
One eyewitness said he refused to go to the front line and was :
tortured and urinated on.
He claimed:
Others in his unit who refused would be electrocuted, starved, and then forced into meat storms unarmed…
The Russian government told the BBC its forces operated:
with utmost restraint, as far as possible under the conditions of a high-intensity conflict, treating their personnel with maximum care.
The government said they could not verify any of the claims but insisted criminal allegations were investigated.
You can read the full testimony here. The documentary, due to air on TV on 24 February, can already be seen online here.
Pipeline strike
Ukraine is alleged to have destroyed a key section of oil pipeline with drones. The Druzbha-1 station supplied Russian crude oil to eastern Europe. Open source X accounts showed footage of explosions:
BREAKING:
The Druzhba-1 station at Kaleikino, the key node of the Druzhba oil pipeline, was blown up by Ukraine
The oil pipeline accounts for 86% of Hungary's oil consumption
Almost 100% of Slovakia's oil consumption
As a response, Slovakia announced it will halt electricity… pic.twitter.com/SPu6hCZEDH
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) February 23, 2026
Hungarian foreign affairs minister Péter Szijjártó said the country would stop supplying diesel to Ukraine unless the matter was addressed:
Despite promises and assurances, it has still not been restored due to a Ukrainian political decision even though every technical condition is at hand, according to our information.
A European Commission spokesperson told reporters:
We are in contact with Ukraine on the timeline for reparation of the Druzhba oil pipeline and how quickly this might be up and running.
The spokesperson insisted reserve oil stocks meant there were:
no short-term risks to security of supply for Hungary and Slovakia.
The war is now 5 years old. The Kremlin said on 24 February it has not achieved all its aims yet. And, in true Trumpian fashion, the US president has indicated he wants a peace deal done by 4 July – in time for the United States’ 250th birthday celebrations.
Featured image via the BBC
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I find a sort of ironic sense of duplicity in this article where The Canary have on one”page” called out the BBC as biased and untrustworthy with regard to Palestine reporting yet quote verbatim the above views from a so called documentary about the Russian Special Military Operation. Sadly and disgustingly methinks you have just undermined your claim to be unbiased reporters of news.
Yep. Exactly
Canary never really recovered from its management sellout. Since then it has always gone with the ‘appearance of balanced reporting’ but this means sporadic use of MSM coverage with what seemed limited credibility. I don’t trust current BBC coverage of anything in Ukraine at all. Their sourcing always turns out to be CIA or Kiev.
Reads better if you write “I don’t trust current BBC coverage of anything […] at all”.
And yes, I’m deeply disturbed to find this sort of report in an outlet that I had come to trust.
Totally agree
Yes I was perplexed about this article, don’t get it at all!
Me too: longtime Canary reader, and distrust the BBC as its coverage of both Gaza and Ukraine has been incredibly biased.
Incidentally, leaked documents and calculations of deaths per munition or extrapolations from body and prisoner exchanges put Ukrainian dead and missing at around 1.7 million and Russian KIA at about 200K, a staggering discrepancy for a conventional war, but one side (Russia) has artillery, missile and glide bomb supremacy and is rapidly gaining drone superiority.
I also have not seen a single video of a “human wave” attack by either side, even on Telegram channels.
Any article that states “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2021” is probably going to be suspect (it was 2022 – although arguably the whole thing kicked off with the western-backed coup in 2014 and subsequent Ukrainian state attacks on its own ethnic Russian citizens – but of course we dont talk about that).
A good source of Ukrainian news is : https://robcampbell.substack.com/
Now anticipating articles backing the inevitable US / Israeli attack on Iran – facts supplied by the BBC and other ‘credible’ sources of course …
Regarding “meat waves” – Considering the saturation of the front with drones, why is there no video evidence of either side conducting such attacks (except the Wagner use of convicts in Bakhmut, but that was a mercenary force, not part of an army)
UK news media going all out on its war in Ukraine this month, without mentioning NATO or the election buying, or ‘f$$k the Europeans’ from election buying Nuland.
How is the same commander going to different units to execute people and is knows as the same person?
How can those who refuse to fight be executed and others end up in Ukraine?
BBC has moved its ‘headline reporters’ into Ukraine even though they have no knowledge of the country or its language.
BBC coverage also includes interviews with Russian civilians who do not support the war but the BBC has previously claimed that free speech and criticism of the war is not allowed in Russia
Points from Bowen (Middle East expert now in Ukraine),
he claims the west needs to increase its military spending but doesn’t point out that the EU is currently outspending Russia and has done so for the past 80 years
he claims that Russia has suffered 1.2 Mn dead, Ukraine 600K but doesn’t explain why Russia has the same casualty level as three years ago and Ukraine has been halved.
Ukrainians ‘battle bravely’, Russians are put through a meat grinder (now a meat storm). In fact, the Russians have relied heavily on artillery (between 8 and 10 to one) against Ukraine. Despite aerial surveillance, there is not evidence of these ‘meat storms’
The exchange of casualties and corpses shows that there are more Ukrainian than Russian dead (distortions caused by Russian advances need to be accounted)
All these figures come from RUSI and other pro west war lobbies, which again the western media refuse to acknowledge, they have ignored other sources that show casualties to be about the same for both sides.
” The exchange of casualties and corpses shows that there are more Ukrainian than Russian dead”
Just today, DD Geopolitics report the latest exchange : 1000 dead Ukrainians exchanged for just 35 Russians.
Now either Ukraine is doing something with all those supposed dead Russians in a way that means they can’t exchange them … or there just aren’t that many dead Russians.
Since this seems to have been an aspect of just about every body swap, perhaps “Ukraine is winning” advocates could tell us what exactly they’re doing with the bodies. Either that or accept that the collective West backed the wrong horse and stop now, while there are still some Ukrainians left in Ukraine.