VILE new videos have shown the Russian army brutally torturing their own soldiers – as frontline morale continues to spiral.
Ukraine has also advanced on the battlefield by retaking several villages and kilometres of territory in the Donetsk region as part of Operation Vivaldi.
In the new torture videos, Putin’s forces can be seen imposing medieval discipline on their soldiers.
In one clip, a fighter is filmed hung upside down by his feet with a rope hanging from a tree branch as he is repeatedly beaten with a stick.
He desperately tries to protect his genitals while a commander strikes him several times.
The victim appears to be from Russian-ally Belarus – as the torturer calls him “Bulbash”, meaning potato-eater – a derogatory insult for Belarusians.
The officer yells: “I’ll make mashed potatoes of you. You get it?”
It is unclear what exactly the soldier did wrong.
But reports say he could have refused to fight on Putin’s meat grinder frontline – a crime punishable by death.
Another Russian unit commander was seen repeatedly kicking his cowering subordinate.
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And in a third video, a man stuck to a tree is repeatedly hit on his bare backside with a stick by a senior soldier.
This time the victim is from the Russian region of Bashkiria, or Bashkortostan.
He is addressed derogatorily as “You Bashkir”.
His crime appears to be to be not paying his share to buy drones to use to kill Ukrainians.
The torturer shouts: “So you’ve decided to save money by not chipping in, for ****’s sake!
“Your mates are scraping together their last pennies for drones, for ****’s sake…. They’re chipping in, for ****’s sake!”
The whipped soldier replies in agony: “I’ll chip in, I’ll chip in!”
A rising number of similar punishment videos have laid bare how torture is becoming widespread in Putin’s army.
Earlier this year, chilling footage emerged showing one mutinous fighter taped to a tree upside down in the biting cold near Putin’s cannon fodder frontline.
And in April, a British PoW sued the Russian state in a landmark legal case after he was starved, beaten and electrocuted by enemy troops.
In Ukraine‘s latest battlefield win, Kyiv said they had liberated a further 40 square km of territory in Donetsk.
They also reclaimed several villages during the current Operation Vivaldi offensive.
The mission was announced on September 15 but reports say it has been in the works since spring.
Details of the operation remain sparse for security reasons.