Ask Lemmy

There's a "famous" gore video showing a Russian soldier being brutally murdered by Chechen rebels. Ya'll probably already know what I'm talking about, so I don't need to explain (and if you haven't seen it or don't know what it is, don't bother looking for it, it's not nice and does you no good to have it on your psychic hard drive). Since seeing that clip in ~2000, I've desperately wanted to know the man's identity and the circumstances in which he was killed. I've had people swear to me that they also saw the clip, but the version they saw was quite a bit longer than the ~20-second clip everyone is aware of, and they describe some details that could well be useful in identifying him, but alas this alleged longer version seems to have vanished entirely, if it ever existed. The version we have is obviously heavily-edited, lots of quick cuts and time-jumps, so there is at least a version without all of that, somewhere.

Trust me when I say that I've looked into this issue on and off for the last 25 years, and I have heard many bullshit claims about who he is: they're all wrong and provably so. I've watched hundreds (literally) of clips from that conflict that show barbarity of one degree or another, and in doing so I have identified the clips that specific reports and testimonies are alluding to when they claim to have identified the victim. None of them is our guy, it's always some other video clip where some other Russian is knifed by a Chechen (there're a lot of such clips).

There was a user on a gore forum who uploaded the Tukhchar massacre (safe click) video in full, and he claimed to have the full version of our mystery clip, but refused to post it and grew increasingly hostile the more people asked him for it, eventually taking his ball and going home by stating his intention to never post it because people were mean to him. He was obviously a bullshitter who had a few good uploads and decided to use that momentum to generate hype around this other 'holy grail' clip which he almost certainly did not have. Other than that one prick, nobody online has access to the full video or the identity of the man. At least, not on the English-speaking internet.

I've seen a lot of awful videos on the net, but there's something about that one in particular that really energised me to find out who he is. I guess it being the first video of that kind I ever saw would probably have something to do with it, but it's also just so fucking cold. You could sense the all-consuming hatred in the killers in the way they staged the scene and the matter-of-fact way they slaughtered him. Just pure inhumanity. There are "worse" videos, there are drug cartel videos that would make a Spanish Inquisitor lose his lunch, but man, that Russian dude is always lingering in my mind.