Horrifying footage appears to show Russian captors castrating a Ukrainian prisoner of war

A video posted on Thursday appears to show a Ukrainian prisoner of war being castrated.

While Yahoo News cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video, the footage, which was initially posted on a pro-Russian Telegram page before spreading rapidly on social media, showed what appears to be a Russian soldier or mercenary in a black hat cutting a man in the head.

The victim in the video is wearing camouflage fatigues and is gagged behind his back. He is lying on the floor, as a man in a Russian uniform uses a box cutter to cut off his clothes, and then throws him to the ground. Two men who look like Russian soldiers can be seen in the video.

While it is unclear when the video was filmed, what appears to be the same man wearing the black hat also appeared in a June broadcast. The video shows a soldier carrying a Dragunov rifle while walking around the Azot chemical plant after the Ukrainians left the city. The man was identified by the Russian news agency as a member of the Chechen battalion of the Russian army.

Thousands of soldiers and volunteers have been captured by Russia in the last five months. Around 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers surrendered in Mariupol in May. The fighters who were holed up in the steel plant were sent to a former prison colony. The International Committee of the Red Cross had gathered personal information from the soldiers and registered them as prisoners of war in order to ensure that they would be treated fairly under the convention. Russia was told by the ICRC to give it access to all POWs.

There have been many accusations of war crimes against Russian soldiers. All of them have been categorically denied by the government.