A Russian soldier Alexey Bychkov was detained on Saturday, for recording a video of himself sexually abusing a baby, The Insider reported. 

The independent investigative journalism outlet, known for exposing fake news in Russian media, also stated that Bychkov serves in a military unit in Pskov, a Russian town. The Insider further cited the chairman of the Council of Veterans of the 76th Guards Division of the Airborne Forces, Yuri Sosedov’s information that all units in Pskov had been in Ukraine as part of Russia’s “special military operations“. 

Nexta, a Belarusian outlet, has reported the soldier intended to sell the filmed content on the darknet but was let down by his colleagues after he sent them the videos. 

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Meanwhile, The Insider revealed that the video with the baby is not Bychkov’s only transgression. He has several other such videos, where he commits acts of violence against children.

Notably, Russia has already been accused of war crimes in Ukraine, and there have been reports of rape. A woman claimed, as per The Times, that Russian soldiers raped her with her child crying in the same house. 

Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, they have increasingly targeted civilians. After Russian soldiers retreated from towns around Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, horrifying news emerged from Bucha, where mass graves of civilians were found. 

This brought global condemnation, with Russia being suspended from the Human Rights Council in the United Nations. The Insider has also reported Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Lyudmila Denisova saying that Russian troops have kidnapped over 120,000 Ukrainian children, and some of them have been raped. 

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Thus far, Russia has denied all accusations of war crimes in Ukraine, going to the extent of saying that civilians in Bucha were killed at the hands of Ukrainian nazis. Moscow’s stated objective, since troops were sent on February 24, has been to “denazify” Ukraine.