Kathrine Frich
They purposely wounded prisoners to give new recruits a realistic medical drill.
War zones often hide terrible secrets far from public view.
But sometimes, a captured soldier speaks up and pulls back the curtain on a deeply disturbing reality.
A new video has exposed what happened when foreign fighters needed practice in the field.
A grim confession
A former Russian mercenary made chilling claims from a Ukrainian prison cell. According to the Express, he revealed exactly how foreign fighters treated local captives in West Africa.
Between 2023 and 2024, the captured soldier fought with the Wagner Group in Mali. He said instructors purposely wounded African prisoners during that deployment to give new recruits a realistic medical drill according to Express.
Ukrainian commentator Anton Gerashchenko shared the video interview online. Gerashchenko noted that the troops “used captured Africans as live subjects for brutal ‘tactical medicine training’.”
Horrific training drills
The fighter outlined a series of brutal exercises in the footage. In one horrifying drill, he claimed that “explosives were strapped to one prisoner’s leg and detonated”.
Instructors then told the recruits to stop the bleeding. They made the trainees apply a tourniquet and bandage the shattered limb.
The violence did not stop there. The soldier described how another captive took a bullet to an artery near the armpit so the fighters could practice patching a gunshot wound.
Instructors even used a third prisoner for close combat practice. Gerashchenko reported that the mercenaries “practised stabbing a person in the heart”.
Tragic outcomes
Another captive faced a gruesome fate when someone hacked off his leg with an axe. The toll of these sessions was absolute.
“According to the Russian mercenary, all of the prisoners died during these ‘training exercises’,” Gerashchenko explained online.
The fighter served in Mali from September 2023 to April 2024. After returning home, he signed a military contract in 2025 and eventually ended up on the Ukrainian front lines.
A history of abuse
The claims remain unverified by independent experts. Still, the story matches a grim pattern of violence documented by global monitors.
The Wagner Group arrived in Mali in 2021 to support the local military. While the group announced a pullout in 2025, many fighters stayed behind to join a state-run Africa Corps.
Human Rights Watch has already recorded widespread abuse across the entire region, blaming both local forces and foreign fighters. Today, recent estimates suggest up to 2,500 Russian personnel still operate in Mali.
