Russian soldiers on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine have been accused of cannibalism after their supplies ran low in the winter, the Sunday Times reported on Saturday.
Ukrainian military intelligence officers who spoke to the Times provided photos and supposed intercepted audio transmissions from senior Russian military officers. The Ukrainian soldiers said their cybersecurity specialists were able to get audio and photo evidence from Telegram.
One Ukrainian soldier said that he had evidence of at least five instances where Russian troops were said by their fellow soldiers or commanders to have eaten their brothers-in-arms.
If correct, the incidents appear to have been isolated and only occurred in the middle of winter when it was difficult for troops to receive supplies. The Times also noted that the troops who reportedly ate their comrades likely were mentally unwell from the conditions of the battlefield and were driven to extreme measures.
Notably, the Times was not able to verify the claims Ukrainian intelligence officers made. Russia frequently dismisses any content of Ukrainian intercepted calls as “fake.”
In one reported instance of cannibalism, a Russian soldier identified by his call sign as “Khromoy”, which loosely translates to limpy, was caught killing two of his fellow infantrymen and attempting to eat one of their legs. He was stationed in the heavily contested Donetsk region in November 2025.
According to the Times’s Ukrainian sources, he was in the 95th Regiment of the 5th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, 51st Guards Combined Arms Army.
One soldier reported the incident to the deputy commander of the 5th Brigade’s reconnaissance battalion, Lieutenant Razikov Vladislav Abdulkhalykovych, on Telegram.
The informant reportedly shared several pictures with Abdulkhalykovych, including a graphic photo of the leg and one of a malnourished soldier. The Times determined that the photos were not altered or AI-generated.
In the intercepted voice messages, the unnamed soldier described the incident to Abdulkhalykovych.
“In short, one ally killed two others, and he tried… he cut off a leg and was already trying to eat one of them,” the soldier said in the voice messages the Times received.
He goes on to describe how two of his soldiers went to find Khromoy, who had been absent for some time.
“In the end, today they went and found the place where he had taken them to the basement, cut off a leg, and was already, through a meat grinder or something, sitting there, turning it, trying to eat … He opened fire on them when they came to check on him. They killed him.”
He then shared a picture of Khromoy’s body, which, according to the Times, was drastically underweight.
“I have no idea where he got that meat grinder. That’s the most interesting part,” the officer added in his voice message to Abdulkhalykovych.
In response, Abdulkhalykovych asked if the Russian troops were being fed. The unnamed soldier replied, “Ours will also soon start eating each other … All the guys are skinny. Everyone is on starvation rations.”
The Times had an unnamed conflict surgeon review the photos the unnamed soldier sent to Abdulkhalykovych. The surgeon determined that the two dead soldiers were likely not wounded by any typical combat means, like gunshots or explosions.
“It doesn’t look like a blast or fragment injury,” the surgeon told the Times. “It looks like it has been cut with a sharp knife.”
In other cases of cannibalism, a soldier with the call sign Most complained in April 2025 about having to share a dugout with another officer near Donetsk.
“If he were a human being, he could stay here as long as he liked, but he ate a corpse, human meat,” Most said in the intercepted messages. “I am a Muslim. I don’t want someone like that coming into my shelter.”
In a separate incident in October 2025, the unit commander of Russia’s 1437th Motorized Rifle Regiment accused one of the soldiers in his command of cannibalism while stationed near Pokrovsk.
“If you had said something, I would have given you a direction on where to go, where to get meat,” he said. “Why the f**k are you eating Khokhols [a slur for Ukrainians] Stop f**king eating people.”
In another incident, the chief of staff of Russia’s 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade wrote a message to his troops:
No alcohol! No drugs! No moving around without identity documents! No cannibalism!”
Also, in June 2025, the Defense Intelligence Agency of Ukraine published audio of what it claimed was a call of two Russian troops discussing an incident of cannibalism.
In the call, the unit commander of the 68th Motor Rifle Division told a soldier from the division that a separate soldier with the call sign Brelock (meaning keychain) ate his partner Foma.
“No one ran off anywhere. ‘Brelok’ murdered him, then f**king ate him for two weeks,” said the commander in the reportedly intercepted call. Brelok was reportedly later found dead.
In response to the Times’s report, the Russian embassy in London said it had “no reason to comment.
“What you have described are fabrications supplied by Ukrainian military intelligence — an outfit whose function is the production of propaganda, not the gathering of facts,” a spokesperson told the Times.
Cannibalism claims used in previous wars
It is worth noting that claims of cannibalism have been used in previous wars to depict enemy forces as sub-human. Similar reports emerged in World War II during the blockade of Leningrad, the Times noted.
However, several reports have emerged that Russian troops have received minimal or expired rations. According to the Times, captured Russian troops repeatedly complain that they starve on the frontlines. As many as 10,000 Russian troops surrendered willingly to Ukrainian forces last year, the Times reported.
Multiple sources told the Times that the prospects of troops lacking rations on the frontlines is entirely credible.
Former US naval Captain and senior research fellow at the Rand Corporation, Bradley Martin, told the Times that there were multiple reports of poor provisions for the Russian infantry during the war.
“Many of the reports come from Ukraine reports of communications intercept, so we do have to apply some possibility of selective reporting, but the concept that logistics support for the Russian army is poor is wholly credible,” Martin said. “Troop support is not a major priority of the Russian army.”
He did not comment on the rumors of cannibalism.
The winter appears to have affected the Ukrainian infantry’s supplies as well.
A recent report from the Guardian detailed how troops in Ukraine’s 14th Separate Mechanized brigade starved for about two weeks and were left to melt snow for drinking water. Ukrainian troops, by family members’ accounts, dropped from at least 80 or 90 kgs to 50 kgs.
The incident led to a top Ukrainian commander being fired from his position.
However, Russia now aims to recruit at least 400,000 more infantrymen in 2026, according to Ukrainian military Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
US military analyst Vikram Mittal told the Times that the push for more troops at the front would be logistically challenging for the Kremlin.
“Sustained offensive operations like the Russian invasion of Ukraine require a constant flow of supplies to the front line. The extreme weather we saw over the past winter will have placed strain on transportation networks and troop sustainment,” Mittal told the Times.
Additionally, military vehicles carrying new supplies on the frontlines are ““particularly vulnerable because they generally lack armor and are constrained to predictable road networks with little cover or concealment.”