“Welcome to the Real Murders Channel”

In 2022, a new trend emerged in the Russian segment of Telegram messenger: public channels exclusively publishing incredibly graphic, violent videos of the war in Ukraine, including combat killings, executions of war prisoners, and desecration of the bodies of the deceased. In four years of the war, such channels have gained hundreds of thousands of subscribers and became successful businesses. The owners of the channels try to carefully hide themselves behind anonymous accounts. However, IStories managed to find out how the Telegram military snuff videos market works and who is making money from it.

Warning: This text contains descriptions of murder and violence as well as profanity and ethnic slurs.

A drone-filmed video shows a battle underway, and a soldier is taking an enemy captive. The captive has a yellow armband on his sleeve, worn by the Armed Forces of Ukraine; he has raised his hands and is not resisting. Off-camera, presumedly Russian soldiers are commenting on the footage in real time. “FInish him off,” a voice can be heard on the radio. “Don’t talk to him, just fucking kill him,” says another one. The video freezes for a few seconds; the commenters are confused. The next thing we see is the captive’s body falling. “Fuck it, that’s awesome,” the soldiers cheer. 

This video was posted on the “Video *** 18+” Telegram channel (here and further on, we hide the exact names of these channels not to give them publicity — Ed.) on January 2, 2026. “Our stormtrooper beats up a pig and captures it in hand-to-hand combat, then decides it’s useless and kills it,” the video caption reads. 

The channel has almost 40 thousand subscribers. The main content is the so-called snuff: videos of Ukrainian soldiers being killed, corpses torn to pieces or burned, bodies desecrated, all titled with offensive captions such as “the pigs who tried to surrender being shot.” Sometimes the channel author even specifies the “key moments” timecodes. “For The Hague,” he comments sarcastically.

“Video *** 18+” is an anonymous channel, but IStories managed to find the founder, Vladimir Grebennikov, 36, a refractory worker at the Volgograd Aluminum Plant. In his free time, he goes fishing with his father, an Afghan War vet. On his social media page, the father often recalls his service and posts the war photos, including the dead Soviet soldiers’ bodies. 

At night, Grebennikov participates in amateur car races. His social media avatar is Russia’s imperial flag with “We are Russians — God is with us” slogan written on it. On Telegram, the name “Vova” is accompanied by a Russian national flag icon.

Refractory workers in Volgograd are paid less than 80,000 rubles (approx. USD 1,000) per month. Most likely, Grebennikov earned more by selling ads on the channel. “Video *** 18+” publishes about 30 advertising posts per week, mostly promoting other channels, or sometimes counterfeit cigarettes shops and online casinos. According to IStories’ estimate based on pricing in this kind of market, the channel might be bringing its owner about 200,000 rubles (approx. USD 2,500) per month.

Grebennikov tells IStories he “has been interested in the topic of war” his entire life. “I watch these videos myself,” he said. “And I decided: if I watch them, why not create a channel and start posting them? So I started doing this, and then somehow they ended up at the top of Google and Yandex (Russian search engine – Ed.) search results. Then people started following the channel. That’s basically it. I was never going to become a blogger or anything like that.” 

Grebennikov himself hasn’t fought and does not want to: “To be a soldier, a contract soldier, to go to war, you have to be brave, at least. I’m not.”

By early 2026, he had sold his channel because he had “burned out during all that time.” When asked how much he had managed to earn from the channel, Grebennikov refused to answer. 

What are snuff videos, and where are they coming from?

Before the Russo-Ukrainian war, no other conflict in history had been documented in such detail with photos and videos. Cameras are placed on hundreds of thousands of drones, which have become an indispensable warfare tool. Russian soldiers wear cameras on their helmets to record “the evidence of their heroism and the elimination of targets,” a former soldier told IStories on an anonymous basis. And, of course, soldiers also have cameras on their phones. 

The military immediately saw the potential of such footage. For example, the “Arkhangel Spetsnaza” (translated as “Special Forces Archangel” — Ed.) Telegram channel has been providing detailed operation coverage since the beginning of the invasion, starting with the Hostomel Airport air assault on February 24. As IStories found out, the channel was created by Yevgeny Zhulidov, an officer of the 45th Airborne Troops Special Purpose Brigade. He now has over 1.1 million subscribers and might earn up to 3.8 million rubles (approx. USD 48,000) a month from advertising, based on the rates provided by his advertising manager, multiplied by the number of such posts. 

There are also channels posting nothing but snuff content: photos and videos of murders, mutilated bodies, and desecration of corpses. Execution exclusives are popular, especially when filmed from a first-person perspective. A typical ad looks like this: “GoPro recordings of khokhols (derogatory slur meaning Ukrainians — Ed.) shot in the head, the wounded finished off, and whole groups killed: here you’ll find everything others don’t dare to show on their channels.” 

IStories examined more than 50 war snuff Telegram channels. Most of them are run by civilians, not military personnel. For example, Grebennikov, an aluminum plant worker, has never been to the front himself, but would find the videos and the photos online: “Sometimes I indicated the source, sometimes I didn’t.” From time to time, Grebennikov would post messages of gratitude to the subscribers, posing as a member of the military. The credulous subscribers responded by wishing “our guys” good luck. 

According to a former Russian military officer interviewed by IStories, the footage of incidents that the soldiers send to the command posts often leaks from there. “Even if the video is highly classified, there will always be someone who will leak it for money or hype.”

Such videos and photos subsequently become war crimes evidence. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has confirmed cases of executions of Ukrainian military personnel via this evidence. According to the latest report by the UN Human Rights Office, there have been no fewer than 96 executions of Ukrainian soldiers confirmed since 2022. The HRMMU told IStories they also keep an eye on the Russian snuff channels.

In just one of the channels, IStories found 51 videos of mass shootings and beheadings in the “Executions” section. In the “Executions (photos)” section, there are 53 more photos of corpses. Some of them have their hands tied. 

Sometimes the admins try to squeeze maximum profit out of such videos and ask subscribers for “donations.”

“Guys. Does anyone want to donate 1.000 rubles to our fighter for executing a khokhol?” a snuff channel admin wrote in a chat on December 3, 2025. “We have the footage,” another administrator wrote a few hours later. “We’ll post it on the channel soon.” The same day, a video titled “Awesome exclusive finishing off a foreign mercenary” was posted. The video shows a wounded soldier lying on the ground is executed with a gunshot to the head.

“We also thank our subscriber for financially supporting the soldier who finished this idiot off!” the video description reads. “Hear me out, executions are fucking awesome,” commented the admin in the chat.

On December 7, 2025, the same admin called on the subscribers to help with the content search: “The simplest and most effective way is to write to the soldiers and ask them to provide the footage […] If a soldier asks for money in return, let us know.”

How teenagers monetize snuff

“Happy New Year, everyone. There were many sad events and things in 2022, but any disappointment is overshadowed by the pleasant fact that about 100,000 combat pigs (and thousands of civilians😁) have been killed. And in 2023, with God’s help, we’ll kill at least as many more,” another Telegram channel, “*** slaughter”, the admin addressed his subscribers at the end of 2022. 

This channel has been around for more than three years. It is the largest war snuff content channel IStories has been able to find, with over 100,000 subscribers.

Since its launch, “*** slaughter” has published more than 15,000 photos and 20,000 videos. The channel publishes footage — both exclusive and taken from somewhere else — showing dead Ukrainian soldiers and moments of them being killed. Ads are also posted almost every day: military service campaign ads, online casinos, and AI bots for undressing girls in photos.

IStories found out that the channel has been monetized by teenagers. Their contact details have been listed for advertising inquiries right in the channel description next to the “18+” label.

Denis Bogolyubov is now 19 years old. He comes from the village of Korkatovo in the Republic of Mari El, with a population of about 500 people. In the neighboring village school, there are two memorial plaques to local residents who went to war and died, and Denis’ uncle is one of them. 

Denis was involved in advertising the “*** slaughter” channel during, at the very least, the summer and fall of 2023, when he was 16 years old. In addition to the snuff channel, Denis collaborated with educational and entertainment Telegram communities. “In more than two years of active work on Telegram, I have gained extensive experience in budget management and the implementation of successful cases,” Bogolyubov writes on his personal channel. Denis charges “15% to 25%, depending on the subject” for advertising services “with his trusted people” and more than 11,000 rubles for “consulting.” 

Bogolyubov did not respond to IStories’ inquiries.

The second teenage advertising manager had not even turned 16 when he started working for the “*** slaughter” channel in 2023. Artem Prigodin is from the village of Konosha in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. In 2023 and 2024, Artem appeared as the administrator or advertising manager of two other trash channels called “not for the faint-hearted” and “18+ strictly.” His advertising career has been interrupted by compulsory military service at the Russian border. 

Artem Prigodin confirmed to us that he worked for “*** slaughter” in 2023–2024, but then “had a beef with the owner and quit.” According to Prigodin, he did not meet the channel owner in person and “only saw him via camera.” He claims the owner is not a member of the military. After completing his compulsory military service, Prigodin has no intention of remaining in the army on a contract basis: “It’s a one-way ticket. You sign the contract, and tomorrow you’re cannon fodder.”

IStories weren’t able to identify the “*** slaughter” channel owner.

“Are we supposed to be ashamed to post and watch?”

As IStories found out, not only do teens manage the ads in snuff channels, but they also create and actively run their own violent footage communities. We know at least two channels like this. 

One of them, called “***’s Funny Corpses,” was created in 2022 and blocked in 2025 after gaining just over 8,000 subscribers. The owner recreated the channel, and 800 people subscribed to it. 

In the last few weeks alone, the channel has published a photo of a decapitated Ukrainian soldier whose head is impaled on a stick; a video of a Russian soldier urinating on a corpse; and a photo of a body with its hands tied and its skull crushed. The administrators made their own sticker pack from such photos of killed Ukrainian soldiers. 

IStories discovered that the founder of this channel is Artem Filippov, 18, from Kaluga. He calls himself the “Kaluga serial killer” and, according to his photos on social media, embraces neo-Nazi views. 

Filippov created the channel when he was just 15 years old. Among the other admins, we found four more teenagers who are now no older than 15 (their names are known to the newsroom, but we are not naming them since they are underage — Ed.). Their Telegram accounts are registered using the phone numbers of their older relatives. One of the teenagers, a 14-year-old eighth grader from Abakan, uses photos of Russian soldiers as userpics. “Mines, explosions, bloody smoke, we’ll wash away the enemy with blood, with our battle plan!” his account description reads. Information obtained from data leaks shows that, in seventh grade, he had applied to join Yunarmiya. This Russian youth organisation aims to prepare kids for future military service.

In a conversation with IStories, Artem Filippov confirmed that he founded the channel while still at school. “This channel was created in response to similar Ukrainian channels. It’s called information warfare,” Filippov claims. “I was just on the internet, arguing with some guy from Ukraine, I don’t remember the topic. He started showing me photos of our fallen soldiers, and I decided to find a channel with dead Ukrainians. At that time, there were practically none. So I decided to create my own channel.” 

Filippov came up with the “Funny Corpses” channel name himself: “I was just so angry that we didn’t have this kind of content, while the Ukrainians had a lot of it. That’s why I deliberately chose such a loud, provocative name.” According to Filippov, younger people are the channel’s main audience. 

Immediately after the conversation with IStories, Filippov announced on a backup channel that the main channel had allegedly been “blocked again,” but he would not recreate it.

Vladimir Grebennikov, the “Video *** 18+” snuff channel founder, also blames Ukrainians for provoking him to create hateful captions for his videos and photos. “I think it all started with the Ukrainians,” Grebennikov says. “Initially, there were no such [misanthropic] captions, but now 95% of them are like that.”

He noticed school kids were showing particular interest in his violent content. Nevertheless, he claims he would block minors if he identified them.

Grebennikov sees no moral contradiction in posting and sharing the violent content among mass audiences:

“What’s wrong with it? It’s our life, people are fighting there and dying, someone’s sisters, brothers, husbands, and so on. Do you think people shouldn’t know how it feels to them and how they died or whatever? Many people live here and don’t know that there is a war going on, figuratively speaking, they don’t give a shit, while someone else has been living in trenches for several years and so on. Do you think we shouldn’t be interested in this? Are we supposed to be ashamed to post and watch?”

How much the owners earn thanks to snuff content 

There are two main ways for snuff channel owners to make money: advertisement posts and collecting donations from subscribers.

Ads are present on almost all snuff channels studied by IStories: it could be online casinos, tech stores, counterfeit cigarettes stores, or the military service campaign ads. Snuff channels also often promote one another.

According to one of the administrators, the cost of an ad post depends on the reach, not on the number of subscribers. In the snuff content “market,” a thousand views cost 300–350 rubles (approx. USD 4). This indicator is known as CPM (cost per mille). Administrators of other channels estimate it more modestly: at 160 (approx. USD 2) or even just 70 (approx. USD 1) rubles per thousand views.

IStories discovered a 4-snuff-channel network that, at such rates, has a total audience of 115,000 subscribers and averages 12,000 views per post, earning about 200,000 rubles per month.

This network was administered by Robert Khaibullin, 24, from Magnitogorsk. Here is how he advertised one of the channels: “If you are weak-nerved, don’t enter. If you have a stable psyche, welcome to the real murders channel.” According to the information found in data leaks, Khaibullin has never been employed. His only official income comes from sports betting and stock trading. Khaibullin told IStories he was only responsible for advertising on these channels and “didn’t even know what the content was.” “At the moment, I have completely left this field,” Khaibullin added. 

Advertising in large communities is handled by special managers, with the same people often working for several ones. One of the manager’s contact details were listed in more than ten different channels, including the largest one, “*** slaughter.”

Most likely, this manager is Nikita Semenov, 23, from the Oryol Oblast. The phone number he registered the account with belongs to his girlfriend, but Semenov has used it when applying for loans, IStories found out. Until 2021, Semenov had worked as a handyman in the Oryol Oblast, then moved to Moscow, where he worked in a warehouse and had a side job as a taxi driver. Semenov did not respond to our request for comment.

The “*** slaughter” channel, with its 112,000 subscribers and nearly 30,000 views per post, publishes one ad per day on average and might be earning up to 260,000 rubles per month (approx. USD 3,250). When we contacted its owner, posing as potential ad buyers, he agreed to give us a “starter discount” and place an ad for a new military-themed Telegram channel for just 2,000 rubles (approx. USD 25). Even at this price, the channel can generate over 50,000 rubles (approx. USD 620) per month in revenue.

Apart from ads paid for directly by clients, automatically appearing in-app ads are also shown across channels. But channel creators don’t get any money from these ads if they are in Russia.

The channels’ owners also earn decent money from collecting donations from subscribers. 

The “*** 21+” channel, with about 100,000 subscribers, posts videos of Ukrainians being murdered paired with reports on the money collected. “Thank you so much, friends, for your financial support 🙂 From the bottom of our hearts 👍,” the admins write, listing the amounts transferred to their cards. Judging by their posts, the channel has managed to collect almost 400,000 rubles (approx. USD 5,000) in three and a half years, with more than 800 people having contributed.

Female admins: Matryoshka, Goddess, and Snaky Girlboss

“Friends, do you like the violent footage we publish?”, the subscribers were asked in a poll published on several war snuff channels. Out of hundreds of answers, “Yes” and “We need the videos to be more violent” were the most popular options.

Many channels have their own chats and allow users to comment. In some of the channel chats, there are over 1,000 participants, with the largest one numbering almost 10,000 people. People chat all day and night: the participants either mock the Ukrainians or engage in heated discussions about the war, throwing insults at each other (as sometimes Ukraine supporters might join in the conversations). 

The chat admins do not restrict or moderate the constant stream of hateful comments; instead, they encourage it. 

We have identified more than 30 chat admins from various snuff channels. Although almost 90% of subscribers are male (according to TGStat data — Ed.), there are quite a few women among the admins.

The “*** SMO Snuff” (the “Special Military Operation” euphemism is the official term for the war in Russia — Ed.) channel’s chat has a particularly high number of female admins: half of them are women. The channel itself boasts more than 50,000 subscribers, and the chat has just over a thousand members. The most active ones are the admins nicknamed “Masyanya” (Ekaterina Chrikyan, 36, from the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast), “The Angry Beastess” (Diana Loginova, 34, originally from Moldova), “Miss Sudarynya” (Ekaterina Selina, 40, from the Rostov Oblast), “Snaky Girlboss” (Natalya Abramova, 43, from the Novosibirsk Oblast), and “Goddess” (Natalya Alekhina, 39, from the Krasnodar Krai). 

They mainly discuss personal topics (such as one of the women’s troubled relationship) rather than the channel’s snuff content. Sometimes, another female admin, nicknamed “Matryoshka,” would pop into the chat to share updates on her combatant husband.

The “Goddess” confirmed to us she moderates the chat, but she doesn’t know why she was put in charge: “Probably because I’ve been around for a while. I’ve been observing [the chat] for a long time.” “Masyanya” told IStories that the channel owner, whom she is familiar with, promoted her to chat admin “behind her back.” “I’m a frequent participant, that’s all,” she explains. “My brother is in the SMO zone.” “Miss Sudarynya” said she joined the group “just like everyone else,” and then hung up, saying, “How do I know you’re not a khokhol?” “The Angry Beastess” was out of reach. 

Why people are watching and talking about snuff videos

An interest in the theme of death is inherent to human nature, but it intensifies during certain historical periods, according to a criminal psychology expert interviewed by IStories on condition of anonymity. “During the periods of civil unrest, wars, and revolutions, people’s violence sensitivity threshold can shift,” the expert says.

However, the culture of mass consumption of snuff content is not a universal characteristic of human nature, Kirill Titaev, a sociologist and researcher in law enforcement and crime, points out in an interview with the “Stories and Facts” outlet. “Undoubtedly, various forms of violent content have accompanied humanity since ancient times. But it would be fundamentally wrong to try to link this exact phenomenon to the gladiatorial fighting culture or the Middle Ages’ public executions,” the sociologist says. “It would imply that humans in general have some psychological predisposition to enjoy this kind of content and to seek it. But we know of many societies of other countries and eras where there is no snuff content available at all.” 

According to Titaev, for the mass consumption of snuff to take root in society, it must first be socially approved. “To take off, watching this would have to be culturally legitimized, because not only is one ready to watch it, but also to discuss it,” the sociologist explains. The second factor is the physical distancing from what is happening on the screen. “Typically, the murder act — with all its associated smells, sounds, and other physical sensations — is not experienced directly by the content consumer,” Titaev adds. 

Mass violent video consumption can be dangerous for society, according to the criminal psychology expert. “It doesn’t mean that people who become desensitized to violence will repeat it, but they will have fewer restraints,” he says.

Russian legislation on snuff videos

There are enough regulations in Russia to allow for the prosecution of snuff channel owners. For example, it’s the set of laws banning trash streams, signed by Russia’s president in 2024. These laws ban the content that “is offensive to human dignity and public morality,” “contains depictions of activities that appear to be illegal, including violent ones, and is distributed with the intention of pranks, profit, or other low motives.” Exposing children to such content is prohibited distinctly. For such violations, the Administrative Code imposes heavy fines and confiscation of equipment used to create such videos.

There is a separate law on “inciting hatred or hostility,” which covers the derogatory captions that accompany the photos and videos. For example, in 2025, a Ulan-Ude resident was fined for using the word “khokhly” in his community chat. The court deemed her actions “aimed at humiliating human dignity based on nationality while committed publicly via the internet.”

“Under the ‘On Information’ law, social media page owners are required to independently monitor, promptly respond to, and remove the banned content, but few actually do so. Everyone has already gotten used to Roskomnadzor’s (Russian digital censoring body — Ed.) strict policies and bans,” says Sarkis Darbinyan, a cyberlaw attorney.

The Telegram app itself claims that it has taken down over 9 million groups and channels in 2026 alone. In 2025, the number was 44 million. However, the platform does not specify what exactly the kind of content banned was, except for terrorist groups and child pornography. Of all the snuff channels we examined, there was only one channel that would be blocked by Telegram, Artem Filippov’s “***’s Funny Corpses” channel. Darbinian believes that Telegram’s policy regarding similar content “echoes its founder’s (Pavel Durov — Ed.) libertarian approach”: “Durov has always stated that he is only willing to counter terrorism, which he has consistently done. It seems that if he weren’t required to, he wouldn’t remove anything at all.”

Authorities should intervene and seek out the distributors and producers of snuff content, Kirill Titaev believes. “This is a classic task for investigative and law enforcement units, which are supposed to identify the creators and the intermediaries. A person who films a homicide scene is clearly an accomplice in the homicide; moreover, it is supposed to mean aggravating circumstances and quite substantial prison terms,” he says. 

The Criminal Code was also amended by the legislative package banning “trash streams” in 2024. Posting violent videos depicting murders is now considered to be an aggravating circumstance and a qualifying element in ten Criminal Code articles, including murder, intentional bodily harm infliction, assault, and torture.

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin had described the importance of banning the “trash streams” to his Telegram channel audience, naming them “online broadcasts during which unlawful acts are committed, demonstrating cruelty, sadism, and abuse of people and animals, usually to make money and increase one’s audience.” 

“The state should not persecute these platforms [Telegram, etc.], but rather be grateful to them. They enable investigators to identify specific individuals and hold them accountable under criminal law,” Titaev adds. “But the problem is, the people who should be doing this work are busy persecuting the very journalists who are doing their work instead.”