Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Telegram has seen the rise of Russian-language channels specializing in graphic footage from the front, including combat killings, executions of prisoners, and the desecration of corpses. The independent outlet iStories examined more than 50 of these channels and identified the individuals behind some of them. They determined that these channels are run mostly not by soldiers, but by civilians — often teenagers. Meduza shares the investigation’s main findings.
The largest “snuff channel” examined by iStories, ”*** Mogilnik” (journalists withheld the channels’ full names to avoid promoting them), has been active for more than three years and has over 100,000 subscribers. It posts both original material and content shared from other channels. Reporters found that its monetization was handled by teenagers whose contact details were listed for advertising inquiries.
One of them is Denis Bogolyubov from the village of Korkatovo in Russia’s Mari El Republic. He began selling ads for the channel in the summer of 2023, when he was 16.
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Another ad manager, Artyom Prigodin, was 15 when he started working for “Mogilnik” in 2023. He is from the Arkhangelsk region and was also listed as an administrator or ad manager for two other snuff channels. He stopped working with Telegram ads only after being conscripted into the army.
Prigodin confirmed to iStories that he had worked for “Mogilnik,” but said he later “had a falling out with the owner and quit.” According to him, the channel’s owner is not a soldier, though he had only ever seen him “through a camera.” Prigodin says he does not plan to sign an army service contract after completing his mandatory service, calling it “a one-way ticket.”
Another channel highlighted by iStories, “Video *** 18+,” has around 40,000 subscribers. Its founder is 36-year-old Vladimir Grebennikov, a worker at a Volgograd aluminum plant. The channel posts around 30 ads per week and, by journalists’ estimates, brings in roughly 200,000 rubles (about $2,400) a month.
Grebennikov told iStories he has “been interested in war his whole life.” His father is a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and he said he had watched videos of killings and corpses long before starting the channel. In early 2026, he sold it, saying he had “burnt out.” The channel description now lists accounts belonging to two 20-year-olds: Timur Nikityuk from Ukraine’s Luhansk region and Andrey Savenkov from Russia’s Belgorod.
Grebennikov said he saw nothing wrong with publishing such material. “This is our life — people are fighting there, dying. Someone’s sisters, brothers, husbands, and so on,” he told iStories.
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Do you think people shouldn’t know what it was like for them there, how they died? Many people live here and don’t even know a war is going on — figuratively speaking, they don’t give a damn. But others have been living in trenches for years. Do you think this shouldn’t interest people? Or that it should be shameful to post or watch it?
iStories also reported on the creator of the channel “Funny Corpses ***,” which until recently had more than 8,000 subscribers. Telegram suspended it in 2025, but the owner recreated it; it now has around 800 subscribers. In recent weeks, it has posted a photo of a Ukrainian soldier’s head impaled on a stick, a video of a Russian soldier urinating on a corpse, and an image of a person with bound hands and a crushed skull.
The channel’s founder is 18-year-old Artyom Filippov from Kaluga. Judging by his VKontakte page, he’s a proponent of neo-Nazi views. He created the channel at 15, and its administrators include four teenagers no older than 15.
Filippov says he started the channel in response to similar Ukrainian channels, calling it part of an “information war.”
I was just online, arguing with some Ukrainian guy — I don’t even remember what about anymore. He started sending photos of our dead soldiers, and I decided to find a channel with the same kind of content about Ukrainians. At that point, there were hardly any. So I decided to start my own.
iStories also identified a network of four channels with a combined audience of 115,000 subscribers, all run by 24-year-old Robert Khaibullin from Magnitogorsk. He claimed he only handled advertising and “didn’t even know what they were about,” adding that he has since “left this field.”
According to iStories, the main sources of income for these channels are advertising and donations from subscribers. They carry a wide range of ads — from online casinos and electronics stores to counterfeit cigarettes, military contract service, and other channels with similar content.
Advertising in larger channels is handled by dedicated managers. One of them, journalists believe, is 23-year-old Nikita Semyonov from the Oryol region, whose contact details appeared in more than 10 different channels, including “Mogilnik.” By their estimates, a channel like “Mogilnik” — with 112,000 subscribers and nearly 30,000 views per post — can earn up to 260,000 rubles (about $3,100) a month by posting one ad per day.
A former soldier told iStories that videos showing the killing of prisoners and the abuse of the dead often make their way online from military headquarters, where footage from the front is sent. “Even if a video is super top-secret, some idiot will leak it for money or clout,” he said.
Cover photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP / Scanpix / LETA