When Russian soldiers spilled into Ukraine in February 2022, reports soon followed of rampant looting in captured towns. Homes, museums, theaters — even schools — were stripped of everything from food and clothing to computers and washing machines. The stories of theft and destruction revealed the brutality of Moscow’s invasion. Today, a growing body of evidence shows that the Russian military has also inflicted some of this cruelty on its own people. On November 5, 2025, after a region-wide manhunt, soldiers in Belgorod captured one of their own, Alexey Kostrikin, who murdered a local homeowner and raped his wife in late October before killing again on November 3.