Shooting at your own people, pits and the “tree of truth”. The publication Texts published a major investigation into 225 separate assault regiment

On July 30, the publication Texts published a major investigation into the 225th separate assault regiment. Journalist Anna Kalyuzhna spoke with active soldiers of the regiment, soldiers who went AWOL, allied soldiers, and relatives of missing soldiers. They say that in the regiment, they shoot at their own people, the soldiers are kept "like in prison", and those who are guilty are tortured.

Babel recounts the main points from the investigation of Texts.

Beatings, "pits" and threats of execution

Soldier Roman Bedey said that in the summer of 2025 he was sent to the 225th Special Military Hospital, despite a postponement due to caring for his seriously ill mother. After being wounded near Hulyaipol, he was discharged from the hospital with a report of "improved condition". Bedey believes that he did not have time to recover, so he refused to return and demanded rehabilitation and payments.

Instead, he was detained by the Military Law Enforcement Service for AWOL and taken to the base of the 225th Special Operations Battalion. There, according to the soldier, he and other fighters were held in a “pit”, and then taken out into the forest and beaten. Bedey claims that after the beating, he and the others were sent to the Zaporizhzhia direction.

The soldier says that at the front, commanders also beat fighters, in particular for leaving positions without orders, and threatened to shoot those “who would not leave”. Another soldier, Ivan (name changed), says that there were indeed shootings in the regiment.

According to him, during the operation in Kursk, the commander of the “Shkval” company with the call sign “Agronom” ordered to “send a shot” at a fighter who refused to move forward. “Agronom” himself told reporters that this was the first time he had heard of this.

Journalists also spoke with the relatives of soldier Bohdan Lohvynenko — he served in the regiment for 1.5 years, and is now in hiding. Before serving in "Shkval" he was in a penal colony for theft. Lohvynenkoʼs sister posted a photo on social networks with her brotherʼs beaten buttocks — she says that this is how he was punished for the SZCH.

Various interlocutors from the regiment say that instructors warned former prisoners early in their service about beatings as a method of punishment for theft, alcohol, or drugs. The Texts claim that soldiers are also beaten for breaking the law, using cell phones without permission (which were supposed to be for commanders only), concealing information about other people’s wrongdoings, refusing to follow orders, and even for arguing or refusing to pay large sums into the “common account”.

In addition to “pits” and beatings, according to eyewitness accounts, there is another method of torture in the unit — the “tree of truth”. Soldiers are tied to a tree, sometimes stripped naked, and beaten with plastic pipes or sticks.

One of the publicationʼs interlocutors says that during the next SBU counterintelligence inspection, his comradeʼs car was used to transport beaten people who were being held in "pits" at the base of Regiment 225. This was before the publication of the Babel investigation into "Skelya", and after that "everything was cleared from the base".

Barriers

In November 2025, social media also accused the 225th Regiment of using barricades near Hulyaipol. This information was confirmed by the fighters with whom journalists spoke. One of them, who served in the 102nd Brigade of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, said that during the retreat his group was met by fighters from 225, and he contacted their leadership to ask them to let him pass. But in response he heard: “Don’t let anyone through, open fire to kill.”

According to him, they were told to put their weapons down and lie down with their faces to the ground. Then the Russians spotted them and started firing mortars at them — only after the shelling did they let the fighters pass. But then they opened fire on the next group that was leaving.

The Texts also published a fragment of the conversation, where a man, with a voice similar to that of the commander of the 225th separate assault regiment Oleh Shiryayev says that there are no "members" of his own, there is only a specific request for permission to move.

"Everything that moves is the enemy. Everyone who flees from positions is a deserter, they are also the enemy. Follow this rule. On your own, on those who flee without authorization... Hold the fucking lines, because you may retreat to Kyiv in this way. Therefore: retreat is fucking forbidden," the recording says.

What does the commander of the 225th separate assault regiment Oleh Shiryayev say?

Shiryayev confirmed in his comments that the recording was his voice, and that it was a recording of a chat room of military commanders interacting in the Kursk sector. He said that it discussed "the rules for the movement of troops of different units and ways of coordinating to recognize their own".

"Since the enemy in war often resorts to dressing up in Ukrainian uniforms and impersonating representatives of the Defense Forces, also using the phrase ʼGlory to Ukraineʼ to confuse soldiers in the trenches," he noted.

Commenting on the stories about threats of executions and attacks on his own fighters, Shiryayev stated that he had not received information about such "misunderstandings" among the fighters directly.

"At the same time, we have information about one company commander who, back in 2024, expressed a desire to defend Ukraine, despite having been in prison. [...] This serviceman has been AWOL since 2024. However, we have information that he gives a somewhat distorted picture of the interaction between servicemen in our regiment," he says.

Shiryayev assures that his regiment never received orders to disarm other brigades in Sumy or Zaporizhzhia or not to allow them to retreat. And they never took any such initiatives on their own.

Commenting on the situation near Hulyaipole, he stated that there the fighters of the Territorial Defence Forces decided to abandon their positions and went out to meet the assault groups of the 225th regiment. According to him, the fighters were without insignia and were dressed not in Ukrainian uniforms, but in cartoons — this is what the Russians also use. Therefore, they were stopped and disarmed in order to identify them later. He insists: there was no attempt not to miss, there was a "lack of communication on their part".

Shiryaev also denies the existence of a "hole" at the regimentʼs base, and regarding cases of beatings, he assures that the regiment is ready to conduct an investigation and punish the perpetrators.

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