(December 22, 2021)

The snuff film Apostol took part in was filmed and uploaded in 2017, although it didn’t gain a wide viewership until two years later. Last week, it was cited by the European Union in its decision to sanction the Wagner Group as a whole, along with three companies and seven individuals connected to it, for “serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan and Mozambique, which include torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings.” Brussels also named Wagner’s commander, Dmitry Utkin, a former GRU officer, as the man responsible for Bouta’s torture and the recording made of it.