A research facility serving the needs of the Russian Defense Ministry is secretly conducting live human trials of weapons and drugs. Investigative reporting by Proekt says the military has been using volunteer servicemen instead of animals to better understand the effects of enhanced munitions and poisons.

The State Scientific Research Testing Institute of Military Medicine (GNIII VM MO) is currently testing new or upgraded munitions and unspecified pharmaceuticals in an attempt to obtain even deadlier weapons and more effective powders and fluids.

This is the same institution that continues improving the nerve gas Novichok in spite of the chemical weapons ban and the Kremlin’s assurances that it was destroyed in 2014.

In reality, it was used in 2018 against the family of Sergey Skripal, a Russian defector, in the United Kingdom, and against Vladimir Putin’s political adversary Alexey Navalny in 2020.

Tested substances can affect “higher nervous activity,” making animal trials insufficient — hence the need for “healthy volunteer servicemen.” The exact scope is unclear, but includes new weapons, damaging effects of new systems, performance-enhancing substances, and protective measures against extreme factors.

A Russian soldier begging for his life from a Ukrainian drone operator. The Ukrainian UAV forces command.

The report alleges the Defense Ministry has found sufficient volunteers for the new project. Survival is not guaranteed and the reward remains unknown.

You almost have to feel sorry for those Russian servicemen. They aren’t heroes charging into battle or patriotic idiots — just men who have done an unsettling math and concluded that getting shot by a firing squad at home and swallowing vials with poison are safer than being blown up by Ukrainian drones.