What happened to Russia’s elite ‘Black Berets’ in Ukraine? | BBC News

In October 2022, Russia sent men from its elite 155th Marine Brigade, the “Black Berets” to take the town of Vuhledar in Ukraine.

Ramaz Gorgadze, a young aspiring TikTok rapper, was among them. Before the assault, he sent a last message to his mother, and then went missing.

Days later, a rare protest letter from the Black Berets emerged online. The men claimed that “inept” commanders threw them into an “incomprehensible offensive” and called them “meat”.
Using only publicly available footage and testimonies, BBC Eye has shown how glaring tactical mistakes caused one of the highest concentration of losses for a single Russian unit since the beginning of the war – a number the Russian authorities have denied.