Russia has always used state sponsored terror tactics and humanities violations. Just go read up on the way they treated people in their way to Berlin in WW2. It's horrifying. Raping children to death in front of their families is just standard operating procedure for the Russian army and that never stopped being true.

Now, they've used another time honored Russian strategy. They emptied the prisons/gulags to flesh out their front line. Which just feeds into the depravity of the troops who are well known for this kind of behavior already.