Why kill the f*cking horse?
This was pretty upsetting indeed.
I suppose the army's a natural magnet for some sadists. It affords nearly complete anonymity and consequently - impunity from prosecution.
However, the idiots in the video in question decided not just to record the act, but then to post it on social media. True genius!
I think it would be good to identify them, and transfer them to a sturm-battalion.
-//-
Killing a horse senselessly - is simultaneously the most un-Russian and most Russian thing one can do.
In Tolstoy's "Kholstomer" and old and worn out mare is beaten savagely by peasants and collapses. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnilov dreams of a drunken peasant beating to a death a horse with a crowbar in front of a cheering crowd, while the boy Raskolnilov tries to save it.
Both these passages produced a powerful impression on me as a young adult.
Russians combine within themselves infinite brutality and infinitive breadth of soul.