Declassified Archives

alright, today we're gonna talk about one of the biggest and MOST infamous lost media pieces ever - the Chechclear video.
arguably the grand daddy of internet gore,

it's widely believed that this is the first even beheading video to be ever uploaded online, in which i don't think as it could be the first ever video to achieve notoriety in the internet but i'am quite sure that this this sort of content definitely existed before this.

well whatever, this video came way before the iraq or afghan beheading videos, making itself as pioneer of internet/execution-gorr videos.
this video and act was recorded during the first chechen war, the video was then recovered by russian authorities and sold to russian media in September 1999 which showed the whole video but in parts on Russian television networks.
the video was ripped off from Russia's Channel 2 Network and was subsequently uploaded to early internet shock sites i late 90s and early 2000s.
the name of the video file name was 'chechlear.asf', it's also believed that the names for the original video of chechclear wasn't chechlear but titles like ‘cutthroat 1996’ or 'The Unknown Russian Soldier', many people claimed this, especially in ogrish forums.
although the meaning of the names were unknown.

chechlear is an unusually dificult type of video to watch today and has been since at least 2007 or 2008, despite being the most infamous death videos on the Internet.
existing copies are in unnaturally worse in quality, many versions have lost audio which is considered to be the most disturbing part of this video, other versions have lost colour and ones existing copies of Chechlear are heavily water marked so the quality of this video over the years has got worse.

utimately it was originally ripped off a documentary and uploaded to the internet and since then it's been reuploaded on websites and for quality over time has been lost.

the video to which is currently available is around 20 seconds where a presumably young russian soldier is seen lying on his side with his head stepped on a chechen rebel wearing heavy combat boots.
the rebel is holding a very sharp Bowie knife, and within seconds, he stabs the soldier in the side of the neck.
as the beheading starts, there's a horrifying amount of blood gushing everywhere. but the worst part is the audio. the soldier's screams, gurgling, and drowning in his own blood make some of the most disturbing noises.
when i first watched it as a kid(back in 2018 or 19), the audio haunted me for weeks.
the sounds he made were so eerie-ly creepy that i couldn't get them out of my head.

the video that's available now is edited into three different cuts: the first part is around 10 seconds and the other two parts are 5 seconds each.

but i've heard there was a longer version, supposedly about 5 minutes long.
it's tough to find any trace of it because most of the OG shock sites and forums have been wiped from the internet.
you can still check out few archived forums and see people talk about different versions.

a mystery with conflicting facts and i don’t think you can verify anything now.
i've seen discussions on Reddit and a few other forums where people shared similar memories, but concrete info is scarce.
it's quite crazy even after nearly 30 years since the Chechen wars noone has ever uploaded the original videos of chechclear.

someday, i will definitely dig around and find some forums or discussions, maybe even some internet archives about this.
but it's tough because most of these OG Shock-sites with the old forums have been decapitated from the Internet itself.
so, the best i've got is other volks providing their memory of browsing OG shock sites and maybe a few rare resources.

there are people who claim chechclear is linked to a series of chechen executions from the late '90s, specifically the 1998 abduction and execution of foreign engineers :- one kiwi, three brits.. by Arbi barayev and his men.
to show they meant business, they slaughtered andrei tedyev, a 24 yo gangster involved in oil smuggling, in front of the kidnapped engineers.

now, stillshots from chechclear appeared in 'Chechnya. White Book' (or 'White Paper'), published in 2000. the link between the 1998 incident and Chechclear is from this book.
i knew about the photos before reddit but didn't dive into the hundreds of pages due to my non existent russian speaking skills.

reddit user thecupfrom2girls1cup brought this story more attention. he also shared research on other videos with disturbed reality himself.

NOTE :- as of 2025, i tried searching for this “chechnya white paper” book but now it’s available nowhere.

now for some online speculation. i've found mentions of chechclear in VERY few articles. either detailed enough to be sure or under-detailed but likely matching in time and context.
these articles analyzed extremism related beheading videos as a phenomenon.
however, i won't link them because they didn't offer solid confirmation.

but one notable comment from Ogrish by user Hugh.G.Recti posted on July 29, 2003.. has been the source of the supposedly correct story for years.
this comment is still mentioned in various videos, even today
now, according to russia's channel 2, the clip was bought in september 1999 by the russian media. channel 2 was the only station to air this clip in its entirety.
the full video begins with a bearded chechen (temirbulatov) kneeling on the back of a panicked 18 year old Russian soldier.
there then follows the bloody action that we see in the "current" clip. the video ends with temirbulatov holding the severed head up to the camera, laughing.
i wanted to trace the earliest mention, but there's a problem:-

russia didn't have channel 2 in 1999.

yes, russia2 didnt even exist back then.
it might refer to russia1, as it's channel 2 in the DDTV system and some former names match.
but, i havent found any specific mention of what documentary it was.
the longest version we have, with cuts, was included in the 2001 documentary 'chechnya, 20th century terror all for your friends'.
this film also showed other known scenes, including OFEX and it's fully available on yt.

Quoting Uri- „i've never seen a 5-minute version, but there is a slightly longer version that was shared on Kazaa called 01_5.mpg.
It was merged with a quick clip of the treestump video. This version was available on Ogrish at one point"

i think, that's true, but traces are still available. till April 2001, there were two versions of Chechclear on ogrish:

1. 01 5.mpg hosted on chechnya.ru (1.3 MB)
2. Longer black and white version i.e cutthroat.asf (381 kB)

kazaa likely got the first file from the same site. kazaa started in March 2001, and the earliest online mention with a link to 01_5.mpg is from february 2001
(fun fact: 015.mpg caused trouble when new zealand's office of film and literature classification added it to their register in 2009 for ‘promoting extreme violence’ and i think they also arrested a person for that)

another version, 'unknown russian soldier,' was hosted on nausea, mentioned on the ogrish forum. it was a shortened, black and white, 8 second clip. i found another one, also called 'unknown russian soldier,' which was a poor quality chechclear fragment and tree stump execution.
the filename was different, and i deleted it about a year or two ago, not realizing it was rare. chechclear.asf was a 1.17 mb video considered the best version available on ogrish.

1. by 2003-4, people were already 'remembering' seeing a longer version (more than 20 seconds), but noone provided proof. this speculation has persisted for nearly 20 years, with no one offering concrete evidence even today.

2. speculations about connections to events from april 12, 1996, were made independently or around the same time as the well known 2004 post from hugh.g.rection.

3. some posts mentioned beliefs about a full version being stored in russian archives. this belief has persisted for nearly 20 years, with various storylines emerging, often half legendary.

so i got alil too much curious about this and tracked the reddit user down myself.
he was was searching for the chechclear video a couple of years ago.
he narrowed the victim down to andre tediyev and believes the killer is mosvar barayev, with arby barayev holding the camera.
i also read these guys names, but didn’t pay much attention.

seems like I accidentally got closer to it. he confirmed there 'must' a longer version of the video and found evidence linking tediyev to the victim, that this thing was mentioned in the whitepapers. he even found footage of barayev's birthday in 1998 where mosvar is wearing the same jacket as the killer in chechclear. unfortunately, he's given up on the search because he is 38 years old currently has a son now and doesn't have the time, but he'd love to see someone else take over and do a deep dive, like GDFM or smth.

2025 edit :-
also, the funny and sad part is that he stopped talking to me right after i told him i was 14-15. also, around that time, my 8th grade final exams started, so i stopped reading morbid stuff. and honestly, i never went back to it the way i used to. good ol’ eerie days, eh?

The Chechclear

Some More Info

NOT NEW, BUT RESURFACED BACKGROUND INFO

EARLY SPECULATIONS - FROM 1999 TO 2006 (until Ogrish went down)

After going through multiple Ogrish forum threads and beyond