A Russian state journalist has sued the organizer of a training course for war correspondents over injuries he says he received during the training. Svyatoslav Pavlov’s gruesome account of the course at a military site in Crimea included scenes of ripped earlobes and bags placed over journalists’ heads causing asphyxiation. The courses are required for conflict journalists under a media law passed amid a war between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian government that has raged in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Real-life marines roleplaying as terrorists had kicked, strangled and shot live rounds near journalists taking the course in September, said Pavlov, an editor at the Kremlin-owned Rossiya Segodnya news outlet. One participant was taken away in an ambulance “in a hysterical fit,” Pavlov wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “The lectures’ main narrative is that a journalist is a nobody, can’t do anything and knows nothing, and needs to coordinate everything with the security forces,” Pavlov said. The courses “culminated with a copious sprinkling of the beaten journalists with sheep’s blood,” he wrote. A photograph Pavlov posted on his profile showed a laceration on his face. Doctors diagnosed him with a concussion and said that he had multiple bruises on the face, body and limbs, according to an attached diagnosis.