Russia on Friday accused Ukraine of having “brutally” executed more than 10 of its soldiers who had laid down their arms, denouncing a “war crime”.
“No one will be able to present the deliberate and methodical killing of more than 10 Russian soldiers who were immobilized (…), with direct shots in the head, as a ‘tragic exception'”, declared the Russian Ministry of Defense.
This accusation comes after the publication on social networks of two videos of about thirty seconds each, presented as showing the execution of Russian soldiers who had just surrendered to Ukrainian forces.
In the first video, taken with a mobile phone, we see a group of men in military uniforms leaving a house with their hands in the air, then lying prone on the ground in a garden strewn with debris, while soldiers wearing yellow armbands point their guns at them. A flurry of gunfire rings out and the video cuts off.
The second video, taken from a height, possibly with a drone, shows a dozen bodies lying amid pools of blood. One of them seems to have a wound on his face.
The presence in both videos of a wheelbarrow and a red children’s car in the garden seems to indicate that they are the same place. However, it was not immediately possible to know where, when, by whom and under what circumstances these images were taken.
The Kremlin Human Rights Council, an advisory body attached to the Russian presidency, said that these alleged executions had been committed in Makiivka, a locality in the Donetsk region (eastern Ukraine).
“We are going to ask for a reaction from the international community and an investigation,” said the head of this body, Valériy Fadeyev.
For the Russian Ministry of Defense, these videos are “proof of the massacre” committed according to him “by the Ukrainian soldiers against unarmed Russian prisoners of war”.
“This brutal murder of Russian prisoners of war is not the first nor the first war crime committed,” he continued, saying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “will be held accountable for all prisoners tortured and killed” .
Since the launch of the Russian offensive against Ukraine at the end of February, the two camps have repeatedly accused each other of inflicting ill-treatment on prisoners of war.
In a report released on Tuesday, the UN said many prisoners of war captured by both sides were subjected to torture and ill-treatment.
The UN had also indicated that it had received “credible allegations” of summary executions of Russian prisoners of war captured by Ukrainian forces and several cases of torture and ill-treatment.