Russian soldiers demonstratively execute surrendered Ukrainian soldiers, knowing that these war crimes are recorded by drones in real-time, writes The New York Times. The Ukrainian Armed Forces record the executions almost live thanks to drones filming events on the battlefield. According to operators, the footage from the drones leaves no doubt — the executions are systematic.
«This could be one of the largest campaigns of deliberate killings of prisoners of war in modern history», stated Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha in February.
In December, the office of the Ukrainian Ombudsman announced that since the beginning of the war, 177 Ukrainian prisoners of war had been executed on the battlefield, 109 were killed only in 2024. Since then, the executions of another 25 Ukrainian soldiers have been recorded.
Since the end of August, the UN mission monitoring human rights in Ukraine has recorded 29 incidents in which Russian soldiers killed at least 91 incapacitated Ukrainian soldiers.
One of the verified videos, filmed last fall, shows Russian soldiers shooting two Ukrainians at close range near the village of Novoivanovka in the Kursk region. On September 30, footage shows 16 people who surrendered near the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk lined up and shot. Nine Ukrainian drone operators were forced to strip to their underwear and lie face down on the ground in Kursk, and then shot on October 10, the footage was so clear that the mother of one of the men later recognized him. Russian officials deny these executions, however, some Russian soldiers post their own videos of the killings of unarmed Ukrainians.
At the same time, as interrogation videos published by the Ukrainian military show, Russian soldiers captured after the execution of Ukrainian servicemen stated during interrogations that they were ordered to kill them, even after they informed their commanders that the Ukrainians had surrendered and dropped their weapons on the ground. In October, the Washington Institute for the Study of War stated: «Russian commanders are likely verbally condoning, encouraging, or directly ordering the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war».
Amid accusations by Ukrainian and international human rights activists of executions of prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Convention, the US informed European officials that they are withdrawing from the multinational group established to investigate allegations of war crimes against senior Russian leaders and allies responsible for initiating the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Photo: AP