The head of Ukraine’s war crimes department believes that Russian soldiers have been instructed to execute Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Russia has continued executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war and the executions seem to be systematic, reports the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC. Killing a captured surrendering soldier is a war crime.
The BBC’s verification service BBC Verify has recently been able to verify several situations in which Russian troops have executed surrendering soldiers of the Ukrainian army. In one case, a Ukrainian soldier was beaten.
Russian troops have filmed some of the executions themselves, some executions have been filmed from Ukrainian drones.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office is investigating at least 147 cases in which the Russians have killed Ukrainian prisoners of war. 127 of the suspected cases have occurred during this year.
– The executions became systematic from November last year and they have continued throughout this year. Unfortunately [teloitusten] the number has been on a special increase this summer and autumn. This tells us that these are not isolated cases, says the head of the war crimes department Yuri Belousov.
According to him, there are clear signs that the executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war are part of Russia’s methods of warfare, and the evidence suggests that Russian soldiers have been instructed to carry out the executions.
Ukrainian forces have also been said to be guilty of executing Russian prisoners of war, but the number of these cases is significantly smaller, reports the BBC.
According to Belousov, Ukraine takes seriously the accusations regarding war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces. So far, no Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with killing Russian prisoners of war.