kyiv accuses Russia of summary executions of Ukrainian soldiers – L’Express

This Sunday, December 3, Ukraine enters its 648 days of war since the Russian invasion of February 2022. A day marked by a Russian drone attack and accusations of summary executions.

⇒ Ukraine claims to have shot down 10 Russian drones Shahed

⇒ kyiv accuses Russia of having executed soldiers who wanted to surrender

⇒ Former Ukrainian President Poroshenko banned from traveling abroad

Ukraine claimed this Sunday, December 3, to have shot down ten Shahed aerial drones above the Mykolaiv region (south of the country), out of the twelve launched by Russia during a new night attack. A type of weapon frequently used by Moscow against its neighbor.

The swarm is believed to have started from the Russian port city of Primorsko-Akhtarsk, on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, Ukrainian Air Force says in a publication on its official Telegram messaging channel. A Russian Kh-59 guided air missile, fired according to kyiv from the Russian region of Belgorod, was also intercepted. No casualties were reported by Ukrainian forces.

In the east of the country, the Ukrainian town of Avdiïvka has seen fewer ground attacks in the last 24 hours, although it has been under continuous fire from Moscow’s army for almost two months. . A relative calm explained by “heavy” Russian human losses and difficult weather, according to Vitaly Barabach, the mayor of this town in the Donetsk region.

One person was killed in a Russian strike on eastern Ukraine on Saturday afternoon, Ukrainian authorities said. According to a statement from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry on Telegram, a civilian was killed by a bombing in the town of Chassiv Yar and another was injured in Toretsk, two towns in the east of the country, in the Donetsk region. Another person was also reported injured in Bogdanivka, in the north of the country, in the kyiv region.

Ukraine opened an investigation this Sunday into the “execution” by Russian forces of Ukrainian soldiers who had signaled their intention to surrender, after the broadcast on social networks of images which provoked indignation in the country . Their authenticity could not be verified by AFP.

Published on Telegram, the short video shows two men coming out of a shelter, one with his hands above his head, before lying on the ground under the eyes of another group of soldiers. What appears to be gunfire ensues and smoke appears, before the video abruptly ends. These images, undated, were presented on social networks as having been filmed near Avdiïvka, the scene of heavy clashes in the east of the country.

On the occasion of a similar video last March, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recalled having “documented numerous violations of international humanitarian law against prisoners of war, including cases of summary executions of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Ukraine’s security services (SBU) said on Saturday that former President Petro Poroshenko, a rival of current head of state Volodymyr Zelensky, was not allowed to travel abroad because he was going meet Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and risked being “exploited by the Russians”.

Petro Poroshenko, who led Ukraine from 2014 to 2019 and is now an opposition lawmaker, had claimed Friday to have been blocked at the border while he had to go abroad for “dozens of meetings in Poland and the United States”. However, he assured that he had received authorization to leave Ukraine: trips abroad by Ukrainian officials must be validated by the authorities under the martial law in force since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

In a statement released on Saturday, the security services explained that Moscow intended to use a meeting between Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Orban, accused of being “anti-Ukrainian”, to “divide Ukrainian society”.