Ukrainian officials have lashed out at Moscow after a video showed one of the country’s soldiers, reportedly in Russian captivity, apparently being executed by Russian soldiers.
The video shows an unarmed soldier in Ukrainian combat dress smoking a cigarette near what appears to be a combat position. The man is then shown pulling the cigarette from his mouth, blowing out the smoke and can be heard saying “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine), before off-camera combatants fire several shots at him.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba blamed Russia, saying it was additional “proof” that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was “genocidal”.
“It is absolutely necessary that [Prosecutor] Karim Khan QC launches one immediately [International Criminal Court] investigation into this heinous war crime,” he said tweeted Monday. “Perpetrators must be brought to justice.”
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak also said the incident was a “war crime”.
“That [war crimes] are part of a [methodical] policy of terror, which is condoned by Kremlin propaganda with its myths about “Nazis”, “There will be punishment for every war crime”, Yermak tweeted Monday. “No one will evade justice. We will find them all.”
Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said he shared the video with international partners as “evidence of yet another Russian war crime”.
“The execution of a captured Ukrainian soldier is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. It is an expression of rascality and baseness,” Lubinets wrote on Telegram.
CNN has not been able to independently verify who the executed prisoner of war is, where he was shot or who shot him.
