Ukraine says Russia is implementing prisoners of war without care for hours

On Monday morning, last autumn, Ukrainian drones saw what became a familiar scene on a drone feed: Russian soldiers faced their weapons to two Ukrainians, who apparently surrendered. Then, the shots showed, the Russians called them an empty point.

The video, presented by a pilot, said that he witnessed the killing of the summary, by the New York Times and the Information Flexibility Center, a non -profit organization. It appears to show the executioned Ukrainian prisoners near the village of Novivanovka in the Kursk region of Russia.

“There were no polite words that spoke between us – we were full of anger and a strong desire for revenge.

While the United States is adopting Russian conversation points in pushing it for a ceasefire in Ukraine, many Ukrainians ask whether the allegations of Russian war crimes will simply forget. President Trump indicated that he wants to re-establish relations with Russia and end the war-or at least, concludes the American commitment to Ukraine by President Joseph R. Biden Junior.

US European officials briefed Recently, it is withdrawn from a multinational group created to investigate the allegations of war crimes against senior Russian leaders and allies responsible for launching the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Biden administration joined the group in 2023. Finance is over to Follow tens of thousands From Ukrainian children Russia kidnapped her.

While both of them Both sides They were accused of war crimes, Russia She faced more allegations, not only from Ukraine, but also human rights groups and the United Nations. In recent months, Ukrainian and international human rights officials have accused the Russian forces of implementing the Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered instead of taking them as a war prisoner, as required by the treaties of the Geneva Conventions that define how countries deal with enemy forces and civilians during the armed conflict.

The latest United Nations report criticized a “worrying rise” in the Russian executions of Ukrainian prisoners. In December, the Office of the Human Rights Secretary in Ukraine announced this 177 Ukrainian war prisoners have been executed in the battlefield since the beginning of the war; Of these, 109 were killed in 2024 alone. The Russians have killed at least 25 additional Ukrainian soldiers since then, according to Artem Starosie, who runs Mellfar, a Ukrainian consultant who supports the war effort and analyzes videos to reach this number. The Times could not independently verify this count.

“This can be one of the largest campaigns to kill deliberate prisoners in modern history,” Ukraine Foreign Minister, Andrei Sepeha, He said In February.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request to comment on Ukrainian allegations, although the Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Russia was committing war crimes in Ukraine.

Five Ukrainian pilot pilots said in the interviews that they saw while videos of drones showed their colleagues who surrender, just to kill. On Telegram, these videos have become common. Although Russian officials have denied committing war crimes in Ukraine, some Russian soldiers seem very interested in the possible repercussions that they published their videos about the killing of unarmed Ukrainians.

In previous conflicts, war crimes usually occur from view, just to be revealed later through investigations. But drones mean that these executions can be tracked in the actual time: Lovers showed up to 16 men, lined up and shot dead September 30After surrendering near the eastern city of Boukrovsk, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office. Nine operators forced a Ukrainian drone to strip their underwear and lie on the floor in Kursk before they were He shot on October 10 The shots were very clear, and one man met him later.

Some perpetrators depict videos themselves – like one of them published in January that were widely distributed on social media and seems to show deaths Six Ukrainian soldiers Near Donetsk, the Ukrainian Public Prosecutor’s Office said.

One of the Russian said on the video, “One of them.”

“Photography on the camera, to the curse on it,” added another.

The video with the seventh Ukrainian ended on the ground, and his fate is unclear.

Although the video site cannot be verified independently, the men who were killed in the video were wearing bile badges, such as the Ukrainian forces known. One soldier has been identified before Open source researchersAnd then Financial timesAs a Russian Named Oleg Yakovlev.

Since the end of August, the United Nations Human Rights Control Mission in Ukraine has documented 29 meetings, Russian soldiers who have killed at least 91 Ukrainian soldiers, including the episode of two. Daniel Bell, head of the mission, said that human rights monitors analyzed videos and photos published by Ukrainian and Russian sources that display executions and bodies, and conducted an interview with witnesses and verification that the executions that were reported were held near Russian attacks.

Ms. Bell said in an interview: “It is terrible.” “These are just the cases that we evaluated as reliable and reliable.”

During those same six months, the United Nations documented one execution of a Russian soldier unable to the Ukrainian forces, Mrs. Bell said.

She will not expect why the number of killings is increased. But in August, Ukrainian soldiers invaded Kursk, and they may arouse revenge. Some military analysts said that the Russians may try to intimidate potential Ukrainian recruits from joining the army and making Russian soldiers think twice before surrender – because the Ukrainians may want revenge.

The Russian soldiers who were arrested after executing the Ukrainian forces said in interrogations that they had ordered their killing – even after they told the leaders that the Ukrainians had surrendered and threw their weapons on the ground, according to a video that was liberated for the recent interrogations released by the Ukrainian Special Forces.

One of them said in the video: He added: “And he opened fire on them.”

In the middle of March, when the Russian forces sought to restore Korsk, a picture of many prisoners of the Ukrainian war was distributed with their hands behind their backs. Another video, unintended independently, showed the same prisoners who have died now, with three of them bleeding from their heads. Use the person who photographed insults to refer to them as he counted the bodies of the camera.

Analysts said that orders are likely to come from above. The Russian Vice -President of the Council of Security – Dimidre Medvedev, the former president – said that the Ukrainian soldiers have no right to life or mercy after Ukraine. Azov Brigade A video clip of a soldier who appears to be a Russian -wounded Russian soldier in July. “Implementation, implementation and implementation”, Mr. Medvedev wrote cable.

In October, the Washington Institute is based in Washington War study He said: “The Russian leaders are likely to write great nutrition or fans or directly order the implementation of the Ukrainian war prisoners.”

When the Russian drone pilots saw their weapons to the Ukrainians on the video, the pilots said, they were often calm watching their comrades. Then they swore.

One of the commanders said that one of the scene was still chasing him: a Russian soldier shot four Ukrainian soldiers lying in a trench near Chancev Yar, and he could not do anything to stop him. “Without hesitation, all of them are executed,” said the leader of the calling mark “Madara” for the Japanese manga hero.

In another video clip, the Russians surrounded four injured Ukrainians, forced them to get out of their shelter in a square and confiscated their weapons. Then the Russians took three soldiers to the street and shot them. It was one of the three executions of Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk area, which he watched in video extracts from drones in a command publication during the past year.

The grandfather said: “The worst part was the deficit – we could not do anything to help our men.”

After seeing the Ukrainian soldiers who were killed on November 11, two of the aforementioned leaders wanted to limit drones. The pilots met with three units on a video call. The Ukrainian drone followed five Ross – the two who shot the Ukrainians, and the three who stood – and lived live to their movements in the forest. Follow ten other drones, surrounding the five Russians. After that, one of them said, drones fired their weapons and killed them.

Mark Santoraand Oleksandra mykolyyshyn and Liubov Soludko She contributed to the reports from Kyiv, and Night Labzina From London.