Investigation opened into alleged Russian shooting of Ukrainian POWs

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office launched an investigation on Wednesday into the alleged execution of two captured Ukrainian servicemen by the Russian military in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region last month.

The move follows the release of a video by Ukrainian news agency UNIAN on Wednesday, which appears to show two Ukrainian prisoners being forced into a ditch and then executed at close range by two Russian soldiers.

While the video has yet to be independently verified, UNIAN said in its post that “Rashist [Russian fascist] scum in the Zaporizhzhia direction shot a group of Ukrainian prisoners of war from the 70th Motorised Rifle Regiment.”

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said that the video had been shot in June near the village of Robotyne in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. He added that a criminal case had been opened for “the violation of the laws and customs of war, in addition to premeditated murder”.

“The recording clearly shows that the defenders of Ukraine laid down their weapons and did not resist. The occupiers, on the other hand, are cynically shooting unarmed people,” Kostin wrote, adding that the incident wasn’t an “accident” but a “deliberate policy of the Kremlin’s criminal regime to destroy everything Ukrainian.”

The Prosecutor General’s Office noted that killing prisoners of war constituted a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and qualified as a war crime.

The Russian authorities have yet to comment on the incident.