- WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
kyiv has accused Vladimir Putin’s forces of beheading a Ukrainian soldier after a severed head was found placed in a damaged armored vehicle.
The gruesome discovery was made in the eastern Donetsk region during an aerial survey, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin.
He shared a disturbing image from the scene that appears to show the body part on the hood of a Kozak-2, a Ukrainian armored vehicle used to transport troops.
The Ukrainian military claimed that it received information yesterday that Russian soldiers in the front area had been ordered not to take prisoners and instead behead them.
Ukraine has launched an investigation into what Kostin called “horrible new evidence” of Russian war crimes, calling it “horrible new evidence.”A horrible barbarism that has no place in the 21st century.’
A chilling image shared by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin purports to show the severed head of a Ukrainian soldier on the hood of a Kozak-2 armored vehicle.
File image showing Russian troops in the occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
“This is further confirmation that the aggressor’s war crimes are not isolated cases, but rather part of the planned policy of the Russian regime,” he said.
“These criminal orders were issued by the battalion and company commanders of the occupation forces.
‘We will not let these crimes go unpunished. “I urge the entire civilized world to isolate and punish the terrorist country.”
He went on to say that the army had “received information that Russian commanders had ordered not to take Ukrainian soldiers prisoner but to kill them with inhuman cruelty: by beheading.”
Such actions constitute a clear violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, the Attorney General added.
The alleged execution would not be the first time Russian forces have executed Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Several videos of prisoner executions shared on social media have shocked the world since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Kostin (pictured) called it an example of “appalling barbarism that has no place in the 21st century.”
Rubble and Z graffiti are seen in a destroyed Ukrainian village in Donetsk, Ukraine.
In March last year, a chilling video shared on Telegram showed a man taking a final drag on a cigarette next to a shallow grave before being executed by Russian troops.
The victim, who was later identified as Ukrainian wrestler Oleksandr Matsievskyi, says “Glory to Ukraine” to his captors before being shot dead.
On April 9, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported 27 criminal proceedings for the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Criminal cases were opened for the alleged murder of 54 Ukrainian fighters at the hands of Russian troops.
The United Nations said last year it was “deeply concerned” by what it described as summary executions of prisoners of war carried out by Russian forces on the battlefield.
A report published in March 2023 by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented the executions of 15 Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian military and the Wagner Group during the first year of the large-scale invasion. scale.