The Kherson regional prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the violation of laws and customs of war because of a video of the execution of three Ukrainian prisoners of war near the village of Krynky, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office said.
The footage of the execution appeared on April 7 in one of the Telegram channels. “The video shows a representative of the Russian Armed Forces firing several shots, probably from an automatic rifle, at the unarmed immobile military”, the agency said.
The description under the record indicates that the event took place near Krynky, Oleshkivka community of Kherson region. “Once again representatives of the aggressor country demonstratively ignore the provisions of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, which indicates the support of such actions by the high command of the Russian armed forces”, – emphasized in the Prosecutor General’s office.
According to the investigators of the Evocation project, the crime was committed by servicemen of the 328th regiment of the 104th division on the orders of Colonel, hero of Russia Sergei Ishtuganov. It was done allegedly to intimidate the AFU fighters.The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that they were checking this information.
The 104th Division was reconstituted in the Airborne Troops in the fall of 2023 to participate in the war against Ukraine. Since November it has been on the Kherson direction, its area of responsibility includes the left bank of the Dnipro river.
Commissioner for human rights in Ukraine Dmytro Lubinets appealed to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to document another fact of massacre of Ukrainian prisoners of war. According to him, “this should become an evidentiary basis for a tribunal against the criminals”.
This is not the first time that Ukraine accuses Russia of shooting POWs. Several similar videos appeared in December 2023 and February 2024. For example, the recording on February 17 showed the killing of prisoners of war who were not evacuated from the Zenit position in Avdiivka during the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops. The dead were identified by their relatives.
The next day it became known about the shooting near the village of Vesele in the Bakhmut district. The drone footage shows a Russian soldier killing two prisoners of war during an assault on Ukrainian positions. Both cases are being investigated by the Donetsk prosecutor’s office.
And on February 20, a video of the shooting of Ukrainian prisoners of war near Rabotino in Zaporizhzhya Region spread on the Web. The incident is being investigated by the regional directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
The UN human rights monitoring mission has documented the executions of at least 32 captured AFU fighters between December 2023 and February 2024, when Russian forces were actively storming Avdiivka.Intentional killings of combatants who had laid down their arms occurred in 12 incidents, “significantly more than in any previous period”, the UN said.The mission independently verified three of them, which confirmed that Russian soldiers “executed without a fight” seven Ukrainian soldiers.
According to Kyiv, at least 8,000 Ukrainians, including more than 1,600 civilians, were in Russian captivity at the end of January. In total, more than 50 prisoner exchanges have been held with Moscow since the start of the full-scale invasion.
