Ukraine has opened an investigation into the alleged execution of 16 Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian army near Pokrovsk, a key city in the east of its territory in the grip of a Russian offensive, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office announced .
‘This is the most massive known case of execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war on the front line,’ accused Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriï Kostin, quoted in the prosecutor’s press release on Tuesday evening.
‘The murders and torture of prisoners are not an accident but a deliberate policy’ of Russia, he assured.
The investigation for ‘violation of the laws and customs of war’ and ‘premeditated murder’ was opened following information shared on social networks including an alleged video of the execution, we read in the press release broadcast on Telegram.
The images it contains, described by the prosecution, show a group of captured Ukrainian soldiers coming out of a forest plantation and lining up.
‘Deliberate act’
After that, ‘the occupants deliberately opened fire on them,’ the prosecution said. ‘The wounded, who showed signs of life, were killed at point blank range by a burst of automatic rifle,’ according to the same source.
The alleged crime was committed near the villages of Mykolaivka and Sukhy Iar, in the Pokrovsk area, the prosecutor’s office said, citing media reports.
The two belligerents have already repeatedly accused each other of having killed prisoners of war since the start, in February 2022, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In March 2023, a video showing a captured Ukrainian soldier, executed by gunfire after saying ‘glory to Ukraine!’, went viral.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recalled at the time that it had ‘documented numerous violations of international humanitarian law against prisoners of war, including cases of summary executions of prisoners of Russian and Ukrainian war’.
/ATS
