Ukraine’s ombudsman rules out Kievan troops having committed war crimes after the release of a series of videos that outraged Moscow and prompted the UN to open an investigation
Faced with increasing pressure on Ukraine to clarify whether it executed 10 Russian soldiers on a farm in Lugansk province this month, Kiev authorities have again denied Moscow’s allegations. The ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, argued that the videos that have come to light today, showing Kremlin troops unarmed and lying face down with their hands on their heads, are actually “fragments” of another fact . As he explained, it was soldiers who invaded “who pretended to surrender… And they committed a war crime by firing on the Ukrainian forces”. In any case, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has assured that he will investigate what happened.
The videos, part shot by a Ukrainian soldier and others captured by a drone, capture the moment when the Russian occupiers surrender without apparent resistance to the forces of Kiev, in the village of Makivka, belonging to the Lugansk region. and recovered by the troops of Volodímir Zelensky in the middle of this month. When they are ordered to lie down on the ground and everything is thought to be under control, an eleventh Russian soldier suddenly emerges from the latrine and opens fire on the Ukrainians, according to the New York Times. In other snapshots, the Kremlin troops are later seen dead in the same position on the ground as when they surrendered.
The Ukrainian army claims that its troops have legitimately defended themselves against enemy fire. Likewise, Lubinets assures that these dead soldiers “cannot be considered prisoners of war”. “Those who use international protection to kill must be punished,” he says.
The videos were first aired on Ukrainian news channels and social media to praise the army’s military prowess and publicize the heroic recovery of territory under Russian control since the start of the war. In Moscow, on the other hand, the recordings provoked harsh reactions.
The Russian Presidential Council for Human Rights has asked the United Nations to set up an international commission to investigate the alleged executions of Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine. For their part, the pro-Russian authorities in Donetsk have announced their intention to hand over the footage of these possible executions to the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Amnesty International for verification.
“It is difficult to comment on the video of the execution of the surrendered soldiers in the Makivka settlement without going beyond the normative vocabulary,” denounced the Russian government’s ombudsman in Donetsk, Daria Morozova, in comments collected by the Russian agency TASS.
Source: La Verdad
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