War crimes investigation launched after Russians post video showing beheaded Ukrainian soldier

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General has initiated a criminal investigation after a video was posted on 16 August on which a masked man points to a severed head on a pole, claiming it to be the head of a Ukrainian defender.  The criminal investigation is under Article 438 § 2 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code (violation of the rules and practice of war, linked with murder) as, even if the victim had already been killed, any such mutilation or desecration of bodies is a war crime.

Unsurprisingly, the video was posted on 16 August by the so-called Rusich ‘sabotage-assault reconnaissance group’ or task force, a neo-Nazi unit originally formed by Alexei Milchakov and Yan Petrovsky. Milchakov who is quite open about his Nazi views, first gained notoriety back in St. Petersburg for beheading a puppy on a video posted on the Internet, and calling on fellow neo-Nazis to kill down-and-outs.  He had even faced criminal prosecution at home until the current Russian regime began paying him to kill Ukrainians. The Rusich Task Force, as well as both Milchakov and Petrovsky, have been under US sanctions since September 2022, together with other paramilitary units seen as linked with the Wagner Unit.

The video asserted that the victim had been from Ukraine’s 155th Marine Brigade, with the Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState reporting that it was made at the Kopotilovka checkpoint in the Belgorod oblast (Russia).  Deep State notes that around 12 August, Ukraine’s Armed Forces had made an unsuccessful attempt to break through the enemy line.  

The probe into the authenticity of the video and the circumstances around the beheading will be carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU].  Ukraine’s Ombudsperson Dmytro Lubinets also stated that he had called on the UN and to the International Committee of the Red Cross to respond to this “latest violation of international humanitarian law by the Russians”.  He noted that all such atrocities are aimed at frightening and demoralizing Ukrainians, but that they merely confirm the wish to ensure that all of those guilty of such atrocities are held to answer.

This is the second such report of a Ukrainian defender being killed and his body mutilated in the last month.  A similar war crimes investigation was initiated on 3 August, although on that occasion the Prosecutor General spoke only of information circulated on social media, not of a video.

The scale of Russian executions of prisoners of war and atrocities like the above has increased dramatically since late 2023, however none of the war crimes can be called new.  In August 2022, drone footage was posted, both in Ukraine and by CNN, of Russia’s total destruction of the Luhansk city of Popasna. In one shot, Ukrainian soldiers were seen being led away, with their hands on their heads.  Shortly after this, another photo was posted by the then Governor of Luhansk oblast, Serhiy Haidai which appeared to show the impaled head and hands of a Ukrainian prisoner of war outside a house in Popasna. 

In April 2023, two separate videos were posted which appeared to show Russians beheading Ukrainian soldiers.  One, posted on 8 April on a pro-Russian social media platform, showed the beheaded bodies of two Ukrainian soldiers.  The other was posted on 11 April but may have been taken earlier.  On it a Russian can be seen beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war. 

In its monitoring report for the period from December 2023 to March 2024, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that its monitors had “recorded 12 cases of executions of at least 32 captured Ukrainian POWs. OHCHR has verified three of these incidents in which Russian servicemen executed seven Ukrainian servicemen hors de combat.” “In eight of the reported cases, videos published on social media showed what appears to be Russian servicemen killing Ukrainian POWs who had laid down their weapons and using other captured Ukrainian POWs as human shields”. 

Earlier in March, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, a body created by the UN’s Human Rights Council, reiterated, in its third report, earlier findings that Russia’s torture of both Ukrainian POW and of civilians had been “widespread and systematic.  Judging by the injuries that Oleksandr Ishchenko, the 56-year-old prisoner of war who died in a Russian SIZO [remand prison] had sustained, it seems likely that he had been subjected to torture.

In a recent interview to Dutch TV, Danielle Bell, Head of the OHCHR Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, stated that Russia subjects over 95% of Ukrainian POWs to torture, and that it was the worst she had seen in her 20 years of monitoring.