Russians execute wounded Ukrainian POW amid mounting evidence of Russia's policy and incitement to kill

A new video has emerged on which a seriously wounded Ukrainian defender appears to be killed in cold blood by Russian invaders. This is the latest in a rapidly increasing number of such atrocities and there are strong grounds for believing that the killings are, at very least, condoned by Russian military command, if not part of their policy.  The same conclusion is prompted by the fact that Russian officials and propagandists constantly call for such executions.

On the video widely posted on Telegram channels on 9 November, a Ukrainian defender is lying on the ground, unarmed, very clearly wounded and unable to move.  He is asked by the approaching Russians where he is from and he replies that he is from Sumy oblast, and waves vaguely behind him when asked where the other Ukrainian solders are and if there are any around (to which he answers no).  At this point, one of the Russians comes right up and fires several shots at the wounded Ukrainian, while the others are telling him not to. 

At present there is no information as to where the killing took place, however most of these war crimes against unarmed prisoners of war are committed in Donetsk oblast.  In condemning the crime, Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsperson Dmytro Lubinets said that there were no limits to Russia’s cynicism and brutality and noted that the Russians had, themselves, videoed the killing which was being circulated via the Internet.  While never clear how videos do appear, this one is certainly not from a drone and does seem to be taken by somebody present at the scene.

The video on 9 November came just four days after Ukraine’s Prosecutor General initiated war crimes investigations  into the killing of six Ukrainian prisoners of war soon after they were taken prisoner in the direction of Pokrovsk (Donetsk oblast) on 23 October, and of three other prisoners of war on 1 November.

According to Denys Lysenko from the Prosecutor General’s Office department on investigating war crimes, Ukraine has thus far initiated 49 criminal investigations over the killing of 124 prisoners.  He too mentioned that there had been a sharp increase in the number of such crimes since the end of 2023, with the largest number in Donetsk oblast.

The war crimes department is currently examining all such cases, seeking patterns of behaviour and building cases against those high-ranking members of the Russian military command who, in their opinion, are either implicated in the organization of such killings or are guilty of not taking adequate measures to prevent them and / or punish the perpetrators.

There have been a horrific number of such killings since the beginning of October when 16 unarmed Ukrainian POWs are feared to have been summarily executed.  See: Russia kills more Ukrainian POWs while UN Secretary-General wined and dined by Putin

As reported, Ukraine’s Military Intelligence have evidence, including intercepted conversations, suggesting that at very least one Russian commander, known as ‘Turk’, ordered a subordinate to kill Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Incitement to kill

Russia’s warmongering propaganda began in 2014, with all state media involved in spreading incendiary lies, claiming ‘genocide of Russian speakers in Donbas’ and deliberately lying about a tragic fire after disturbances in Odesa on 2 May 2014. 

Within hours of a deadly, and probably deliberate, explosion during the night of 29 July 2022, which killed over 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war,  including many defenders of Mariupol, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted that the Azov Regiment Mariupol defenders deserved a “humiliating death” by execution. This was in pre-Musk Twitter times, and the tweet was found to violate the platform’s rules on hateful conduct but was not removed as being “in the public’s interest for the Post to remain accessible.”. It is certainly in everybody’s interest to see the hate speech and toxic lies that Russian officials are openly using to incite war crimes.

On 4 November 2024, the Crimean Human Rights Group published the latest monitoring report by Iryna Sedova, which pointed to constant calls by Russian propagandists to execute Ukrainian prisoners of war.  Any such executions are a grave war crime, yet there is no accountability for such calls on state-controlled television.   

As well as openly claiming that Ukrainian prisoners of war should be executed, that “there will be no mercy”,  presenters on Russian propaganda shows, as well as their guests, constantly stress that the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ does not have a moratorium on the death penalty, and that this ‘death penalty’ should be applied (without trial or right of defence, of course) against unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war.  Some have even called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Russian legislation specifically for use against Ukrainian prisoners of war.

All the techniques of warmongering propaganda are applied, with dehumanizing language used, as well as the unsubstantiated claims used in the Kremlin’s attempt to justify Russia’s war of aggression (claims that Ukrainians are ‘fascists’; that this is about ‘denazification’, etc.).  Worth noting that former employees of Russian state television reported that the instructions on which forms of abuse or dehumanizing terms should be used were passed to the channel management from the Kremlin.

While those appearing on propaganda talk shows will not be reading scripted texts, they will certainly have an idea of what is permitted and / or encouraged, with this clearly including incitement to kill Ukrainian defenders.  On one main Russian state TV channel, in talking about the surrender of Azov Regiment soldiers, a speaker said that so-called ‘denazification’ (which Russian leader Vladimir Putin used as excuse for the full-scaled invasion) should be understood as ‘neutralization’. 

While some of these individuals are known solely through their role on state television, others engaged in effectively inciting to extrajudicial killings, and to genocide are high-ranking state officials.  They include the speaker of the State Duma Viacheslav Volodin who justified the death penalty as ‘just punishment’ for representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, whom he called ‘fascists’, claiming that Kyiv is a ‘neo-Nazi regime’.  The pronouncements from Dmitry Medvedev, close Putin ally and deputy head of Russia’s security council, are generally even worse and should often be viewed as incitement to genocide.  They should also be brought to the attention of those US politicians who appear to believe in some kind of ‘peace plan’ involving ‘peace’ in exchange for effective Ukrainian capitulation.  Medvedev has made it quite clear that Russia will not stop until Ukraine ceases to exist as a sovereign state and until all Ukrainian territory falls under its control.