The sharp escalation in Russian executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war is continuing with three such cases, involving the killing of as many as twelve Ukrainian defenders, reported this week alone. Further evidence that such war crimes are deliberate state policy was provided on 18 November with the report from Ukraine’s Military Intelligence [HUR] of an intercepted call in which a Russian military commander essentially ordered his subordinates to kill a prisoner of war. This is not the first such order from military command which Ukraine has intercepted, and HUR called it “the latest proof of the deliberate genocidal policy of the occupying army in the criminal war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.”
On 22 November, the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor reported that five Ukrainian prisoners of war had been shot and killed by Russian invading forces near Vuhledar in Donetsk oblast. This war crime, in flagrant breach of international law, is believed to have been committed on 2 October 2024. According to preliminary investigations, one POW was killed in a forest area, with four others led out, under gunpoint, on to a road, where they were shot dead. The investigation here, as, essentially, in all other cases, is under Article 438 § 2 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code – war crimes, linked with homicide.
The news came just two days after reports of similar crimes near the village of Novodmytrivka in Donetsk oblast, and in Kursk oblast (Russia). Near Novodmytrivka, a war crimes probe is now underway over the likely execution of two Ukrainian defenders taken prisoner after the Russians stormed Ukrainian positions on 10 November. This is a particularly harrowing case as the Ukrainian defenders were, reportedly, forced to strip naked before being shot dead. The Donetsk Regional Prosecutor is also verifying information regarding the possible killing of three wounded Ukrainian soldiers in the same place.
On 20 November, a week after posting similar information, Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets reported information, being circulated on Russian sources, suggesting that the Russians had also killed two Ukrainians taken prisoner in Kursk oblast.
It seems likely that the sharp increase in such crimes is also deliberate Russian policy. According to Taras Semkiv from the Prosecutor General’s war department, the number of such executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war is increasing by the month. In October and November, 13 criminal investigations were launched over the killing of 54 Ukrainian POWs. This, he said, was a third of all such investigations initiated in 2024.
The trend is frighteningly clear. Of 53 criminal proceedings launched over the executions of 177 Ukrainian POWs, the vast majority (37 proceedings over the killing of 109 Ukrainian defenders) were in 2024.
