UN monitors report sharp increase in executions of Ukrainian POWs, and point to Russian officials’ effective incitement to kill

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has reported a sharp rise in the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian armed forces. Importantly, it has also pointed to the effective incitement to commit such war crimes from Russian public officials. 

In a statement released on 3 February, the monitoring mission said that they had documented 79 such executions in 24 separate incidents since August 2024.  They had analysed the evidence for 19 of these incidents involving the killing of 62 prisoners of war [POW] and assessed the reports as credible.  

Although Yury Bielousov, Head of Ukraine’s War Department (within the Prosecutor General’s Office) also reported a sharp increase in cases where Russians had killed Ukrainian prisoners of war in summer and autumn 2024, he pointed out that such executions had become systematic from November 2023. He also noted evidence that Russian soldiers have been instructed to kill Ukrainian POWs.  On 18 November 2024, Ukraine’s Military Intelligence [HUR] posted an intercepted call in which a Russian military commander essentially ordered his subordinates to kill a prisoner of war.  This was not the first such order from military command which Ukraine had 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.”

Most of the information about executions of Ukrainian POWs has come from video or drone footage, or photos, posted on Ukrainian or Russian Telegram channels.  As well as examining those, and checking geolocation, etc., members of the monitoring mission have spoken with witnesses of some of the killings. 

Although the OHCHR reports which are based on the Mission’s findings have long provided details of the torture and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, illegal trials, etc, it is in the 41st report, covering the period from 1 September to 30 November 2024* , that a whole section is devoted to the executions of prisoners of war.  OHCHR reported having verified 19 of the incidents, including that shown in a video where “four Russian servicemen line up and fire automatic rifles at 10 seemingly unarmed Ukrainian servicemen whose bodies then fall to the ground.”   The monitors also verified the execution of eleven Ukrainian prisoners of war during the previous reporting periods.  As of earlier 2025, OHCHR has verified the execution of 68 Ukrainian POWs and servicepersons hors de combat (all men) by Russian armed forces since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.   It quotes a Russian serviceman who was heard telling a severely injured Ukrainian defender that “we won’t bring you with us, we won’t bother with you” before executing him.

In reporting its findings on 3 February 2025, OHCHR stated that it had documented the execution of a wounded and incapacitated Russian soldier by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024. It has also reported some alleged cases of torture and ill-treatment of POWs by Ukrainian soldiers, with these predominantly in transit places before POWs were transferred to official places of detention.  Although the scale is quite different, there is no excuse for any such torture or killings, and OHCHR reports that Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General, the General Staff of Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the Ministry of Defence have confirmed that investigations are ongoing.

As well as the above-mentioned indications that commanders had ordered such executions, or were at least not taking measures to prevent them, there is other evidence of effective incitement which OHCHR has noted.   On 3 February, Danielle Bell, the Head of the Monitoring Mission, was reported as saying that “these incidents did not occur in a vacuum. Public figures in the Russian Federation have explicitly called for inhumane treatment, and even execution, of captured Ukrainian military personnel. Combined with broad amnesty laws, such statements have the potential to incite or encourage unlawful behaviour.”

The Mission stated that it had recorded at least three such calls by Russian public officials, as well as a number of social media posts by military groups linked to the Russian armed forces reportedly ordering or approving executions.  

Many such examples have been quoted here, with the politicians and propagandists involved very clearly certain of their impunity for such incitement to war crimes.  This is scarcely surprising given that the warmongering propaganda which began in 2014 was directly overseen by Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s presidential administration.

Within hours of the deadly explosion on 29 July 2022, which killed over 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war, 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.”.  

This was shortly after a major report from 30 international human rights lawyers and scholars warned that there was a serious risk of Russian genocide in Ukraine. Among the features they pointed to was the clear incitement to genocide from both Russia’s leaders and the state media, like Russia Today. 

The monitoring mission may well have studied crucial evidence presented in November 2024 by Iryna Sedova from the Crimean Human Rights Group.   This pointed to constant calls by Russian propagandists to execute Ukrainian prisoners of war, with many of these broadcast 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.

On 3 May, Ms Bell stressed that “international humanitarian law prohibits ordering that there shall be no survivors, threatening an adversary therewith, or conducting hostilities on this basis. Declaring that “no quarter” will be given is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime.”

Russia is not, unfortunately, providing any grounds for optimism that Ms Bell’s call for military commanders and superiors to provide clear and unequivocal orders to protect prisoners of war will be heeded.  On 29 October 2024, Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin protégé and leader of Chechnya, publicly threatened “vengeance” against Ukraine’s Armed Forces and stated that he had “given all commanders on the frontline the order to not take prisoners, to destroy and maximise their battle still further, 100 percent.”   Although he did later, on 2 November claim that he had revoked this order, it remains in the public domain.  Most importantly, there is nothing to suggest that those Russians seen on geolocated drone footage and their commanders, or those who can be heard in intercepted conversations ordering execution of prisoners, have in any way been held to account.

*   The last two reports can be found here

OHCHR 41st periodic report on Ukraine   

OHCHR 40th periodic report on Ukraine