By Olha Hembik | 2025-01-08

WARSAW -- Russian troops are executing Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) with increasing frequency in clear violation of international law, evidence suggests.

The Russians themselves frequently record videos of executions or of killed Ukrainian soldiers' bodies and post them on Telegram.

On December 22, the Ukrainian 110th Gen. Marko Bezruchko Separate Mechanized Brigade posted a video it had obtained of the latest atrocity. It shows Russian soldiers shooting five Ukrainian POWs.

"I will report this incident to the [United Nations] and ... the Red Cross," Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian ombudsman, wrote on Telegram the same day.

"Russian war criminals who shoot Ukrainian prisoners of war should be brought before an international tribunal and punished with the most severe punishment provided for by law."

Executions on the rise

Kyiv is conducting 53 criminal proceedings on the execution of 177 Ukrainian POWs, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office.

"The number of these cases is clearly rising. This is happening all over the front. We know which units are involved in this," Taras Semkiv, deputy director of the Prosecutor General's Department for Combating Crimes in Conditions of Armed Conflict, told public broadcasting on November 22.

Ukraine launched the vast majority of those investigations in 2024: 37 cases regarding 109 executions, he said.

Analysts from DeepStateUA in October reported on the largest known mass execution of Ukrainians in Kursk province, Russia, when the Russians shot nine drone operators near Zelenyi Shlyakh village.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, called the killings an international crime and a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, which stipulates that POWs must be treated humanely.

Incidents "causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war" are considered a "serious breach," of the Convention.

"We are doing our utmost to identify and prosecute all those responsible for the aggressor's crimes committed against Ukraine and Ukrainians," Kostin posted in English on X in October.

Additional killings could be occurring unknown to Ukraine.

Several days after Semkiv's TV appearance, media reported the execution of five Ukrainian servicemen captured near the town of Novodarivka in Zaporizhzhia province, Ukraine.

Law enforcement already has identified the Russian army units involved in that crime.

Attempt to worsen the situation

Russian commanders are probably encouraging or ordering their underlings to shoot Ukrainian POWs, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American think tank, reported in October.

It cited as an example the execution of 16 Ukrainian POWs near Pokrovsk, Ukraine, on October 1, the largest such incident in the war.

Russian war bloggers approve of these murders, ISW wrote.

"This is an attempt to worsen the situation as much as possible. It's clear that these kinds of actions by Russian service members arouse outrage and horrify the public," said Vladyslav Seleznyov, a military correspondent and former speaker for the Ukrainian General Staff.

He pointed to a video from April 2023 in which marines from the Russian Pacific Fleet beheaded a captured Ukrainian soldier.

"They kill our guys who ... get captured, and they hope we'll do the same thing," Seleznyov told Kontur. "But, no. The Ukrainian army unambiguously affirms the rules of international humanitarian law and also abides by them."

Every Russian taken captive by Ukraine reminds the global community that the full-scale war is still going on, he said.

"This isn't a special military operation. It's a war, one where POWs exist," Seleznyov said. "This is explicit leverage that the Ukrainian government has over the Kremlin and that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to take away from us."

The General Staff conducts regular training on compliance with international law.

On December 30, 2022, the Russians shot a Ukrainian POW named Oleksandr Matsievskiy after he said, "Glory to Ukraine!"

They filmed his murder and posted it online. The final moments of his life reminded the West about the fight the Ukrainians are engaged in every day.

On March 13, 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posthumously bestowed the Hero of Ukraine honor on Matsievskiy.

"From [the Russians'] perspective, this might look like intimidation, but it has the opposite effect on us," said Oleksandr Pohrebyskyi, a member of the Kyiv city council and commander of a drone battalion.

"Every infantryman knows that surrendering isn't an option -- he'll be shot and killed. So they have to fight to the bitter end," Pohrebyskyi told Kontur.

Demands for justice

Videos of the executions of Ukrainian POWs help Ukrainian lawyers document evidence of crimes, including for international courts.

"The state has entities that are working on documenting these incidents for The Hague, and there will be more than one volume of materials about them," Yaroslav Zhukrovsky, a military lawyer and co-coordinator of the Military Family Support Office, told Kontur.

Providing documents, facts and evidence of war crimes to the international judicial authorities will be a priority right after the war ends, he said.

"Another issue is if a serviceman was executed, the body most likely wasn't returned," Zhukrovsky said.

Videos that prove such deaths unlock "a number of welfare benefits" for the bereaved families, he said.

Video documentation is valuable in another way to Ukrainian intelligence.

Soon after the Russian marines "decapitated the Ukrainian POW on video, the Ukrainian intelligence agencies killed them," Seleznyov said of the video posted in April 2023.

In this way, the intelligence agencies are acting on the Ukrainian public's demand for justice. One example of retribution was the Security Service of Ukraine's assassination of Russian Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov on December 17 in Moscow.

"This isn't the first time in history," Seleznyov said, likening the assassination to "the activities of Israeli intelligence agencies, which for several decades after World War II sought and killed Nazi criminals."