Kiev accused Russian troops of having “beheaded” a Ukrainian soldier in the eastern Donetsk region. “While carrying out aerial reconnaissance in one of the combat positions in the region of Donetsk, the Ukrainian army discovered a damaged Ukrainian armored vehicle. It contained the severed head of a Ukrainian defender“, the Kiev Prosecutor General’s Office wrote on social media, Andriy Kostin. While awaiting further confirmation, the indiscretion launched by Kostin and the Ukrainian media has already gone viral.
Kiev’s accusation over the beheaded Ukrainian soldier
The photo shared by the same senior Kiev official depicts a broken down military vehicle with an alleged severed human head (covered by censorship) on top of the hood. We are faced with a barbaric crimeyet another war crime since the conflict broke out, or to an indiscretion difficult to confirm at a very delicate moment, with the Kremlin forces pressing on multiple fronts and Volodymyr Zelensky asking for further support from the West?
“Horrifying new evidence of Russia’s criminal policy targeting extermination of Ukrainians: we received information that Russian commanders ordered not to take Ukrainian soldiers prisoner but to kill them with inhuman cruelty, by beheading“, Kostin wrote on his X profile.
“This terrible barbarism must have no place in the 21st century. And this is yet more proof that i war crimes committed by the attacker are not isolated incidents but a planned strategy of the Russian regime. These criminal orders were given at the battalion and company command level of the occupation forces. We will not let these crimes go unpunished. I call on the entire civilized world to isolate the terrorist state and bring it to justice“, added the Ukrainian Prosecutor General.
The Order of Moscow
L’Ukrainska Pravda wrote that yesterday the Ukrainian army received information that representatives of one of the units of the Russian occupation forces in the district of Volnovakha of the Donetsk region would have given theorder to their subordinates not to capture the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and behead them.
“During aerial reconnaissance at one of the combat positions in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian military discovered a damaged armored vehicle of the Ukrainian Defense Forces. On it was the severed head of the Ukrainian defender“, the newspaper said, adding that as part of the investigation all necessary measures are being taken to ascertain the circumstances of the incident and that the involvement of specific Russian soldiers in this crime is being verified.
In the event that the episode cited by Kostin actually coincides with one
intentional decapitation, this would be the second case to emerge in the war in Ukraine after the one captured by a video released in April 2023 showing the live beheading of a Ukrainian prisoner of war.
