Images of a soldier shot in cold blood by Russian forces, posted on the Internet, have become the symbol of war crimes committed in the country.
The images, which last a handful of seconds, are overwhelming. On a video that has gone viral, we see a Ukrainian soldier standing in a forest with trees bare by winter. Motionless silhouette, slightly hunched shoulders, he stands in front of a kind of trench dug in the ground. He has opened his military jacket and is wearing neither his helmet nor his weapons, just a thin, white cigarette in the corner of his lips. We imagine him as a prisoner.
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Behind the camera, a man – who cannot be seen – says in Russian, “film it“. The soldier removes his cigarette, puffs out his smoke and replies, staring him straight in the eye: “Slava Ukrainian”, “Glory to Ukraine”. A second later, he collapses under a burst of automatic weapon. “Die, you bastard”, said the voiceover. And the video stops.
Execution of an unarmed man
According to the Ukrainian army, this soldier is called Timofii Mykolayovitch Shadoura, 41, a soldier from the 30th mechanized brigade, mobilized in December and missing since February 3 in Bakhmout, in Donbass, where the battle is taking place. longest and bloodiest since the start of the Russian invasion.
The Russians executed an unarmed Ukrainian soldier after he said “Slava Ukraini!”. A heinous war crime.#SlavaUkraini , it is our freedom, our dignity and love for our land. We fight and we are ready to die for it. And we will win with this! pic.twitter.com/1E4q8NgaIE
— UA Embassy in France (@UKRinFRA) March 6, 2023
But a journalist specializing in military matters, Yuriy Boutusov, come up with another name: Macievsky Alexander Igorevych of the 163rd Territorial Defense Battalion of the city of Nizhyn. DDoubts remain about his identity. Problem: his body is in occupied territory and until he is repatriated, we will not know with certainty who he is. As for the video, Ukrainian bloggers claim to have downloaded it from the site of the Russian channel Rossiya 24, before it was removed, but its date and its authors have also not been identified.
A soldier become a symbol
Despite these gray areas, this soldier is already an icon. In a few hours, thanks to the virality and the strike force of the social networks that Ukrainians use as a weapon of mass communication, his act of courage has gone around the world. Artists have even taken his silhouette to make posters and drawings, and derivative products.
The video of a Ukrainian soldier coldly shot by Russian troops for saying #SlavaUkraini is doing the rounds on social media. His memory is honored in the country by many artists.#HeroyamSlava pic.twitter.com/YwnIYIqAzZ
— UkraineWorld French (@UkraineWorldFr) March 7, 2023
The artists had already seized the soldiers of Serpents’ Island, who had replied “Screw you” to the Russian ship asking them to surrender on the first day of the war; or with the resistance fighters at the Azovstal factory in Mariupol, or even with this soldier giving the middle finger to the Moskva, the Russian flagship which ended up being sunk in the Black Sea and which today appears on an official stamp .
Another war crime
This ordinary, unarmed soldier from Bakhmout has become a national hero and a martyr, victim of what looks like a cynical war crime. The Minister of Foreign Affairs calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court and President Zelensky urges the population to take up this patriotic slogan with which he already concludes each of his speeches.
While the stubbornness of the military authorities not to cede the city of Bakhmout is paying a heavy price, with an incalculable number of deaths, brandishing this icon is also today a way for Kiev to remobilize the nation, to maintain the spirit of resistance, and to shine the spotlight on how war crimes will one day be judged. Nearly 65,000 cases have been recorded to date, according to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Andriy Kostin.