“Kill them all”: the boss of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner has said that his troops will no longer take Ukrainian prisoners, in reaction to what he presents as the execution of one of his men by Kiev forces.
“We don’t know the name of our wounded guy who was shot by miserable Ukrainians. But we’re going to kill everyone on the battlefield. We will not take any more prisoners, ”said Yevgeni Prigojine on Sunday in an audio message published on Telegram by his press service.
He was reacting to another audio recording posted on a Telegram account supporting Wagner and presented as a conversation between Ukrainian servicemen ordering the execution of a captured fighter from the paramilitary group.
AFP was unable to confirm the authenticity of this latest recording.
“When you take a prisoner, you start by taking care of him, you heal him, you don’t hurt him and you send him back home after a while by trading him or just like that,” Mr. Prigozhin.
The Wagner group, accused of numerous abuses in the various areas of operations where it has been deployed around the world, is currently on the front line in the battle of Bakhmout, in eastern Ukraine, which has been raging for month.
Regularly, since the start of the Russian offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of mistreatment of prisoners constituting war crimes.
In mid-April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the actions of Russian “monsters” after the publication on social networks of a shocking video showing the beheading of a suspected Ukrainian prisoner of war.
Yevgeny Prigojine had rejected accusations made by an NGO and a deserter from his group who claimed that the executioners of the Ukrainian soldier, visible in this video, were members of Wagner.