A video, which appeared on social networks on Wednesday, shows the beheading of a soldier wearing the characteristic armband of the Ukrainian forces. On another, released a few days earlier, the mutilated bodies of soldiers appear.
Volodymyr Zelensky denounced, Wednesday, April 12, a new exaction of “monsters” Russians, after the broadcast of two videos showing violence against men dressed as Ukrainian soldiers. kyiv has opened a preliminary investigation to date and authenticate the most recent, showing the beheading of a man in a forest, and authorities are seeking to identify the victim. Franceinfo summarizes what we know about these images.
What do these videos show?
Two videos of abuse appeared on social networks in a few days. The first, broadcast on April 8, “shows the decapitated bodies of two Ukrainian soldiers near a destroyed military vehicle”, reports CNN*. Their hands also appear to have been severed. A person off screen, whose voice “appears to have been edited to prevent identification of the author”declares in Russian that the vehicle was damaged by a mine. “Someone approached them and cut off their heads”continues this person, laughing.
Another video, which appeared Tuesday (April 11) on pro-Russian discussion groups on social networks, shows the beheading of a man in uniform and wearing a yellow armband, characteristic of the Ukrainian military. The unbearable images last one minute and forty seconds. We see another man, in camouflage, with his face masked, wearing “a strip of white cloth on the leg – a symbol commonly associated with the Russian military and pro-Russian fighters”reports The world.
This masked man cuts the neck of his victim, who struggles on the ground screaming in agony. After a few seconds, the screams stop and a man behind the camera encourages the executioner, in Russian, to “cut the head” of the soldier on the ground. The latter finishes his decapitation with a knife and shows the severed head to the camera. The victim’s waistcoat, crossed out with the Ukrainian trident and a skull and crossbones, is also shown.
Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of crimes against prisoners of war. At the beginning of March, a video which seems to attest to the execution of a Ukrainian soldier by Russian soldiers caused a shock in Ukraine. A few months earlier, the Kremlin was outraged by two videos that appeared to show the execution by bullets of a dozen Russian soldiers who had surrendered to Ukrainian forces. In a report on the conflict, the UN accused both sides of committing summary executions of prisoners and war crimes.
Have these images been authenticated?
At this stage, none of these videos could be independently authenticated. According The worldthe place and the date of the images of the decapitation “remain uncertain”. But the French daily and the American channel CNN point out that the green grass and the vegetation in the background suggest that they could have been shot during the summer of 2022 and broadcast months later. The Russian independent media The Insider* adds that this video was first shared on the Telegram channel of Vladislav Pozdniakov, a Russian ultranationalist figure. According to a message from the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense published on Telegram, the authorities are “All [leur] possible to identify the deceased”.
The other video, showing two decapitated bodies, may be more recent, CNN claims. According to the American channel, the images were shot by mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner. Messages posted on Russian social networks report that they were filmed near Bakhmout, a city in Donbass which is the scene of violent clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces. The veracity of this information, however, could not be confirmed, either independently or by CNN.
What are the international reactions?
In a video posted on Instagram, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of being responsible for these abuses. “How easily these monsters kill. This video of the execution of a Ukrainian prisoner of war, the world must see. This is a video of Russia as it is”affirmed the Ukrainian president. “It was [déjà] like that in Boutcha. Thousands of times”he added, in reference to the massacres of civilians discovered in this city on the outskirts of Kiev in the spring of 2022. The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced that it had opened an investigation into this “war crime”.
“These are of course horrible images”reacted the spokesman of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, during a press conference on Wednesday. “In the world of ‘fakes’ [fausses informations] in which we live, we must ensure the authenticity of this video”, he said, however. Since the start of the conflict, Russian officials have consistently denied any involvement of their troops in war crimes, accusing Ukraine of orchestrating the scenes.
These images also elicited strong reactions from the rest of the international community. The UN mission in Kyiv said “horrified”. “Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event”, she lamented, demanding an investigation into these abuses. France denounced “a barbaric act” and an “unbearable attack on human dignity”. For his part, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, declared on Twitter to be “mortified by [cette] horrible video”. The EU will ask “Accounts to all perpetrators and accomplices of war crimes”added a spokeswoman for the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell.
* Links marked with asterisks refer to content in English.