Kyiv says Russia has executed 93 Ukrainian POWs since start of war

Ukraine has documented grounds related to the execution of 93 Ukrainian prisoners of war, according to a instrumentality enforcement authoritative tasked with investigating warfare crimes related to Russia’s penetration of Ukraine.

Yuriy Belousov, who heads the Prosecutor-General's Office’s section successful complaint of investigating crimes committed successful equipped conflict, provided the latest fig during a unrecorded tv quality connected October 4.

"Now we person accusation astir the decease of 93 of our soldiers who were executed connected the battlefield," Belousov told Yedyniy Novyny, a broadcast that unites aggregate Ukrainian tv channels.

Belousov said that astir 80% of the executions were recorded this year, but that the fig of executions began rising successful November "when determination were changes for the worse successful the cognition of Russian servicemen toward our prisoners of war."

On October 1, the Prosecutor-General’s Office announced it had opened an probe into what it described arsenic the "largest wide execution" of Ukrainian prisoners of warfare by Russian troops since the commencement of Moscow's full-scale penetration successful February 2022.

According to an authoritative connection published connected the office’s Telegram channel, Russian forces precocious killed 16 Ukrainian "prisoners of war" adjacent the villages of Mykolayivka and Sukhiy Yar successful the Pokrovsk territory of the Donetsk region.

Videos circulated connected assorted Telegram channels look to amusement Ukrainian soldiers, freshly captured by Russian troops, emerging from a forested area.

After the prisoners person lined up, Russian forces look to unfastened fire. The videos past look to amusement Russian soldiers approaching those who were lone wounded and shooting them again astatine adjacent scope with instrumentality guns.

The videos person not been independently verified.

Under planetary humanitarian law, executing soldiers who person surrendered is considered a warfare crime.

Ukraine's Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said helium had contacted some the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross implicit the deaths, citing violations of the Geneva Conventions, which govern the attraction of prisoners of war.

In March, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission successful Ukraine published a study that recorded the execution of astatine slightest 32 Ukrainian prisoners of warfare successful 12 abstracted cases from December 2023 to February 2024.