A video that appears to show Putin’s soldiers beheading a live Ukrainian prisoner of war with a knife has sparked anger in Kiev. President Zelensky calls on world leaders to convict and punish war criminals.
The footage, which appears to have been filmed earlier in the war last year, shows a masked man violently sawing into the neck of a prisoner with Ukrainian insignia trapped on the ground below him.
The victim is seen writhing on the forest floor, screaming ‘it hurts!’ and stop!’ while his killer, wearing a white ribbon associated with Russian troops, hacks his arteries with the steel blade.
A voice from another apparently Russian fighter taunts the killer into decapitating the stricken man and breaking the spine.
“Send it to Kiev, *****,” says a voice in a foul-mouthed diatribe. ‘Stop it, *****! Break the spine!’
‘What, you never cut off a head, *****? Do it, do it, do it, *****!’
The video ends with the executioner holding the decapitated, bloodied head to the camera as he is told to “pack it up and send it to the commander.”
The barbaric footage shows a masked man violently sawing into the neck of a prisoner with Ukrainian insignia trapped on the ground below him
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba compared Russia to ISIS after watching the video
President Volodymyr Zelensky reacts to sickening video alleging Russian soldier beheads captured Ukrainian POWs with knife
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said of the video: “A gruesome video is circulating online of Russian troops beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war.
It is absurd that Russia, which is worse than ISIS, is in charge [United Nations Security Council… Russian terrorists must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN and be held accountable for their crimes.’
Militants from Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were notorious for releasing videos of beheadings of captives when they controlled swathes of those countries from 2014-2017.
A visibly shaken Zelensky expressed his disgust at the bestial actions of the Russian troops and demanded that world leaders condemn the brutality.
The president said in recorded remarks: ‘This video – the execution of a Ukrainian captive – the world must see it. This is a video of Russia as it is – what kind of creatures they are.
‘There are no people for them. A son, a brother, a husband – someone’s child.’
The video showed the ‘new norm’ that Putin’s Russia wanted to impose, he said.
‘Such a habit of destroying life. This is not an accident. This is not an episode. There was the case in Bucha.
‘Don’t expect it to be forgotten, that time will pass. We are not going to forget anything.
Neither are we going to forgive the murderers.
‘There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary.
‘No-one will understand if the leaders don’t react. Action is required now!’ he concluded.
Ukraine’s domestic security agency, the SBU, said it had launched an investigation into a suspected war crime over the video.
‘We will find these subhumans. If necessary, we will get them wherever they are: from underground or from the other world. But they will definitely be punished for what they have done,’ stressed SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk.
Meanwhile, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted the beheading footage was ‘horrific’ but questioned whether it was genuine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the video was ‘awful’ but pushed for the clip to be verified as authentic
Oleg Tsaryov, a staunchly pro-Moscow Ukrainian businessman and politician, said: ‘Cutting off the head of a captive is a crime. I cannot find a definition for those who post all this on the net’
‘The footage of the beheading of a soldier is horrific, it should be verified,’ he said.
‘There could be reason to check where it happened, [and] on whose side.’
‘First you have to check whether the images are true.
‘Of course they are terrible images.
‘First we have to check whether it is credible, and then of course we can check whether this is true, where it happened and from which side.
“I would like to say that in the fake world we live in, the first thing we need to do is check the authenticity of these images.”
The grotesque 90-second clip shows the murder taking place in a leafy green forest, suggesting it was probably filmed last summer.
But no other information about the circumstances of the murder was provided.
Putin’s armed forces in Ukraine are made up of men from multiple ethnic groups in the Urals, Siberia and the Russian Far East, as well as ethnic Russians.
A glimpse of the executioner’s face suggests that he has Asian features.
Oleg Tsaryov, staunchly pro-Moscow Ukrainian businessman and politician, said: “Cutting off a prisoner’s head is a crime.
‘The filming on camera is idiotic.
“I can’t find a definition for those who post all this on the net.
“I only know that if there is no legal punishment for this, there will be no state.”