Images of rare violence. A new excruciating video showing the beheading of a suspected Ukrainian prisoner of war angered Ukraine on Wednesday, with President Volodymyr Zelensky denouncing a new exaction by Russian “monsters”.
The video, one minute forty seconds of footage, has been circulating since Tuesday. In this one, a man in camouflage, his face masked, slices the neck of another man in uniform who is struggling on the ground, shouting “it hurts”.
AFP was unable to immediately verify the authenticity of the video, or where and when it may have been filmed. Ukrainian authorities have said they are trying to identify the victim. The UN mission in Kiev said it was “horrified” by the footage demanding an investigation as the Kremlin called for verification of the “authenticity” of the video, which usually rejects charges of crimes against its soldiers.
For Dmytro Kouleba, Russia is “worse than the Islamic State”
“How easily these monsters kill. This video of the execution of a Ukrainian prisoner of war, the world must see it. This is a video of Russia as it is,” President Zelensky said in a video address posted on Instagram. “It was (already) like that in Boutcha. Thousands of times,” he continued, referring to the suburbs of kyiv that have become a symbol of the atrocities attributed to the Russian army.
The EU will hold “all perpetrators and accomplices of war crimes to account” in Ukraine, a spokeswoman for the head of European diplomacy said on Wednesday, after the broadcast of a video appearing to show, according to Kiev, a Russian soldier beheading a Ukrainian prisoner with a knife.
Head of Ukrainian diplomacy Dmytro Kuleba he felt that Russia was “worse than the Islamic State”, a jihadist organization which filmed the executions of its hostages, in particular by beheading. “Russian terrorists must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN and held accountable for their crimes,” he said on Twitter.
On the Russian side, the spokesperson for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov also described the images as “horrible”, but questioned their veracity. Usually, Russian officials limit themselves to denying any involvement of Russian soldiers in war crimes, and accuse Ukraine of orchestrating the scenes.