“A terrible barbarism”
Kiev accuses Kremlin troops of beheading a soldier
18.06.2024, 19:12
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The Ukrainian authorities are making accusations against Russian troops. On the Eastern Front, Kremlin fighters are said to have beheaded a Ukrainian soldier. Kyiv’s Attorney General speaks of a “terrible barbarism”.
Kiev accuses Russian troops of beheading a Ukrainian soldier near the front in eastern Ukraine. “We have received information that the leaders of the units of the Russian occupation forces in the Volnovakha area of the Donetsk region ordered not to take prisoners among the Ukrainian soldiers,” the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram. The head of a Ukrainian soldier was discovered on a military vehicle during aerial reconnaissance.
Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin spoke of a clear violation of the Geneva Convention and said the incident would not go unpunished. “This is a terrible barbarism that has no place in the 21st century,” he wrote on X about a drone shot showing an unrecognizable object on the hood of a damaged army vehicle. Kostin called on “the entire civilized world to isolate and punish the terrorist country.” There was no reaction to the accusation from Moscow.
Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of committing crimes on the front lines since the war began in February 2022. As part of a ten-point peace plan, Kyiv is calling for the establishment of a special court to investigate the abuses.
According to an expert, the number of alleged Russian war crimes has recently increased dramatically. There are currently around 133,000 investigations registered. This is an “enormous increase,” said the German advisor to the Ukrainian Attorney General’s Office, Klaus Hoffmann, to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” in early June. By the end of 2022, there were 56,000 such proceedings.
Hoffmann cited Russian air strikes on civilian targets and kidnappings and forced adoptions of Ukrainian children as examples. He did not want to pre-empt a legal assessment. However, his personal opinion was that the Russian actions could only be described as “terrorism against the civilian population,” he told the newspaper.