HRW: Russian military executes Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered
The organisation has sent a letter to Shoigu asking whether the Russian military receives orders to kill Ukrainian soldiers
Since the beginning of December 2023, Russian soldiers have executed at least 15 Ukrainian soldiers while trying to surrender, Human Rights Watch reports.
Human Rights Watch investigated the alleged extrajudicial executions of at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers, using videos on social media that appeared in December last year and February this year. In all of these cases, the Ukrainian soldiers demonstrated a clear intention to surrender and, having ceased to participate in hostilities, should have been considered persons prohibited from being attacked under international humanitarian law or the laws of war, HRW said.
HRW investigated several other similar cases, in one of which two Russian soldiers apparently executed three unarmed Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered.
Apparently, these extrajudicial executions are not isolated incidents, the report says. Human Rights Watch also examined drone footage published on 5 February 2024, in which a male voice in Russian allegedly gives orders to Russian soldiers on the battlefield in the Donetsk region: "Take no prisoners, shoot everyone". According to HRW's analysis, this is a recording from a Russian drone.
Human rights activists recall that a report published in March 2023 by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented the executions of 15 Ukrainian prisoners of war in the first year of the full-scale invasion.
In a February-July 2023 report, the UN documented the extrajudicial executions of six Ukrainian prisoners of war. Similar reports from a later period describe 12 episodes of executions of at least 32 captured soldiers.
Human Rights Watch noted that on 22 April, it sent a letter to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu asking him to comment on the above cases and provide information on whether Russian military personnel were receiving orders to kill Ukrainian soldiers.
It was also reported that in early April, Russian Telegram channels published footage of the alleged execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war, specifying that it had taken place in the Krynok area.
As a reminder, Human Rights Watch estimated the number of people killed by Russians in Mariupol at at least 8,000. The organisation accused Putin, Shoigu and Kadyrov of war crimes.
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