Soldiers fighting for Ukraine appear to shoot dead a Russian prisoner of war outside a village west of Kyiv in video posted online.
The footage was originally shared on social media app Telegram. The New York Times said it checked the video and the BBC said it confirmed the location north of the town of Dmytrivka and found satellite imagery showing bodies on the ground.
At least three men in camouflage clothing can be seen in the video, including one with a head wound and his hands tied behind his back, dead next to a fourth man, breathing heavily and wearing a jacket over his head.
“He’s still alive. Film those looters. Look, he’s still alive. He’s gasping for air,” says a man in the video in Russian — a language widely spoken in Ukraine.
A soldier then shoots him twice in the head. He keeps moving, so the soldier shoots again and stops. Then a soldier is heard shouting “Glory to Ukraine.” A man replies with the phrase: “Honour the hero.”
The audio ends with a man saying, “Don’t [expletive] Come to our country.”
The living soldiers in the video wear the Ukrainian colors of blue and yellow on their arms, while the men on the ground wear white armbands, the color of Russian troops. A few meters from the bodies is a BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle used by the Russian airborne unit.
BBC investigators attempted to biometrically match the face of one of the men in the video, who faces the camera with a prominent beard. They found a match for a Georgian man with close ties to Ukraine but have yet to confirm his identity. The station believes the word “Gruziny” – which means Georgians in Russian – is also heard.
The scenes in the video match the landscape on Google Street View of the main road outside Dmytrivka, which is about 11 km southwest of Bucha with roads to Irpin.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Thursday he was aware of the video and it was “definitely being investigated.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he had not seen the video but said: “I will say that any report of possible violations of international law should be followed or investigated, and of course any violation of international law and any other war crimes are always.” unacceptable.”
A war crime is defined by the United Nations as a serious violation of international law committed during an armed conflict against civilians or enemy forces.
The video emerges days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russian military of committing the worst war crimes since World War II after mass civilian graves were discovered in Bucha, a town 24km north of Kyiv.