Rome (AP) – The Ukrainian soldiers climbed from the ruined house to the threat of a firearm – one with arms raised in the surrender to the Russian troops – and rested in front of the grass in early spring.
Two drones – one Ukrainian and a Russian – recorded the top scene above the south of the Ukrainian village of Piatykhatky. The Associated Press managed to get the two videos. They offer very different versions of what happened next.
The video of Ukrainian drone, which AP obtained from European military officials, shows soldiers with Russian uniform marks raising their weapons and pulling on each of the four Ukrainians in the back with such ferocity that a man was left without head.
“Of all the executions we have seen since the end of 2023, this is one of the clearest cases,” said Rollo Collins of the Center for Information Resilience, a London group specializing in visual surveys and examined video at the request of the AP. “It is not a typical combat murder. It is an illegal action. “
The video of the Russian drone, that the AP located on pro -Kremlin social media, suddenly cuts with men lying on the soil – living. “Following the work done by our guys, the enemy decided not to be killed and came out with his hands,” wrote a Russian military blogger who published the video.
Two videos. Two stories. In one, prisoners seem to live. In the other, they die.
While the proof of potential war crimes continues to rise, many in Ukraine fear that the face of the Trump administration on the war will make it more difficult to establish a firm historical account of what has happened since the invasion of Russia in 2022 and if the most responsible for atrocities will never be held responsible.
On March 13, the day the European officials say that the incident in Piatykhatky took place, American representatives landed in Russia for cease-fire talks with President Vladimir Putin.
President Donald Trump, who pointed out that a potential agreement could see Ukraine rendering a territory and echoes the Moscow discussion points, called for a rapid peace agreement. His administration has resumed the support of Ukraine, including surveys on war crimes, and reconstructs relations with Putin – the same man as many victims and prosecutors want to see in court.
“Whatever a peace agreement, Ukraine is not ready to forgive everything that has happened in our territory,” said the head of the War Crimes Department, the head of the Ukraine War Crimes Department. “In what form there will be a responsibility, which we do not know at the moment.”
Kremlin denies a policy to kill prisoners of war
The murder of prisoners of war in Ukrainian video – a crime in international law – was not unique, according to Ukrainian prosecutors, international human rights officials and open -source analysts.
According to Ukrainian prosecutors, at least 245 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been killed by Russian forces since the large -scale invasion. They allege that this is part of a deliberate strategy encouraged by Russian officials.
“This is definitively part of the policy, which is fully supported by the main leaders of the Russian Federation,” Bielousov told AP. “This is not the action of specific commanders. It is supported at the next level.”
Asked about Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia deals with Ukrainian troops in accordance with international law and does not encourage the murder of prisoners of war.
“It is not a policy of the Russian party,” he told AP, and Moscow’s claims have repeated that the atrocities committed by his troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha were faked.
In the occupation of this city outside kyiv at the start of the war, hundreds of Ukrainians were killed. Accablant evidence, in particular testimonies, photos, video surveillance videos, telephone interceptions and corpses of civilians, supported these deaths.
Battle for Piatykhatky
Drone’s video in Piatykhatky was taken by the 128th Ukrainian mountain brigade, according to military officials in a European country with which the Ukrainian authorities shared the video. The AP obtained it under the cover of anonymity because the civil servants were not allowed to release it.
Intense fights have devastated this crossroads in the Zaporizhzhia region. Fresh scras marks stain grass and houses remain, roofs and windows are missing. The battle was part of a race to seize the territory before the peace talks, Russia asking for a strategic foot to force Ukraine to restructure its logistics lines, according to military analysts.
Russian soldiers planted their flag in the middle of the ruins of Piatykhatky last month, according to a drone video published on March 11 by pro-Kremlin bloggers.
Two days later, Russian and Ukrainian drones recorded the surrender of the four Ukrainian soldiers about 100 meters (yards).
Russian video shows an explosive drone flying in the house window where the Ukrainians have covered themselves, exploding with a flash.
The drones of the two countries have recorded one of the Ukrainians, the weapons raised and apparently unarmed, leaving the house broken. With a Russian soldier pointing his weapon on him, the man slipped spread next to his comrades on the ground.
European military officials who analyzed the video said that the Russians were identifiable by red or white brands on their uniforms.
The Ukrainian video shows that the Russians briefly searched their prisoners. Two other Russians arrive and consult the comrades. We stop to use your radio.
What is happening was then cut off from Russian video. A Russian heads for the prisoners, lifts his weapon with one hand and begins to shoot. Another soldier shoots too. While he recharges, a third Russian joins, pulling at least two shots at close range which remove the helmet – and the head – of a man. Then, the soldier who had recharged finished the four Ukrainians, firing each one, one by one.
No video shows how the first Ukrainian soldier came out of the house.
The 128th mountain brigade of Ukraine refused to comment because deaths are the subject of an investigation as alleged war crime. Ukraine’s internal security agency confirmed to the AP that it had opened an investigation.
Russian military bloggers who published the published video said that it shows the work of an assault unit of the 247th Russian Airborne regiment.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comments on the incident.
Analysts of the Center for Information Resilience confirmed that the videos had been recorded by different drones, as well as the location and identification of soldiers’ marks.
“For us, it is a methodical and clinical execution process,” said Collins, CIR analyst. “It follows from a very coherent trend that we have seen since at least December 2023.”
An increase in killings of prisoners of war
Russia also claims to have documented “systematic killings” of Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian troops but has not given global figures. In March, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published testimonies from Russian Pows exchanged by Ukraine who described blows and tortures in detention. Some have pointed out “a practice of finishing of injured Russian fighters, as well as to execute combatants who laid arms”.
The investigation committee, the main criminal investigation agency in the state of Russia, said in December that it had opened more than 5,700 criminal cases on alleged Ukrainian crimes since the start of the conflict.
The United Nations Human Rights Surveillance Mission in Ukraine has documented 91 extrajudicial killings of Ukrainian prisoners since August 2024. During the same period, it found only one case of Ukrainian soldiers killing a prisoner of Russian war.
Bielousov, the prosecutor of Ukrainian war crimes, said that all of these allegations against Ukrainian troops were the subject of an investigation.
Danielle Bell, head of the United Nations Human Rights Surveillance Mission in Ukraine, said the increase in murders of Russian forces prisoners did not occur in the void. Russia promulgated laws protecting the soldiers from prosecution, she said, and officials called the murder or torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and approved extrajudicial murders. Several videos of killings of prisoners of war have appeared online, some published by Russian soldiers themselves, she noted, suggesting an environment of large impunity.
“Calls on social networks by civil servants, the laws of amnesty, dehumanizing it language in the context of impunity for these acts-this contributes to an environment that allows these acts or these crimes to occur,” she said.
Follow war crimes
Extrajudicial murders are part of more than 157,000 potential war crimes that Ukrainian prosecutors investigate. Ukraine relied on international support to help process this flow of information and complex affairs structure for international and national courts.
This work has suffered from the Trump administration cuts with foreign aid.
Among the people affected, there was the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, who lost $ 5 million in the American agency for international development. He had used money to collect evidence of offenses ranging from material damage to sexual assault. The non -governmental organization has reduced staff, reduces operations and out of its kyiv offices, Oleksandr Pavlichenko’s executive director told Executive Director.
US funding for groups investigating atrocities in Cambodia and Syria has helped build cases of war crimes later. It took more than two decades to bring the main leaders of the Red Khmers to a court not supported by war crimes resulting from their brutal rule in the 1970s which led to 1.7 million people. Prosecutors relied on the archives of the Cambodia documentation center, established with the funding of the United States government.
Without this center, “there would not have been a Khmer Rouge court.
“To have a lasting peace, we must have a responsibility. We must invest now,” he said. “Without that, we see that the ceasefire and the armistices are only waiting periods for the next conflict to begin.”
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Leicester reported in Paris and Dupuy reported to New York. Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine; Molly quell in The Hague, Netherlands; Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia; And Emma Burrows in London contributed.
