Top Ukrainian Official Condemns Russian Shooting of Ukrainian POW in Video as ‘War Crime’

Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s Office of the President and a member of the National Security Council, has said Moscow’s troops are continuing to commit war crimes for which they will pay, in the first official response to a new video seeming to show the murder of a Ukrainian soldiers by Russian captors

"War crimes are cultivated in Russia. And they are whitewashed by propaganda and myths about the 'Nazis',” Yermak said in a personal Telegram channel comment.

“Killing a captured person is another example of this. And this is also an example of their national insignificance and weakness. There will be retribution for every such war crime."

The video which went viral on Monday afternoon does not show the shooter or shooters.

Ukraine has accused members of Moscow’s forces of, beyond participating in an unprovoked military invasion of a sovereign state, of hundreds of individual cases of murder, rape and assault, against both members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and Ukraine’s civilian population.

The highest-profile mass death of Ukrainian prisoners of war was recorded on Aug. 7, when explosions hit a prison containing soldiers captured by Russian forces during the Siege of Mariupol. More than 50 Ukrainian service personnel were killed following explosions in a holding facility. Kyiv officials later called pre-fabricated mass murder.

Kremlin spokesmen at the time denied responsibility and claimed Ukrainian artillery shelled the detention site to kill eyewitnesses with knowledge of alleged Ukrainian government misdeeds. Russian state media since Kremlin invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 22 has claimed Russian troops observe all rules of war – a claim widely rubbished over the next twelve months by independent observers and media.

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