Russian soldiers, accused of killing unarmed prisoners / What happened to a family from Pokrovsk that refused evacuation and “waited for the Russians”
Russian soldiers in Pokrovsk. Photo source: Dmitry Yagodkin / Zuma Press / Profimedia
The Kyiv prosecutor's office accused the Russian army of the extrajudicial killing of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Donetsk region, largely occupied by Russia, according to the DPA news agency, while several Ukrainian media, including the independent Belarusian portal Nasha Niva, reported on the tragic case of a family from the city of Pokrovsk (in the same region) who had not evacuated, waiting for the “Russians”.
According to a statement issued on Monday by the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, Russian soldiers took two Ukrainian prisoners in the town of Shahovo, a village near the city of Pokrovsk, where heavy fighting is taking place, and forced one of them to undress. “Then they shot both unarmed Ukrainian soldiers”, says the press release of the Kyiv prosecutor's office, which states that the second Ukrainian soldier was stripped of his clothes after he was killed, reports Agerpres.
The Ukrainian prosecutor's office said that legal proceedings for war crimes had been initiated.
Kiev has repeatedly accused the Russian forces of violating the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. Ukrainian authorities have reported several cases of prisoners of war being summarily shot on the basis of videos shared by the executioners themselves on accounts of the Telegram messaging application.
Ukrainian prisoners of war from a mechanized brigade were killed last week in the Guleaipole sector of the Donetsk region.
In September, officers of the Main Directorate of Intelligence under the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR) intercepted a conversation between the occupiers, in which a unit commander ordered a subordinate soldier to execute two Ukrainian prisoners.
In May, the Russian occupiers executed Ukrainian prisoners in the town of Novopol in the Donetsk region.
“The Russian soldiers, who were drunk, started shooting at random in the house, for fun”
More recently, drunken Russian soldiers brutally killed the head of a family in Pokrovsk, which was waiting for “russki mir” (“Russian world”), the independent Belarusian publication Nasha Niva quotes, citing Russian Telegram channels.
Viktoria Švaiko – a resident of Pokrovsk – testified that, on the night of December 22 to 23, three drunk Russian soldiers broke into the house where she lived with her family. A video recording of her testimony before the investigators was published by Telegram channels in Russia.
The woman said that the soldiers came from the Mechanized Brigade of the Guard Army No. 2, identifying them with the nicknames: Şuher, Stroi and Ulâbka.
The soldiers started shooting at random in the house, for fun, and then they killed her husband after beating him badly. Afterwards, the soldiers dragged her into the bedroom and raped her, threatening to kill her, Viktoria Švaiko told military investigators.
Her mother-in-law, whom the soldiers wanted to rape and kill, managed to escape and warn the neighbors that “the three wanted to visit”.
The woman also said that she begged the soldiers to stop and not set the house on fire, saying that she and her husband had not left Pokrovsk because they were “waiting for Russia to come”.
The soldiers ignored her pleas and set fire to the house. Later, the soldier with the nickname “Ulâbka” (Smile) recovered from his drunken state, knelt in front of the woman, asked for her forgiveness and gave her his bank card with several thousand rubles as a ransom for his guilt, reports Nasha Niva.
Russia has been trying to conquer Pokrovsk for a year and a half. Ukrainian troops are currently maintaining defensive lines in the northern districts of the city, according to the cited media.
