KYIV — Two unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed on the Huliaipole front after Russian soldiers were told to “take them out immediately,” Ukraine’s Southern Forces Group says, but the radio intercept offered as proof has not been made public.
Maksym Kravchuk, the group’s spokesperson, told Ukrainska Pravda on Saturday that Russian troops had received orders to kill wounded Ukrainian soldiers, according to the Kyiv Independent’s account. The soldiers are believed to belong to the 38th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, and Kravchuk alleged that such orders come at the initiative of its commander, Colonel Valery Kazak. The charge lands on one of the few channels still working between Moscow and Kyiv, prisoner swaps, which returned 103 captives to each side on Aug. 19.
For now that is a serious claim from one party to the war, not an established finding. It rests on the intercepts and on what the military calls other materials, which have gone to Ukrainian law enforcement. No video or documents have been shown, the two victims are not named, and the Kyiv Independent’s account carries no response from Russian authorities.
The numbers around it have rough edges too. Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said in August that Russian forces had executed at least 345 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered since Russia launched its military operation, the Kyiv Independent noted. The UN human rights office verifies cases before it counts them, and OHCHR reported 129 Ukrainian prisoners and others out of combat executed since February 2022 in its 29 June update. One is a national tally and the other a verified minimum, so the gap says little by itself about what happened.
The same UN update cuts both ways. It recorded credible allegations that 37 Ukrainian servicemen were executed in 18 incidents between mid-November and January, at least 16 of them verified, and it also documents 31 executions of people no longer fighting, Russian prisoners among them, by Ukrainian forces, mostly in 2022 and early 2023. OHCHR urged that the UN, the Red Cross and other monitors get the fullest possible access to Russian-held areas and detention sites.
That is where the Red Cross comes in. The ICRC said in May it had visited 8,000 POWs since the war began, but a visit is not an inquiry into a killing, and TEH found no report that anyone outside Ukraine’s own services has heard the intercepts.
The incident reportedly happened several days before Saturday’s briefing. When, where exactly, and who the two men were remain unstated.
