A video posted online on Monday and verified by the New York Times showed a group of Ukrainian soldiers executing captured Russian soldiers outside a village in western Kyiv.
Pointing to the Russian soldiers, one of the Ukrainian soldiers involved in the crime said, “He’s still alive.. Take pictures of these thieves. See he’s still alive. He is panting while a Russian soldier is seen wearing a jacket over his head. It looks like he’s injured and still breathing.” Then a soldier shot the captive twice.After the man continued to move, the soldier shot him once more and stopped moving.While the newspaper refrained from publishing the video of its ugliness.
Russian soldiers clothes
At least three other Russian soldiers can also be seen, including one with a visible head wound and his hands tied behind his back near the first victim. All of them wear camouflage clothing, and three of them wear white ribbons worn by Russian soldiers.”
According to the video, which the newspaper verified, it appears that the Russian soldiers have removed their jackets, boots and helmets. Other destroyed vehicles can be seen further from the road.
According to the New York Times, the video was filmed on a road north of the village of Dmitrievka, regarding seven miles southwest of Bucha, where hundreds of bodies of people in civilian clothes have been discovered in recent days amid accusations that Russian forces killed civilians as they retreated.
Ukrainian ambush
The executions appear to have been the result of a Ukrainian ambush of a Russian convoy on or around March 30, as Russian forces were withdrawing from small towns west of Kyiv that had been the scene of heavy fighting for weeks. Freelance journalist Oz Katerji posted videos and photos of the destroyed convoy on Twitter on April 2 and wrote that soldiers had told him that the Russians had been ambushed 48 hours earlier.
For its part, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry tweeted regarding the destruction of the Russian convoy, describing it as a “delicate act” by Ukrainian forces.
“These are not humans.”
“These are not human beings,” a Ukrainian soldier said in the video, walking between the wrecked vehicles, adding that two Russian lieutenants had been captured.
A Ukrainian news agency that published the video following the ambush on March 30 described the attack as the work of the “Georgian Legion,” a paramilitary unit of Georgian volunteers formed to fight on behalf of Ukraine in 2014.