Kiev, April 13, (dpa/GNA) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded world leaders respond to a video shared online that allegedly shows a Ukrainian prisoner of war being beheaded with a knife by a member of the Russian forces.
The footage drew comparisons to execution films shot by the Islamic State terrorist group and sparked out
“This is a video of Russia as it is,” Zelensky said on Wednesday, calling it neither an accident nor an isolated incident.
No one would understand if leaders did not quickly react, he said in a video message. “Action must be taken now!”
Ukrainians must focus on the war front and drive the occupiers out of the country, he said, emphasizing: “Smashing the occupier, sentences for the murderers and a tribunal for the state of evil,” are the main tasks.
When and where the gruesome killing took place is unclear. But the trees in the one-and-a-half-minute video are green, suggesting it was recorded last year. The video surfaced online on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian secret service is investigating. “We will find these brutes. If necessary, we will find them wherever they are: underground or from beyond the grave,” said Vasyl Malyuk, chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Observers with the UN Human Rights office in Ukraine said they was “appalled” by the video, saying it “shows a brutal execution of a man who appears to be a Ukrainian prisoner of war.”
“Regrettably this is not an isolated incident,” UN spokesman Krzysztof Janowski said in a statement.
“Accountability and justice must prevail over terror and impunity,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote on Twitter. The European Union “will do all possible to ensure that.”
Kiev’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called Russia “worse” than the Islamic State terror group and demanded Russia’s expulsion from the United Nations.
Czech President Petr Pavel echoed that sentiment: “If this video turns out to be authentic, then Russian soldiers have placed themselves in line with the Islamic State, which we should all condemn worldwide.”
The Kremlin cast doubt on the authenticity of the video.
“First of all, we live in a world of fakes and therefore we have to check the authenticity of the footage,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
These are “horrific images,” Peskov admitted but said it had to be established whether the beheading actually took place.
Then, he said, the authorities should examine which side committed the crime.
According to civil rights activists, a Russian ex-mercenary has already identified former comrades as the perpetrators in the video.
They had sent the video footage to former Wagner mercenary commander Andrey Medvedev, who fled to Norway months ago and is currently imprisoned in Sweden, the founder of the Russian rights organization Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin, said in an interview on Wednesday.
“He has listened to and watched it carefully several times and he clearly recognizes his former colleagues there, fighters from the mercenary Wagner troop,” Osechkin said in a video published on the YouTube channel of expatriate Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Medvedev, who himself used to fight for the notorious Russian mercenary group, had identified the men by “characteristic call signs and their way of speaking.”
Osechkin’s organization is known primarily for its work combating violence in Russian prison camps. However, it also looked after ex-mercenary Medvedev when he was arrested in Norway in January under that country’s immigration law after fleeing. Medvedev was later released in Norway – but detained a few weeks later in neighbouring Sweden for unauthorized entry.
In Washington, during a separate video address to a roundtable on Ukraine during the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Zelesnky asked for a minute’s silence.
“I ask you now to honour with a minute of silence the memory of the Ukrainian soldier whose death the world saw yesterday, and the memory of all our people whose lives were taken away by the Russian invaders,” Zelensky said.
GNA