Ukraine says will look into alleged prisoner shooting video

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By JOHN LEICESTER and ROB GILLIES

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine says it will investigate video footage circulated on Russian social media which Moscow alleged shows that Ukrainian forces killed Russian troops who may have been trying to surrender, after one of the men seemingly refused to lay down his weapon and opened fire.

“Of course Ukrainian authorities will investigate this video,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister overseeing the country’s push to join the European Union, said on the sidelines of a security forum in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Stefanishyna, speaking late Saturday, said “it is very unlikely” that the short, edited snippets show what Moscow claims.

Russian authorities announced the opening Friday of a criminal investigation based on the snippets posted on Russian Telegram channels and relayed on other social media. They present a muddled and incomplete picture.



FILE - A view of apartment buildings destroyed by fighting, in Borodyanka, Kyiv region, Ukraine, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. Ukraine says it will investigate video footage circulated on Russian social media which Moscow alleged shows that Ukrainian forces killed Russian troops who may have been trying to surrender, after one of the men seemingly refused to lay down his weapon and opened fire. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko, File)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-social-media-moscow-7582e330117da02798397feea54adcc6?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_04

[oldsoftie]

1. If a guy doesnt put down the weapon & starts firing, thats NOT surrendering.

[COL Mustard]

2. It's perfidy and itself is a violation of the Geneva Conventions

If someone pretends to surrender but then does not, and takes any kind of offensive action, response is permitted. From what I read here, the Ukrainians did not commit a war crime but the Russian (at least that one) did.

(Edited to add: I read the accompanying article. Once you've taken prisoners, they are no longer combatants and are to be protected. If the Ukrainians shot them, there could be a problem, but I'd have to actually see the video and know much more about it to assess that.)

[FredGarvin]

3. Russia says will look into the alleged thousands of missile strikes on civilians

Fixed it.

[blue-wave]

6. This +1000!!!

Missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians. Genocidal butchers they are, if I recall. There is a reason more and more countries are legally naming Russia a terrorist state.

[YourFriendlySnake]

4. There's a couple of videos floating around on Reddit about this incident

First video of a group of Russians that had already surrendered and were lying facedown on the ground when another Russian pops out of a building and starts firing. Second video is drone footage of the same group of Russians being dead as fuck. Guess you could call it a war crime.

That Russian Rambo asshole got himself and his friends killed.

[Strelnikov_]

7. With what I have read about it so far, thats what it sounds like n/t

[blue-wave]

5. So let's get this straight

The Russians were attempting to surrender, so they were not yet "prisoners" of the Ukrainians.

One of the Russians opens fire on the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians are supposed to do what? Umm, per the Russians just take the bullets and die. But the Ukrainians fought back and some Russians got killed because of the Russians stupidity at opening fire on the Ukrainians.

I am so tired of reading Russian propaganda. The whole story smells of bullshit. Why did the AP even run this story?

[Emrys]

8. Very relevantly, a small body of Ukrainian soldiers

were trying to take custody of a larger body of "surrendering" Russian soldiers.

Understandable jumpiness in that situation called for no quick or false moves from those surrendering.

As it was, it looked like a set-up and the guy who fucked it all up lurked in their hideout till last, then opened fire on emerging. The result was inevitable. That's one of the reasons perfidy has a specific term and is severely frowned upon as a transgression of Protocol I of the Geneva Convention.

[Kennah]

9. Russia is making allegations, but the video appears to support the Ukrainians' perspective

[stopdiggin]

10. but you don't go ahead and execute

all Russians (including those unarmed and having surrendered) after the fact. And that seems to be the allegation of what happened here.

(I don't have any confirmation of details - but this is the supposed action that is under scrutiny. And the AP probably ran this story because it is 'out there' in terms of video and verbal accounts, in the wild. Let's hope for better and more solid information - but at the same time, this is not the 'first' time allegations have come forward - and to turn a blind eye is just as irresponsible as to automatically condemn.)

[blue-wave]

11. We don't know the intimate facts

but if someone starts shooting at you from a group of hostile (until they are restrained they are hostile, even can be considered hostile after restraints) troops, you shoot back. The Ukrainians were trying to save themselves and the lives of their compatriots. They fired in the direction of the hostile fire directed at them. As mentioned before, video supports the Ukrainian version of the story.

The Russians need to stop their anti-Ukrainian propaganda (they have done this for CENTURIES!) and stop the war. Withdraw all Russian military units back to Russia and stop slaughtering civilian Ukrainians through indiscriminate bombing. Every dead Ukraine and Russian is the fault of Kremlin insanity.

[stopdiggin]

12. if in fact this incident

unfolded as you lay out - then of course this would be defensive and justifiable force. As I put forward in my post however, that is not what the allegations are here. If all of the killings here came about in the midst of a heated fire fight ... Then there really is nothing to this story at all, and nothing further needing discussion. But there seems to be a degree of doubt on that score.

- NYTimes, 11/22/22
The United Nations has said the episode should be investigated. ‌

“We are aware of the videos, and we are looking into them,” Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Human Rights Office, told Reuters on Friday. “Allegations of summary executions of people hors de combat should be promptly, fully and effectively investigated, and any perpetrators held to account.” Under international law, the French term “hors de combat” refers to people who are “outside of combat” because of their surrender, being unarmed, unconscious or otherwise unable to defend themselves.

- “It looks like most of them were shot in the head,” Dr. Rohini Haar, a forensic expert and faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said in an interview.

- Iva Vukusic, a war crimes prosecution expert at Utrecht University, said that it was difficult to determine whether a war crime had or had not been committed based on the video evidence alone, and that the critical factor was time — when the Russians were shot.
“Was it in one or two bursts of fire at the moment of, or immediately after, the last Russian comes out and shoots at the Ukrainians?” Dr. Vukusic said. “Or was it after the immediate threat had been neutralized, as an act of revenge — then this is more clearly a war crime.”
If the Russians were shot in the heat of the moment, Dr. Vukusic said, it is not clearly a crime.

And lastly - this is not Russian propaganda (although Russian media has certainly picked up on it) - but reporting that is circulating in western media, and the United Nations.

[blue-wave]

13. Well then,

let the investigation begin, with neutral investigators agreed to by Russia and Ukraine, of course.

[stopdiggin]

14. most definitely!

And I want to emphasis (and maybe should have earlier) that my advocacy here is for exactly that. And certainly not as any sort of apologist for the Russian state, or armed forces. It's more than clear that those forces are guilty of (repeated) war crimes.
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