The Ukrainian soldiers left the pink house at gunpoint with their arms raised in the surrender to the Russian troops, and lay face down in the grass of early spring.
Two gifts, one Ukrainian and another Russian, registered the scene from the point of view on the southern town of Piatykhatky in southern Ukraine. Associated Press managed to get both videos. They sacrifice very different versions of what happened next.
The video of Ukrainian drones, which AP obeyed European military officers, shows the soldiers with Marqués of the Russian uniform raising their weapons and shooting each of the four Ukrainians on the back with such ferocity that a man was with his head.
“Of all the executions we have since the end of 2023, it is one of the clearest cases,” said Roll Collins of the Information Resilience Center, a London group that specializes in visual research and reviewed the video at the request of AP. “This is not a typical combat murder. This is an illegal action.”
The video of Russian drones, which AP is found on Pro-Kremlin social networks, abruptly interrupts with men lying on the floor Alive. “As a result of the work done by our boys, the enemy decided not to be killed and went out with his hands up,” wrote a Russian military blogger that published the video.
Two videos. Two stories. In one, the prisoners seem to live. In the other, they die.
As the evidence of possible war crimes continues to increase, many in Ukraine care that the face of the Trump administration in the war will be more difficult to establish a firm historical narrative about what Russia’s invasion of 2022 has made and if he is responsible for the hero of the force.
On March 13, the day when European officials say that the incident in Piatykhatky Tok Place, US representatives landed in Russia for high fire conversations with President Vladimir Putin.
President Donald Trump, who has indicated that a possible agreement could see Ukraine deliver some territory and echo the conversation points of Moscow, requested a quick peace agreement. His administration has retired support from Ukraine, including war crimes investigations, and is reconstructing relations with Putin, the many victims and prosecutors want to see in court.
“Whatever a peace agreement, Ukraine is not ready to forgive everything that happened in our territory,” Belusov, head of the War Crimes Department for the Ukraine Attorney General, told AP. “In what way there will be responsibility, that we do not know right now.”
Kremlin denies a policy of killing prisoners
According to Ukrainian prosecutors, international officials and open source analysts, the murder of the prisoners of war in the Ukrainian video, a crime of international law, was not unique, according to Ukrainian prosecutors, international human rights officials and open source analysts.
At least 245 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been killed by Russian forces since large -scale invasion, according to Ukrainian prosecutors. They claim that it is part of a deliberate strategy encouraged by Russian officials.
“It is definitely part of the policy, which is totally supported by the main leaders of the Russian Federation,” Bielosov told AP. “This is not the action of specific commanders. It is admitted at the higher level.”
When asked about the treatment of Russia to Ukrainian prisoners of war, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia tries to deliver Ukrainian troops in accordance with international law and does not encourage the murder of prisoners of war.
“This is not a Russian side policy,” he told AP, and repeated Moscow’s claims that the atrocities committed by his troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha were falsified.
In the occupation of that city outside kyiv at the beginning of the war, hundreds of Ukrainians were killed. Super -sorting evidence, which include witness testimony, photos, CCTV videos, telephone interceptions and civilian corpses, corroborated those deaths.
THE PIATYKHATKY BATTLE
The video of drones in Piatykhatky was tasks of the 128th Mountain Brigade of Ukraine, Chrowning military officers with a European country with which the Ukrainian authorities shared the video. The AP obtained it on condition of anonymity because officials were not authorized to release him.
The intense fight has devastated this crossroads in the Zaporizhzhia region. Fresh burning marks stain the grass and houses remain missing ceilings and windows. The battle has been part of a struggle to take territory before the peace conversations, with Russia looking for a strategic support point to force Ukraine to restructure their logistics lines, according to military analysts.
The Russian soldiers planted their flag in the middle of the piatykhatky ruins last month, according to a video of drones published on March 11 by the Pro-Kremlin bloggers.
Two days later, the Russian and Ukrainian drones registered the surrender of the four Ukrainian soldiers about 100 meters (yards) away.
The Russian video shows an explosive drone flying in the window of the house where the Ukrainian tok are covered, detonating with a flash.
The drones of both countries recorded one of the Ukrainians, the arms raised and apparently unarmed, leaving the house shattered. With a Russian soldier pointing his weapon towards him, the man himself extended next to his comrades on the ground.
The European military officers who analyzed the video said that the Russians are identifiable by red or white brands in their uniforms.
The Ukrainian video shows the Russians who seek their prisoners in letters. Two more Russians arrive and consult comrades. One pauses to use your radio.
What happens later was cut from the Russian video. A Russian walks towards the prisoners, lifts his gun with one hand and begins to shoot. Another soldier also shoots. While recharging, a third Russian joins, shooting at least two short -distance shots that take off the helmet, and the head, or a man. Then, the soldier who recharges on his legs ends with the four Ukrainians, methodicular shots each, one by one.
None of the video shows how the first Ukrainian soldier of the house came out.
The 128th Brigade of the Ukraine mountain declined to comment because the deaths are being investigated as a suspended war crime. The Ukraine Internal Security Agency confirmed to AP that it has opened an investigation.
Russian military bloggers published the edited video said that it shows the work of an assault unit of the 247th Airborne Regiment of Russia.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comments on the incident.
The analysts of the Center for Information Resilience confirmed that the videos were recorded by different drones, as well as the location and identification of soldiers’ brands.
“For us, this is a methodical process of clinical and clinical execution,” said Collins, the Cir analyst. “It is deduced from a very consistent trend that we have from at least December 2023.”
An increase in prisoners’ murders
Russia also claims to have documented “systematic murders” or Russian prisoners of war for Ukrainian troops, but did not give general numbers. In March, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a testimony of Russian prisoners of war exchanged for Ukraine, who described the powers and torture in custody. Some reported “a practice of finishing the injured Russian combatants, as well as executing combatants who have left their arms.”
The Investigation Committee, the main state criminal investigation agency in Russia, said in December that it had opened around 5,700 criminal cases in alleged Ukrainian crimes since the beginning of the conflict.
The UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has documented 91 extrajudicial murders of Ukrainian prisoners of war since August 2024. Returning the same period, he found a single case of Ukrainian soldiers who kill a Russian war prisoner.
Belousov, the prosecutor of Ukrainian war crimes, said that all those accusations are being investigated against Ukrainian troops.
Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said the increase in the murders of war prisoners for Russian forces has not happened in a vacuum. Russia promulgated laws that protect the soldiers from the prosecution, he said, and the authorities have requested the murder or torture of Ukrainian and backed war prisoners the extrajudicial murders informed. Multiple videos of murder in Pow online have appeared, some published by the Russian soldiers themselves, he said, suggested an environment of wide impunity.
“Call for social networks by public officials, amnesty laws, dehumanizing language within the context of impunity for these acts: it is contributing to an environment that allows such acts or these crimes to take place,” he said.
War crimes monitoring
Extrajudicial murders are among more than 157,000 potential war crimes that Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating. Ukraine has been based on international support to help process that information flood and structure complex cases for international and national courts.
That work is suffering from the court of the Trump administration to foreign aid.
Among the blows was the Humanki Ukrainian Human Rights Union, which lost $ 5 million of the cuts to the United States Agency for International Development. I had a leg using money to raise evidence of crimes that range from damage to property to sexual aggressions. The non -governmental organization has reduced the staff, reduces operations and moved from its kyiv offices, executive director Oleksandr Pavlichenko told AP.
American funds for groups investigating atrocities in Cambodia and Syria helped build cases of war crimes years later. It passed more than two decades to bring to the main leaders of the Khmer Rouge before a court not backed by the charges of war crimes of its brutal government in the 1970s that led to 1.7 million deaths. Prosecutors trusted the archives of the Cambodian documentation center, established with the financing of the United States government.
If it weren’t for that center, “there would be no Khmer Rouge leg court.” Said Christopher “Kip” Hale, an expert in criminal law who worked in court and has worked in Ukraine.
“To have lasting peace, we have to have responsibility. We have to invest now,” he said. “Without it, we see that the cessation of students and armistices are only waiting periods to begin the next conflict.”
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