THIS is the horrifying moment Russian soldiers are said to execute at least seven unarmed Ukrainian prisoners “in cold blood”.
The drone footage – still to be independently verified – sparked an outrage and criticism of alleged war crimes committed by brutal Russian forces.
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At least seven Ukrainian soldiers were shot dead as they surrendered to Putin’s army near the village of Ivanovskoye in the Bakhmut region.
In the video, the Ukrainian prisoners can be seen dropping their weapons before crawling out of the trench.
The footage shows them raising their arms to indicate that they were unarmed, and dropping to the floor with the arms behind their heads.
But in the chilling moment – which The Sun has decided not to show – the Russian forces opened fire with machine guns at the defenceless soldiers laying on the ground.
Some reports suggest that the Ukrainian fighters were from the 92nd separate assault brigade or from the units assigned to it.
Among those executed, there may have been wounded military personnel.
The prosecutor’s office in Ukraine has launched an investigation into the video which was likely recorded on February 24, reported Ukrainian Pravda.
Russia has been accused of purposely ignoring the international humanitarian law, with the claims that it has carried out a premeditated murder.
The video will need to undergo checks and verification before it can be used as evidence of a war crime, but initially the shooting appears an appalling violation of the rules of conflict.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the aggressor state “deliberately finished off wounded and unarmed Ukrainian soldiers”.
The office of the Prosecutor General adds that 19 criminal proceedings are currently being investigated regarding the murder of 45 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The deadly incident has been condemned by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets.
In his Telegram channel, he blamed the Russian army for “mercilessly” killing Ukrainian prisoners as well as ignoring the Geneva Convention.
Lubinets has vowed to send official letters to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to publicly record the Russian “war crimes”.
He said: “For the Russian army, the Geneva Conventions, rules and customs of war mean nothing.
“They act according to their unspoken “conventions”, “rules” and “customs” – cruelty, meanness, baseness.
“Such murders of prisoners of war are not isolated cases. There should be punishment for them!”
Another top Ukrainian official, Anton Gerashchenko, shared the shocking footage in a post on X, former Twitter.
He wrote: ” Evil must be stopped and be punished! Give Ukraine weapons!”
The video began circulating online when the open-source intelligence site, Deep State, posted it on their Telegram channel.
The volunteer-led organisation wrote: “Those who were shot are probably fighters of the 92nd OSHBr or one of the units assigned to them.
“It was hoped yesterday that the boys from the position were alive and in captivity, but footage released today shows the execution of Defense Forces fighters.”
This isn’t the first case of Putin’s soldiers were caught on camera executing Ukrainian troops.
According to the Deep State, Russian forces have done “a lot of shootings lately” but only a fraction of them has made it into the public space.
In December, a video emerged of the Ukrainian paratroopers kneeling with their hands behind their heads on the fronline in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region.
The appalling moment when they are shot is clearly visible despite the poor quality of the aerial footage.
In Ukraine, the incident has been condemned as showing how Vladimir Putin’s forces “are simply not human”.
Earlier harrowing footage showed the moment “two surrendering Ukrainian troops are mercilessly gunned down by Russian troops”.
The chilling video shows one unarmed Ukrainian soldier emerge from a trench with his hands above his head.
He evidently obeys instructions shouted by the Russian invaders and lies face down on the ground.
A second Ukrainian from the 45th separate rifle battalion then comes out of the underground passage and is seen rapidly shot in a hail of machine gun fire.
The first soldier gets up to look what is happening and is also gunned to death in a cloud of smoke.
The earlier incident was reportedly near Avdiivka.
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