“The minister stated this at a joint press conference with the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland Elina Valtonen in Kyiv”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
He stated this on January 8 during a joint press conference with his Finnish colleague and acting OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Elina Valtonen, who is currently visiting Kyiv, Radio Liberty reports.
“One of the terrible atrocities during this war is the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war. The OSCE should assess these systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions. We will use every international platform to draw attention to the torture, loss and mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war. We continue to demand access to them by international monitors and medics and generally their release. We remember every Ukrainian man and woman in Russian prisons,” said Andriy Sybiga.
The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also noted that Ukraine is counting on expanding the OSCE’s documentation of Russian crimes. In addition, according to Sybiga, Kyiv hopes to “maintain attention to the deportation of children, the taking of civilian hostages and the fate of three of its employees, citizens of Ukraine in Russian captivity: Vadym Golda, Maksym Petrov and Dmytro Shabanov (employees of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission detained in the territories occupied by the Russian Federation in April 2022 – ed.)“.
“The OSCE should remain a platform for bringing Russia to justice,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
Andiy Sybiga also assured that the Ukrainian side appreciates the fact that “the priority of the Finnish chairmanship of the OSCE is to support Ukraine and counter Russian aggression.”
Reports of murders, torture and ill-treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war are regularly reported.
In December, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said in an interview with “Ukrainian Pravda” that there are 177 confirmed cases of the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian military since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation.
As Yuriy Belousov, a representative of the OGP, noted on October 4, 80% of the executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war were recorded in 2024, but the trend began to appear in November 2023, when “there were changes in the attitude of the Russian servicemen towards our prisoners of war for the worse.”
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said it was observing an increase in the number of executions by the Russian military of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and stressed that Russian commanders likely “connived, encouraged or directly ordered” the executions.