Zelenskyi: a Russian soldier involved in the killing of Ukrainian prisoners was captured

Ukrainian forces captured a Russian serviceman involved in the murder of nine Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation in October 2024, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after a report by the first deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine Oleksandr Poklad.

“There is an important result of the Security Service in combat work at the front – they took a Russian who killed captured Ukrainians… I instructed Oleksandr Poklad to give the society all the necessary details,” Zelenskyy said in an evening address on January 19, without giving details. The SBU has also not provided details yet.

Earlier, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine opened a criminal case on the shooting of nine Ukrainian prisoners in the Kursk region on October 10, 2024. According to analysts of the Deepstate project, it happened near the village of Zeleny Shlyach: Ukrainian military personnel surrendered after they ran out of ammunition.

The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, called the actions of the Russian military a gross violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War. He appealed to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate what happened.

According to international humanitarian law, the shooting of surrendering soldiers is a war crime.

Reports of murders, torture and ill-treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war are regularly reported.