Russians execute two unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war

Ukraine’s prosecutor has initiated war crimes proceedings after evidence emerged that Russian invaders gunned down two unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war near Pokrovsk (Donetsk oblast) on 22 May 2025.  This is the latest of many killings in cold blood, with international monitors and human rights NGOs increasingly convinced that such executions, as well as the horrific torture and ill-treatment which Ukrainian prisoners of war are subjected to, are part of Russian state policy.

The criminal investigation, announced by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General on 23 May, is under Article 438 § 2 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code (a war crime involving homicide).  It is known that in the morning of 22 May, the Russians stormed  the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ position with four defenders carrying out military duties near Udachne in Pokrovsk raion.  Two of the Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoner and were, or should have been, protected under international law, as prisoners of war.  Instead the Russians machine gunned them down.  It is not known what happened to the other two Ukrainian soldiers.

This is the second such brazen violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War in May alone.  As reported, on 3 May, three Ukrainian soldiers were shot dead near the village of Novpil (Donetsk oblast) when they were surrounded by the enemy who forced them to lay down their weapons and surrender.  

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence have recorded 150 killings of Ukrainian soldiers after they had been taken prisoner by the Russians.  The figure may be considerably higher as HUR was only referring to those cases which they have verified since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.   

Evidence of executions and even beheadings either emerged or seemed positively flaunted by Russian pro-war Telegram channels back in 2022. In August 2022, for example, drone footage was posted, both in Ukraine and by CNN, of Russia’s total destruction of the Luhansk city of Popasna. In one shot, Ukrainian defenders were seen being led away, with their hands on their heads.  Shortly after this, another photo was posted by the then Governor of Luhansk oblast, Serhiy Haidai which appeared to show the impaled head and hands of a Ukrainian prisoner of war outside a house in Popasna.  In April 2023, two separate videos were posted which seemed to show Russians beheading Ukrainian soldiers.  One, posted on 8 April on a pro-Russian social media platform, showed the beheaded bodies of two Ukrainian soldiers.  The other was posted on 11 April but may have been taken earlier.  On it a Russian can be seen beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war. 

Yury Bielousov, Head of Ukraine’s department on investigating war crimes, reported a dramatic increase in Russian killings of Ukrainian POWs, beginning in November 2023.  In February 2024, he stated that this escalation and the fact that the crimes were not confined to one area suggested that this was Russian policy supported by the top echelons of Russia’s armed forces. Through the publication of such videos, he said, Russia was trying to demoralize Ukrainian soldiers and weaken their resistance. 

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine have also been investigating reports of such crimes.  In its monitoring report for the period from December 2023 to March 2024, OHCHR stated that its monitors had “recorded 12 cases of executions of at least 32 captured Ukrainian POWs.

By early February 2025, the UN monitors publicly expressed alarm at a sharp rise in the number of such reported executions.  They had, since the end of August 2024, recorded one “execution of a wounded and incapacitated Russian soldier by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024.”

This was the first time that Danielle Bell, Head of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission, had pointed to the effective incitement to commit such crimes against Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian public figures.  “Combined with broad amnesty laws, such statements have the potential to incite or encourage unlawful behaviour.”

Such incitement has come from high-ranking political figures, including Ramsan Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya, publicly threatened “vengeance” against Ukraine’s Armed Forces and stated that he had “given all commanders on the frontline the order to not take prisoners, to destroy and maximise their battle still further, 100 percent.”   Although he did later, on 2 November claim that he had revoked this order, it has not been removed.

There is nothing to suggest that any killer of Ukrainian prisoners of war has been punished.  Quite the contrary.  In the trial now underway of Dmitry Kurashov, a 26-year-old from a Russian assault unit accused of killing a Ukrainian soldier, Kurashov’s commander has stated that they were instructed, during training, to not take Ukrainian soldiers prisoner. (details here). 

Such commands are in grave breach of international law, yet they are heard regularly on Russian television by presenters and guests on Russian propaganda shows, who openly claim that Ukrainian prisoners of war should be executed, that “there will be no mercy”.  Some have stressed, for example, that the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ does not have a moratorium on the death penalty, and that this ‘death penalty’ should be applied against unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war.