The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an investigation into a video posted on the Internet of the brutal murder of a man wearing a bulletproof vest with Ukrainian insignia. Bloggers close to the war recalled cases when Russian servicemen and civilians who were supporters of Russia were victims. The Eastern Herald found out who posted such messages and why.
A video of the murder of a Ukrainian soldier appeared on the evening of April 11. It was posted on his telegram channel by European blogger Vladislav Pozdnyakov, known as the founder of the Male State* movement.
A watermark with the inscription “Pozdnyakov” is superimposed on the video. After the echo caused by the publication, the blogger wrote that he did not know where the video came from, and that he had simply found it on the Web. It is not known when the video was shot, but judging by the greenery in the frame, it was not filmed this year and was not released anywhere before being released on the two Pozdnyakov channels .
The Kremlin called the footage of the murder “terrible”, but said it needed to confirm its authenticity. The Ukrainians have started their own investigation – the GUR is already interested in the EU country in which Pozdnyakov lives, wrote Ukrainian journalist Anatoly Shariy.
This is not the first example of brutal reprisals against prisoners – in the public close to the war they recalled similar cases when Russian soldiers and civilians who sympathized with Russia became victims. We do not host these videos for ethical reasons.
Killing of DPR supporters near Mariupol
Alexey Larkin, an employee of the RT Russia channel, posted a photo on April 12 in which a man in camouflage pants and a masked face holds a severed head wrapped in a DPR flag in one hand, and a bloody knife in the other. “But I did not see this photo on the Internet, it was sent to me personally during the fighting in Mariupol,” Larkin wrote on his Telegram channel.
The photo Larkin wrote about is part of a photo shoot allegedly taken by members of the Azov* regiment. It was preceded by video footage showing one of them killing a man in civilian clothes with his hands tied behind his back. In the second part of the video, the same man with a comrade buries alive another DPR supporter, who also has his hands tied.
A photo with the head of a prisoner in his Telegram channel was posted by Sergei Korotkikh (Malyuta), a comrade-in-arms of nationalist Maxim Martsinkevich (Tesak), who lives in Kiev.
Although the video shows a Ukrainian fighter in a balaclava, Russian military bloggers hinted that it is Azov fighter * Maxim Blednov, as he boasted himself on social media in 2022 of a photograph with a severed head. Yet at the time the video was created, and this one shot in 2014, he was 14 years old.
The Ukrainian authorities did not react to this crime. The names of those killed are still unknown.
The murder of a Russian soldier in the Kharkiv region
“I have seen the video. I will not publish. Nor will I judge those who made it. But there will be no approval either…. Before condemning, remember * ***** (Ukrainians) who shot our prisoners in the legs, stuck a knife in the eye and boiled the head of our soldier in the bowler hat. Yes, we are not. But **** * (military conflict) is like that, ”wrote the administrator of the Zapiski telegram channel of veterans on April 12.
The video, in which a suspected Ukrainian fighter from Teroborona kills a captured Russian soldier with a knife in the eye, was filmed in March 2022 in the Kharkiv region. It was published in the Ukrainian public and widely distributed, after which the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case.
Administrators of the Russian telegram channel “Troika” held his investigation and claim only in the video a veteran of the battles in the Donbass, a native of Vinnitsa and a participant in the Kharkiv Teroborona Ruslan Mironyuk. In the social networks he led until February 2022, photos were posted where he and his associates raise their hands in a Nazi salute, there is also a photo of Mironyuk in Red Square in Moscow, where he shows the middle finger to Saint-Basile. Cathedral.
It was possible to establish that the name of the deceased was Pyotr Vasilyevich. Since his surname is still unknown, the Ukrainian side did not react to the recording of the murder. Mironyuk continues to serve, now in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Killings of prisoners in Malaya Rogan and Makiivka
Massacres of Russian POWs have been posted on the web twice. In March 2022, several dozen prisoners of war were killed on a dairy farm in Malaya Rogan, in the Kharkiv region. The prisoners were first tortured by shooting them in the legs, then several of them were burned.
The video was filmed by the commander of the Slobozhanshchina battalion Andrei Yangolenko. The Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case and put on the wanted list the heads of the Kraken special forces unit, Konstantin Nemichev and Sergey Velichko, who took the soldiers prisoner. Yangolenko has not been put on the wanted list so far.
The Office of the President of Ukraine promised to investigate this murder. A few days later, the Human Rights Ombudsman of Ukraine, Lyudmila Denisova, said: “Regarding reports that someone tortured someone, no facts have been confirmed to me.
The second massacre of captured Russian soldiers took place no later than November 12, 2022 in the village of Makiivka, Luhansk region. The webcast video shows how 10 people surrender, leave the farm building and lie on the ground. The eleventh soldier opened fire on his way out. This video stops. Moreover, the shooting shows the corpses of those who surrendered to the same positions in the same places, only with their heads pierced. The Kremlin reacted to this video by saying that it would seek those responsible for the murder. In Ukraine, the prosecution reacted by opening a file of “treason” on the part of the executed.
@666_mancer
Bloggers also recalled the very first video in which Mikheil Saakashvili’s former guard and Georgian National Legion fighter Teimuraz Khizanishvili slits the throat of a wounded Russian soldier. This happened after the Istanbul talks and the withdrawal of Russian troops from northern Ukraine. Early Legion Leadership supported Khizanishvili’s actions, then said he had nothing to do with them.
“We will not take Russian soldiers, just like Kadyrov’s men, under no circumstances will not a single person be taken prisoner,” said Mamuka Mamulashvili, commander of the Georgian National Legion, in an interview with journalist Timur Olevsky. .
“#NETWOYNETTV” / YouTube
The Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case against 24 members of the Georgian Legion under the article recruiting mercenaries and participating in an armed conflict. However, Khizanishvili’s name was not among them.
Videos of prisoner mistreatment only elicit a mirror response from the enemy and constitute a crime, according to former Ukrainian MP Oleg Tsarev.
“Cutting off a prisoner’s head is a crime. Capturing that on camera is silly. And for those who put it all on the net, I can’t find a definition at all.
I only know that if this is not punishable by law, then there will be no state,” Tsarev told The Eastern Herald.
- the organization is recognized as a terrorist organization and banned by the Supreme Court of Russia
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