POWs: Russ officers killing own wounded
Captured Russian soldiers have accused their commanders of killing their own wounded troops rather than recovering them from the battlefield and sending them for treatment, Ukrainian journalist Volodymyr Zolkin reports.
The young intelligence soldiers told Zolkin on video shown on the Mirror news website how one lieutenant colonel asked a wounded comrade if he could walk. When the badly injured soldier replied that he could not, the officer shot him and several others dead, the soldiers said.
Another soldier told Zolkin, who has reported about Russian prisoners for Open Media Ukraine, that officers have “finished off their wounded.”
“Just like that . . . a wounded soldier is lying on the ground, and a battalion commander shoots him dead,” the soldier says. “It was a young man, he was wounded. He was on the ground. He was asked if he could walk, so he was shot dead.”
Another captive said the lieutenant colonel “shot four or five like this.”
A third told Zolkin that their wounded comrades “could have been rescued, given help, taken out of there. He simply shot
them dead.”
It was unclear from the video where the alleged atrocity took place, where the soldiers being interviewed had been captured and to what unit they belonged.
The allegations follow a recent report by Zolkin that some demoralized troops have taken their own lives on the front line to avoid the conflict.
Andrey Ushakov, 20, claimed he knew two soldiers had committed suicide because they could no longer cope with the bungled invasion.
“Everyone was panicking and wanted to leave, but there was no way,” he said. “The only option to
go was as ‘300.’ Some people couldn’t bear it, and shot themselves dead.” “Cargo 300” is the Russian military’s designation for soldiers who are evacuated from a war zone after shooting themselves.
Footage of captured Russian soldiers has raised questions about whether Ukraine has violated the Geneva Conventions, which provide POWs with protections.
According to Article 13: “Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.”