Ukrainian officials have condemned Russian forces after a video circulating on social media appeared to show the beheading of a Ukrainian prisoner with a knife.
Footage videos obtained by Africa Today News, New York showed a man in uniform beheading a man who wears the yellow arm band used by Ukrainian soldiers.
The video is heavily blurred and contains a voice at the beginning, which suggests that the victim might have still been alive when the attack began.
The Kremlin described the video as ‘awful’ and said its authenticity needed to be checked. Moscow has denied in the past that its troops have carried out atrocities during the conflict.
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‘There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
‘We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary,’ he added.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described the video as ‘horrific’.
‘It’s absurd that Russia, which is worse than ISIS, is presiding over the UNSC,’ he wrote on Twitter, referring to the United Nations Security Council, where Russia took up the rotating presidency this month. ‘Russian terrorists must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN and be held accountable for their crimes.’
ISIS (ISIL) was notorious for releasing videos of the beheadings of captives when they controlled swaths of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017.
Ukraine’s domestic security agency (SBU) said it has launched an investigation into the suspected war crime.