FROM OUR REPORT IN KRAMATORSK – The knife that digs into the victim’s neck, the blood, the screams, up to the decapitation with the enemy’s head brandished by his executioner as a trophy and threat. Unfortunately, the images of the massacre of the killed opponent are not new, but the novelty now lies in the fact that they come from the scenario of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Suddenly, it is as if a little of the horrors that Islamic extremism had imposed over the last two decades on the broader Middle East are now coming to poison the confrontation between Moscow and Kiev.
Land Ukrainian authorities have officially opened an investigation to shed light on the truthfulness and possibly identify those responsible for what appears to be a real beheading of a Ukrainian soldier by Russian soldiers, which according to initial estimates could have occurred last summer in the war zones of Donbass. Accusations against the brutalities of Russian soldiers have appeared on the Ukrainian side since days just after the invasion began on February 24, 2022.
A few weeks ago the International Tribunal in The Hague even issued the arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin himself for “war crimes”. And last summer the Ukrainian side again accused the Russians of methodically torturing prisoners of war, an accusation that Moscow later leveled against Kiev for the ill-treatment of its own prisoners in Ukrainian cells. The UN has recently reiterated that abuses have occurred on the part of both.
But now the video of the beheading is decisively returning to relaunch the accusations against Russia. The images, apparently taken from a cell phone, show what it looks like a soldier in uniform with the yellow patch of the Ukrainians moaning and screaming while a military manwho has tied the white bandage used by the Russians to recognize each other to his leg, thrusts a long knife into his prisoner’s neck. A second soldier with a white bandage shows the victim’s jacket. The three speak to each other in Russian. On the ground you see what looks like a Ukrainian military identification card.
Volodymyr Zelensky immediately launched a heartfelt appeal to the international community. “There is something no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill. Everyone has to react», thundered the Ukrainian president. The heads of its military intelligence services specify that they are investigating this “war crime” and there are those who compare Russian soldiers to the cutthroat executioners of Isis.
The Kremlin also calls the video “horrible”, but demands its authenticity be verified as fast as possible. ‘In the world of fakes we live in, we need to check that even these images have not been fabricated,’ said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The video had initially appeared on the sites of Russian nationalist bloggers, it seems “clicked” by over 300,000 followers.
The new exchange of accusations takes place while the battle for the possession of the town of Bakhmut continues in the Donbass. Yesterday, Ukrainian officials denied claims by the head of the Russian Wagner mercenary militia, Yevgeny Prigozhin, that his men control more than 80 percent of Bakhmut.