Foreign mercs committing war crimes against Russian POWs
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A German combat medic testifies that fighters in his Western mercenary unit fighting for Ukraine are committing war crimes against Russian POWs.
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Russian prisoners of war stand in front of a wall at a detention center in the Lviv region, April 25, 2024. (AP)
Members of the Chosen Company, an international mercenary group fighting on behalf of Ukraine, are committing war crimes against Russian soldiers, a battlefield doctor and former soldier who served as a medic for the unit said, according to a report by the New York Times.
Caspar Grosse, a German medic, reported that in one instance in August 2023, a severely injured, unarmed Russian soldier, initially presumed dead, was crawling through a trench and pleading for help in English.
Despite his apparent surrender, he was shot in the chest by a member of the Chosen Company. When the soldier continued to move and breathe, another fighter shot him in the head, which Grosse assumed was a mercy killing.
Another incident involved a Greek soldier known as Zeus, who threw a grenade at two Russian soldiers. One soldier was severely injured and immobile, while the other attempted to surrender with his hands up.
Both soldiers were killed by the grenade explosion, as confirmed by helmet camera footage reviewed by the New York Times, with Grosse also adding to the culpability of the soldiers by underlining that a Ukrainian drone team verified that the soldier was trying to surrender.
Bound POW executed
Another incident reported on by the German medic saw a member of the unit informing him they had captured prisoners of war, with the aforementioned Zeus executing a POW, who was bound, by shooting him several times in the back of the head. He was defended as "just doing his job."
After learning of the events, Grosse attempted to report them to the Chosen Company's commander, but former US Army National Guardsman Ryan O'Leary dismissed that his unit did anything wrong despite, whom he called his "brothers" violating the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which dictate that wounded or captured members of any armed forces should be treated humanely.
Russian POWs tortured
This is not the first time that the Ukrainian side and its allies have been accused of committing war crimes, with the last report of such actions being in March, wherein the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that Russian prisoners of war were tortured in Ukraine between December 2023 and February 2024.
Between December 2023 and February 2024, OHCHR staff visited 44 Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, and Zaporizhia areas.
According to the report, the OHCHR stated that the POW "provided credible accounts of torture or ill-treatment in transit places after their immediate evacuation from the battlefield."
The OHCHR stated that Ukrainian authorities do not properly punish those guilty of torture and brutality against civilians and prisoners of war.
The report, although unrelated, came not too long after the Ukrainian armed forces executed in a video that was circulated on social media last year a Russian prisoner of war, with further reports suggesting that a second was executed off camera.
The report detailed that the OHCHR documented arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and the use of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, by Ukrainian authorities during the detention of conflict-related civilian detainees and Russian POWs, as well as the summary execution of at least 25 Russian servicemen hors de combat (all in 2022 and early 2023)."
Furthermore, the report indicates that "Ukrainian authorities have launched at least five criminal investigations into allegations of violations committed by their own security forces, involving 22 victims," which the OHCHR believes indicates there has been little progress in the investigation and punishment of such abuses.
