Ukraine's human rights commissioner urged the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations (UN) to investigate a photo circulating on the internet on Saturday showing a Ukrainian prisoner of war being killed and mutilated by Russian troops.
Ukraine's prosecutor general said separately that an urgent investigation had been launched into information spread on social networks about the murder and mutilation of a Ukrainian prisoner of war.
“A photo, possibly of a Ukrainian prisoner, is circulating on the internet,” Dmytro Lubinets, the country's top human rights official, said in a post on the messaging app Telegram.
“In light of these horrific images, I have urged the ICRC and the UN to take note of other human rights violations by the terrorist state,” Lubinets wrote.
Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said an urgent investigation had been launched. “Russia is constantly repeating Nazi crimes, showing contempt for all norms of world civilization,” he wrote on Telegram.
Russia denies using torture or other forms of ill-treatment against prisoners of war.
The UN commission of inquiry on Ukraine said in a report published in March that it had documented credible allegations of the execution of at least 32 Ukrainian prisoners of war in 12 separate incidents between December 2023 and February 2024. It also independently confirmed three of the incidents.
The three-member commission of inquiry said it had also gathered more evidence that Russia had systematically tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war, documenting threats of rape and the use of electric shocks to the genitals.
The commission said the scale of the torture cases may amount to the most serious violations known as crimes against humanity, describing them as “widespread and systematic.” (ah/ft)
