On a fall Monday morning, Ukrainian drone pilots witnessed a familiar scene unfold on a drone’s live feed: Russian soldiers pointed their guns at two Ukrainians who seemingly surrendered. The footage verified by The New York Times and the Centre for Information Resilience, a nonprofit organization, showed the Ukrainian prisoners executed near the village of Novoivanovka in the Kursk region of Russia.

A pilot who witnessed the killing on the feed and provided the video said there were no polite words spoken among them, only a filled rage and an intense desire for revenge. As the United States embraces Russian talking points in its push for a cease-fire in Ukraine, many Ukrainians wonder whether allegations of Russian war crimes will be forgotten.

The United States recently informed European officials it is withdrawing from a multinational group created to investigate allegations of war crimes against senior Russian leaders and allies responsible for launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. State Department also ended the funding for the tracking of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.

Although both sides have been accused of committing war crimes, Russia faces far more allegations from Ukraine, human rights groups, and the United Nations. In recent months, Ukrainian and international human rights officials have accused Russian troops of executing Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered instead of taking them as prisoners of war, as required under the Geneva Conventions.

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to the Ukrainian allegations, although the Kremlin frequently denies committing war crimes in Ukraine. Five Ukrainian drone pilots who were interviewed had witnessed drone videos showing their fellow soldiers surrender and being killed. On Telegram, such videos have become commonplace, and some Russian soldiers appear unconcerned about potential repercussions, posting their own videos of killing unarmed Ukrainians.

During the past six months, the U.S. human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has documented 29 encounters in which Russian soldiers killed at least 91 incapacitated Ukrainian soldiers. Russian soldiers captured after executing Ukrainian troops said in interrogations that they were ordered to kill them.

Russian soldiers argued that the Ukrainians began to run “after hearing the command over the radio to open fire.” Russian soldiers later executed them even after the Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered and tossed their weapons on the ground.

Orders are likely to come from the top, analysts said. Russia’s deputy head of the Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, said that Ukrainian soldiers had no right to life or mercy after Ukraine’s Azov brigade posted a video of a soldier shooting what appeared to be an injured Russian soldier on social media in July.

Analysts from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said, “Russian commanders are likely writ large condoning, encouraging, or directly ordering the execution of Ukrainian P.O.W.s.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/europe/russia-ukraine-pow-executions.html