Ukraine investigates possible execution of more than 300 prisoners of war by Russian forces

The Ukrainian Intelligence services began this Wednesday to investigate the possible execution of 306 Ukrainian prisoners of war at the hands of Russian Army soldiers since the Russian invasion began more than four years ago.

This has been confirmed by the head of the Investigation Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Andri Shvets, who has pointed out that from February 2022 – when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began – until April of this year, 116 procedures of this type have been opened to analyze the possible execution of hundreds of prisoners of war on the battlefield.

Shvets has indicated that most of these “brutal cases of extrajudicial executions of Ukrainian soldiers have taken place in areas of Donetsk”, as well as in the Russian Kursk region. “You can observe the most brutal execution methods, such as beheading, mass executions and dismemberment.

Furthermore, he stressed that these executions are carried out “systematically and on a large scale”, even when “the authorities of the aggressor State themselves support this type of actions”, according to information collected by the Ukrinform news agency.

In this sense, he explained that after the Ukrainian operation in Kursk in 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the Ukrainian military and all soldiers fighting on kyiv’s side were “terrorists who could be annihilated.” “These actions add to the fact that senior Russian military officials have called for war crimes,” he said.

At the moment, nine Russian soldiers are among the main suspects of carrying out these executions, although another seven are being investigated and five have already been convicted.