Zelenskyy vows to find soldiers who executed Ukrainian POW
Kyiv, Mar 7 (EFE).- Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy pledged to track down the “murderers” who allegedly executed an unarmed Ukrainian prisoner of war who shouted “Glory to Ukraine” before his death.
“Today, a video has emerged of the occupiers brutally killing a warrior who bravely said to their faces: ‘Glory to Ukraine!’,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Monday, according to an English transcript posted by the presidential office.
“I want us all to respond to his words together, in unity: ‘Glory to the Hero! Glory to the Heroes! Glory to Ukraine!’,” he added. “And we will find the murderers.”
Video footage of the alleged assassination was circulated widely on social media. It appears to show a Ukrainian soldier in a wooded area, smoking a cigarette while being questioned by Russian soldiers.
At one point in the footage, the Ukrainian soldier shouts “Glory to Ukraine” before his captors open fire with automatic firearms, killing the prisoner.
Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said the killing was a war crime.
Several Ukrainian media outlets cited a preliminary report from the military as saying the soldier in the video was Timofii Shadura, who was deployed with the 30th Independent Mechanized Brigade.
Shadura has been declared missing since February 3 during combat in the vicinity of Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city that has become a flashpoint of heavy fighting.
Ukraine’s security service has opened an investigation into the killing.EFE
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