KIEV, UKRAINE (AP) – Ukraine launched an investigation into a gruesome video circulating on social media that allegedly showed the beheading of a Ukrainian soldier.
The video quickly went viral and sparked outrage among Ukrainian officials. The Kremlin called the footage “terrible” but said it needed to be checked.
The Associated Press was unable to verify the authenticity of the video or the circumstances of where and when it was filmed.
Meanwhile, a Russian defense official claimed that fighters from the Russian militia Wagner Group had captured his three districts of Bakhmut. A video circulating online appears to show a man in a green uniform wearing a yellow armband typically worn by Ukrainian fighters. He is heard screaming before using the knife to decapitate him.
A third man holds up a bulletproof vest believed to be that of the decapitated man. All three men speak Russian.
The Russian military has been accused of widespread human rights violations and war crimes since it invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, according to reports by the United Nations, human rights groups and the Associated Press. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of targeting apartment buildings in its strikes, and images of hundreds of civilians lying dead in the streets and in mass graves in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew have horrified the world.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelenskyy, also linked the video’s release to the expected offensive, but said it was meant to “demoralize the public mood or at least change the psychological perception of the war right now.”
Ukraine’s ombudsman on Wednesday said that he will request that the U.N. Human Rights Committee investigate the video. Dmytro Lubinets said he has also written letters to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the U.N. secretary-general and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
He wrote on Telegram that “a public execution of a captive is yet another indication of a breach of Geneva Convention norms, international humanitarian law, a breach of the fundamental right to life.”
The front lines of the war have been largely frozen for months, with much fighting focused around the city of Bakhmut.
In the latest of regular video briefings, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Wagner forces had made some progress there. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment, but Zelensky had previously said his troops could withdraw if surrounded by Russian forces.
Konashenkov did not specify which parts of Bakhmut are now under Russian control, or which parts of the city remain in Ukrainian hands.
Elsewhere, at least four Ukrainian civilians were injured when Russian forces shelled a Ukrainian-held town near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
“People were being dragged out from under the rubble,” Lysak said in his Telegram post after Russian shelling destroyed his 13 houses and car in Nikopol, across the Dnieper from the nuclear power plant. there is,” he said. Governor Pablo Kirilenko claimed that Russian forces had attacked a city in eastern Donetsk province, injuring one person with cluster bombs, which are banned by international treaties. AP and a frontline database called War Crimes Watch Ukraine , cataloging how Russia used cluster bombs.
