Photo: Telegram
Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets appealed to the United Nations and the Red Cross on Friday over a video posted by several pro-Russian Telegram channels in which the decapitated head of a Ukrainian soldier is displayed on a pole.
The 12-second video, posted by the Russian far-right and neo-Nazi Rusich Group on Friday, features a man in military uniform pointing to a severed head mounted on a spike, saying: “Some of you got your heads blown off today after our attack. It’s going to be like that every time we meet.”
The man’s voice has been digitally altered, and his face is covered with a mask. According to the caption posted with the video, the man is a member of Russia’s 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, though that claim could not be immediately verified.
Ukrainian OSINT group Deep State said on Friday that it had tracked down the location of the video to Kolotilovka, a border crossing between Russia and Ukraine in Russia’s western Belgorod region, where Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to breach the border on Monday.
Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda wrote on Friday that it had obtained “intercepted audio recordings” from sources within the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) indicating that a Russian serviceman “was ordered to cut off the heads of four dead Ukrainian soldiers”.
Lubinets said on his Telegram channel that he had appealed to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross over “yet another violation of international law” by Russia.
“The enemy uses such videos to intimidate and demoralise Ukrainians. However, this only strengthens our resolve to bring everyone who commits such inhuman atrocities to justice,” Lubinets wrote.
Ukrainian forces have for the second week continued their advance into Russian territory, with the AFU claiming on Thursday that they were in control of some 1,150 square kilometres of Russia’s southwestern Kursk region. Meanwhile, Russia appears to have redeployed several thousand troops from the frontline in eastern Ukraine to the Kursk region, CNN reported on Thursday.
