Ukraine compares Russia to ISIS as beheading video circulates

Ukraine compared Russia on Wednesday to ISIS and asked the International Criminal Court to investigate after a video surfaced online showing Russian soldiers who saw themselves cutting Ukrainian prisoners with knives.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity or provenance of the video on social media, which shows a man in uniform beheading a man wearing a yellow arm band used by Ukrainian soldiers.

The Kremlin described the video as “terrible” but said its authenticity should be checked. Moscow has denied in the past that its forces committed atrocities during the conflict.

“There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these animals kill,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video message.

“There is legal responsibility for all. The defeat of terror is necessary.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Twitter: “Horrifying video of Russian soldiers mutilating Ukrainian prisoners of war has gone viral online.

“It’s absolutely absurd that Russia, which is worse than ISIS, is leading the UNSC,” he said, referring to the UN Security Council, where Russia took the rotating presidency this month.

“Russian terrorists must be expelled from Ukraine and the UN and must be held accountable for their crimes.”

Militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are notorious for releasing videos of beheading prisoners while controlling swaths of the country from 2014-2017.

“First of all, in the fake world we live in, we need to check the veracity of this footage,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at a briefing in Moscow.

“Then it can be a pretext to check whether this is true or not, whether it happened, and if it happened, where and by whom.”

Call for investigation

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called on the International Criminal Court to “immediately investigate other atrocities of the Russian military.”

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar told people online not to publicly name the soldier until his identity has been officially established by law enforcement. He urged people to stop sharing the video online.

“Remember, the enemy wants to scare us. They want to make us weaker,” he said.

Ukraine’s domestic security agency said it had launched an investigation into suspected war crimes over the video.

“Yesterday, a video appeared on the internet showing how the Russian invaders showed their animal nature – cruelly torturing Ukrainian prisoners and cutting off their heads,” the SBU agency wrote on Telegram.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said it was shocked by what it called “particularly horrific” videos posted on social media.

As well as the alleged execution, another video showed mutilated bodies of Ukrainian prisoners of war, he said.

“We are sorry, this is not an isolated incident,” he said in a statement. “The last incident must also be properly investigated and the perpetrators held accountable.”