Foreign mercenaries commit war crimes against Russian prisoners of war

Members of the Chosen Company, an international mercenary group fighting on behalf of Ukraine, are committing war crimes against Russian soldiers, a field doctor and former soldier who served as a medic for the unit said, according to a report by the New York Times.

German medic Caspar Grosse reported an incident in August 2023 in which a seriously injured, unarmed Russian soldier, initially thought to be dead, crawled through a trench and pleaded for help in English.

Although he had apparently surrendered, he was shot in the chest by a member of Chosen Company. As the soldier continued to move and breathe, another fighter shot him in the head, which Grosse considered a mercy killing.

In another incident, a Greek soldier named Zeus threw a grenade at two Russian soldiers. One soldier was seriously injured and unable to move, while the other tried to surrender with his hands raised.

Both soldiers were killed by the grenade explosion, as confirmed by helmet camera footage obtained by the New York TimesGrosse further underlined the soldiers’ guilt by stressing that a Ukrainian drone team had confirmed that the soldier had tried to surrender.

Captured prisoner of war executed

In another incident reported by the German medic, a member of the unit told him that they had captured prisoners of war. The aforementioned Zeus executed a bound prisoner of war by firing several shots into the back of the head. He was defended by saying that he was “just doing his job.”

After learning of the incidents, Grosse attempted to report them to the Chosen Company commander, but former U.S. Army National Guardsman Ryan O’Leary denied that his unit had done anything wrong, even though he called them his “brothers,” violating the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which require that wounded or captured members of all armed forces be treated humanely.

Russian prisoners of war tortured

This is not the first time that the Ukrainian side and its allies have been accused of war crimes. The last report of such actions dates back to March, whenThe Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that Russian prisoners of war were tortured in Ukraine between December 2023 and February 2024.

Between December 2023 and February 2024, OHCHR staff visited 44 Russian prisoners of war in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia and Zaporizhia.

According to the report, the OHCHR said the prisoners of war had provided “credible accounts of torture and ill-treatment in transit locations following their immediate evacuation from the battlefield.”

The OHCHR stated that the Ukrainian authorities are failing to adequately punish those guilty of torture and brutality against civilians and prisoners of war.

The report, although unrelated, came not long after Ukrainian forces executed a Russian prisoner of war in a video that circulated on social media last year, with further reports suggesting that a The second was performed off-camera.

The report detailed that OHCHR documented arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and the use of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, by the Ukrainian authorities during the detention of conflict-related civilian detainees and Russian prisoners of war, as well as the summary execution of at least 25 incapacitated Russian soldiers (all in 2022 and early 2023).”

In addition, the report states that “the Ukrainian authorities have opened at least five criminal investigations into alleged violations by their own security forces, involving 22 victims.” OHCHR considers that this indicates that little progress has been made in investigating and punishing such violations.