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 showing the severed head of a Ukrainian soldier on a pole.
The 12-second video, posted on Friday by the far-right and neo-Nazi Russian group Rusich, shows a man in military uniform pointing to a severed head mounted on a pole and saying: “Some of you had your heads shot off today after our attack. It will be like this every time we meet.”
The man’s voice has been digitally altered and his face is covered with a mask. According to the caption accompanying the video, the man is a member of Russia’s 155th Guards Marine Brigade, but that claim could not be immediately verified.
The Ukrainian OSINT group Deep State said on Friday it had tracked down the location of the video in Kolotilovka, a border crossing between Russia and Ukraine in the western Russian region of Belgorod, where Ukrainian forces tried unsuccessfully to breach the border on Monday.
The Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda wrote on Friday that it had received “intercepted audio recordings” from the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces showing that a Russian soldier “received the order to cut off the heads of four dead Ukrainian soldiers”.
Lubinets said on his Telegram channel that he had turned to the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross because of “another violation of international law” by Russia.
“The enemy uses such videos to intimidate and demoralize Ukrainians. However, this only strengthens our determination to bring to justice anyone who commits such inhuman atrocities,” Lubinets wrote.
Ukrainian forces have continued their advance into Russian territory for the second week. The Ukrainian Air Force claimed on Thursday that they controlled around 1,150 square kilometers of Russia’s southwestern Kursk region. Meanwhile, Russia has apparently moved several thousand troops from the front line in eastern Ukraine to the Kursk region, CNN reported on Thursday.
