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By Brendan Cole
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Russian forces last month executed nine Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Kursk region, according to reports, in acts of brutality that appear to be a new tactic for Moscow in the war since it started. At least 104 Ukrainian POWs are now thought to have been killed.
Since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion on February 24, 2022, prisoners have been used by both sides as bargaining chips, with large groups exchanged, including a major swap of 206 POWs in September this year.
But the Institute for the Study of War said there has been an increase in Russian forces killing Ukrainian POWs, with commanders "condoning, encouraging or directly ordering" the executions. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
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Yuri Bilousov, head of the Ukrainian Department for Combating Crimes in Conditions of Armed Conflict, said there was evidence that 80 percent of Russian executions of Ukrainian POWs on the battlefield since the war began were carried out this year.
Open-source intelligence project DeepState reported on October 13 that Ukrainian drone operators near the Kursk village of Zeleny Shlyakh unexpectedly encountered Russian forces and surrendered when they came under fire. Visual evidence suggested that the prisoners had been disarmed, lined up, stripped and shot in what was condemned by the Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, as a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Article 13 of these rules of law says any illegal act by the detaining power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody "will be regarded as a serious breach."
Viktor Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military veteran (2014-2015) and geopolitical analyst, said Moscow became "more flexible" about prisoner swaps after Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region on August 6 in which hundreds of Moscow's soldiers were captured, giving Kyiv leverage as it claimed to have seized hundreds of miles of territory.
These swaps included Chechen troops known as Kadyrovites, named after the Russian Caucasus republic's strongman leader and Putin loyalist, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Kovalenko told Newsweek that during Ukraine's Kursk incursion and Russia's response to it, prisoners on both sides have been captured more easily than in other parts of the front.
"Their forces are more mobile there and their positions aren't that fortified and defended like along the contact line inside Ukraine," he said. "Moreover, the Russian proven tactic of penetrating defense by small groups is more effective in Kursk.
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"Russian forces are routinely very brutal during this war, as massacres in Bucha and Olenivka demonstrated," Kovalenko added, "but this is not a major reason of the increase in executions of Ukrainian POWs.... The brutal executions filmed and shared in social media are aimed at intimidating potential Ukrainian recruits and their families so they could avoid the draft."
Ukraine's parliament passed legislation in April to boost numbers in the military to fight Russia. Clauses included obliging Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 to update personal data with military authorities, allowing draft offices to see more easily who can be called up in any given region.
Ukrainian officials said on October 21 that Russian forces had executed two unarmed Ukrainian POWs near Selydove, Donetsk Oblast, three days earlier by shooting them at point-blank range. This takes the number of known cases of Russian executions of Ukrainian POWs to the latest figure of at least 104, with the pair added to a figure released by Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General on October 14.
Emil Kastehelmi, military analyst from the Finland-based Black Bird Group, said that Russian forces have been more open about war crimes, such as in Kherson, where drones have hit civilians in incidents sometimes captured on camera. "It's possible that there is some institutional incentive which encourages such actions, or then the Russians simply care less as the war progresses and they don't want to deal with POWs in difficult places," Kastehelmi told Newsweek.
He added the Russians also believe that nobody will prosecute them "and many Russian civilians don't condemn these actions either, so it's socially and legally acceptable, which lowers the threshold for committing war crimes."
Russian Telegram channels with large followings whose links to the Kremlin give them authority have not only justified but also celebrated the executions of Ukrainian POWs.
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They include RVvoenkor, which has 1.62 million followers, Dva Mayora with 1.17 million subscribers, Starshe Eddy, which has 627,000 subscribers, and Zapisky Veterana, with 357,000.
The ISW said that the praise of executions is "reinforcing a cultural norm to justify and celebrate war crimes within the broader Russian ultranationalist community." In any case, such battlefield brutality offers no military objective, according to Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who said it showed "the lack of discipline and professionalism of the Russian armed forces."
It also showed "the brutalization and radicalization that not only the Russian military but also Russian society went through in this war.
"It will make Ukrainian soldiers fight even harder, reserving the last bullet for themselves," Gressel told Newsweek. "German orders to shoot commissars in WWII led to a lot of Soviet units not surrendering even if the overall situation was hopeless for them.
"During the 2023 counteroffensive, Ukrainians faced some Russian units who would not surrender under any circumstances, because they were so much indoctrinated about 'Bandera Nazis' that they did not dare to."
Stepan Bandera led a Ukrainian nationalist movement that included a militia which fought with the Nazis in World War II. His supporters see him as a Ukrainian freedom fighter, the Kremlin as a Nazi collaborator.
"It is testimony to the fact that Russia has fully transitioned to a fascist system, where territorial expansion and power is everything, humans are nothing," Gressel added.
Elina Beketova, democracy fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the reports of executed POWs were not isolated incidents but a "deliberate" policy by Russia. She noted how Ukraine's prosecutor general had revealed a Russian officer was heard in an audio recording instructing his troops not to take any prisoners.
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"This could also be a psychological operation by the Russian forces, aimed at demoralizing Ukrainian soldiers and instilling panic and fear among them and within Ukrainian society," she told Newsweek. "Additionally, Russian military forces are using Ukrainian prisoners of war as human shields to prevent drone attacks," she added, citing evidence from a Russian POW, as reported by Ukrainian outlet Slidstvo-Info.
In May, a Ukrainian court convicted 15 Russian soldiers of war crimes in absentia two years after cramming a village into a school basement in Yahidne, north of Kyiv, depriving them of sustenance and using them as human shields. Seventeen civilians died.
"The more justice is served and the more it is shown that actions can be taken against such violations of law and the most brutal war crimes, the greater the hope that the enemy will cease its current actions," she added.
In September, CNN reported that it had received drone videos and audio intercepts which showed 15 instances over the previous 10 months in which Ukrainian troops had been killed rather than taken prisoner.
On September 30, 16 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered were reported to have been lined up and shot, with drone footage backing up the allegations. Kyiv has said it follows the rules of war and has published videos of Russian prisoners to show they are held in humane conditions. However, Human Rights Watch said in 2022 Ukraine must not show pictures of Russian prisoners, which can be a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office says it will investigate allegations that Ukrainian soldiers had executed Russian soldiers trying to surrender, although as Ukrainian political adviser Mykyta Vorobiov wrote for the CEPA, "evidence suggests these acts are rare, individual, and not systematic, in contrast to Russian behavior."
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian National Guard's 12th Special Forces Azov brigade released video in which a Russian soldier who identified himself as Delyagin Gennadyevich said his commanders gave troops orders to shoot three Ukrainian prisoners at a battle in the Donetsk region. "There was no time to deal with prisoners," he said, describing a tactic widely used by Russia during its advances in eastern Ukraine.
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The testimony will be used as evidence of war crimes which advocates are hoping will see those in charge of Russia's war effort eventually tried.
One of them is Wayne Jordash, who is president of Global Rights Compliance, which is investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine. He told Newsweek that POWs are protected under international humanitarian law and Russia is obliged to guarantee their rights under the Geneva Conventions.
"Recurring brutalities against Ukrainian POWs have now become a clear pattern," Jordash said, outlining how cases included summary executions, detention in inhumane conditions and "many other forms of mistreatment." "And this is just the tip of the iceberg," he added, citing what has been uncovered from footage made public, testimonies of those who survived and returned or their families.
"Violations committed against Ukrainian POWs qualify as war crimes and must face prosecutions domestically in Ukraine and other countries based on the universal jurisdiction principle," Jordash said, adding that the cases "must trigger the attention of the International Criminal Court."
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