KYIV: Ukraine launched an investigation Wednesday into a gruesome video circulating on social media that purportedly shows the beheading of a Ukrainian soldier.
The video spread quickly online and sparked outrage from Ukrainian officials. The Kremlin called the footage “horrible” but said it needed to be verified.
The Associated Press was not able to verify the authenticity of the video or the circumstances of where and when it was shot.
Meanwhile, a Russian defense official claimed that fighters from Russia’s paramilitary Wagner group have seized three districts of Bakhmut, the embattled city that for months has been the focus of Moscow’s grinding campaign in the east.
The video circulating online appears to show a man in green fatigues wearing a yellow armband, typically donned by Ukrainian fighters. He is heard screeching before another man in camouflage uses a knife to decapitate him.
A third man holds up a flak jacket apparently belonging to the man being beheaded. All three men speak in Russian.
Since Russia's forces invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, they have committed widespread abuses and alleged war crimes, according to the United Nations, rights groups and reporting by The Associated Press. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of targeting apartment buildings in its strikes, and images of hundreds of civilians lying dead in the streets and in mass graves in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew have horrified the world.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes.
The Kremlin denies it has committed war crimes or that it has targeted civilians.
Ukrainian troops have also been accused of abuses, and last year Kyiv said it would investigate video footage circulated online that Moscow alleged showed Ukrainian forces killing Russian troops who may have been trying to surrender.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy said the violence in the latest video would not be forgotten — and that Russian forces would be held responsible for such acts.
“Everyone must react, every leader. Do not expect that it will be forgotten, that time will pass,” he said in a video posted to his official Telegram channel.
In it, he used strong language to describe Russian soldiers, including calling them “beasts.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it’s necessary to thoroughly check the “horrible” video — including verifying that it's real.
"In the world of fakes we live in the authenticity of the footage must be checked,” he said in a conference call with reporters.
Ukraine’s state security service launched an investigation the video, according to a statement from Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the agency, known as the SBU.
Posters in some pro-Kremlin Russian Telegram channels, while not confirming the authenticity of the video, did not dispute it. Some sought to justify it by saying that Russian troops have become hardened by combat.
Andrei Medvedev, a Russian state TV journalist and a member of the Moscow city legislature, speculated that the timing of the video’s release was “fairly opportune” for the Ukrainian army, saying it could help “fire up personnel ideologically” ahead of a planned major counteroffensive.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Zelenskyy, also linked the video's release to the expected offensive, but said it was meant to "demoralize the public mood or at least change the psychological perception of the war right now.”
Ukraine’s ombudsman on Wednesday said that he will request that the U.N. Human Rights Committee investigate the video. Dmytro Lubinets said he has also written letters to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the U.N. secretary-general and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
He wrote on Telegram that “a public execution of a captive is yet another indication of a breach of Geneva Convention norms, international humanitarian law, a breach of the fundamental right to life.”
The front lines of the war have been largely frozen for months, with much fighting focused around the city of Bakhmut.
In the latest of regular video briefings, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Wagner forces had made some progress there. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment, but Zelenskyy has said before that his troops could pull out if they face a threat of being encircled by Russian forces.
Konashenkov did not specify which neighborhoods of Bakhmut are now under Russian control, or how much of the city remains in Ukrainian hands.
Elsewhere, at least four Ukrainian civilians were wounded as Russian forces shelled a Ukrainian-held town near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, regional Gov. Serhii Lysak said.
In a Telegram post, Lysak said that “people are being pulled out from under the rubble” after Russian shelling destroyed 13 houses and cars in Nikopol, across the Dnieper river from the nuclear plant.
Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko alleged that Russian forces also attacked a town in the eastern Donetsk province with cluster munitions — which are banned by an international treaty — wounding one person. An AP and Frontline database called War Crimes Watch Ukraine has cataloged how Russia has used cluster bombs.
Ukraine probes video purported to show soldier's beheading
https://arab.news/rg9ag
Ukraine probes video purported to show soldier's beheading
- The authenticity of the video has not yet been verified
- Kremlin said the footage was “horrible” but needed to be verified
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
