KYIV: Kyiv said on Thursday that Russian forces had shot dead five Ukrainian servicemen who had surrendered in the eastern Zaporizhzhia region, marking the latest war crimes allegations levied against Moscow.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other’s armies of committing atrocities since Russian forces launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Prosecutors said the incident had taken place on November 24 near the village of Novodarivka in the Pologiv district of the Zaporizhzhia region.
“Servicemen of the Russian armed forces shot dead five Ukrainian defenders out of six who had been taken prisoner,” a statement read.
There was no immediate response to the accusations from Moscow, which claimed to have annexed Zaporizhzhia along with three other partially occupied Ukrainian territories in late 2022.
Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said he had contacted the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) over the allegations.
Kyiv earlier this month accused Russian forces of killing five other surrendered soldiers, this time in the eastern Donetsk region, which Moscow also claims.
The UN has documented “numerous violations of international humanitarian law against prisoners of war, including cases of summary execution of both Russian and Ukrainian POWs,” a spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office told AFP last year.