Law enforcement officers are investigating 49 criminal proceedings over the killing of 124 prisoners of war on the battlefield. This was reported by Denys Lysenko, head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in the Context of Armed Conflict of the Prosecutor General's Office, on one of the Ukrainian TV channels, UNN reports.
"As of today, law enforcement agencies are investigating 49 criminal proceedings on the killing of 124 prisoners of war during the surrender or after the surrender," Lysenko said.
According to him, the rapid increase in cases of killing Ukrainian defenders while surrendering began at the end of last year and reached unprecedented proportions this year. Most cases were recorded in Donetsk region.
Lysenko reminded that yesterday two more cases of killing of Ukrainian prisoners of war during surrender were registered in Donetsk region. These incidents occurred on October 23 in the eastern part of the town of Selydove, when three prisoners of war were killed, and on November 1 near the village of Vyshneve in the Selydove territorial community, when three more prisoners of war were shot by the occupiers.
"We are now analyzing all these cases, looking for patterns and regularities. And we are already building cases against representatives of the highest command of the Russian armed forces who, in our opinion, may be involved in organizing such crimes or in failing to take measures to stop them and punish the perpetrators. Therefore, we consider all these cases in a comprehensive manner and the participation of a particular armed unit is, of course, analyzed on a case-by-case basis. But this does not relieve the commanders of their responsibility," said the head of the department.
Addendum
In early October, the head of the war crimes department of the Prosecutor General's Office, Yuriy Belousov , reportedthat it was known that the Russian occupiers had executed 93 Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield. 80% of these executions took place this year.