Ukraine Charges That Murdered Russian POWs Were ‘Imitating a Surrender’

Nov. 23, 2022 (EIRNS)—Two videos surfaced last week that made it unmistakably clear that Ukrainian servicemen executed 10 Russian soldiers who had surrendered. It would be a war crime to execute prisoners who had surrendered. Would Ukraine for once admit that one of their war crimes wasn’t simply a Russian “false flag” operation to “make Kiev look bad” and actually accept responsibility?

The statement yesterday from Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General—who had vowed to investigate the videos of 10 Russian soldiers lying on their stomachs with no weapons, who then are shown dead, having been shot in their heads—found a way out of that box. The Russian soldiers, it turns out, are to be charged with committing “perfidy” by “imitating a surrender” for purpose of an ambush—and such “actions are prohibited by international humanitarian law.”

It was once said the definition of “hubris” was the kid who murders his parents, and then pleads to the court for mercy—on account of his being an orphan. The kid had nothing on Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.

The statement RT quotes reads: “According to the results of mass media monitoring, it became known that in the village of Makeevka, Lugansk region, the Russian military, imitating a surrender to the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, opened fire on Ukrainian defenders. Such actions are prohibited by international humanitarian law,” the prosecutor’s statement said.

There is a third video apparently being relied upon by the Ukrainians. While the first shows 10 unarmed Russian soldiers lying in a row on the ground, and a second, from a drone, shows the 10 arrayed in the same position, but with blood from gunshot wounds to their heads, the third one, this one without audio, shows a Russian soldier coming out of a building shooting at Ukrainians. Even if one assumes that the last video is of the same event, and there were really eleven Russian soldiers, with one of them refusing to surrender, is this supposed to implicate the 10 lying on the ground with no weapons as “imitating a surrender”?

Further, do any of the 10 rise up from their supine position and make any aggressive actions, as if they are part of some premeditated—and rather bizarre—scheme to fool the Ukrainian soldiers? No, the prima facie evidence is that they were executed. It really makes no difference whether the third video is connected with the other two, or not.

Whenever Kiev is caught in an outrageous activity, their one defense has been consistent: “It is a false flag operation of the dastardly Russians, trying to make us look bad.” The Russians have supposedly: been firing upon their own position at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant; launched a missile at Poland; blew up their own submarine pipeline, and bombed Ukrainian prisoners at Olenivka, who were providing evidence of Kiev’s war crimes. Now, 10 Russians disarmed, lay down on their stomachs, as a ploy, so that one Russian could attack a heavily-armed contingent of Ukrainians? And the world is not supposed to blink.

One might think it better for Kiev that they just ignore the latest videos, as they did in late March with a video showing abuse and murder of Ukrainian treatment of Russian prisoners. But Kiev’s obnoxious and flagrant lying yesterday seems designed to implicate the West in heinous crimes, with the message: “You are with us or against us. Last week, you failed to support us in the ‘Russia bombed Poland’ operation. We’re doubling down. There is no turning back.”