A senior UN official has said they have seen videos purporting to show the abuse of prisoners of war on both sides in Ukraine, as Russia raised the mistreatment of its soldiers at the first day of the latest peace talks.
Matilda Bogner, head of the UN’s human rights office in Ukraine, said a number of videos of the abuse of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners were being examined, adding that “on the face of it, it does raise serious concerns”.
“It is important that these types of videos and that any ill treatment that may happen is stopped immediately,” she said, following the broadcast of footage that appeared to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting three captive Russians in their legs.
In the grainy footage, which is being investigated by Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government in Kyiv, three prisoners are seen being brought in from a car. A man with a blue armband then approaches them and says: “Hi” before shooting each of them in the leg.
The Ukrainian government has said it is taking the footage “very seriously” although there is no independent evidence of its veracity yet.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said: “If this turns out to be real, this is absolutely unacceptable behaviour.”
One of the biggest promoters of the video was Maria Dubovikova, a political commentator at the Russian International Affairs Council.
The BBC reported that the footage of Russian soldiers being shot took place in a dairy plant in Malaya Rohan, to the south-east of Kharkiv, which had been recently been retaken by Ukrainian troops from Russian forces.
Analysis of the weather conditions and troop movements further suggested that the video could have been shot in the early hours of Saturday 26 March.
The Tass news agency reported that the Russian negotiators in Istanbul, where peace talks resumed on Tuesday after a two-week break, raised the issue of the abuse of prisoners of war.
Russia also announced that it would “drastically reduce” military combat operations around the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv to “boost mutual trust” in peace talks.
• This article was amended on 30 March 2022. In an earlier version, one paragraph mistakenly referred to “footage of Ukrainian soldiers being shot”, rather than Russian soldiers.
