Shootings of Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian army have been taking place since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion. However, these messages are now appearing in the news more and more often.
On November 9, a video appeared in one of the Russian Telegram channels showing how representatives of the Russian army captured a wounded Ukrainian soldier. The man lay unarmed on the ground. The Russians first interrogated him, and then one of the Russians started shooting.
Even earlier, on October 1, a video appeared on Telegram channels showing the shooting of 16 Ukrainian servicemen who had surrendered near the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, since 2022, the Russians have killed more than a hundred Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered. Monitoring groups suggest that the actual number may be much higher.
At most, the Russians themselves distribute videos of their crimes to the public. In this article, The Ukrainian Review analyzed how the reaction of the world media to the news about the murders of Ukrainian prisoners of war changed from 2022 to 2024. In this article, we will analyze why Russians distribute videos of executions and what effect this has on Ukrainians.
Note that the killing of prisoners of war is considered a war crime and a violation of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention.
Why are Russians killing captured Ukrainian soldiers
According to Andrii Kostin, the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the facts of Russian crimes can be proven. Law enforcement officers have an audio recording in which a Russian officer orders his troops not to take prisoners on the battlefield, but to kill Ukrainians.
These crimes are not isolated incidents, but a purposeful policy of Russia, – says Andriy Kostin.
Oleksandr Pavlichenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights, notes that there have been confirmations that the Russian military receives orders from the commander to execute Ukrainian soldiers:
The Russian military does not bear real responsibility for committing such crimes, so they commit them again and again. There were such mass executions both in Chechnya and in Syria. This is a common practice of the Russian army, and this is the second reason. And the third reason is that the value of human life in the Russian army is almost zero.
Oleksandr Musienko, head of the Center for Military Legal Studies, also says that the Russians received appropriate instructions from their commanders regarding executions.
Psychologically, with such crimes and especially their demonstration, the Russian military is trying to intimidate Ukrainians, cause a feeling of helplessness, demoralize and weaken their readiness to resist. It is also a demonstration that the international system of laws and customs does not work. And the right of the strong will always work, – believes Volodymyr Savinov, a social psychologist at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
How executions of prisoners of war affect Ukrainians
We spoke with Ihor Solovey, head of the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, about the impact of executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian military on Ukrainian society.
He said that Russians constantly try to influence Ukrainians psychologically. In particular, by publishing such videos. The emotions that watching such videos evoke in us may well cause “witness trauma”:
This concept, introduced in 1995, applied more to people whose professions are related to helping people who have experienced trauma. That is, they can be psychologists, employees of the State Emergency Service, the police, etc. However, now it affects every Ukrainian, because we view traumatic content every day.
As Ihor Solovey explains, this trauma can manifest itself in difficulties in managing emotions, the emotional state can fluctuate up and down. It is difficult for people to cope with these emotions. It can be a feeling of numbness or fatigue, sleepiness. These can be various physical complaints, chronic diseases and pains that do not go away.
The trauma of a witness can manifest itself in the loss of the meaning of life. Problems in relationships with people, with family, with friends, with colleagues may be obvious, there may be excessive anxiety. A person begins to be annoyed by those phenomena that did not annoy him before, to which he calmly reacted.
Now, according to the expert, these phenomena can lead to a certain emotional explosion. And, accordingly, it can also lead to the development of deeper disorders, such as PTSD, depression, etc. The Russians are doing it precisely in order to cause Ukrainians to witness a collective trauma (they spread the video, editor’s note).
And that is why Ukraine’s task is to document these atrocities in order to add them to the cases in international courts. And every Ukrainian should direct the emotion of anger not at relatives, but at Donat, for example. You can find a hundred methods of self-help in various states provoked by the events of the war in the psychological support section of the Info Help.
He said that from a psychological point of view, the long-term consequence of the constant distribution of such videos for Ukrainians could be the collective trauma of the witness:
Or PTSD, to which people who have lost relatives, friends, comrades in the war, were or are under shelling or bombardment, saw the killed, etc. are prone to it. There is a section on psychological assistance on the website of the Dovidka.info project of the Center for Strategic Communications. There, everyone can find self-help methods for various acute conditions.
He explained what the Center for Strategic Communications is doing to counter enemy information attacks.
Every day on our resources we publish both refutations of fakes and the nature of certain Russian IPSOs. When you understand exactly what method they want to influence you, you become more resilient because you understand the tactics of the enemy. We also constantly distribute instructions on how Ukrainians can distinguish between fakes and IPSO. There are many such instructions on the Dovidka.info website in the section on communication and information search. We always remind you that when the news causes you strong emotions – shock, fear, numbness, then these emotions of yours are beneficial to someone.
According to Ihor Solovey, the main obstacle to the dissemination of videos of Ukrainian military executions is not to distribute such videos independently. Before you share it, you should think about how this content might hurt others. It is necessary to be sure that all this is recorded by law enforcement agencies in order to attach it to investigations and punishments in the future.
To protect yourself from misinformation, it is important to follow a number of simple rules and distinguish information attacks. It is necessary to pay attention to the presence of links to sources of information. presentation of facts, assessments and comments, generalizations, photos or videos used to confirm information, commentators, involved experts.
What responsibility awaits the Russians
At present, it is difficult to find a method to effectively bring all the Russians involved to justice. There are no guarantees that the investigation will identify absolutely all the perpetrators.
Without an effective mechanism for bringing to justice the direct perpetrators and those who give orders for these crimes, the situation will not change radically, – Oleksandr Pavlichenko from the Helsinki Union believes.
At the same time, there is currently no real legal mechanism for prosecution, except for open proceedings in the Prosecutor General’s Office. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office has started an investigation under Part 2 of Art. 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with intentional murder.
As part of the criminal proceedings, primary investigative (search) actions are carried out, aimed at establishing the circumstances of the event in order to bring the culprits to justice. The SBU conducts the pre-trial investigation.
But they also have no prospect of being positively completed. Secondly, team responsibility in this case will be established quite difficult. The opening of even the proceedings in the ICC (International Criminal Court) does not mean a radical change, in general, any change regarding this situation on the battlefield. Because this is a very distant prospect – prosecution.
Oleksandr Musienko believes that there is only one way to counteract Russian crimes:
And there is only one way to fight this, as the 95th Polish Airborne Assault Brigade showed. They simply destroyed the scoundrels from the 155th brigade of marines, the so-called “marines”. In particular, among them were those who tortured and killed our prisoners of war. Therefore, this is the way to stop it. Unfortunately, there is no other way today, – the expert emphasized.
In his opinion, the influence of international institutions or any other means of influencing the enemy are useless.
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Russia distributes videos of the shootings of Ukrainian servicemen as part of a targeted policy of psychological terror in an attempt to intimidate Ukrainian society, increase feelings of helplessness and demoralize the population. This informational pressure is also aimed at demonstrating the ineffectiveness of international laws and reinforcing the effect of the law of the strong. To counter this, Ukrainians must avoid the distribution of such materials, raise awareness of the methods of Russian information and psychological operations, and also focus on recording crimes in order to bring the guilty to justice.
Anya Ostymchuk
