Russia accuses Ukraine of killing POWs after footage emerges on social media

Russia has accused the Ukrainian armed forces of killing more than 10 prisoners of war after video emerged on social media which is purported to have come from the frontline.

Moscow said the video showed Russian soldiers being told to lie face down on the ground in Makiivka, in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, after surrendering to armed men with yellow bands on their arms.

Gunfire rings out and about 12 bodies can be seen.

The video has not yet been verified and it is not known when the video was filmed.

The Russian Defence Ministry said the video showed "the deliberate and methodical murder of more than 10 immobilised Russian serviceman by degenerate Ukrainian soldiers".

It added that the video was a sign of the "atrocious nature" of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government in Kyiv, and said he would "answer before the court of history and the people of Russia and Ukraine".

"This brutal murder of Russian servicemen is neither the first, nor the only war crime," the ministry said.

"This is common practice in the armed forces of Ukraine that is actively supported by the Kyiv regime and blatantly ignored by its western patrons."

There was no immediate response from Kyiv, which said it would investigate any alleged abuses by its armed forces. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of war crimes, which Moscow has denied.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which examines serious crimes, said later it had opened a criminal case into the killings of "at least 11 unarmed Russian servicemen."

Investigators were working to identify the people who had filmed the video, it said.

In a statement to Reuters, Marta Hurtado, a representative for the UN Human Rights Office said: "We are aware of the videos and we are looking into them.

"Allegations of summary executions of people hors de combat should be promptly, fully and effectively investigated, and any perpetrators held to account."

This week, the UN said it had spoken to Ukrainian prisoners of war, captured by the Russians, who reported torture and ill-treatment. It said it had also documented cases of ill-treatment of Russian prisoners of war in Ukrainian facilities.

Matilda Bogner, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said the mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners by Russians was "fairly systematic" while it was "not systematic" for Ukraine to mistreat Russian soldiers.

Meanwhile, Russian missile strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine's energy system, the government said, and authorities in the capital Kyiv said that the city could face a "complete shutdown" of the power grid as winter sets in.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Ukrenergo’s chief executive, told Ukrainian state television: “We need to prepare for possible long outages, but at the moment we are introducing schedules that are planned and will do everything to ensure that the outages are not very long.”

Russian troops kept up attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, with another seven missiles hitting Zaporizhzhia in the south-east on Friday night, knocking out heat to thousands.

More than 1,000 missiles and drones have hit energy targets since Russia’s invasion in February, the government said. The bulk of the hits have come since early October. Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is experiencing long periods without power.

About 1.5 to two million people, half of the city’s population, are periodically plunged into darkness as authorities switch electricity from one district to another, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.