Volodymyr Zelensky, visibly upset, has threatened to punish Russian “murderers” after footage purportedly depicting Kremlin soldiers beheading Ukrainian soldiers surfaced.
The shocking videos, according to the president of Ukraine, demonstrate “how easily these beasts kill.”
In one beheading video, a killer is urged to break the spine of his scared victim, who is wearing a yellow tactical armband to identify him.
‘Get working, brothers. Break his spine, f–k, have you never cut off a head?’, the voice says.
A photo thought to be from the same video shows what appears to be a severed head mounted on a spike.
Another piece of footage is said to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle.
Seemingly referring to the bodies on the ground, a laughing voice says: ‘They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off.’
It’s thought the first clip may have been filmed in summer last year given the amount of foliage seen on the ground, while the other is apparently more recent.
Western analysts have blamed mercenary fighters from the Wagner Group for the alleged atrocities.
After the videos were posted to pro-Russian social media channels last week, it was claimed both incidents took place in or near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine – where Wagner forces are spearheading some of the war’s heaviest fighting.
Metro is unable to independently confirm the details behind the videos, but Ukrainian authorities have made it clear they believe them to be real and blame Russia.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman today admitted the footage is ‘terrible’, but said the authenticity must be checked and suggested Ukraine may have filmed it themselves.
Mr Zelensky appeared visibly shaken by the footage as he mourned the ‘sons, brothers and husbands’ killed.
He promised Russia would never be forgiven for alleged war crimes and called on world leaders to take action ‘now’.
‘This is something that no-one in the world can ignore – how easily these beasts kill’, the politician said.
‘This video – the execution of a Ukrainian captive – the world must see it. This is a video of Russia as it is – what kind of creatures they are.
‘There are no people for them. A son, a brother, a husband – someone’s child.’
The beheadings were ‘not an accident or an episode’ and instead showed the ‘new norm’ that Putin’s Russia wanted to impose, he said.
‘There was the case in Bucha. Thousands of times – everyone must react – every leader’, he continued.
‘Don’t expect it to be forgotten, that time will pass. We are not going to forget anything.
‘Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything.
‘The defeat of terror is necessary. No-one will understand if the leaders don’t react. Action is required now!’
The head of the Security Service of Ukraine has also vowed to ‘find these subhumans’.
‘If necessary, we will get them wherever they are, from underground or from beyond the grave’, Vasyl Malyuk warned.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has named Russia ‘worse than ISIS’ while blasting the enemy country’s current chairmanship of the UN security council.
Militants from Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were notorious for releasing videos of beheadings of captives when they controlled swathes of those countries from 2014-2017.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has insisted ‘we need to check the authenticity of this footage in this fake world we live in’.
He said: ‘First it is necessary to check whether it is credible, and then, of course, there may be an opportunity to verify whether this is true, where it happened and by which side.’