- A video appears to show Russian soldiers executing Ukrainian troops who had surrendered.
- A Ukrainian blogger accused Russia of "breaking all the war rules."
A new war video appears to show Russian soldiers executing two Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered, The Kyiv Post reports. The footage was said to have been filmed near Avdiivka.
In the video filmed by what appears to be a drone camera in the sky above, a Ukrainian soldier emerges from a dugout with his hands raised in surrender, eventually lying face down on the ground.
Just a few feet away, a group of Russian soldiers is seen crouching down, pointing their weapons.
Moments later, a second Ukrainian soldier emerges, struggling to surrender, only to face gunfire from the Russian soldiers. The first soldier then gets up briefly amid the shooting and quickly slumps back down into the mud.
The Strategic Committee of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the video's authenticity.
In a message posted on Telegram, they stated, "The published footage depicts the execution of two prisoners of war from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to verified information, the Russian occupiers have once again treacherously fired upon unarmed soldiers."
The town of Avdiivka, just northwest of occupied Donetsk, has seen significant battlefield fighting over the past few weeks as Russia launched a renewed offensive against Ukrainian troops, and Putin's forces have experienced catastrophic losses.
Ukrainian blogger Deep State first posted the surrender footage online, and it quickly gained traction on social media. Blogger Ihor Lachenkov said, "Once again, the Russians are breaking all the war rules, along with moral and human laws they never cared about."
Business Insider was not able to independently verify the harrowing footage.
It is not the first instance of Russian troops being accused of killing unarmed Ukrainian soldiers. In April, a video surfaced showing Russian troops beheading a Ukrainian soldier.
"There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill,"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the time.
An unarmed Ukrainian prisoner of war, Oleksandr Matsievskyi, became a national hero when was captured on video uttering his final words, "Slava Ukraini" (Glory to Ukraine). Standing smoking a cigarette in a wooded area, carrying no visible weaponry, Matsievskyi is then seen slumped to the ground, apparently struck repeatedly by unseen shooters.