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UN body reports 'alarming rise' in Russian execution of captured Ukrainian soldiers
KYIV, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission has recorded an "alarming rise" in reported executions of Ukrainian soldiers captured by the Russian armed forces during the war in recent months, it said on Monday.
The mission in Ukraine said it had received reports of 79 executions in 24 separate incidents since the end of August last year. International humanitarian law prohibits the execution of prisoners of war and the wounded, and regards it as a war crime.
"Many Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered or were in physical custody of the Russian armed forces were shot dead on the spot. Witness accounts also described the killings of unarmed and injured Ukrainian soldiers," the mission said in a statement.
Commenting on the report, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the Russian atrocities demanded urgent international action.
"Russia's horrific executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war demonstrate that Ukraine confronts true beasts," he said on X. "We need new and effective international legal tools, and concrete steps to hold the perpetrators accountable."
The Russian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The UN body obtained and analysed video and photographic material published by Ukrainian and Russian sources showing executions or dead bodies and conducted detailed interviews with witnesses.
It said the reported executions took place in areas where Russian offensive operations were underway.
Danielle Bell, head of the mission, said some Russian officials "have explicitly called for inhumane treatment, and even execution" of captured Ukrainian soldiers.
The mission said it also documented the execution of a wounded and incapacitated Russian soldier by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024, but gave no details.
The Ukrainian prosecutor's office earlier said it was investigating dozens of cases of executions of Ukrainian military personnel by Russian forces.
One Ukrainian Brigade Lost Entire Companies In ‘Futile’ Attacks On Worthless Treelines
One Ukrainian Brigade Lost Entire Companies In ‘Futile’ Attacks On Worthless Treelines
The 92nd Assault Brigade is effective on the defense, but conditions aren’t right for a major attack.
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Combining their drones, mines, missiles and artillery, the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade and 92nd Assault Brigade not only resisted a Russian assault on their positions in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast on Friday—they destroyed it, leaving a strip of the forest in the oblast littered with dead Russians.
It was an important victory for the two elite brigades—but a victory that could come with surprising risks. According to one Ukrainian combat veteran who goes by “Constantine,” there’s a dangerous tendency among some Ukrainian commanders to assume units that are effective on the defense are equally ready to attack.
So when a formation such as the 92nd Assault Brigade defends its lines from a Russian assault, some commanders might be tempted to order the unit to leave its fortifications, mass on open ground and move toward Russian lines. But attacking is riskier than defending—and tends to get more troops killed.
The Ukrainian 95th Air Assault Brigade, deployed to Kursk alongside the 92nd Assault Brigade, rediscovered this truism the hard way in early January, when it rapidly shifted from defense to offense and advanced toward the village of Berdin, just north of the main Ukrainian line. A clutch of Russia’s best fiber optic drones blasted the exposed Ukrainian paratroopers, inflicting heavy casualties and defeating the ill-advised attack.
The same thing has happened to the 92nd Assault Brigade more than once. The part of the brigade that has been fighting in Kursk “has had its staff replaced three times over the three years” of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine “due to futile orders to seize a treeline at the cost of an entire companies,” Constantine explained. A company normally has more than 100 troops.
Left unsaid in Constantine’s criticism is an implied endorsement of the most obvious Ukrainian strategy as the wider war grinds into its fourth year. Dug-in Ukrainian brigades with intact supply lines and support from drones and artillery routinely inflict horrific casualties on Russian troops—at times killing or maiming hundreds in a single clash.
The Russians have no choice but to attack, as the Kremlin’s war aims are mostly offensive in nature: primarily, to capture as much of eastern Ukraine as possible, as fast as possible.
The Ukrainians can lay their mines, pre-sight their artillery kill zones and arm their drones—and confidently wait for the Russians to come rolling or marching across the shell-pocked no-man’s land. “Experienced Ukrainian units are highly effective at repelling Russian attacks,” Constantine noted.
By comparison, there’s a Ukrainian definition of winning this war that doesn’t require much in the way of offensive action. Kyiv’s forces can kill so many Russians, destroy so much Russian equipment and inflict such harm on Russian morale that Moscow’s forces collapse. Only then, amid their enemy’s unraveling, would the Ukrainians leave their trenches and advance.
It’s happened before. In the fall of 2022, Russian troops were badly depleted by their failed offensive toward Kyiv that had kicked off the wider war six months earlier. Careful Ukrainian reconnaissance detected weakness in certain stretches of the Russian front line around the northeastern city of Kharkiv. A handful of Ukraine’s best brigades exploited this weakness, breached Russian lines and sparked a panic among the exhausted Russians.
The Russians retreated. The Ukrainians advanced behind them—and quickly liberated almost all of northeastern Ukraine.
The 92nd Assault Brigade, then designated the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, executed one of the most impressive maneuvers of this counteroffensive when it quickly marched more than 50 miles from the village of Pryshyb to the city of Kupyansk. Today the city remains free.
Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive succeeded because it was preceded by a much longer defensive operation that bled Russia pale. By comparison, Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive along the southern front was preceded by a long stalemate that afforded Russian field armies ample time to reinforce their front-line units, dig trenches and lay mines.
It should’ve surprised no one that the 2023 offensive failed.
If the disparate outcomes of Ukraine’s separate 2022 and 2023 counteroffensives tell us anything, it’s that timing is everything. There could come a time when Russia is weak and Ukraine is strong and Ukrainian brigades can go on the attack with reasonable expectations they’ll achieve something meaningful and lasting.
With Russia still holding a significant manpower and firepower advantage over Ukraine despite staggering Russian losses, that time is not now.
The 92nd Assault Brigade is holding defensible ground with effective weapons and inflicting heavy casualties on Russian assault groups. It’s doing what it needs to do to set favorable conditions for some future negotiated peace or, barring that, an eventual Ukrainian attack on the weakened Russians.
In the meantime, “commanders should prioritize preserving the lives of our experienced troops,” Constantine urged. Hold now so they can win later.
Police in Ukraine's Pokrovsk plead with reluctant residents to leave
POKROVSK, Ukraine, Feb 3 (Reuters) - When the elderly Ukrainian couple refused Hennadii Yudin's pleas for them to evacuate their war-torn eastern city of Pokrovsk, the sturdy police officer tried another tactic: calling their grandchildren.
"Come on, tell them they need to leave," he implored them over a mobile video call. "We're standing here - we came here just for them."
A short time later, Leonid and Yelena were smiling inside an armoured van as they sped away from Pokrovsk, a logistics hub currently under threat by advancing Russian forces.
The city is an apocalyptic landscape of shattered buildings and streets littered with debris from Russian artillery, air and drone strikes as Moscow's war nears its three-year mark.
Yet local authorities like Yudin's team of police rescuers, dubbed the "White Angel", still face difficulties in persuading residents to flee to safer territory.
Some 7,000 remain out of a pre-war population of 60,000, regional officials said last week, despite cuts to electricity, water and heating.
"Every time you enter, it looks worse than before," said Yudin, clad in camouflage and body armour and clasping a shotgun.
His team responds to appeals from both residents and their family members. When they arrive, however, they often face pushback.
"I'm begging you, please - we're not going to evacuate anywhere," said one woman from inside her apartment, who said she did not want to leave her cat behind.
Reluctant residents also typically cite their age, poor health or the uncertainty of decamping to an unfamiliar new area as reasons for staying put.
Russian forces are just several kilometers from the city centre, and Ukrainian commanders have reported unrelenting infantry assaults around it.
The city's capture would further compromise supply lines to Ukrainian forces in the east and enable a grinding Russian march westward into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region.
Pensioner Halyna called Yudin's team to evacuate her 90-year-old aunt, a World War Two survivor. The woman trundled down the cracked stairwell of her apartment building wrapped in a thick overcoat and bright pink headscarf.
"We thought things would take a turn for the better, but they're not moving," said Halyna. "What else should I do with her?"
Ukrainian drone strikes trigger fires at major oil and gas facilities in Russia
MOSCOW, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Ukraine struck energy facilities in southern Russia with dozens of drones launched on Monday, triggering fires at a major oil refinery and gas processing plant and disrupting flights from the Volga to the Caucasus Mountains, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.
Russia's defence ministry said that its air defence units intercepted and destroyed 70 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight, including 25 over the Volgograd region, 27 over the Rostov region and seven over the Astrakhan region.
"The air defence forces of the defence ministry repelled a massive attack by aircraft-type drones on the territory of the Volgograd region," Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov said.
Falling drone debris sparked several fires at an oil refinery, he said, though he did not say which refinery was on fire.
Since Russia sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv has tried to fight back against its much bigger neighbour by striking deep into Russia with drones and missiles, and even killing a senior military commander in Moscow.
Russia says the attacks amount to terrorism, are an escalation of the war and that the West aids the attacks with weapons and targeting information.
Ukrainian officials say they have a right to hit back at Russia, as Russia's energy, transport and military infrastructure is key to Moscow's war effort.
Baza, a Russian news Telegram channel that is close to Russia's security services, said a series of explosions were heard in the area around a refinery operated by Russia's second-largest oil producer Lukoil
The 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery is the largest in southern Russia. In 2023, it processed 13.508 million metric tons of oil, or 4.9% of the total refining volume at Russian refineries.
In the neighbouring region of Astrakhan, Governor Igor Babushkin said Ukrainian drones tried to strike energy facilities and a fire had broken out. Baza and other Russian Telegram channels said Ukraine attacked a gas processing plant near Astrakhan.
"Ukrainian armed forces attempted a drone attack on objects located in the region, including fuel and energy facilities," Babushkin said on Telegram. "There were no casualties."
DAMAGE ASSESSED
Russia's Interfax news agency, citing local authorities, reported that the fire at the plant has been contained, while the governor said the plant had suspended operations before coming under attack.
The governor put out a video on Telegram of him inspecting the plant and a manager telling him that the damage to a condensate processing unit was being assessed.
"The situation is under control, there is no danger to the staff," the manager said.
Ukrainian Lieutenant Andriy Kovalenko, who heads the Center for Countering Disinformation, part of the National Security and Defense Council, said the Astrakhan gas processing plant had been hit.
The plant, controlled by gas giant Gazprom
The Astrakhan plant produced 703,000 tons of gasoline, or 1.6% of Russia's total, as well as 492,000 tons of diesel (0.6%) and 299,000 tons of fuel oil (0.7%) in 2023.
Unverified videos on social media showed giant flames and black smoke leaping into the night sky above a processing plant, as bystanders expressed shock at the size of the fire.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports from either side. Gazprom and Lukoil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether their facilities had been attacked.
Russia's aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia temporarily suspended flights from the Astrakhan and Volgograd airports, as well as from Kazan, Nizhnekamsk, Saratov and Ulyanovsk to ensure air safety.
Flights were later restored at most of the airports, Rosaviatsia said on Telegram.
