Ukraine’s deputy prime minister on Saturday said authorities will investigate video footage that Moscow says shows Ukrainian forces killing Russian troops.
Olha Stefanishyna said it is “very unlikely” the footage actually depicts what Moscow describes, but that “of course Ukrainian authorities will investigate this video.”
Russia says the footage shows Ukrainian forces attacking soldiers who may have been trying to surrender. Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram that the clips, which circulated on Russian social media, were evidence of an “execution.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry has demanded an international investigation into the footage, and Russia’s United Nations representative Dmitry Polyanski said on Twitter that he’d asked U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to bring the matter to the Security Council and the General Assembly.
Stefanishyna insisted that Ukraine is not interested in killing prisoners of war, which can be swapped for Ukrainians in prisoner exchanges with Russia.
“Every potential executed Russian soldier is some Ukrainian that is not able to be exchanged, so the spirit and logic is not there,” Stefanishyna said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.