An adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has likened Russian troops to Isis militants after they allegedly shared a video of a captive Ukrainian soldier to demand a ransom from his family.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to the Ukrainian president, said Russian forces demanded €5,000 (£4,204) from the mother of a captured Ukrainian soldier if she wanted to see him alive. The Russians reportedly threatened to send a video of his execution if she did not pay the ransom.
The video which has been shared online purports to show a man who identifies himself as Aleksey Antonovich Novikov of Mariupol, a soldier from the 109th brigade of the territorial defence of the Donetsk region.
Mr Novikov says he was a volunteer in Mariupol, and adds that the Russians were treating him “okay”.
“I have food here, water, a toilet,” he says as the Russian soldiers interrogate him. He adds that no one had beaten him up “except for this time”.
The Independent has not been able to verify the video.
“They demand €5,000 and threatened that the next video she gets will be her son’s execution,” Mr Podolyak said. “Russian soldiers are increasingly similar to Isis militants. Russia must be recognised as a terrorist state.”
Russian soldiers have been accused of committing a range of war crimes in the course of the conflict that entered its third month last week. The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor is set to join an EU investigations team that is probing possible war crimes in Ukraine, the EU’s judicial cooperation agency has said.
In Bucha, chilling scenes of hundreds of bodies lying strewn across streets and in mass graves with their hands tied behind their backs sparked a major investigation, with Russian soldiers accused of the killings.
There have been previous reports of intercepted phone calls where Russian commanders appear to order their troops to kill prisoners. In one of the conversations released last week, a Russian soldier was allegedly told to kill all but one Ukrainian prisoner. “No one ever f***ing sees them again, including their families,” the person on the call says.
Russia has denied the alleged atrocities and claimed videos showing the bodies after its troop withdrawal were fake. Moscow has instead accused Ukraine of committing war crimes against its own citizens and captive Russian soldiers.
A video emerged earlier this month purportedly showing Ukrainian forces shooting and killing captive Russian soldiers in the west of Kyiv. Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said they were were aware of the video and it would “definitely be investigated”.
Meanwhile, the British government on Monday issued its own assessment of the losses suffered by the Russian army during the conflict, and said it believes 15,000 Russian troops have now been killed in Ukraine.
Defence secretary Ben Wallace told MPs: “Alongside the death toll are the equipment losses and in total, a number of sources suggest that to date over 2,000 armoured vehicles have been destroyed or captured.”
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