Ukraine Probing ‘Russians Shooting At Surrendering Troops’ (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent
KYIV/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Ukraine has launched a probe into allegations that Russian forces shot surrendering Ukrainian troops, and Kyiv reportedly prevented an ex-president from meeting Hungary’s pro-Moscow prime minister.
Ukrainian officials confirmed Sunday they were probing grainy footage on social media appearing to show two uniformed men being shot at close range after emerging from a dugout.
The video shows the servicemen, one of them with his hands up, walking out at gunpoint and lying down on the ground before a group of Russian troops appears to open fire.
It was not immediately possible to verify the video’s authenticity or the circumstances in which it was filmed, and it was unclear when the incident occurred.
The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s office on Sunday launched a criminal investigation, hours after the Ukrainian military’s press office said in an online statement that the footage is genuine.
“The video shows a group in Russian uniforms shooting, at point-blank range, two unarmed servicemen in the uniform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who were surrendering,” the prosecutor’s office said.
News of the investigation came as Ukraine’s ex-President Petro Poroshenko said he had been stopped from leaving the country on Friday morning in what he described as a politically motivated bid to disrupt his work.
BLOCKING EU BID
Security officials said that Poroshenko had agreed to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and refused to support Kyiv’s bid to join the European Union.
In a statement on social media, they said such talks would make Poroshenko a “tool in the hands of the Russian special services.”
On Saturday evening, Orbán’s spokesman said that Hungary “does not wish to play any part in (President Zelenskyy’s) internal political struggles,” without confirming or denying that a meeting had been planned between Poroshenko and the Hungarian leader. Zoltán Kovács made the remarks in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Poroshenko, who led Ukraine from 2014 to 2019 and is now an opposition lawmaker, posted a video of himself at a border crossing with Poland. He said he had been turned away and holding up papers that he said showed he had official permission to cross.
Under martial law, Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years of age are not allowed to leave the country without special approval.
Poroshenko, 58, announced that he had been turned away at the border despite previously receiving permission from Parliament to leave the country.
He said he planned to meet with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Polish parliament during his trip. Poroshenko did not address allegations that he also planned to meet Orban, who has been among the EU’s most vocal Russia supporters.
FACING UPHILL BATTLE
The standoff came at a time when Kyiv faced an uphill battle against Moscow nearly two full years after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted that his counteroffensive has made slow progress due to enduring shortages of weapons and ground forces, with a harsh winter ahead.
Zelensky also said he fears the Israel-Hamas war threatens to overshadow the armed conflict in Ukraine, as competing political agendas and limited resources put the flow of Western military aid to Kyiv at risk.
“We have a new phase of war, which is a fact. Winter as a whole is a new phase of war,” he added in published remarks.
His comments came as Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, was left on “the verge of a nuclear and radiation accident” over the weekend.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said it could not draw power from two lines connecting it to the local energy grid.
It said that the plant switched to diesel generators to stop the plant from overheating before Kyiv restored off-site power.
IAEA STILL MONITORING
Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been monitoring safety at the Zaporizhzhia plant, one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations.
Though the site’s six reactors have been shut down for months, it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features, officials said.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia reportedly launched 11 Iranian-made Shahed drones and one guided cruise missile overnight Saturday.
Ukrainian air defenses reportedly destroyed the missile and all but one of the drones.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that it had shot down two Ukrainian C-200 rockets over the Sea of Azov.
The fighting underscored global concerns that Moscow and Kyiv have no appetite to enter serious peace talks to end a war that is believed to have killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people.
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