russians Behead Ukrainian Soldiers

What do you say about a culture that practices beheading of prisoners of war? We were aghast to see on video Islamic State cutthroats perform this heinous crime.

The bloody list of war crimes committed in Ukraine by invading russian murderers at least since February 24, 2022 if not longer, has shocked the global community. Unarmed civilians – men, women and children – have fallen into their crosshairs. And so have prisoners of war. For russians, it matters not who they kill in Ukraine. If they speak Ukrainian or if they love their native Ukrainian land, they are in mortal danger at the hands of russian killers.

We’ve barely digested watching the incredible coldblooded killing of a Ukrainian POW after he replied “Glory to Ukraine” to a group of russian killers when we learned of the beheading – decapitation of the head, the chopping off of the head – of Ukrainian POWs. There’s really no clean way to say this.

I heard of this yesterday in a colleague’s LinkedIn post, in which he said that he had mustered the courage to watch the video and listen to the horrific screams as russians beheaded the Ukrainian soldiers. I daresay that few people would have the moral strength to watch that clip.

Today newsmedia began reporting this latest russian crime.

Two videos appear to be of separate events – one of them may have been filmed very recently, while the other, from the amount of foliage seen on the ground, looks like it was filmed during the summer of 2022.

The first video, which was posted to a pro-Russian social media channel on April 8, 2023, was purportedly filmed by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group and appears to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle.

In the video, CNN and others reported, a voice can be heard, behind the camera, the sound seemingly distorted to prevent the speaker’s identification.

“(The armored vehicle) got f**ked by a mine,” the voice, speaking Russian, says.

Apparently referring to the bodies on the ground, the voice, laughing, continues, “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off.” The dead soldiers also appear to have had their hands cut off, CNN reported.

Russian social media accounts say the video was shot near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has been the scene of the war’s fiercest fighting for many months, with Wagner fighters heavily involved.

The second video, which was posted on Twitter and is heavily blurred, looks to have been filmed during the summer of 2022 because of the amount of plant life on the ground. It shows a Russian fighter using a knife to cut off the head of a Ukrainian soldier. A voice at the beginning of the video suggests the victim might have still been alive when the attack began.

Ukrainian officials compared russia to the Islamic State and called on the International Criminal Court to investigate after a video emerged online showing apparent russian soldiers filming themselves beheading a Ukrainian captive with a knife, reported Reuters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today condemned as “beasts” those who purportedly beheaded Ukrainian soldiers shown in two videos that emerged on social media in the past week.

Zelenskyy vowed those behind the purported atrocities would be held accountable. “There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill,” he said in a video message. “We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary,” he said.

Dariia Zarivna, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said today the videos are part of a psychological operation “aimed at intimidation.”

“It completely dehumanizes and demonstrates the essence of a terrorist country,” she said of the videos. “But it is important to understand the purpose. This is a PSYOP [psychological operation] aimed at intimidation. The target audience is not only Ukraine, but also Western societies,” Zarivna reasoned.

“It doesn’t work on us, though. The Russians are afraid of this, but not us.”

What do you say about a national culture that invades a neighbor and commits incredible evident crimes against humanity and then flaunts them on social media? What do you say about a national culture that kills prisoners of war, unarmed men, women and children, destroys their churches, libraries and infrastructure? What do you say about a national culture that tolerates these war crimes? What do you say about the brutal, terrorist russians? Think about that the next time you network with a russian businessman, academician or government official. Think about that the next time reach for

russian vodka or other made-in-russia product in your local store.