The Russian Prosecutor’s Office today opened an investigation into the video broadcast on social networks in which Russian soldiers or mercenaries are allegedly seen beheading a Ukrainian soldier.
“In order to assess the veracity of the materials and make an appropriate decision, they have been sent to the investigative bodies“, says the official statement.
The Prosecutor emphasizes that the video contains “allegedly” pictures of the murder “an alleged Ukrainian soldier”.
In this regard, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said on Wednesday that the video should be “verified”.
“To begin with, you have to check the veracity of the images”which, he admitted, are “terrible”.
He Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) it is also investigating the authenticity of the video in order to identify the perpetrators of the beheading of the Ukrainian soldier with a knife, of which kyiv has accused the Russian military.
The former mercenary of the Wagner Group who fled last January from Russia to Norway He has assured that the fighters of the Russian private military company beheaded the Ukrainian soldier.
“Wagner veteran Andrei Medvedev, who fled to Norway, recognized the voices of his colleagues in a video recording.”said the founder of the Gulagu.net organization, Vladimir Osechkin, on his Telegram channel, where he published a fragment of his intervention on the Khodorkovsky Live program.
According to this human rights activist, who lives in exile, the former mercenary “he unequivocally identifies his colleagues there, Wagner’s fighters by their characteristic nicknames, by the way they speak, by what they express on the radio” during the beheading of the Ukrainian soldier.
The day before, Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, denied that his units, which are currently fighting in Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region, are linked to the beheading of the soldier.
“I saw that video. It’s wrong when people are beheaded, but I couldn’t find anything anywhere to indicate that this takes place in Bakhmut or that Wagner fighters are involved in this execution.”Prigozhin said in an audio posted on his Telegram account.