Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s leading human rights official, has appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations to investigate an image widely shared online on August 3 that he said likely showed a Ukrainian prisoner of war killed and dismembered by Russian forces.
"A photo appeared on the Internet, probably with the body of a Ukrainian prisoner whose head and limbs were cut off by the Russians,” said Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, on Telegram.
He said the behavior was a violation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war and inhumane.
"I would like to note that in accordance with the norms of international humanitarian law, no prisoner of war can be subjected to physical mutilation, violence, or murder," he said.
Lubinets urgently appealed to the ICRC and the UN "to record another human rights violation by the terrorist country, as well as to the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to verify the identity of the murdered prisoner and the fact of this crime."
He said prisoners of war "are in the hands of an enemy state, and it is responsible for their treatment, that is, the responsibility for killing and maiming lies not only with Russian soldiers, but with the Russian Federation itself."
Spreading such images on social media is meant to intimidate Ukrainians, both civilians and military, he added.
Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said an urgent investigation had been launched.
"Russia consistently repeats the crimes of the Nazis, defiantly showing utter contempt for all norms of the civilized world," he said on Telegram.
A United Nations commission of inquiry on Ukraine said in a report published in March that it had documented credible allegations of executions of at least 32 Ukrainian POWs in 12 separate incidents from December 2023 to February, and that it had independently verified three of the incidents.
Russia denies torture or other forms of maltreatment of POWs.