Investigating POW Executions
Law enforcement agencies argue that such crimes are systemic and that not only direct perpetrators but also their commanders must be held to account.
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Ukraine is campaigning for this phenomenon to be recognised as a new, stand-alone international crime.
Investigating POW Executions
Law enforcement agencies argue that such crimes are systemic and that not only direct perpetrators but also their commanders must be held to account.
In the morning of January 9 2025, near the village of Guyevo in Russia’s Kursk region, a burst of automatic rifle fire rang out and two Ukrainian soldiers fell to the ground. Viktor Liapota and Ivan Kondratiuk, fighters with the 41st Separate Territorial Defence Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, had been captured after a firefight with a Russian reconnaissance and sabotage group.
“After temporarily seizing the dugout, the occupiers led the prisoners into an open area and shot them in the back with automatic rifles,” the subsequent investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) report stated.
Two days later, during a counterattack in the same area, Ukrainian forces captured several Russian soldiers. Among them there was Vladimir Ivanov, a rifleman from the 40th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces who investigators allege was among those who participated in the execution of the two Ukrainian POWs.
Ivanov was transferred to a Ukrainian detention facility and subsequently notified of a suspicion against him under Article 28, Part 1 and Article 438, Part 2 of the criminal code of Ukraine concerning the violation of the laws and customs of war. Hearings in the case are currently underway at the Shevchenkivskyi district court in Kyiv.
As Ukrainian courts prosecute a number of Russian servicemen accused of executing POWs, law enforcement agencies argue that such crimes are systemic and that not only the direct perpetrators but also their commanders be held to account.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the execution of Ukrainian POWs has been documented across the entire front line: in Donetsk, Luhansk, Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Chernihiv regions of Ukraine as well as in Russia’s Kursk region.
“Prosecutorial authorities have overseen 105 criminal proceedings related to the murder of 337 Ukrainian servicemen of the Defence Forces of Ukraine who had unconditionally laid down their arms and/or surrendered,” a spokesperson for the prosecutor general’s office of Ukraine told IWPR.
These are only the official cases that Ukrainian investigators have been able to confirm; the actual number could be significantly higher.
Nine Russian servicemen have been charged in connection with the killing of Ukrainian POWs. Indictments against six of these individuals have been sent to court: three have since been convicted, while the trials for the other three are ongoing.
“Every case against Russian servicemen is significant and it is crucial to investigate them not as isolated incidents but to prove the systemic and widespread nature of the crimes in court,” Andrii Yakovliev, an international humanitarian law specialist, told IWPR. “We see crimes committed. We see that these crimes are not isolated.
“We see that these crimes are committed in different parts of the front and this process involves a large number of people at various levels of the military hierarchy,” he continued, adding that “these are all facts that lead to the conclusion that the executions of Ukrainian prisoners are systemic in nature”.
Yakovliev argued that it was necessary to prosecute not only direct perpetrators of battlefield executions but also commanders who ordered or failed to prevent such war crimes.
“One of the tools that can be used to prove the systemic nature of Russian crimes is the principle of command responsibility,” he said. “This is one of the key mechanisms of international criminal law. A commander is responsible not only if they gave a criminal order to execute prisoners, but also if they knew about the executions and failed to take measures to stop them or punish those responsible.”
The spokesperson for the prosecutor general’s office confirmed that “evidence gathered during pre-trial investigations shows a practice of commanders at the brigade, regiment, battalion, company and platoon - assault group - levels issuing orders not to take Ukrainian servicemen prisoner”.
However, proving the guilt of commanders is harder than that of soldiers who carry out executions, said Mykyta Manevskyi, a prosecutor with the Zaporizhzhia regional prosecutor’s office. He explained that commanders were rarely captured and could therefore only be tried in absentia, making it impossible to interrogate them or conduct other investigative actions.
“You need some evidence that the order was given, even if only verbally,” he said. “You also have to establish the commander’s identity – his first and last name. We might know a unit commander’s call sign, but his real name remains unknown. This all presents a definite challenge.”
Manevskyi served as prosecutor in the first in-person conviction of a Russian soldier for the execution of a Ukrainian POW. On November 6, 2025, the Zavodskyi district court of Zaporizhzhia found Russian national Dmitry Kurashov guilty of shooting Vitalii Hodniuk, a soldier with the 226th Battalion of the 127th Territorial Defence Brigade. The court established that on January 6, 2024, Russian units stormed Ukrainian positions near the village of Pryiutne in the Zaporizhzhia region. During the battle, Hodniuk laid down his weapon and raised his hands, after which Kurashov killed him.
Kurashov was later captured during a Ukrainian counterattack in this sector. An investigation revealed that he served in the Shtorm-V unit of the 218th Tank Regiment, part of the 127th Motor Rifle Division of the 5th Combined Arms Army of Russia’s Eastern Military District, and that he had been recruited from a Russian penal colony where he was serving a sentence for theft. Kurashov was sentenced to life in prison.
During his trial, Kurashov stated that he had been under orders to take no prisoners.
“This claim was investigated, but authorities were unable to confirm that commanders had actually issued such orders, that’s why no charges were brought against them,” explained Manevskyi.
“During interrogations, some Russian soldiers said there were no instructions on the matter at all. Others said taking prisoners was encouraged. A third group claimed that instructors told them not to take prisoners. But there’s a nuance here: we can hold a commander accountable, not some third party. In this case, an instructor is an outside party who has no actual authority over a serviceman."
Each time a new case of the execution of POWs becomes public, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, sends official letters to UN bodies and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Ombudsman’s secretariat told IWPR that information about these war crimes was used in the preparation of reports by international organisations and could serve as a basis for launching investigations into specific incidents.
“In addition to collecting, verifying and including information about Russia’s violations of international humanitarian law in periodic and special reports prepared by UN bodies and special rapporteurs, this data forms the basis for public condemnation and political pressure on the perpetrator,” the Ombudsman’s secretariat said in a statement. “It is also used for drafting and adopting UN resolutions on human rights in Ukraine and for developing recommendations for the parties to the armed conflict.”
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has reported an increase in allegations of POW executions by Russian armed forces since mid-November 2025.
“OHCHR assessed the allegations related to at least four incidents, involving the killing of ten men, as credible based on analysis of video and photo material published by Ukrainian and Russian sources. It continues to look into two more incidents involving the killing of eight more Ukrainian POWs,” the organisation’s report stated.
The execution of POWs is a grave breach of international humanitarian law and constitutes a war crime. Furthermore, the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War obligates Russia to investigate and prosecute individuals responsible for the wilful killing of POWs.
However, there is no information to suggest that Russia is conducting such investigations into its own servicemen. On the contrary, it rejects accusations that its forces have executed Ukrainian POWs.
