United Nations monitors reported an “alarming rise” in Russian executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war in recent months, as Kyiv said its latest long-range drone strikes had hit two big fuel facilities in southern Russia.
“Since the end of August 2024, the mission recorded 79 such executions in 24 separate incidents,” the UN human rights monitoring mission in Kyiv said on Monday, indicating that a single incident may involve the killing of several captured Ukrainian soldiers.
“Many Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered or were in physical custody of the Russian armed forces were shot dead on the spot,” the mission said in a statement, adding that analysis of footage and photos of the executions showed that they “took place in areas where Russian offensive operations were under way”.
“These incidents did not occur in a vacuum. Public figures in the Russian Federation have explicitly called for inhumane treatment, and even execution, of captured Ukrainian military personnel,” said Danielle Bell, the head of the mission.
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“All allegations of execution of captured Ukrainian military personnel and public statements calling for, or condoning, such actions must be investigated.”
The mission said it had also “documented the execution of a wounded and incapacitated Russian soldier by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024.”
Russia and Ukraine deny committing atrocities during nearly three years of full-scale war, despite repeated allegations from international human rights groups, which level the vast majority of their accusations at Moscow’s invasion force.
On Monday, fires were reported at an oil refinery and a gas processing plant in southern Russia, after Moscow said air defence units intercepted 70 Ukrainian drones over several regions of the country in the early hours of the day.
Ukraine’s military claimed its drones hit both plants and said the “strategic facilities are producers of a large amount of fuel for the Russian occupation army” and pledged that such operations – which now routinely strike targets hundreds of kilometres inside Russia – “would continue”.
Kyiv’s troops have been on the back foot in eastern Ukraine for many months, but it has expanded its “deep strike” drone programme against Russian military and industrial facilities and conducting targeted assassinations in occupied territory and Russia itself.
“The situation is difficult, but we are fighting back with honour. We continue to effectively destroy the enemy’s military facilities in order to reduce its strike potential,” said Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
A businessman on Kyiv’s wanted list for founding a pro-Russian militia group in occupied eastern Ukraine was killed in an explosion on Monday at the entrance to an upscale apartment block in Moscow. Armen Sargsyan was also suspected of hiring thugs to attack pro-democracy protesters during Ukraine’s 2013-2014 Maidan revolution.
Russian investigators said the bomb attack, which also killed one of Sargsyan’s bodyguards and injured several people, was a carefully planned operation but did not immediately apportion blame. Ukrainian officials did not comment on the incident.
As civil society in Ukraine and worldwide struggled to cope with US president Donald Trump’s order to halt work on programmes funded by the US agency for international development (USAID), Russian officials welcomed a pledge from billionaire Elon Musk to close an organisation that in 2023 disbursed $72 billion (€70 billion) to a vast range of groups.
“It’s beyond repair ... We’re shutting it down,” said Mr Musk, whom Mr Trump has asked to make swingeing cutbacks in US administration.
“Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat,” Dmitry Medvedev, a former president of Russia who is now deputy chairman of its security council, wrote on social media. “Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole.”
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