No mercy must be shown towards Ukrainian neo-Nazis who murdered an unarmed Russian soldier, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. The only response that should follow is across-the-board executions, he added.
Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, was commenting on a video depicting the brutal execution of a Russian serviceman that was published by the Azov Brigade on its Telegram channel on Monday. The helmet-camera video shows an unarmed soldier asking a purported Azov militant not to shoot him, before he gets shot several times in the face at point-blank range.
The commander of Russia’s Akhmat Special Forces unit Apty Alaudinov said the incident violated the Geneva Conventions. Under the provisions of the 1949 treaties, “members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, or detention” should be treated humanely.
Medvedev said, however, that reference to the Geneva Conventions is pointless, as there should be “no mercy” to perpetrators of war crimes. The politician quoted the Soviet WWII-era war poet Konstantin Simonov’s verse “Kill him” and called for the expedited execution of those who murdered the captured serviceman.
“There is no place for good here. Just kill! Like Simonov, to whom I have referred many times!” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “Only total executions. No choice. There are no words about mercy. No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to life,”Medvedev insisted.
Echoing his remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Tuesday that Ukrainian Neo-Nazis should be “destroyed.”
“Fascists are fascists,” he told reporters. “We must treat them this way and they must be destroyed,”Peskov added.
Earlier this month, the New York Times revealed, citing a German battlefield medic, multiple atrocities allegedly committed by members of the so-called ‘Chosen Company,’ an international mercenary group fighting on behalf of Ukraine.
In one reported incident described by the NYT, members of the Chosen Company murdered a seriously injured Russian serviceman who, it’s claimed, was surrendering and pleading for help.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has said it will probe alleged war crimes committed by mercenary units fighting for Ukraine.
Moscow will also demand that international organizations verify data on alleged Russian POW executions, which, if confirmed, would qualify “as a violation of key norms and principles of humanitarian law, amounting to war crimes,” according to ambassador-at-large for Ukraine’s crimes, Rodion Miroshnik.
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