Zelensky on Gruesome Video: We Will Not Forgive or Forget

It appears to show Russians behead a Ukrainian captive
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 12, 2023 9:25 AM CDT
Gruesome Video Has Zelensky Calling Russians 'Beasts'
Ukraine is promising to investigate a gruesome video circulating on social media that purportedly shows the beheading of a Ukrainian soldier.   (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)

Volodymyr Zelensky made clear he would neither forgive nor forget the Russian "beasts" who appear to have beheaded captive Ukrainian soldiers in two videos that have surfaced on social media in the last week, reports CNN. "This video, the execution of a Ukrainian captive, the world must see it," Zelensky said in a reaction video posted to Twitter on Wednesday in which he called on world leaders to react. "This is a video of Russia as it is, what kind of creatures they are, there are no people for them: a son, a brother, a husband, someone’s child. ... There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill. ... We are not going to forget anything. Nor are we going to forgive the murderers."

Politico details the videos, which it and other media outlets could not independently verify: In one, attributed to Wagner group mercenaries, two beheaded Ukrainian soldiers are shown; they are also missing their hands. Another, which is very grainy and appears to have been recorded last summer due to the amount of greenery present, shows a Russian beheading a Ukrainian with a knife. The AP reports the victim is a man in green fatigues and the yellow armband that Ukrainian fighters typically wear. "He is heard screeching," before he is decapitated, it reports, and another man displays a flak jacket apparently belonging to the man being beheaded. A Kremlin rep called the footage "horrible" but said its authenticity would need to be determined. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)

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