Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said his mercenaries would no longer take Ukrainian soldiers prisoner and would instead “kill everyone on the battlefield,” Ukrainska Pravda reported on April 24, 2023, citing a statement from his press service on Telegram.
“Not a single prisoner”
“We will kill everyone who is on the battlefield. Not a single prisoner will be taken anymore,” Prigozhin said. He claimed Wagner would not break “the rules of humanism” but would simply destroy everyone on the battlefield.
Unverified recording
Prigozhin was responding to an audio recording posted on April 23 on a pro-Wagner Telegram channel, which claimed it was an intercepted conversation between Ukrainian soldiers deciding to shoot a wounded Wagner fighter. In the recording, the speakers use Russian.
Prigozhin called the recording “proof” that a prisoner had been executed, but said Wagner did not know the name of the man allegedly shot. It is unknown whose voices are on the recording, and the Ukrainian side did not comment on it.
A war crime
Ordering that no quarter be given, or killing combatants who have surrendered or are wounded, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war.
Wagner, which has led Russia’s assault on Bakhmut, has been accused of numerous abuses in Ukraine and elsewhere. The UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has documented executions of prisoners of war, mostly by Russian forces, as well as some cases attributed to Ukrainian forces.
Sources
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