Pow Beheading Video: Ukraine compares Russia to IS

Ukraine compared Russia to Islamic State yesterday, after a video emerged online showing apparent Russian soldiers filming themselves beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW) with a knife.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity or provenance of the video shared on social media, which showed a man in uniform beheading a man who wears the yellow arm band used by Ukrainian soldiers.

There was no immediate comment on the video from Moscow, which has denied in the past that its troops carry out atrocities during the full-scale invasion Russia launched last year.

"There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message. "There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Twitter: "A horrific video of Russian troops decapitating a Ukrainian prisoner of war is circulating online.

"It's absurd that Russia, which is worse than ISIS, is presiding over the UNSC," he said, referring to the UN Security Council where Russia took up the rotating presidency this month. "Russian terrorists must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN and be held accountable for their crimes."

Militants from Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria were notorious for releasing videos of beheadings of captives when they controlled swathes of those countries from 2014-2017.

Ukraine's domestic security agency said it had launched an investigation into a suspected war crime over the video.

Meanwhile, Russian deputy foreign minister said yesterday the leak of a trove of highly sensitive documents online could be a move by the United States to "deceive" Russia, reports AFP.

"It's probably interesting for someone to look at these documents, if they really are documents or they could be a fake or it could be an intentional leak," Sergei Ryabkov told Russian news agencies.

The Kremlin said the outlook for the landmark UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal was "not so great" as promises to remove obstacles to Russian agricultural and fertiliser exports had not been fulfilled.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the current agreement was not working for Russia, despite some efforts by the United Nations to get the parts of the deal relating to Moscow's interests implemented.

"No deal can stand on one leg: it must stand on two legs," Peskov told reporters.

On paper, the deal allows for the export of food and fertiliser, including ammonia, from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. But Moscow says that shipments are compromised by obstacles - such as insurance and payment hindrances - that it says must be removed.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Ryabkov yesterday acknowledged that detained US reporter Evan Gershkovich had not been granted consular access, two weeks after his arrest.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden declared the imprisonment "illegal" after the State Department classified the reporter as "wrongfully detained". Ryabkov said "for us, the status assigned in Washington does not matter."