Russian deserter confesses to killing 5 captured Ukrainian soldiers

A 31-year-old Russian serviceman claimed in an interview to have participated in the May 2024 killing of five captured Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk Oblast, according to Polish-Belarusian media outlet Vot Tak.

The five Ukrainian soldiers were allegedly captured on May 5, 2024, in the village of Karlovka, near Avdiivka. They were stripped of their phones and body armor, then brought to a garden and shot in the back of their heads while kneeling, according to an audio recording of the interview that Vot Tak released.

Vot Tak said it was unable to confirm the soldier's account of the executions, but that it sent a request to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine for any information about Ukrainian servicemen killed in Karlovka.

The Russian-language outlet is focused on Eastern Europe and Eurasia and was created by Polish state media to counter official Russian and Belarusian propaganda.

The Kyiv Independent contacted Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets for comment on the reported events but was not able to reach him before publication.

The Russian serviceman who described the shootings, Ivan Okhlopkov, said the Ukrainian men were left unburied and that mortar shelling eventually destroyed their remains, and that he did not regret his actions and did not remember details about the men. Okhlopkov said he and four or five others in his battalion carried out the executions, which he said were ordered by their commander.

Okhlopkov and the soldiers that took part in executions were part of the notorious Somalia Battalion, members of which have been alleged of committing war crimes in the past.

Okhlopkov, who was serving time in prison for theft when he signed a contract to join the Russian military, said he deserted the army and is currently in hiding in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk.

Last month, Ukraine's prosecutor general said it had documented at least 273 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) who had been executed by Russia during their captivity, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Kyiv and the U.N. have raised the alarm over rising numbers of executions of POWs, saying they point to a systematic policy by Russia to murder Ukrainian captives. Half of the documented cases were recorded this year alone.