Ukraine parades captured Russian soldiers in videos posted online

Ukrainian officials have begun posting videos and photos of captured and killed Russian troops online. WARNING: Graphic content.

GRAPHIC CONTENT

Ukrainian officials are publishing dozens of images of what they say are dead or captured Russian soldiers as fighting continues.

For the first time, Russian officials have begun to acknowledge their “killed and injured” troops as videos of captured soldiers and disturbing photos of those killed in the conflict were placed online.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs started posting the images on a Telegram page Find Your Own as well as a website to assist Russian families to identify their loved ones.

Ukrainian officials, who estimate Russian casualties number around 5300, began releasing the material over the weekend.

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Footage of a Russian soldier that Ukrainian officials claim to have captured. Source: Telegram

The emergence of the videos of captured Russian soldiers has shocked and angered some of their families, according to The Guardian.

The publication spoke to three family members of a soldier who identified himself as Leonid Paktishev, the commander of a sniper unit based in the Rostov region.

“I was sent the video of my brother captured at 2am last night. I was completely shocked. I had no idea that he was fighting in there,” Paktishev’s sister Yelena Polivtseva said.

Videos also appear to suggest some Russian troops were surprised by the attack, with the Daily Mail reporting some soldiers believed they were conducting training exercises and did not know they were being sent to invade Ukraine.

One video reportedly shows one soldier phoning his mother to tell her he had been captured, explaining they had gone into Donetsk as “peacekeepers” but that war had broken out.

The Russian army began to admit on Sunday there were “killed and injured” soldiers among its troops in Ukraine on the fourth day of its invasion, without saying how many had died there.

“Russian servicemen are showing courage and heroism while fulfilling combat tasks in the special military operation,” Moscow’s army spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on state television.

“Unfortunately, there are killed and injured among our comrades.”

This was the first time Moscow had spoken about losing men in Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion in the early hours of Thursday.

Three men Ukrainian officials claim were saboteurs from Russia. Source: Telegram

Mr Konashenkov said the Russian army would return Ukrainian prisoners of war “who surrender” to their families.

Meanwhile Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Anna Malyar has suggested an estimated 5300 Russian soldiers have been killed, although this has not been verified according to in a post on the Ministry of Defence Facebook.

Ukraine also estimates the Russians have lost 29 planes, 29 helicopters, 191 tanks, 816 battle armoured machines, 74 cannon, one ZRK BUK surface-to-air missile system as well as other equipment.

Ukrainian service members look for and collect unexploded shells after a fighting with Russian raiding group in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on February 26, 2022. Picture: Sergei Supinsky/AFP

On day four of the invasion, Ukrainian forces said Sunday they had defeated a Russian incursion into Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, 500 kilometres east of Kyiv.

Russian forces had also “several times” attempted to storm the outskirts of Kyiv on Sunday night, but all attacks were repelled, the Ukrainian army said Monday morning.

“The situation in the capital of our homeland is under control,” said the army on Facebook.

Local media reported strong explosions heard throughout Sunday night in both Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Ukraine has reported 352 civilian deaths, including 14 children, since the invasion began.

Ukrainian service members in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Picture: Sergei Supinsky/AFP

Meanwhile Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met Monday for the first time since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, with Ukraine demanding a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops. The talks ended with both sides agreeing to continue a second-round of negotiations “soon”.

In a lengthy telephone call, Russian President Vladimir Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that “the demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine and Western recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula were prerequisites to ending fighting in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

“The Russian enemy is bombing residential areas of Kharkiv, where there is no critical infrastructure, where there are no positions of the armed forces,” said Oleg Sinegubov, the governor of the region that includes Kharkiv.

An AFP photographer in the city inspected damage caused by fighting on Sunday, finding a destroyed school, as well as several burned out Russian infantry vehicles.

Russian corpses in army fatigues could also be seen in the streets.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned what he called “the barbaric air strikes being carried out by Russia against innocent civilians, including children”.

Earlier on Monday, the Russian army urged Ukrainians to leave Kyiv “freely” on one highway ahead of what is an expected Russian offensive to capture the capital.

Ukraine has called on its own civilians to fight Russia, with a brewery in Lviv in the country’s west switching its production line from beers to bombs, making Molotov cocktails for the volunteer fighters.

Russia invaded on Thursday and quickly announced it had neutralised key military facilities, but fierce fighting has since raged and Ukraine forces are reporting some success.

“The Russian occupiers have reduced the pace of the offensive,” the general staff of the Ukraine armed forces said.

The United States has also said that Ukraine forces, backed by Western arms, are stymieing the advance of Russian troops.

Putin on Sunday ordered Russia’s nuclear forces onto high alert in response to what he called “unfriendly” steps by the West. Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic missiles.

The United States, the world’s second largest nuclear power, slammed Putin’s order as “totally unacceptable”.

Germany said Putin’s nuclear order was because his offensive had “halted” and was not going to plan.

— with AFP

Originally published as Ukraine parades captured Russian soldiers in videos posted online