Horror as severed head is found placed on a war-damaged Ukrainian armoured vehicle as Kyiv accuses Putin’s troops of decapitating soldier in act of ‘dreadful barbarism’

Kyiv has accused Vladimir Putin’s forces of decapitating a Ukrainian soldier after a severed head was found placed on a damaged armoured vehicle.

The horrifying discovery was made in the eastern Donetsk region during aerial reconnaissance, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin.

He shared a disturbing picture of the scene which appears to show the body part on the bonnet of a Kozak-2, a Ukrainian armoured vehicle used for troop transportation.

The Ukrainian military claimed that it received information yesterday that Russian soldiers in the frontline area had been ordered not to take prisoners and instead behead them.

Ukraine has launched an investigation into what Kostin said was ‘new horrifying evidence’ of Russian war crimes, labelling it ‘dreadful barbarism that has no place in the 21st century.’

File image shows Russian troops in the occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine

‘This is further confirmation that the aggressor’s war crimes are not isolated instances, but rather a part of the Russian regime’s planned policy,’ he said.

‘These criminal orders were issued by the occupation forces’ battalion and company commanders.

‘We will not let these crimes go unpunished. I urge the entire civilised world to isolate and punish the terrorist country.’

He went on to say that the army had ‘received information that Russian commanders have ordered not to take Ukrainian soldiers as prisoners but to kill them with inhumane cruelty – by decapitation.’

Such actions constitute a clear violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions Concerning the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, the Prosecutor General added.

The alleged execution would not be the first time Russian forces have put Ukrainian POWs to death.

Several execution videos of prisoners shared on social media have shocked the world since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. 

Kostin (pictured) labelled the it an example of ‘dreadful barbarism that has no place in the 21st century’

Debris and Z graffiti is seen in a destroyed Ukrainian village in Donetsk, Ukraine

In March last year, a chilling video shared on Telegram showed a man taking one last drag from a cigarette next to a shallow grave before being executed by Russian troops.

The victim, who was later named as Ukrainian fighter Oleksandr Matsievskyi, says ‘Glory to Ukraine’ to his captors before he was shot to death.

On April 9, the Prosecutor General’s office had reported on 27 criminal proceedings over the execution of Ukrainian POWs.

Criminal cases were opened on the alleged murder of 54 Ukrainian fighters by Russian troops.

The United Nations said last year that it is ‘deeply concerned’ by what it described as summary executions of POWs carried out by Russian forces on the battlefield.

A report published in March 2023 by the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented Russian armed forces and Wagner Group executions of 15 Ukrainian POWs during the first year of the full-scale invasion.