The SBU announced the probe on the Telegram social messaging app on Wednesday, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
It cited the Ukrainian security service as saying that a video emerged on the internet a day earlier in which "the Russian occupiers were demonstrating their brutality, torturing a Ukrainian prisoner and beheading him."
The SBU said it "has launched preliminary proceedings regarding this war crime,” according to PAP.
SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk said that "the perpetrators will be found no matter where they are” and “receive punishment,” the Polish state news agency reported.
‘How easily these beasts kill’: Zelensky
In a video posted to social media on Wednesday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the footage proved “how easily these beasts kill.”
He added that Ukraine “does not intend to forget anything or forgive the killers,” while “terror must be defeated.”
Zelensky later tweeted: “The execution of a Ukrainian captive … This is a video of Russia as it is. This is a video of Russia trying to make just that the new norm.”
He said: “Everyone must react. Every leader. Don't expect it to be forgotten. We are not going to forget anything. The defeat of Russian terror is necessary.”
The drastic video emerged on Tuesday night, according to news outlets.
It shows masked men in uniforms adorned with white ribbons, which are usually used as a mark of identification by Russian soldiers, cutting off the head of a living individual with Ukrainian insignia, the PAP news agency reported.
The footage looks to have been filmed during the summer because of the amount of plant life on the ground, according to the US broadcaster CNN.
Shortly after the video emerged, Andriy Yermak, a top advisor to Zelensky, said on social media: “There will be an answer and accountability for everything.”
An official Ukrainian government Telegram channel said the tweet was a direct reference to “another execution video published by Russians,” CNN reported.
Russia’s Wagner beheading Ukrainian POWs?
On Monday, the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said that Russia’s Wagner Group private paramilitary company was “reportedly continuing to commit war crimes by beheading Ukrainian servicemen in Bakhmut,” the embattled city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The ISW referred to a photo shared on pro-Russian social media sites showing what appeared to be a severed head, which the ISW claimed belonged to a Ukrainian soldier, mounted on a spike.
The US think tank also reported similar incidents in Popasna, in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, where Wagner troops were also operating earlier in the war.
On Saturday, a video was posted to a pro-Russian social media channel that appeared to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle, CNN reported.
The footage was purportedly filmed by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, according to CNN.
Wednesday is day 413 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, CNN, ISW