Russian guardsmen shot Ukrainian war prisoners for refusing to speak Russian

The Security Service of Ukraine has served a notice of suspicion on the commander of the Russian Guard who shot Ukrainian prisoners of war for refusing to speak to him in Russian.

Source: Security Service of Ukraine and Office of the Prosecutor General press services, source of Ukrainska Pravda in law enforcement agencies

Details: This is Kostiantyn Yudin, Head of a group of the 376th Separate Operational Battalion of the Russian Guard.

At the beginning of April 2023, acting as one of the leaders of this military unit, he arrived at the location of a Russian checkpoint in the temporarily occupied Energodar of Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

At that time, there were Ukrainian prisoners of war on the territory of this checkpoint of the Russian Federation, whom the occupiers wanted to involve in the dismantling of fortifications.

However, Yudin gave another order – to line up the captured defenders of Ukraine for interrogation. First of all, he was interested in the personal data of the defenders of Ukraine and the circumstances of their capture.

At the same time, Yudin demanded that his questions be answered exclusively in Russian.

According to the investigation, one of the prisoners answered him in Ukrainian. After that, the Russian took the man to a commercial building on the territory of the checkpoint and, threatening him with a weapon, ordered him to face the wall.

Yudin then fired a pistol into the victim's right leg, resulting in the prisoner receiving a gunshot wound to the knee joint.

The Russian repeated his demand to speak with him only in Russian, but the Ukrainian refused to comply with the occupier’s instructions this time as well.

Then Yudin fired another shot close to the captive's head, but even this did not make the Ukrainian answer in Russian.

After that, the attacker took the victim to other prisoners and threatened to shoot them when he heard the Ukrainian language again.

Based on the collected evidence, the investigators of the Security Service have served Yudin with a notice of suspicion for violating the laws and customs of war.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, the soldier who refused to make concessions to the occupier later was brought back to the Ukrainian-controlled territory as a result of a PoW exchange.

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