Alt Left: What’s up with the Russian Execution of a Ukrainian POW?

• As you may well have discovered by now, this is claimed to be a video of Russian soldiers executing a Ukrainian POW. The man is smoking a last cigarette. POW’s are often given a cigarette upon capture,  and POW’s to be executed are sometimes given a “last cigarette” before they are killed.
• He is standing in front of a depression. This is apparently going to be his grave. He may have been forced to dig his own grave.
• In the video, a man says in Russian, “Start the video!”
• After that, the Ukrainian POW says, “Slava Ukraini,” in Ukrainian, which means, “Glory to Ukraine!” It’s a Nazi slogan as it originated with Nazi collaborators.
• The Russians then open up automatic weapons on the man, and he falls to the ground, dead.

There are claims that it is Ukrainians killing their own man, etc. However, the killers are speaking unaccented Russian, so they could very well be from Russia.

And they executed man is definitely speaking Ukrainian, so he has to be Ukrainian because few Russian soldiers have Ukrainian as a first language, and even those that do would not be speaking Ukrainian to their Ukrainian captors. Also Ukrainian soldiers would not make a Russian soldier say, “Slava Ukraini” before killing him, but Russians may well do that.

I did some research on this and I can now report, possibly for the first time, that I found a Russian Telegram site that admitted that this is Russians executing a Ukrainian POW. However, they said that this man was a sadist who had been executing Russian POW’s. So, sure, it’s a war crime, I guess, but it’s Russians executing a Ukrainian war criminal, which is quite a bit different.

Even in WW2, Soviet and troops from the Western Allies were known to execute SS prisoners. They simply felt that their murderous behavior was so egregious that they deserved to be killed. In general, neither the Western allies or the USSR executed ordinary German POW’s, so there’s a legacy of “good guys” doing this sort of thing.

The Ukrainians are turning this guy into a national hero because there have been few if any videos of Russian war crimes. Most videos showing this are actually Ukrainians killing Russian POW’s or other Ukrainians for “collaborating” with Russia.

So we know a few things about this guy:

• He’s a Nazi. He has to be. They’re the ones doing most of the POW executing. Even if he’s not, this is Nazi behavior, so he’s a Nazi on those grounds.
• He’s a war criminal. He’s a particularly sadistic Ukrainian Nazi (which is saying something!) who had been identified as executing Russian POW’s.
• The Russians executed a POW, yes. But he was a Nazi war criminal, so this is the context in which this video must be viewed.