MOSCOW: Russia said Monday it has sentenced more than 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war to lengthy sentences, with some getting life in prison, almost two years into the Kremlin’s offensive.
Russia holds an unknown number — believed to be in the thousands — of Ukrainian captive soldiers, many of whom were taken during the siege of the port city of Mariupol in 2022.
Kyiv and international rights groups have denounced Moscow’s trials of the POWs as illegal.
“More than 200 Ukrainian military personnel have been sentenced to long prison sentences for committing murder of civilians and mistreating prisoners (of war),” Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said in an interview to state news outlet RIA Novosti.
He vowed Moscow will “continue” its efforts to prosecute Ukrainian military staff, including “high-level officials.”
Many of the Ukrainian prisoners of war have been held in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, while others were taken to Russia.
Bastrykin did not specify if the soldiers were sentenced in Russia or occupied Ukraine.
But state-run outlet RT quoted an Investigative Committee source as saying 242 soldiers were handed sentences in occupied Ukraine.
On January 3, Russia and Ukraine said they had swapped hundreds of captive soldiers in their first publicly announced exchange in months. –Agencies
