Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 11 APR 2023 16:00 PDT - Video Showing Beheading of Ukrainian POW

If you thought the castration video was bad, this is worse.

We have seen reports over the last few days of reports and photos of beheadings, hands, and arms cut off, and one photo circulating of a head that was picked on a tree branch.

There wasn't enough visual evidence to conclude if, in our assessment, a crime had been committed. It's one thing to see a picture of a head stuck on a tree branch, but that does not provide enough evidence to determine who did it, when they did it, where they did it, and why they did it. It's also hard to determine if the head is real simply by a photo. Your author has very convincing novelty heads in a jar in the garage (novelty - novelty heads) that are used for a Halloween haunted house done as a fundraiser for a local food bank.

Part of journalism is being skeptical, even with trusted sources.

We believe this video is authentic, and it is horrible. It is very similar in brutality to ISIS beheading victims where the victim's head is slowly sawed off. This was not romanticized medieval beheading (fun fact, while the movies typically portray medieval beheadings as accomplished in a single blow, it was more common for it to be a brutal affair, requiring several blows). The supportive comments on Russian Telegram are also shocking.

It is more likely that the other pictures and videos are authentic also, but we cannot make a fair determination. As with all war crimes conclusions we make, the final arbitration will reside with criminal investigators.

We have seen these types of crimes when Russian offensives in Severodonetsk bogged down and east of Bakhmut in the Svitlodarsk Bulge over the summer. This does not include civilian reprisals in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions during the occupation just prior to the Russian retreat.

Sharing the video, even with a cautionary link, will violate the terms of service with Patreon. It isn't hard to find both blurred and unedited, but we advise you to be careful what you search for.