Ukrainian prosecutors have formally accused a captured Russian marine of executing a Ukrainian unit commander near Pokrovsk, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office said on 20 August. Investigators allege he took the 34-year-old captive to a forest belt after an interrogation and shot him in the back of the head on his superior’s order.

The case comes as Ukraine steps up efforts to prosecute Russian troops accused of executing or abusing Ukrainian POWs. Ukrainian investigators and UN monitors have documented a growing pattern since 2024 of Russian forces executing Ukrainian troops after capture.

The alleged gunman is now in Ukrainian custody, opening the way for an in-person trial. Russian troops also shot dead a second Ukrainian prisoner, prosecutors said.

Russian assault units had been trying to seize Shakhove on the Pokrovsk front since May 2025, according to the prosecutor’s office. On 10 October 2025, a small Russian infantry group entered the village’s outskirts and captured two Ukrainian service members, including the commander, the office alleges.

After the interrogation, the suspect took the commander to a forest belt and killed him with an automatic rifle, prosecutors said. The other Ukrainian prisoner was also shot dead. The statement names neither victim.

Investigators identified the suspect as a 34-year-old native of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Krai who used the call sign “Tai” and served as a rifleman in the 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade.

Ukrainian forces later captured him during fighting in the same sector, according to prosecutors. The office did not say when he was taken prisoner.

Prosecutors formally accused him of cruel treatment of prisoners of war resulting in death, a war crime under Ukrainian law.

Ukraine’s other cases against captured Russian soldiers

Ukraine has previously brought cases against other captured Russian soldiers over POW executions. A Zaporizhzhia court sentenced Dmitry Kurashov to life imprisonment in November 2025—the first time Ukraine convicted a Russian soldier of executing a surrendered Ukrainian POW.

In a separate case, the Security Service of Ukraine charged Sergey Tuzhilov over the execution of one bound Ukrainian POW and his alleged role in killing two others near Vovchansk in June 2024.

Ukraine is investigating officers who cheated soldiers and misused defense money. The State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) has launched a large operation, "Justice for Soldiers", on 20 August, checking cases of illegal payments to soldiers, the use of soldiers for private work, and corruption, together with the General Staff, the DBR reported.

The operation is part of Ukraine's effort to control its own military and defense spending during the war. Across 21 criminal proceedings, investigators planned 72 searches in various regions and prepared to notify 22 people of suspicion, as part of an internal accountability push.

The biggest category is illegal payments

Most of the cases concern money wrongly paid to soldiers. Twelve proceedings deal with the illegal calculation and receipt of payments by soldiers, with 58 searches conducted and suspicions planned against 20 people, the DBR said.

The bureau has already closed some cases. It finished investigating four more proceedings on illegal payments and plans to send indictments against 16 people to court.

Some commanders used soldiers as private labor

A separate strand targets the misuse of soldiers themselves. Five searches are being conducted in a case involving the illegal use of military labor, in which subordinates, instead of performing military duties, were used for construction, household, and other work in commanders' private interests, the DBR said.

That practice diverts soldiers from the war. Using troops as personal labor for officers takes fighters away from their duties and abuses the command relationship, the kind of misconduct the operation is meant to root out.

The bureau frames it as accountability

The remaining searches target corruption. Nine searches are underway in a case of corruption abuses, with suspicions prepared against two people, and the operation is being conducted with the General Staff and under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General's Office.

Russian forces have executed at least 345 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered since the start of the full-scale war, Ukrainian Ombudsperson Dmytro Lubinets said at a press conference at Ukrinform.

The figure is the latest point on a documented and rising curve of a systematic war crime. Ukraine's prosecutors and international monitors have tracked these killings from 268 confirmed by July 2025 to over 330 by March 2026. Financial Times investigation found the executions appear to be systematic military policy directed from Russian command, with intercepted orders to "shoot prisoners on the spot."

The victims had surrendered

Lubinets described people killed after they had given up.

"It means that they laid down their weapons, came out with raised hands, lay on the ground, and showed they were no longer fighting," he said, and Russian soldiers examined them and confirmed they were unarmed.

Then the soldiers killed them.

"We have recorded cases where they fully demand that the clothes be removed. And after that, they force them to lie on the ground the same way, and shoot the Ukrainian soldiers at point-blank range," Lubinets added.

Killing a surrendered soldier is a war crime

Lubinets stressed the legal character of the act. The killing of soldiers who have surrendered is a distinct war crime, he said.

The prohibition is absolute. Under the Geneva Conventions, a soldier who lays down arms and surrenders is protected, and killing a prisoner of war is a grave breach of international law. Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds" against those who have laid down their arms, with no battlefield circumstance that permits it, per the ICRC.

The count keeps rising and accountability lags

Ukraine documents each case for eventual prosecution, but most perpetrators are in Russia, beyond reach, and Russian courts and media have glorified the killings rather than punished them.