Ukrainian authorities are investigating video footage that allegedly shows Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoners of war in the legs.
The video has been circulating on social media since it first appeared in the early hours of Sunday morning (March 27). It has since been widely reposted by pro-Russian accounts on various platforms.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said that Russia was “filming and distributing staged videos” in order to discredit Ukraine’s treatment of Russian prisoners.
However, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said there would be an immediate investigation and added: "I would like to remind all our military, civilians and defense forces that the abuse of prisoners of war is a war crime."
The head of the UN Human Rights Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, said she was "deeply concerned" and confirmed that the video would be investigated.
The BBC has analysed the footage but has not yet been able to independently verify it. As we continue to examine the footage, here's what we've discovered so far.
But what do these images actually show?
The footage – which is too graphic to fully portray the event – purports to show a number of captured soldiers lying on the ground. Some have bags over their heads and many appear to be bleeding from wounds to their legs. It is not known how or when they were injured.
The prisoners are interrogated by their captors, asking them about their units and activities in the area.
At one point, three men are pulled from a vehicle and apparently shot in the leg by a soldier with an assault rifle.
These men are then questioned.
Where was it filmed?
On Sunday evening, a Twitter user suggested that the video was filmed at a dairy factory in Malaya Rohan, southeast of Kharkiv. The BBC used geolocation tools to confirm the location. The area had recently been retaken by Ukrainian troops from Russian forces.
By analyzing satellite imagery and photographs from the farm, we can identify clues to the location of the video.
Before the three soldiers are shot, we can make out elements of a house behind one of them. A tree (1), a chimney (2) and the upper half of a window (3) are very similar to those in an earlier image (from 2017) of the dairy's surroundings which we found on the farm's website on Google.
In the video, the house is partially obscured by a white structure.
In another part of the video, with soldiers lying in the foreground, there is more visual evidence.
The white structure (4) and chimneys (1), the trees and the black wall (2) are all present in the main open space of the farm.
When was it filmed?
The video footage has no time or date indication and there is no data available that would allow us to determine exactly when it was filmed.
But sky views show clear conditions and the ground is dry.
Weather reports from the Kharkiv area suggest that the video may have been shot on Saturday, March 26. Friday and Saturday were dry, sunny but cold, while light rain fell in the region on Saturday night and Sunday.
Looking at the position of the sun in some of the video frames, it suggests that the footage could have been filmed in the early hours of the day.
What is being said?
The prisoners are being interrogated in Russian. A language expert for BBC Monitoring says the interrogators' accents "are consistent with the Russian of Ukrainians".
Another expert confirmed that they appear to have Eastern Ukrainian accents, pointing to the use of “hovor” (“speak”) instead of the Russian “govor”.
At one point, one of the captives is accused of bombing Kharkiv, the other is asked about his nationality and replies that he is Azerbaijani (not ethnic Russian).
One of the captives says he is located in Biskvitne, which is near the village of Malaya Rohan and the dairy we have identified.
Who are the soldiers?
The kidnappers' accents are consistent with them being Ukrainians from the east of the country. However, this does not confirm that they are Ukrainian soldiers – it remains possible that they could be pro-Russian separatists from this region.
They are also wearing blue-striped uniforms used by Ukrainian forces, although again this is by no means definitive.
However, Ukrainian forces were nearby.
Over the weekend of March 26-27, a video was posted online showing the activities of the Kraken unit, linked to the far-right National Corps political group. The BBC has geo-located the footage from this video to the village of Vilkhivka, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from Malaya Rohan. The weather is uniformly sunny and dry.
The group said 30 Russians were captured in the village on March 25, and the Kraken video shows the prisoners being tied up, blindfolded and put into a van at one point and forced to sing the Ukrainian national anthem at another. But there is no evidence of shooting or serious violence against them. The BBC contacted Konstantin Nemichev, the head of the National Corps in the Kharkiv region. He said his forces treated the prisoners “humanely” and denied any connection to the video of the alleged shooting.
camouflaged.
We asked Nick Reynolds, a military expert from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), to examine this image.
“It looks similar to the way Ukrainian SOF [special forces] camouflage their assault rifles,” he told us, “but the weapon looks fundamentally different from anything I’ve seen.”
He also noted that both sides have seized weapons from each other so it is difficult to be definitive about the weapon.
Questions about shooting
In the most disturbing part of the video, three men appear to have been shot in the leg at close range with an assault weapon.
There has been some debate on social media about whether the footage is real or staged, with some people claiming there is not enough blood, evidence of exit wounds or the sound of screams and shouts from the victims.
We showed the video to several trauma surgeons and former military doctors, who gave us their expert opinion but wished to remain anonymous.
One said he had treated soldiers who had suffered gunshot wounds who were not screaming or yelling and said the lack of bleeding in some of the wounded soldiers could be explained by the fact that they had applied a dressing (seen in the video).
He said: "I think the footage cannot be categorized as 'fake' simply based on the first images. This requires a war crimes investigation."
Another doctor said: "It seems true... these fit the description of punitive shootings to the limbs."
Other people on social media pointed out the lack of noticeable recoil in the assault rifle when it was fired, claiming it could have been firing blanks.
Mr. Reynolds points out that the AK-74's 5.45mm round is small-caliber and has very little recoil, but he also added that "the video quality is not great."