The head of the Wagner PMC Evgeny Prigozhin has declared that his mercenaries will not take any more prisoners. This was his response to the voice recording that allegedly captured a conversation between Ukrainian fighters who decided to shoot a wounded captive mercenary. The “intercept” was published in the Razgruzka Wagnera Telegram channel.
“We will never violate international humanitarian law,” Prigozhin commented. “But it only comes into effect after you take someone prisoner. If you capture someone, you must take care of them, provide medical help, not inflict any injuries, and send them home, in exchange for someone or simply because you feel like it. We sometimes released prisoners without exchanging them. So we won’t violate humanitarian rules. We’ll exterminate the enemy in combat. We’ll call this rule ‘the 300 rule’ [in the Russian army, 300 is code for “wounded”] because we don't yet know the name of our wounded guy who was shot point blank by the Ukrainian scoundrels. We’ll kill everyone on the battlefield. We won’t take a single prisoner from now on.”
On April 11, a video surfaced on social media in which a Ukrainian soldier, who is still alive, has his head cut off by Russian combatants. One of them suggests bagging the head and “sending it to the commander”. Another video, which circulated in pro-Russian Telegram channels on April 8, featured an overturned armored vehicle and beheaded bodies of Ukrainian fighters. “No one’s even f*cking come by... Oh, wait, they have – they cut their heads off!” comments the cameraman, presumably another Wagner merc.