The commander of the Georgian Legion denies involvement in the incident with Russian prisoners of war

The commander of the Georgian legion fighting in Ukraine, Mamuka Mamulashvili, told Civil Georgia that his legion “has nothing to do” with the incident with Russian prisoners of war in the village of Makiivka, Luhansk region. “This is disinformation spread by the Russians… it is not the first,” he stressed.

Last week, several videos appeared on social media, the authenticity of which was independently verified by the American edition of the New York Times. The circulating videos show scenes before and after the November 12 clash between Ukrainian and Russian troops.

The first video, filmed by a Ukrainian soldier, shows up to 10 surrendered Russian soldiers exiting a dilapidated building with their hands raised, watched over by a Ukrainian soldier with a machine gun, before they lie down on the ground. In the second video, which is believed to have been taken a few minutes later by a drone, the same soldiers are seen dead on the ground. Most likely, they were mortally wounded at close range. The end of the first video, which is not continuous and it is edited, makes it hard to understand what happened. In particular, the video shows a Russian soldier with his hands not raised and with a machine gun in his hands. In the video, the sound of a gunshot is clearly audible, but in this video it cuts off as the Ukrainian soldier’s phone falls from his hands.

On November 19, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the circulated video is “another proof of the crimes committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis” and another example of how Ukraine grossly violates international humanitarian law. The UN has called on Ukraine to conduct a “prompt, full and effective” investigation into the incident. On November 22, the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine announced that an investigation into the incident had been launched under the first part of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which concerns violations of the rules of war, namely, imitation of surrender by the Russian military, which is an action prohibited by international humanitarian law.

As a result, the possible fault of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in what happened may lie in whether they killed Russian soldiers at the moment when one of the Russian military fired in the direction of the Ukrainian overseer, or later, out of revenge.

On November 22, the French publication Le Monde wrote that the 89th brigade and specifically the volunteer fighters of the Georgian Legion were involved in the incident in the Luhansk region, which was refuted by the commander of the legion Mamuka Mamulashvili in an interview with Civil Georgia. The Georgian Legion, which has been fighting in Ukraine since 2014, brings together Georgian and other foreign volunteer fighters. The Legion is integrated into the structure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

This is not the first time that Georgian volunteers have been accused of committing war crimes. A video released in April 2022 shows a group of Ukrainian soldiers, some of whom may have been Georgians, killing a wounded Russian soldier. The Ukrainian side promised to investigate the incident, but the results of the investigation are still unknown.