Ukraine To Investigate Videos Showing 'Captured Russian Soldiers' Shot In Leg, Abused: Zelensky Aide

Ukraine has promised to launch an "immediate" investigation after videos circulating on social media allegedly showed captured Russian soldiers getting abused and shot in the legs by the Ukrainian army.

"The government is taking this very seriously, and there will be an immediate investigation. We are a European army, and we do not mock our prisoners. If this turns out to be real, this is absolutely unacceptable behavior," Oleksiy Arestovych, a senior presidential adviser said Sunday, Washington Examiner reported.

In one of the videos, alleged Ukrainian soldiers could be seen unloading three captured "Russian soldiers" from a van and shooting them in their legs one by one, New York Post reported.

Another video purportedly shows wounded Prisoners of War with swollen faces, covered in blood after their hoods are removed from their heads. Some of the soldiers in the video appear to have broken legs.

However, it is unclear where the videos were captured and the authenticity of the clips was not independently verified.

"I would like to remind all our military, civilian, and defense forces once again that the abuse of prisoners is a war crime that has no amnesty under military law and has no statute of limitations," Arestovych said in another video statement released Sunday.

Meanwhile, the head of the armed forces in Ukraine claimed that the videos were staged by Russian forces and urged the public to only trust "official sources."

"In order to discredit the Ukrainian defense forces, the enemy is filming and distributing staging videos with an inhumane attitude of 'Ukrainian military' to 'Russian prisoners,'" commander in chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in a statement.

"I urge you to take into account the realities of the information and psychological war and trust only official sources," he added.

The head of the Russian Federation investigative committee, A.I. Bastrykin condemned the "extreme cruelty" in the videos that show soldiers getting shot in both legs and not given medical assistance. Bastrykin said the incident reportedly happened at one of the bases of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Kharkiv region.