This is how Russians execute a Ukrainian soldier – before he dies he has a message for Putin’s army
A video shows suspected Russians murdering an unarmed Ukrainian soldier. The pictures caused a stir around the world. who was the man
The last shot of the Ukrainian soldier just before he was murdered by Russians. He is believed to be Timofej Shadura.
Image: screen shot
The man is standing in a depression in the middle of the forest that looks like a stance. He is wearing a Ukrainian uniform, his helmet is lying on the ground next to him, but there is no weapon in sight. The men who are recording the video have probably already taken it away from him. Everything indicates that the Ukrainian has just been captured. One of the invisible men tells the other off-screen: “Pick him up.”
The video surfaced on social media on Monday, but it’s still unclear who uploaded it and why. A cigarette is stuck in the soldier’s mouth and the man wears a camouflage-patterned cap on his head. He looks his murderers in the face. Then he takes the cigarette out of his mouth, exhales a cloud of smoke and says: “Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine).”
The first shot hits him in the face and rips his hat off his head. His body sags beside the helmet as the killers continue to fire bursts from their assault rifles at the man on the ground. At the end one of the perpetrators says “Die, you bitch”.
What happened before the murder can be seen in the video just as little as what the murderers, presumably Russians, did with the corpse afterwards. The most obvious interpretation at the moment is that the Ukrainian soldier was surprised and captured by Russians.
President Zelensky answers
Videos from both warring factions have already appeared in the past, in which prisoners were forced to make statements or slogans. Russians have asked Ukrainians to shout “Glory to Russia” at the camera, but the reverse has also happened.
Ukrainian soldier Timothy Shadura
Image: zvg
The soldier may have guessed that the Russians were about to kill him. He remained composed, enjoyed the last puff of his cigarette and said what is often used in the Ukraine when greeting: “Slava Ukraini”. The correct answer to this is: «Heroyem slava (Glory to the heroes). And that was exactly the response of President Zelensky and countless social media users to the execution video.
On the Russian side, “damage control” has already begun, which usually means accusing the Ukrainians of the crime. A Russian military blogger on Telegram, for example, speculated that the Ukrainians probably put a captured Russian in a Ukrainian uniform in order to blame the Russian army for the murder. The blogger therefore also called for help to identify the murdered man.
However, the Ukrainian side has already done so. The 30th mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian army wrote to this newspaper when asked that the man who was shot was Timothy Shadura, a tractor driver from the Zhitomir region west of the capital Kiev. His two brothers and his mother now lived in his house.
Missing since early February
The 40-year-old was only drafted into the army in December, but he had previously done military service. Timofey Shadura has been missing in the region of the heavily contested city of Bakhmut since February 3. In order to be 100 percent sure of the identification, however, the body must first be recovered and examined.
Timofej’s sister Olja uploaded a missing person’s report to Facebook on February 5, along with a photo of her brother in uniform. According to Ukrainian media reports, she is now 90 percent certain that the person who was shot was Timothy Shadura.
In Ukraine, the former tractor driver is now considered a hero. The authorities initiated a criminal investigation and also want to mobilize the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
