Video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoner of war

Soldiers fighting for Ukraine appear to shoot a Russian prisoner of war outside a village west of Kyiv in a video posted online.

The footage was originally shared on social media app Telegram. The New York Times said it had verified the video and the BBC said it had confirmed the location north of the town of Dmytrivka and found satellite images showing bodies on the ground.

In the video, at least three men in camouflage, including one with a head wound and his hands tied behind his back, can be seen lying dead next to a fourth man, who is breathing heavily with a jacket covering his head.

The living soldiers in the video are wearing the Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow on their arms, while the men on the floor wear white armbands, the colour of Russian troops. A few metres away from the bodies is a BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle which is used by the Russian airborne unit.

Scenes in the video match the scenery on Google Street View of the main road outside Dmytrivka, which is about seven miles south-west of Bucha with roads to Irpin.

A war crime is defined by the United Nations as a serious breach of international law committed against civilians or enemy forces during an armed conflict.

The video emerges days after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused the Russian military of undertaking the worst war crimes since the second world war after the discovery of mass civilian graves in Bucha, a city 15 miles north of Kyiv.