Ukraine War: 'Executed' soldier video could be a war crime

President Zelensky has promised that Ukraine will find the Russians allegedly responsible for shooting dead an unarmed Ukrainian soldier. Footage emerged online yesterday, purportedly showing the killing and a warning that we're about to show the moments leading up to that incident. In it, an unarmed man is seen smoking a cigarette before saying, Glory to Ukraine. The man is then shot repeatedly. Sky News has been unable to independently verify the location and date of the footage. But Ukraine says the man killed is thought to be Ukrainian serviceman called Timofey Shadora, who went missing in the area around the heavily contested city of Bakhmut in early February. A video appeared today showing how the occupiers brutally killed a soldier who bravely said to their face, Glory to Ukraine.

I want all of us together in unity to respond to his words. Glory to the hero. Glory to heroes. Glory to Ukraine. And we will find the killers. Well our Chief Correspondent, Stuart Ramsey, has more now from Kyiv. There's some confusion about the detail of the video.

What I would say though, if it is absolutely correct and what it purports to be, then that is without doubt a war crime. And of course that's nothing to do with actual fighting, as we're saying around Bakhmut and in other parts of the country as well. That is just simply a criminal act and it will be investigated. There are of course hundreds, if not thousands of war crime allegations that are being investigated right now from the rape of women, from the killing of civilians and just the shooting and damage caused to civilian buildings. I think the key issue here though is, despite what the President says, I don't know how you're going to find the people who carried out that attack. That will be extremely difficult. But he says that is what they're going to attempt to do and we know that the prosecutors here are following up on all sorts of crimes and the UN of course are doing exactly the same.

But it will be very difficult. I think it will be very interesting when it comes to war crimes, is what they're really interested in, that's the investigators, is to worst the line of command with their actual orders to do this and how high up to those orders go. Did they go all the way up to the Kremlin for example for some of the behaviour that we've seen in the country and what is turning into a really, really nasty war as we know. Sean, your reaction to that video and any more detail that you can tell us about it? Yes, part of the horrors of war that's being piped in our living room which is quite horrible. But what do we know? This is a 12 second video, it's not a particularly great quality. It appears to show a Ukrainian soldier captured prisoner of war getting shot at point blank range. But this is an information war and the harsh realities we don't know the background to that video so it's very difficult to provide an informed comment on that specific incident.

However, the law of armed conflict and the Geneva Convention are both rules signed up to by Russia that specifically provide legal guidance around the handling of prisoners of war to provide them protection. Now Russia uses Wagner group mercenaries which are not professional soldiers, do not have any professional training on the law of armed conflict and Putin pays for these Wagner group. It also equips the Wagner group through Yevgeny Prigoshin, the boss of the Wagner group there. So Putin is actually personally accountable for any war crimes that are committed by that group and the challenge here is that whilst this one video has emerged and has actually been released so we've seen it, the worry is how many of these incidents are happening routinely that we're just not hearing about it, it could be the tip of the iceberg. And of course as we know the Wagner group has been recruiting convicts and we have very little access to the front line, it's really hard to know what's going on. So to broaden it out, Sean, on that note, what is going on on the ground at the moment as we understand it, especially around that heavily contested city of Bakmut? So the fighting has been continuing although it seems to be abating to the north and south a bit but around Bakmut the sort of noose tightening around the Ukrainian forces there. Ukrainian positions looking a bit precarious 48 hours ago but the Ukrainians seem to have bolstered their positions somewhat, look more robust.

But the real question for the Ukrainians is whether they stay and fight in this enclave here and risk getting encircled or do they withdraw? Now the American political and military advice has been to them to withdraw, save their limited resources to be able to fight for another day. But President Zelensky is done quite the opposite. He's actually ordered reinforcement of the Ukrainian position in the middle of the city here. Part of that is because it's his lands, it's personal to him but also if you give up the town of Bakmut it's going to be really, really difficult for them to take it back again. But strategically there's a really interesting point here that Russia has mounted a major offensive. If its intent was to take the hold of the Donbas then it's failing miserably and it looks very likely that the only way that they're going to be able to achieve their objective is a large scale mobilisation. Not only of its people but its economy and also its industry.

To do that it's effectively putting Russia onto a war footing and Putin will judge that the Russian population may not be ready for that just yet. Yeah and we saw just how unpopular that was last time when Putin called mobilisation. Sean, for now, thanks so much.

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