Caspar Grosse, a medic in an international volunteer unit in Ukraine, said he wrote this journal entry in October after a fellow soldier, known as Zeu

In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit

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2024-07-06 19:30:06

Caspar Grosse, a medic in an international volunteer unit in Ukraine, said he wrote this journal entry in October after a fellow soldier, known as Zeus, recounted executing a Russian prisoner. Credit... via Caspar Grosse

Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported this article over several months during multiple assignments to Kyiv, Ukraine, and the front lines of the war.

Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American.

Caspar Grosse, a German medic in that unit, said he saw the soldier plead for medical attention in a mix of broken English and Russian. It was dusk. A team member looked for bandages.

That is when, Mr. Grosse said, a fellow soldier hobbled over and fired his weapon into the Russian soldier’s torso. He slumped, still breathing. Another soldier fired — “just shot him in the head,” Mr. Grosse recalled in an interview.