US Special Envoy: Russian servicemen shoot Ukrainians trying to surrender

The US has evidence that Russian troops in eastern Ukraine have executed people trying to surrender, a top US official told the United Nations Security Council.

"We now have credible information that a Russian military unit operating in the vicinity of Donetsk executed Ukrainians who were attempting to surrender, rather than take them into custody," Beth Van Schaack, the US ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice, said in the meeting.

"If true, this would be in violation of a core principle of the law of war: the prohibition against the summary execution of civilians and of combatants who are hors de combat by virtue of surrender, injury, or other forms of incapacitation."