Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that dealing with war criminals requires zero tolerance, specifically targeting Russian President Putin as potentially the current era's worst offender
Russian forces have executed five more Ukrainian prisoners of war, bringing the 2024 toll to nearly double that of the previous two years combined, Ukraine's human rights commissioner reports.
Death certificates of Ukrainian defenders whose bodies were returned from Russian captivity usually state tuberculosis or heart attack as a cause of death; however, their bodies show visible signs of torture and starvation, and witness accounts of cellmates who survived Russian captivity prove inhumane treatment and humiliation.