Members of the ‘Chosen Company’, an international mercenary group fighting on behalf of Ukraine, may have committed war crimes by killing wounded or surrendering Russian soldiers, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing a German battlefield medic.
In an article published on Saturday, the paper detailed an account from Caspar Grosse, a former German soldier who served as a medic for the unit and allegedly witnessed the events.
He described an incident in August 2023, when a severely injured and unarmed Russian soldier, initially presumed dead, crawled out of a trench saying “help” and “surrender” in English, only to be shot in the chest by a member of the unit. The Russian was still “breathing and wiggling around” when another fighter “just shot him in the head,” which Grosse assumed was a "mercy kill" at that point.
In another episode recounted by Grosse, a Greek soldier known as Zeus tossed a grenade at two Russian soldiers, one of whom was seriously injured and “could barely move.” A second serviceman tried to approach the mercenaries with his hands up when the grenade explosion killed them both, according to a helmet camera video reviewed by the publication. Grosse added that a Ukrainian drone team also confirmed at the time that the soldier was apparently trying to surrender.