The Security Service of Ukraine claims to have intercepted a telephone conversation in which a Russian soldier confessed to killing prisoners of war, Sky News reports.

In a conversation published by the SBU on Telegram, a Russian soldier can be seen describing slitting the throat of a prisoner of war after extracting the information he needed.

“You have to kill a person. But this is not my first time. Prisoners of war… there is no point in keeping them. Because we get all the information from them. There is no point in holding them back. Here… we have to get rid of them,” says a Russian military officer.

The call was intercepted on the Eastern Front, the SBU reported, war crimes were committed on the territory of the Kharkiv region.

Rare evidence of Wagner’s mercenary

The revelation came after Wagner’s former mercenary admitted in an interview with The Guardian that he had killed and tortured dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war. The former commander says he does not regret anything and does not know how he managed to escape with his life from Ukraine.

Oleksiy Savichev, 49, a former Russian prisoner recruited by Wagner’s group last September, told The Guardian in a telephone interview that he participated in the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war during the six months he fought in eastern Ukraine.

“We were told not to take prisoners and shoot them on the spot,” Savichev said.

During the fighting near Soledar in the east of Ukraine last fall, Savychev claims that he participated in the murder of 20 Ukrainian soldiers who were surrounded.

“We peppered them with our bullets,” he said. “It’s a war now, and I don’t regret anything I did there. If I could, I’d go back.”

On another occasion, in January, Savichev, together with other Wagnerites, killed “several dozen” wounded Ukrainian prisoners of war by “throwing grenades” into the trench where they were being held near the town of Bakhmut. “We also tortured soldiers, there were no rules,” Savichev said.

Savichev’s account was first published on Monday by the human rights group Gulagu.net in a one-hour-and-17-minute video in which he appears alongside another former Wagner fighter, Azamat Uldarov, who also said he killed civilians, including children, during the battle for Bakhmut.

Uldarov said that he, together with other mercenaries, killed a group of people who hid in the basement of a nine-story apartment building in Bakhmut, including a little girl.