A 31-year-old Russian serviceman claimed in an interview to have participated in the May 2024 killing of five captured Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk Oblast, according to Polish-Belarusian media outlet Vot Tak.

The five Ukrainian soldiers were allegedly captured on May 5, 2024, in the village of Karlovka, near Avdiivka. They were stripped of their phones and body armor, then brought to a garden and shot in the back of their heads while kneeling, according to an audio recording of the interview that Vot Tak released.

Vot Tak said it was unable to confirm the soldier’s account of the executions, but that it sent a request to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine for any information about Ukrainian servicemen killed in Karlovka.

The Russian-language outlet is focused on Eastern Europe and Eurasia and was created by Polish state media to counter official Russian and Belarusian propaganda.

The Kyiv Independent contacted Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets for comment on the reported events but was not able to reach him before publication.