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the ministry claimed.Ukraine contests the claim, which is only supported by sketchy video evidence. Meantime, former Ukrainian POWs say they were mistreated and beaten while in Russian captivity.The Russian ministry said 1,209 of the POWs who purportedly surrendered in Mariupol were from Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade. The group included 162 officers who surrendered sometime between April 12-13, Reuters reported.One of the first videos showing these POWs was posted on April 12 by Alexander Sladkov, a war reporter for Russia’s state-owned Channel 1 television. The video is dark and seems to be shot at night, so it is impossible to count the exact number of POWs in it, but they appear to number about 100 at most.In the video, Sladkov asks the officers among the Ukrainian POWs to raise their hands. Only four hands go up.On April 13, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), the self-declared Russia-backed separatist government in the province, said in a video posted on Telegram that Russian forces had halted the 36th Marine Brigade’s attempt to break through a blockade of Mariupol.The video claimed that most of the Ukrainian marines were killed, while 42 others surrendered and the remaining troops retreated. It claimed to show Ukrainian marines surrendering to the Russians.There is still no evidence of the 1
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