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American says ‘Chosen Company’ mercenaries executed Russian POWs

Benjamin Reed said that the war crimes of Chosen Company were recorded by military medic Caspar Grosse, among others

MOSCOW, September 9. /TASS/. The mercenaries of ‘Chosen Company’ have repeatedly carried out war crimes, in particular, in October 2023 they executed a group of Russian prisoners of war, American mercenary Benjamin Reed told Maria Butina in an interview with TASS.

"I was at ‘Chosen Company,’ and it was around the October 13, if I remember correctly, and they had just gotten blasted out of their positions somewhere near Pervomaysk. They had to retreat from every sector. Some of the guys were coming back, and one guy was like: ‘Did you hear what <…> Zeus (a Chosen Company mercenary - TASS) did?’ He explained it was ‘like ‘Band of Brothers’ (a TV series - TASS) where the guy just mows down a line of POWs; there's just a line of them, and he just executed all of them.’ So that's how explained to me. That was my first understanding of the multitude of war crimes committed by Chosen Company under Ryan O'Leary," Reed said.

He added that the war crimes of Chosen Company were recorded by military medic Caspar Grosse, among others. "[There was] Caspar Grosse, a Swiss German. He's a medical student; he wanted to get practical experience with medical work in Ukraine, and is currently in medical school back in Western Europe. And he started documenting war crimes. Like there were <…> [people] begging for their lives, getting shot in the head and so on, and multiple instances of executions," Reed noted.

The mercenary said that he tried to get explanations, but he never received a clear answer.

"I started asking around, and I asked a guy named Donat, who was a recruiter. I was like: ‘Are we going to shoot POWs?’ And he was like: ‘If they do not surrender in the strictest Geneva Convention manner - yes, we execute them.’ [I was] like: ‘What does that mean? What is this, do they have a white flag? Is that what they meant?’ There was no real, clear understanding that," Reed said.