The Russian military executed one of the five fighters of the Ukrainian National Guard who had left the Azovstal plant in Mariupol and surrendered to the Russian Armed Forces. Later, the executed man's mother received a photo in which she could not see his face and identified her dead son. The Hromadske TV channel reported about it on 30 April.

On 20 April, the press service of the so-called "people's militia of the Donetsk people's republic" published a video with five Ukrainian servicemen. It said that these soldiers were defending Azovstal, but decided to lay down their arms and surrender. The voice-over promised them "the preservation of life and compliance with international laws on the treatment of prisoners of war".

However, the "DNR" militants later called the mother and informed her that her son had been killed, and some time later sent a photo from which the woman recognised her son, according to Ukrayinska Pravda.

The CNN TV channel on 2 May published a video in which journalists contacted the relatives of the deceased and tried to find out the circumstances of their son's death. The journalists found out that the National Guard soldier's name was Dan Zvonik, born in 1996. He was actively involved in sports and was a Ukrainian kyokushin karate champion.

In an interview with the TV channel, Zvonik's mother Anna confirmed that Dan was killed: when the body was taken to the morgue, the family saw a large hole in the back of the young man's head. According to her, her son was executed by the Russian military while he was in captivity. Dan Zvonik's body was handed over to his grandmother in Donetsk, where he was buried.