Ukraine and Russia have shared different information about the prison strike. It is not yet certain whether the prisoners were killed by a rocket strike or by explosives.
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell condemns the attack that claimed the lives of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Borrell said in your statement (you switch to another service) that the attack was a continuation of Russia’s previous atrocities in the Ukraine war.
According to Borrell, among the prisoners of war there were reportedly also soldiers who defended the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol, located in southern Ukraine, in the spring.
According to Borrell, these soldiers surrendered to the Russians and were registered by the International Committee of the Red Cross in May.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi called the attack a deliberate Russian war crime, in which more than 50 prisoners of war were killed, in his daily statement.
On Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense published a list of those killed and wounded in the attack. According to the ministry, 50 prisoners died, 73 were wounded.
The Russian-backed puppet regime in eastern Ukraine said earlier that 53 prisoners were killed in the attack early Friday.
The prison is located in Olenivka in the Russian-held Donetsk region, some distance from the front line. A Reuters reporter who visited the prison confirmed some of the deaths.
Explosives or a rocket attack?
No precise information has been received about the attack on the prison. It is unclear, for example, whether the building was destroyed by a rocket attack or by the explosives placed there.
The Ukrainian army and three other authorities jointly statement (you switch to another service) according to them, it was an explosion planned by the Russians. According to the Ukrainians, this is indicated by, among other things, the transfer of soldiers from one place to another just before the explosion, the nature of the destruction caused by the explosion, the phone calls of the Russian-backed forces that were taken over by the Ukrainians, and the fact that there was no gunfire at the scene.
Russia has denied that it carried out the attack. According to it, the Ukrainians destroyed the prison building with a rocket attack.
In a video transmitted by Reuters, it was shown how fragments of the projectile had been placed on a bench in the destroyed prison. There was no exact information about where the pieces of the projectile had been brought to it.
Ukraine, on the other hand, has considered that Russia attacked the prison in order to destroy evidence of the ill-treatment of Ukrainian prisoners held there.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has requested access to Olenivka and offered help to evacuate the wounded.
On Friday evening, Ukrainian security authorities demanded both the UN and the Red Cross to react immediately to the deaths of prisoners of war.