Ukraine on Monday urged the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate an attack on a prison in Russian-occupied Ukraine that killed dozens two years ago.
The attack on the Olenivka facility in the eastern Donetsk region overnight on July 29 two years ago left at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners dead and wounded at least 130, Kyiv says.
“Two years ago, Russians carried out a terrorist attack in Olenivka against Ukrainian POWs. I call on the UN and the ICRC to fulfil their mandate and investigate this war crime,” Ukrainian rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.
Both sides blamed each other for the attack on the facility.
The Russian embassy in London was criticised for a social media post that said the Ukrainian soldiers held at Olenivka “deserve a humiliating death”.
Many of the imprisoned servicemen were from the Azov battalion, which surrendered to Russian troops after their siege of the port city of Mariupol.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said on Monday that Russian officials had blocked independent investigators from accessing the site.
“Russia must be held accountable for this. And it will be. There is no scenario in which the murderers will remain unpunished,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other’s militaries of carrying out war crimes, including abusing and killing prisoners, since the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his senior military leadership for the forcible transfer of civilians and attacks on civilian infrastructure.
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