Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Friday of the bombing of a prison in separatist territory in eastern Ukraine. The Russian army reported 40 dead and 75 injured in the strike on Olenivka prison, while pro-Russian separatist authorities in the Donetsk region cited death tolls of 47 and 53.
Ukrainian forces “fired on the prison where members of the Azov battalion are being held, using American projectiles from the Himars system”, said the Russian Investigative Committee, Russia’s main investigative body.
After long weeks of siege and resistance at the Azovstal steel site in Mariupol, some 2,500 Ukrainian fighters surrendered in May. The Russian authorities had indicated that they would be imprisoned in Olenivka. “This outrageous provocation aims to scare Ukrainian soldiers and dissuade them from surrendering,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
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Ukraine quickly denied having targeted civilian infrastructure or prisoners of war, stressing that the army “fully adheres to the principles and standards of international humanitarian law”.
The Ukrainian general staff in return accused the Russian army of being behind this “targeted artillery bombardment”, in order to “accuse Ukraine of having committed war crimes and cover up the torture of prisoners and the executions they perpetrated there”.
Russian public television broadcast images presented as those of the charred barracks and the tangles of destroyed metal beds. She showed blurry images of what appear to be human bodies. AFP was unable to verify all of these statements from independent sources.