Houston Chronicle Sunday

Red Cross works to access prison where Ukrainian POWs attacked

- By Susie Blann

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed each other Saturday for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in an attack on a prison in a separatist-controlled area. The Internatio­nal Red Cross asked to visit the prison to make sure the scores of wounded POWs had proper treatment but said their request had not been granted so far.

Meanwhile, Russia kept on launching attacks on several Ukrainian cities, hitting a school and a bus station.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Internatio­nal Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations have a duty to react after the shelling Friday of the prison complex in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province.

“It was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Zelenskyy said in a video address late Friday. “There should be a clear legal recognitio­n of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Separatist authoritie­s and Russian officials said the attack killed 53 Ukrainian POWs and wounded another 75. Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday issued a list naming 48 Ukrainian fighters, aged 20 to 62, who died in the attack; it was not clear if the ministry had revised its fatality count.

The ICRC, which has organized civilian evacuation­s and worked to monitor the treatment of POWs held by Russia and Ukraine, said it requested access to the prison “to determine the health and condition of all the people present on-site at the time of the attack.”

“Our priority right now is making sure that the wounded receive lifesaving treatment and that the bodies of those who lost their lives are dealt with in a dignified manner,” the Red Cross said.

But the organizati­on said late Saturday that its request to access the prison had not been granted.

“Granting ICRC access to POWs is an obligation of parties to conflict under the Geneva Convention­s,” the ICRC said on Twitter. “We will not stop seeking access to these POWs and to all POWs of this internatio­nal armed conflict who we have not had access to yet.“

Both Ukraine and Russia alleged the attack on the prison was premeditat­ed and intended to silence the Ukrainian prisoners and destroy evidence.

Russia claimed Ukraine’s military used U.S.-supplied precision rocket launchers to target the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.

The Ukrainian military denied making any rocket or artillery strikes in Olenivka. It accused the Russians of shelling the prison to cover up the alleged torture and execution of Ukrainians there.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said the competing claims and limited informatio­n prevented assigning full responsibi­lity for the attack but the “available visual evidence appears to support the Ukrainian claim more than the Russian.”

Moscow has opened a probe into the attack on the prison and the United Nations said it also was prepared to send investigat­ors.

On Saturday, an associatio­n of Azov fighters’ relatives dressed in black held a demonstrat­ion outside Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and called for Russia to be designated a terrorist state for violating the Geneva Convention’s rules for the treatment of war prisoners.

A woman wearing dark glasses who gave only her first name, Iryna, was waiting for news of her 23-year-old son.

“I don’t know how is he, where is he, if he is alive or no. I don’t know. It’s a horror, only horror. For a mother, it’s the biggest loss if her child has gone,” she said.

 ?? David Goldman/Associated Press ?? Protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine, attend a rally Saturday for Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia after the fall of Mariupol in May. On Friday, dozens of prisoners of war died in an attack.
David Goldman/Associated Press Protesters in Kyiv, Ukraine, attend a rally Saturday for Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia after the fall of Mariupol in May. On Friday, dozens of prisoners of war died in an attack.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States