Kyiv, Ukraine –
Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed each other on 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 requested to visit the prison to ensure dozens of wounded POWs received proper treatment, but said their request had so far not been granted.
Meanwhile, Russia continued to launch attacks on several Ukrainian cities, hitting a school and a bus station.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ICRC and the United Nations have a duty to react after Friday’s bombing of the prison complex in Donetsk province in eastern Ukraine.
“It was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Zelenskyy said in a video address Friday night. “There must be a clear legal recognition of Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.”
Separatist authorities and Russian officials said the attack killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded 75 others. The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday issued a list naming 48 Ukrainian fighters, aged 20 to 62, who were killed. on the attack; it was unclear whether the ministry had revised its death count.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has organized civilian evacuations and worked to monitor the treatment of prisoners of war held by Russia and Ukraine, said it had requested access to the prison “to ascertain the health and condition of all the people present at the scene. the time of the attack.
“Our priority right now is to make sure that the injured receive life-saving treatment and that the bodies of those who lost their lives are treated with dignity,” the Red Cross said.
But the organization said Saturday night that his request for access to the prison had not been granted.
“Granting ICRC access to prisoners of war is an obligation of the parties to the conflict under the Geneva Conventions,” the ICRC said on Twitter. “We will not stop seeking access to these prisoners of war and to all prisoners of war from this international armed conflict that we have not yet had access to.”
Both Ukraine and Russia alleged that the prison attack was premeditated and intended to silence Ukrainian prisoners and destroy evidence.
Russia claimed Ukraine’s military used US-supplied precision rocket launchers to attack the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military denied carrying out rocket or artillery attacks on Olenivka. He accused the Russians of bombing the prison to cover up the alleged torture and execution of Ukrainians there.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said conflicting claims and limited information prevented full responsibility for the attack from being assigned, but “available visual evidence appears to support the Ukrainian claim more than the Russian one.” “.
Moscow has opened an investigation into the prison attack and the United Nations said it was also prepared to send investigators. Deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said “we are ready to send a group of experts capable of conducting an investigation, which requires the consent of the parties, and we fully support the initiatives” of the Red Cross.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian rockets hit a school in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, overnight and another attack occurred an hour later, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Saturday. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
The bus station in the city of Sloviansk was also attacked, according to Mayor Vadim Lyakh. Sloviansk is close to the front lines as Russian and separatist forces try to take full control of the Donetsk region, one of two eastern provinces that Russia has recognized as sovereign states.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned on Saturday that Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donetsk region will face severe heating problems this winter due to extensive destruction of gas pipelines. She called for a mandatory evacuation of residents before cold weather arrives.
In southern Ukraine, one person was killed and six wounded in a shelling that hit a residential area in Mykolaiv, a port city, the regional government said.
Friday’s attack on the prison reportedly killed Ukrainian soldiers captured in May after the fall of Mariupol, a Black Sea port city where troops and the national guard’s Azov Regiment withstood a months-long Russian siege.
On Saturday, an association of relatives of Azov fighters dressed in black held a demonstration in front of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and called for Russia to be designated a terrorist state for violating the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of prisoners. of war.
A woman in dark glasses who gave only her first name, Iryna, awaited news of her 23-year-old son.
“I don’t know how he is, where he is, if he’s alive or not. I don’t know. It’s a horror, just horror. For a mother, it is the greatest loss if her child is gone. ,” she said.
On the energy front, Russia’s state natural gas corporation said on Saturday it had halted shipments to Latvia due to contract violations. Gas giant Gazprom said shipments were stopped because Latvia breached “terms for gas extraction”. He did not elaborate.
The statement likely referred to a refusal to meet Russia’s demand for gas payments in rubles rather than other currencies. Gazprom previously suspended gas shipments to other EU countries, including the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria, because they would not pay in rubles.
EU nations have been scrambling to secure other energy sources, fearing Russia will cut off more gas supplies as winter approaches.