Kyiv and Moscow trade blame over deaths of dozens of Ukrainian POWs in prison blast

Ukraine has accused Russia of committing another war crime after dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were reportedly killed when a detention centre was destroyed by an explosion, in an attack that Moscow blamed on Kyiv’s military.

Russian officials and their proxies in the partly occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine said 53 prisoners were killed and 75 injured in a strike they claimed was carried out by Ukrainian troops using US-supplied Himars long-range rocket systems.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said eight guards were wounded in the “bloody provocation”, while Dariya Morozova, a spokeswoman for Moscow-led militants in Donetsk, said “thankfully workers at the detention centre were not injured and they are in good condition. Unfortunately only prisoners suffered.”

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said “Russia has committed another petrifying war crime by shelling a correctional facility ... where it held Ukrainian POWs. I call on all partners to strongly condemn this brutal violation of international humanitarian law and recognise Russia as a terrorist state.”

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Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the attack on Olenivka “was carried out by Russian troops to blame Ukraine. We know that Russia transferred part of the Ukrainian defenders to this barracks a few days before the strike”.

Mr Podolyak said Russia’s aim was “to discredit Ukraine in front of our partners and disrupt weapons supply. But, firstly, this is a deliberate, cynical, calculated mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners, which requires strict investigation. We demand a reaction from the UN and international organisations.”

Moscow has denounced Ukraine’s western allies for supplying it with heavy weaponry and particularly the US-made Himars system, which fires volleys of powerful rockets a greater distance and with more accuracy than anything in Russia’s armoury.

[ Himars: What are the advanced rockets the US is sending Ukraine? ]

Russia said those killed in Olenivka were mostly members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion who were captured after the brutal 10-week siege of Mariupol. Russian politicians and state media portray Azov fighters as far-right radicals and the embodiment of what the Kremlin is trying to root out in its “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine.

The reported deaths of the Azov troops — who are widely regarded as heroes in their homeland for their defence of Mariupol and their last stand in its Azovstal steelworks — added to public fury over the appearance of a gruesome video on social media that seems to show a Russian soldier castrating a bound Ukrainian prisoner of war.

Mr Zelenskiy visited the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk on Friday as Ukraine prepared to restart shipments of grain following a five-month blockade by the Russian navy.

“We are ready to export Ukrainian grain. We are waiting for signals from our partners about the start of transportation,” he said, a week after the United Nations and Turkey brokered deals with Moscow and Kyiv that could allow 20 million tonnes of trapped Ukrainian grain to reach world markets.

“It is important for us to remain a guarantor of global food security. While someone blocking the Black Sea takes the lives of other states, we allow them to survive,” he added.

In the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, five people were killed and seven injured on Friday when Russian shells exploded near a bus stop, and at least two people were killed and five were hurt in a rocket strike on Kramatorsk in the government-held part of Donetsk region.