As global outrage grows an explosion kills at least 50 With Ukrainian prisoners held at a Russian detention center, Ukrainian authorities called for an international investigation on Saturday while gathering evidence they say will prove Russia orchestrated what they described as “a terrorist attack”.
Since the explosion late Thursday at Correctional District 120, a prison camp in the eastern Russian-occupied area of Donetsk, the warring sides have presented complete opposition to what happened, all the more. another war has now entered its sixth month.
Russian officials claim that the Ukrainians, using precision weapons supplied by the United States, attacked the prison themselves to deter defectors. Ukrainian authorities dismissed the story as absurd and said the deaths were a premeditated act of brutality by Russian forces from inside the prison, where survivors have been described as being only provide enough food to survive and endure. beating ritualeven with metal chains and pipes.
The explosion was particularly painful for the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine because many of the people killed fought to defend Mariupol, a port on the Black Sea, and then retreat to the city’s Azovstal steel mills. For weeks there, they withstood Russian onslaught before finally surrendering in May.
For many Ukrainians, the siege of Azovstal has become a symbol of the country’s suffering and defiance, and the soldiers who fought there, an estimated 2,500 were taken prisoner. heros.
“It was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Zelensky said in a speech late Friday.
Mr. Zelensky said that the Red Cross, along with the United Nations, had played a role “as guarantors of the life and health of our soldiers,” and now they must act. “They have to protect the lives of hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” he said.
A series of Russian missile attacks on civilian targets, including shopping malls and apartment buildings, prompted the Ukrainian government to call on Washington to designate Moscow as a state sponsor. for terrorism, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken denied.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, said in a statement that Russia’s “illegal and unjustifiable war of aggression” every day causes “more terrible atrocities”, adding that “barbaric and inhuman acts” violate the Convention. Geneva and became a war crime.
Our Report on the Russo-Ukrainian War
Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, a Baltic state that has been among Moscow’s toughest opponents in the war, said Russia was responsible for the “mass murder” of prisoners at the camp, an act action, which she said was “the darkest. chapters of history.”
“Not being exonerated for war crimes is like not being able to have a relationship back with a war criminal,” she said in a statement.
For Mr. Zelensky, the prison explosion fits a pattern in which an unwarranted invasion of his country, at the behest of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, has been accompanied by atrocities. by Russian forces, for example in the northern suburbs of Kyiv. and missile attacks on civilian targets, including an attack this month in mall in the heart of the country far from the front line.
Russia controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, but after deploying its superior artillery power to capture most of Luhansk province in the eastern Donbas region earlier this month, Kyiv is now waging a protest in Kherson Province in an attempt to regain the land.
Moscow denies that it committed atrocities or targeted civilians, and on Saturday the Defense Ministry said that the Ukrainians had killed their soldiers using precision-guided missiles, due to American production, called HIMARS, to attack prison camps in Russian-controlled territory. eastern Ukraine.
An adviser to the President of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podoliak, told The New York Times that an expert analysis of photos and videos released by Russia had shown that the center of the explosion was inside the building, with the exterior of the building was practically undamaged.
In addition, he said that the speed of Russian propaganda after the attack hinted at the plan. The prisoners had been moved to the barracks where the explosion occurred just a few days earlier, and it was suspicious that no Russian soldiers or workers at the prison were injured, he said. In addition, he said that, before the explosion, Russia had delivered debris to the camp from previous attacks elsewhere that involved HIMARS weapons.
Tetiana Kravchenko, an organized Ukrainian human rights activist in contact with inmates in the camp, said that one inmate called his wife on Thursday night and reported hearing an explosion, not an explosion. not shelling, around 11pm. The call in which the prisoner said that two of his friends were moved to another building in the prison on the day of the explosion and that one is now dead and the other injured.
Soldiers detained in other areas of the camp have also forwarded similar accounts to their family members, she said.
Competing claims cannot be independently verified immediately. Ms. Kravchenko said she could not release further information without risking the safety of prisoners still being held at the camp.
At its heart, the invasion killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians and brought misery to many others. It also had far-reaching external consequences, reviving NATO, isolating Russia, raising energy prices, and undermining global growth. Given Ukraine’s importance to the global grain market and Russia’s effective blockade of its Black Sea ports, Ukraine has also threatened several countries in the Middle East and Africa with shortages. food and hunger.
The first grain shipments since the beginning of the conflict have been loaded onto transport ships at Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. The shipments will be the fruit of an agreement brokered by Turkey and the United Nations about a week ago. Mr. Zelensky and representatives of the Group of 7 industrialized nations visited Chernomorsk, one of three ports in Odesa province, on Friday.
Odesa is a frequent target of Russian missile attacks, the most recent being a week ago with an attack on the port that cast doubt on the grain deal. Indeed, Mr. Podoliak said that the prison explosion was another sign of Russia’s assurances that it would allow grain ships to safely pass through the Black Sea.
Elsewhere on the ground, the battle largely devolved into a series of incremental offensive and defensive maneuvers whose only territorial limits were changed each week.
The Donbas region, where the Ukrainian military said on Saturday that it had repelled Russia’s latest offensive efforts, is the clearest example of this slowdown. But in Kherson province, Ukraine hopes that HIMARS weapons and other Western-supplied things will help the country move forward.
Ukraine said it hit key Russian logistics hubs overnight into Saturday and was making small but steady gains as it advanced toward Kherson, a shipbuilding hub and port where Ukrainian missiles are located. attacked a bridge over the Dnipro River leaving the Russian defenders largely isolated. .
It would be several weeks and perhaps longer before the outcome of the Kherson counterattack would be decided, especially since the war proved the military adage that attack is harder than defense. But a senior US Department of Defense official told a press conference on friday that there is growing evidence that large Russian losses have left some units unprepared for combat. The official described Russia’s recent efforts as a failure both on the battlefield and at home.
Michael Schwirtz contribution report.
