Massaker von Oleniwka

Vorlage:Short description Vorlage:Use dmy dates Vorlage:Infobox civilian attack Vorlage:Campaignbox 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 29 July 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a Russian-operated prison in Vorlage:Ill near Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast, was destroyed, killing 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and leaving 75 wounded. The prisoners were mainly soldiers from the Azovstal complex, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the siege of Mariupol.

Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities accused each other of the attack on the prison. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that the Russians shelled the prison in order to cover up the torture and murder of Ukrainian POWs that had been taking place there, and Ukrainian authorities provided what they said were intercepted communications indicating Russian culpability, while Russians suggest that a HIMARS rocket was shot from Ukrainian territory. As of 30 July 2022, there was no independent confirmation of what occurred.

Explosion

On the night of 29 July, a prison in Vorlage:Ill near the village of Olenivka, a settlement southwest of Donetsk that is controlled by the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), was destroyed. Russian and DPR casualty tallies suggest 53 Ukrainian POWs died, and another 75 were wounded (a Russian communiqué initially suggested 40 dead and 75 wounded, in addition to 8 guards). The Ukrainian side suggested that about 40 people were dead and 130 were wounded.

Both sides agree that there were captive Azov fighters in the destroyed barracks, brought there a few days before the event. Denis Pushilin, the leader of DPR, suggested that among the 193 inmates were at the detention facility, there were no foreigners, but did not specify the number of Ukrainians held captive. Russian officials released a list of deceased POWs. Vorlage:As of, Ukrainian officials stated that they are unable to verify the list.

On the day the prisoners were killed, the Russian embassy in London published a tweet that said Azov Regiment fighters "deserve execution, but death not by firing squad but by hanging, because they're not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death", with a video of a couple from Mariupol who said were victims of shelling. The sentence in the tweet was quotation of a man in the video.

Four days after the explosion, the Russian supreme court declared the Azov Regiment a terrorist organization, and in response Ukrainian intelligence said that this was intended to justify a Russian war crime committed against Ukrainians including members of the unit of the National Guard of Ukraine.

Responsibility

The Ukrainian side blamed the Russians for the attack. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) released recordings of taped telephone conversations between Russian soldiers, which suggested that the Russians had planted an explosive inside the building. The SBU added that from available video evidence, some windows were left intact and that no eyewitness accounts mention any shelling or sounds that would have normally accompanied it, which also suggests that no rocket had struck the detention facility. According to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense Intelligence Directorate, the explosion was carried out by the Wagner Group, a Russian government-backed private military company accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria, and Ukraine, but without prior consultation with the Russian Defence Ministry.

Russian authorities stated that the Ukrainian forces attacked the prison using HIMARS rocket systems that had been provided by the United States. Available evidence does not support that statement.

The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. based think tank said that available evidence suggests the Ukrainian version is more plausible as the character of explosions was not consistent with the HIMARS strike, but that it could not say with certainty which side is responsible. InformNapalm, a Ukrainian volunteer initiative, also said the same, but assigned the blame to the Russians by suggesting that they used a RPO-A Shmel flamethrower or an MRO-A rocket and waited for the captives to burn alive. An Israeli-Ukrainian military officer suggested that Russia perpetrated the attack on Ukrainian war prisoners to make Russian soldiers fear torture and thus deter them from surrendering to Ukrainian forces advancing in the Kherson region.

Reactions

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry appealed to the International Criminal Court regarding the attack, which it called a Russian war crime, and Russia said it was starting its own investigation. Russian and Ukrainian officials also called for the International Red Cross and the United Nations to intervene. Late in the evening of 30 July, with some delay, the Russians allowed the representatives of these organisations on the site, though the Red Cross's request to access the site was not granted as of the morning of 31 July.

In a statement issued on 29 July, Josep Borrell, the top foreign relations official of the European Union, blamed Russia for the attack and called it a "horrific atrocity" and a "barbaric act". He also referred to a video of Russian soldiers committing "a heinous atrocity" against a Ukrainian POW (torture and castration), which had begun to be shared on pro-Russian social media. The officials in Estonia, the United Kingdom and France expressed a similar attitude.

The White House on 2 August 2022 mentioned that new intelligence information hints that Russia is working to fabricate evidence concerning the massacre.

See also

• War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Further reading

• Luke Harding: ‘Absolute evil’: inside the Russian prison camp where dozens of Ukrainians burned to death. In: the Guardian. 6. August 2022, abgerufen am 8. August 2022 (englisch). 

External links

• Удар по колонии с пленными украинскими военными в Еленовке: то немногое, что пока известно Vorlage:In lang (tr. "A strike on a colony with captured Ukrainian soldiers in Yelenovka: what little is known so far"), BBC.com