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-held area. The International Red Cross asked to visit the prison to make sure the many wounded prisoners of war received proper treatment, but said its request had so far not been granted.
Meanwhile, Russia continued to attack several Ukrainian cities, hitting a school and a bus station.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the ICRC and the United Nations had a duty to respond to the shelling of the prison complex in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, and he again called for Russia to be designated a terrorist state.
“Condemnation at the level of political rhetoric is not enough for this mass murder,” he said.
Separatist authorities and Russian officials said Friday’s attack killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded 75 others. The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday issued a list of the names of 48 Ukrainian fighters aged 20 to 62 who died in the attack; it was not clear whether the ministry had revised the death toll.
Satellite images taken before and after the attack showed that a small, square building in the middle of the Olenivka prison complex was destroyed, its roof in splinters.
Both Ukraine and Russia say the attack on the prison was premeditated and aimed at silencing Ukrainian prisoners and destroying evidence.
The ICRC, which organizes civilian evacuations and works to monitor the treatment of prisoners of war held by Russia and Ukraine, said it had requested access to the prison “to determine the health and condition of all people present at 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 late Saturday that its request for access to the prison had not yet been granted.
“Granting the ICRC access to prisoners of war is an obligation of the parties to the conflict under the Geneva Conventions,” the ICRC said on Twitter.
Russia has claimed that the Ukrainian military used US-supplied precision-guided missile launchers to attack a prison in Olenovka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military 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 Washington-based think tank, said competing claims and limited information prevented it from assigning full responsibility for the attack, but “the available visual evidence appears to support the Ukrainian claim more than the Russian one.”
Moscow has launched an investigation into the attack and the United Nations has said it is also ready to send investigators. UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said “we are ready to send a group of experts capable of conducting an investigation that requires the consent of the parties, and we fully support the initiatives” of the Red Cross.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian missiles hit a school in Kharkiv and a bus station in Slavyansk, among other strikes. In southern Ukraine, one person was killed and six wounded in shelling in a residential area in Mykolaiv, local authorities said.
Russian and separatist forces are trying to take full control of Donetsk region, one of two eastern provinces that Russia has recognized as sovereign states.
Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk warned on Saturday that Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk would face serious heating problems this winter due to the destruction of gas pipelines. She called for a mandatory evacuation of residents before the onset of cold weather.
The 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 Azov Regiment of the National Guard withstood a months-long Russian siege.
On Saturday, an association of relatives of Azov fighters, dressed in black, demonstrated outside Kyiv’s Hagia Sophia cathedral and called for Russia to be designated a terrorist state for violating the rules of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
A woman with dark glasses, who gave only her first name, Irina, was waiting for news about her 23-year-old son.
“I don’t know how he is, where he is, whether he’s alive or not. I don’t know. It’s horror, just horror,” she said.
On the energy front, Russia’s state-owned Natural Gas Corporation said on Saturday it had halted supplies to Latvia due to contract violations. Gas giant Gazprom said supplies were halted because Latvia violated “the conditions for gas production”.
The statement likely refers to a refusal to meet Russia’s demand for gas payments in rubles rather than other currencies. Gazprom has previously suspended gas supplies to other EU countries, including the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria, because they do not pay in rubles.
EU countries are scrambling to secure other energy sources, fearing that Russia will cut off more gas supplies as winter approaches.
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