Both sides said the attack was premeditated to cover up the atrocities. Russia claimed that Ukraine’s military used US-supplied rocket launchers to hit the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic. Separatist authorities and Russian officials said the attack killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners and wounded 75 others. Moscow opened an investigation into the attack, sending a team from Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s main criminal investigation agency, to the scene. The state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported that fragments of US-supplied high-mobility artillery rockets were found at the site. The Ukrainian military has denied launching any rocket or artillery attack on Olenivka and accused the Russians of shelling the prison to cover up the alleged torture and execution of Ukrainians there. An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the bombing as “a deliberate, cynical, calculated mass killing of Ukrainian prisoners”. Neither claim could be independently verified. Video captured by the Associated Press shows charred, twisted bed frames in the damaged barracks, as well as burned bodies and metal sheets hanging from the damaged ceiling. The video also included bodies lined up on the ground next to a barbed-wire fence and a row of metal missile fragments on a wooden bench. Denis Pushilin, the leader of the internationally unrecognized Donetsk republic, said the prison was holding 193 prisoners. He did not specify how many Ukrainian prisoners there were. The deputy commander of Donetsk separatist forces, Eduard Basurin, suggested that Ukraine decided to storm the prison to prevent the captives from revealing key military information. Ukraine “knew exactly where he was being held and in what place,” he said. “After the Ukrainian prisoners of war began to speak about the crimes they committed and the orders they received from Kyiv, the political leadership of Ukraine made a decision: to hold a strike here.” Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, called for a “rigorous investigation” into the attack and urged the United Nations and other international organizations to condemn it. He said the Russians had moved some Ukrainian prisoners to the barracks just days before the strike, suggesting it was planned. “The aim is to discredit Ukraine in front of our partners and cut off arms supplies,” he tweeted. Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said it had intercepted phone calls “in which the occupiers confirm that Russian troops are responsible for this tragedy.” The intercepted conversations indicate that the Russians may have planted explosives in the prison, the agency said in a statement. “Specifically, none of the eyewitnesses heard any rockets flying towards the penitentiary. There was no characteristic hissing and the explosions happened by themselves.” In addition, online videos showed that windows remained intact in some rooms of the facility, according to the SBU. This “indicates that the epicenter of the explosion was inside the damaged building and its walls were hit by the blast waves, protecting some of the neighboring rooms.” A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, described the strike as a “bloody provocation” aimed at discouraging Ukrainian soldiers from surrendering. It also claimed US-supplied HIMARS rockets were used and said eight guardsmen were among the wounded. Ukrainian forces are fighting to keep the rest of the region under their control in Donetsk. Together with neighboring Luhansk Oblast, they form the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region of Donbass, Ukraine. For several months, Moscow has focused on trying to capture parts of Donbas not already held by the separatists. The detention of prisoners in an area of active fighting appeared to defy the Geneva Convention, which requires that prisoners be evacuated as soon as possible after capture to camps away from combat zones. Ukrainian prisoners in the Donetsk prison included troops captured during the fall of Mariupol. They spent months hiding with civilians in a giant steel mill in the southern port city. Their resistance during a relentless Russian bombardment became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression. More than 2,400 soldiers from the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard and other military units abandoned their fight and surrendered on the orders of the Ukrainian military in May. Dozens of Ukrainian soldiers were taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas. Some have returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges with Russia, but the families of other captives have no idea if their loved ones are still alive or if they will ever return home. In other developments on Friday: — Ukraine’s president visited one of the main Black Sea ports a week after a deal was struck to create safe corridors for grain shipments that have been stuck in the country since the war began. Workers were seen preparing terminals for grain exports, which millions of poor people around the world rely on. Zelensky said the shipments would begin with the departure of several ships that were already loaded but could not leave when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. — The Ukrainian presidential office reported that at least 13 civilians were killed and another 36 wounded by Russian shelling in the past 24 hours. In the southern city of Mykolaiv, at least four people were killed and seven others wounded when Russian shelling hit a bus stop. The Russian barrage also hit a facility distributing humanitarian aid, where three people were injured, officials said. Ukrainian officials also said at least four civilians were killed and five wounded in the eastern town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. — An appeals court in Kyiv on Friday reduced to 15 years the life sentence of a Russian soldier convicted in the first war crimes trial since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Critics had said the sentence of Vadim Shishimarin, 21, was unduly harsh given that he confessed to the crime and expressed remorse. He pleaded guilty to killing a civilian and was sentenced in May. His defense lawyer argued that Shishimarin shot a Ukrainian on the orders of his superiors.
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