The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that the Russians blew up the barracks 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 satellite images of pre-dug graves and intercepted communications indicating Russian culpability,[2][3] while Russians suggested that a HIMARS rocket was shot from Ukrainian territory.[4] Independent investigations based on the work of forensic and weapons experts, as well as satellite images, found that the Russian version of events is very likely fabrication and disinformation, as there is virtually no chance that the damage was caused by a HIMARS rocket and instead evidence suggests the prison was blown up by a bomb detonated within the building.[5][6][3]
On 3 August, the UN secretary-generalAntonio Guterres announced his decision to establish a fact-finding mission, as requested both by Russia and Ukraine.[7][8] However, Russia refused to cooperate with the UN and International Red Cross, and the fact-finding mission was disbanded.[9][10]
Explosion
On the night of 29 July 2022, a single barracks in a prison in Molodizhne was damaged by an explosion, killing and wounding a number of prisoners kept inside. The prison is near Olenivka, a settlement southwest of Donetsk controlled by the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). Russian and DPR casualty tallies suggest 53 Ukrainian POWs died, and another 75 were wounded[11] (a Russian communiqué initially suggested 40 dead and 75 wounded, in addition to 8 guards).[12] The Ukrainian side suggested that about 40 people were dead and 130 were wounded.[13]
Many captive Azov fighters were in the destroyed barracks, brought there a few days earlier. Denis Pushilin, the leader of DPR, suggested that among the 193 inmates at the detention facility, there were no foreigners, but did not specify the number of Ukrainians held captive.[11] Russian officials released a list of deceased POWs,[14] Ukrainian officials said they were unable to verify the list.[15]
On the day the prisoners were killed, the Russian embassy in London tweeted that the 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 saying they were victims of shelling. The sentence in the tweet was a quotation from the man in the video.[16][relevant?]
Four days after the explosion, the Russian supreme court declared the Azov Regiment a terrorist organization,[17] 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.[18]
Investigation
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry appealed to the International Criminal Court regarding the attack, which it called a Russian war crime,[19] and Russia said it was starting its own investigation.[11] Russian and Ukrainian officials also called for the International Red Cross and the United Nations to intervene.[20][21] Late in the evening of 30 July Russia declared it will allow the representatives of these organisations on the site.[22] However, ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) declared it did not receive invitation, nor a response to their own request to visit the site.[23][1] By October 2022 no international observers or humanitarian organizations were allowed into Olenivka or granted access to the survivors, and Russian side has never published a detailed list of killed and wounded, or notified their relatives, or ICRC who has officially registered them as prisoners of war during their surrender in Mariupol.[24][25][1]
On 3 August, UN secretary-generalAntonio Guterres announced his decision to established a fact-finding mission, as requested both by Russia and Ukraine.[7] Guterres disbanded the fact-finding mission into the attack on 3 January 2023 (according to a UN spokesman) "as the UN mission cannot deploy to the site."[9]
Speculations
Russian authorities stated that the Ukrainian forces attacked the prison with Ukrainian prisoners of war using HIMARS rocket systems.[4] As Russian side released videos and photos from inside the barrack, a CNN analysis noted that the Russian version of events is very likely a fabrication as there is virtually no chance that the damage was caused by a HIMARS rocket. According to the analysis the most likely cause of the explosion was an incendiary device detonated from inside the prison warehouse.[5] The Institute for the Study of War said that available visual evidence supports the Ukrainian version of the events as the character of explosions was not consistent with a HIMARS strike, but that it could not say with certainty which side is responsible.[26]
InformNapalm, a Ukrainian volunteer initiative, 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.[27]Prosecutor General of UkraineAndrii Kostin stated that "according to preliminary data from international experts, prisoners in the occupied Olenivka penal colony were killed with thermobaric weapons”.[25][28] 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.[29]
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.[30] 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.[31][32]
The White House on 2 August 2022 mentioned that new intelligence information hints that Russia is working to fabricate evidence concerning the massacre.[33] In August Russia invited a number of Russian media and actor Steven Seagal to the facility where they made statements supporting the official Russian version of HIMARS attack.[34]
billboard dedicated to the victims of Olenivka prison massacre
In March 2023, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights's report on the treatment of POWs during the Russo-Ukrainian War claimed to have uncovered new details surrounding the massacre, which suggest Russian culpability. These involve the moving of prison guards away from the barracks, the digging of a fortified trench for the guards, the wearing of bullet-proof vests and helmets by the guards, and the firing of a newly-deployed BM-21 Grad rocket system to cover the sounds of the explosions.[35]
On 25 July 2023, the UN officially rejected Russia's claims that the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian HIMARS rocket.[36]
On 4 October 2023, UN report on the case indicates that the explosion would not be compatible with that of a HIMARS and that "the pattern of structural damage appeared consistent with a projected ordnance having travelled with an east-to-west". The report also accused Russia of keeping prisoners in colony too close to the front line, exposing them to the risk of being hit.[37]
Reactions
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".[38] The officials in Estonia,[39] the United Kingdom and France expressed a similar attitude.[40]
Further events
On 11 October, the bodies of 62 soldiers, including prisoners of war killed in Olenivka, were returned to Ukraine.[41]
^ abLister, Tim; Mezzofiore, Gianluca; Cotovio, Vasco; Brown, Benjamin; Nechyporenko, Kostan (11 August 2022). "Russia claims Ukraine used US arms to kill jailed POWs. Evidence tells a different story". CNN (Special Report). Design by Sarah-Grace Mankarious and Marco Chacón. Archived from the original on 30 September 2022. Retrieved 12 August 2022. A CNN investigation based on analysis of video and photographs from the scene, satellite imagery from before and after the attack and the work of forensic and weapons experts concludes the Russian version of events is very likely a fabrication.
^"UN rejects Russian account of attack that killed 50 Ukrainian prisoners, confirming findings of a CNN investigation". 25 July 2023. Experts consulted by CNN discounted a HIMARS strike on Olenivka – but could not say definitively what killed and wounded so many prisoners. The investigation noted that "experts say most signs point to an intense fire, and according to several witnesses there was no sound of an incoming rocket." [...] The OHCHR said that it had been able to "conduct extensive interviews with survivors of the incident at Olenivka and undertaken detailed analysis of available additional information…While the precise circumstances of the incident on the night of 28-29 July 2022 remain unclear, the information available and our analysis enable the Office to conclude that it was not caused by a HIMARS rocket."
^"OHCHR report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and Persons Hors de Combat in the Context of the Armed Attack by the Russian Federation against Ukraine: 24 February 2022 – 23 February 2023". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 24 March 2023. pp. 19–21. Retrieved 24 March 2023. OHCHR documented that the 193 POWs were transferred on 27 July to this barrack, which was refurbished from an industrial shed that stood separately from the other barracks in the colony. That same day, the colony management ordered that the guard post be moved further from the barrack and that a fortified trench be dug for the guards, which was not done for other barracks. On 28 July, the guards of the barrack wore bullet-proof vests and helmets, which they had not done before and unlike other colony personnel who rarely wore them. POWs interned in different barracks reported that an "Grad" rocket system, which had been placed close to their barracks and near the colony's fence just before the incident, was firing in a westerly direction away from the colony and covered the sounds of the explosions that killed and injured the POWs.
