KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed themselves Saturday for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian war criminals in an attack on a criminal in a separatist-controlled domain. The International Red Cross requested a stop at the prison to make sure the dozens of wounded prisoners of war receive proper treatment, but said their request has so far not been granted.
Meanwhile, Russia continued to launch attacks on several Ukrainian cities, hitting one and one bus station.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ICRC and the United Nations had a duty to respond to the bombing of the compound in Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province and reiterated his call for Russia to be declared a terrorist state.
“Condemnation at the point of political rhetoric is enough for this mass murder,” he said.
The separatist government and Russian officials said Friday’s attack killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded 75 others. The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday released a list naming 48 Ukrainian fighters, elderly between the ages of 20 and 62, who were killed in the attack; it is not transparent whether the ministry had reviewed its death toll.
Satellite images taken before and after the attack show that a small square building in the middle of the Olenivka criminal complex was demolished, with the roof shattered.
Ukraine and Russia alleged that the attack on the criminal was premeditated and was intended to silence Ukrainian criminals and destroy evidence.
The ICRC, which organized the evacuations of civilians and worked to monitor the treatment of war criminals held in Russia and Ukraine, said it had asked for access to the criminal “to find out the state of health and condition of all those who were present at the time of death. “the attack. “. “
“Our priority at this time is that the injured get vital care 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 application for the criminal had not yet been granted.
“Allowing the ICRC to hold prisoners of war is a legal responsibility of the parties to the conflict under the Geneva Conventions,” the ICRC said on Twitter.
Russia claimed that the Ukrainian military used precision rocket launchers across the United States to attack the Olenivka prison, an agreement controlled through the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military accused the Russians of bombing the country to cover up allegations of torture and execution of Ukrainians.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the conflicting claims and limited data made it highly unlikely that it would fulfill the full duty of the attack, but that “the visual evidence we have appears to be more for the Ukrainian claim than for Russia. “. “
Moscow has opened an investigation into the attack and the UN said it is also in a position to send investigators. the parties, and we completely the initiatives” of the Red Cross.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian rockets hit a school in Kharkiv and a bus station in Sloviansk, among other attacks. In southern Ukraine, one user was reportedly killed and six wounded in a bombing at a residential domain in Mykolaiv, local officials said.
Russian and separatist forces are seeking to completely take over the Donetsk region, one of the two eastern provinces that Russia has identified as sovereign states.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned on Saturday that the Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk will face severe warming this winter due to the destruction of fuel pipelines. He called for a mandatory evacuation of citizens before blood loss begins.
The criminal attack reportedly killed Ukrainian infantrymen captured in May after the fall of Mariupol, a Black Sea port city where troops and the National Guard’s Azov regiment withstood a months-long Russian siege.
On Saturday, a group of parents of black-clad Azov fighters demonstrated outdoors at Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and demanded that Russia be designated as a terrorist state for violating Geneva Convention rules on reparations for prisoners of war.
A woman dressed in dark glasses and giving only her first name, Iryna, waits for news of her 23-year-old son.
“I don’t know how he is, where he is, whether he is alive or not. I do not know. It’s a horror, just a horror,” he said.
On the energy front, Russia’s state-owned herbal fuel company said on Saturday it had halted shipments to Latvia due to contract violations. Gas Gazprom said shipments were halted because Latvia violated “fuel extraction conditions. “
Most likely, he was referring to a refusal to comply with Russia’s request for fuel bills in rubles rather than other currencies. In the past, Gazprom suspended fuel shipments to other EU countries, adding the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria, as they would not pay in rubles. .
EU countries have been racing to protect other energy sources, fearing Russia will cut off more fuel materials as winter approaches.
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