The Red Cross requests access to a Ukrainian prison after the deaths of prisoners of war

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian and Russian officials on Saturday blamed each other for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in an attack on a prison in separatist-controlled territory. The International Red Cross asked to visit the prison to make sure dozens of wounded prisoners of war were receiving proper treatment, but said its request had not yet been granted.

Meanwhile, Russia continued to attack several Ukrainian cities, damaging a school and a bus station.

President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky said that the ICRC and United Nations obliged to respond to the shelling of a prison complex in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and he again called to declare Russia a terrorist state.

“Condemnation at the level of political rhetoric of this mass killing is not enough,” he said.

Separatist authorities and Russian officials said Friday’s attack killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded 75 others. The Russian Ministry of Defense on Saturday published a list of the names of 48 Ukrainian fighters aged between 20 and 62 who died in the attack; it was unclear whether the ministry had revised the death toll.

Satellite images taken before and after the attack show that a small square building in the middle of the Alena prison complex was destroyed and its roof blown to pieces.

Both Ukraine and Russia declared attack on the prison was pre-planned and aimed at silencing Ukrainian prisoners and destroying evidence.

The ICRC, which organized the evacuation of the civilian population and monitored the treatment of prisoners of war held by Russia and Ukraine, said it had requested access to the prison to “determine the state of health and condition of all people present at the site at the time of the attack. .”

“Our priority now is to ensure that the injured receive life-saving treatment and that the bodies of those who died 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 said the Ukrainian military used US-supplied precision-guided munitions systems to shell a prison in Alenivtsi, 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.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said conflicting statements and limited information prevented it from assigning full responsibility for the attack, but “available visual evidence appears to support Ukraine’s claim more than Russia’s.”

Moscow has launched an investigation into the attack, and the UN has said it is also ready to send investigators. UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq said that “we are ready to send a team of experts capable of conducting an investigation, requiring 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 others. In the south of Ukraine, one person died and six were injured as a result of shelling of a residential area in Mykolaiv, local authorities reported.

Russian and separatist forces are trying to take full control of Donetsk Oblast, one of two eastern provinces that Russia has recognized as sovereign states.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Verashchuk warned on Saturday that Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk will face serious heating problems this winter due to the destruction of gas pipelines. She called for 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, the Black Sea port city where troops and the Azov National Guard regiment had withstood a months-long Russian siege.

On Saturday, the Association of Relatives of Azov Fighters in Black held a demonstration near the Hagia Sophia in Kyiv and called for Russia to be recognized as a terrorist state for violating the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

The woman in dark glasses, who gave her name only as 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.

In terms of energy, the Russian state-owned natural gas corporation said on Saturday that it had stopped supplies to Latvia due to a breach of contract. Gas giant Gazprom said supplies were halted because Latvia violated “gas extraction conditions.”

The statement probably referred to the refusal to meet Russia’s demands to pay for gas in rubles, and not in other currencies. Earlier, Gazprom suspended gas supplies to other EU countries, including the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria, because they would not pay in rubles.

EU countries are trying to secure other sources of energy, fearing that Russia will cut off additional gas supplies as winter approaches.