The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine issued a statement in connection with the allegations of the DPR and the Russian Federation that the Ukrainian Armed Forces allegedly fired from the HIMARS MLRS on a prison where Ukrainian prisoners of war were kept, which led to the death of dozens of people.
The statement of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine says: “The armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out targeted artillery shelling of a correctional institution in the village of Olenivka (the Russian version of the name Yelenovka) of the Donetsk region, where, in particular, Ukrainian prisoners were kept. The Russian invaders, thus, pursued their criminal goals – to accuse Ukraine of committing “war crimes”, as well as to hide the torture of prisoners and executions carried out there on the orders of the occupation administration and the command of the Russian army in the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region. The consequences of the shelling are being specified. According to the commander of the missile forces and artillery of the command of the ground forces of Ukraine , in the area of the Olenivka settlement, the armed forces of Ukraine did not carry out rocket and artillery strikes.The missile troops and artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, thanks to the high-precision weapons received from the partner countries, inflict exceptionally accurate strikes only on military targets of the Russian Federation. The Military Forces of Ukraine fully and unwaveringly adhere to the principles and comply with the norms of international humanitarian law, have never fired and do not fire on civilian infrastructure, especially places where prisoners of war may be located.
The statements of the DPR and the Russian Federation about the shelling of the prison by the Ukrainian military in the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are called “an outright lie and a provocation, the responsibility for which lies with Russia – an aggressor country, occupier and sponsor of terrorism.”
The Ukrainian side does not have reliable data on the number of victims as a result of this shelling.
On the morning of Friday, July 29, the telegram channel of Daniil Bezsonov, who is referred to by the Russian media as the “Deputy Minister of Information of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, published a message about the death of 40 people and the injury of 130 more as a result of the strike of the Ukrainian armed forces on the prison in Yelenovka (Volnovahsky DPR region, about 25 km from Donetsk). Bezsonov’s publication suggested that the strike could have been delivered by the HIMARS high-precision MLRS.
Then Bezsonov wrote in the telegram channel: “It is interesting that the attack on the colony in Yelenovka, during which, according to preliminary data, 40 “prisoners of Azovstal” were killed, the Ukrainians inflicted against the backdrop of numerous interviews of captured “Azov” that appeared in various media in recent days ” .
This message was quoted by many Russian media, in particular the TASS, Interfax and RIA Novosti agencies. Moreover, if TASS and Interfax indicated in the headline that this was a message from a representative of the DPR, then the Russian state agency RIA Novosti gave the headline “Forty people died and 130 were injured in the shelling of a prison with prisoners in the DPR”, thereby asserting the reliability of this information.
Shortly after these publications, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation stated that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had indeed struck a pre-trial detention center in the Yelenovka area, as a result of which 40 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed and 75 were injured, in addition, eight employees of the detention center were injured. In the message of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, it is stated that the strike on the pre-trial detention center, in which the captured “Azov” were kept, was inflicted from the HIMARS MLRS.
DNR officials then said the death toll had risen to 53.
Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko expressed concern that the statements of the DPR and the Russian Defense Ministry could be a cover for the murder of Ukrainian prisoners.
In addition, announcing the use by the Ukrainian military of the HIMARS MLRS to strike at the pre-trial detention center in the Yelenovka area, the Russian authorities can expect to stop or at least suspend the supply of these systems to the Armed Forces of Ukraine by Western countries, which are extremely effectively used by the Ukrainian military to deliver accurate strikes against Russian headquarters and warehouses weapons in the deep rear in the occupied territories in the south and east of Ukraine.
It should be noted that last night it was reported from the DPR that Ukrainian troops fired at the village of Yelenovka, firing 12 shells with a caliber of 152 mm (caliber of HIMARS MLRS missiles – 227 mm).