Ukraine’s Shelling of Donetsk Prison Leaves 53 Dead, 75 Wounded

The military command of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) reported the death of 53 people and 75 wounded as a result of the bombardment of a prison in Elenovka carried out by Ukrainian forces.

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The senior staff of the Territorial Defense of the DPR confirmed through Telegram that the strike took place in the early hours of Friday, and detailed that Ukrainian prisoners of war were interned in that prison.

Representatives from Donetsk, as well as from the Russian Defense Ministry, assured that a projectile from the M142 HIMARS system, a US-made multiple rocket launcher, hit the Elenovka prison.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that the facility had held members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, whose fighters surrendered to Russian and Donbass forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol. 

The battalion is notorious for having fighters with nationalist and neo-Nazi views. The leader of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, stated that there were 193 prisoners in the prison. 

“Kiev is deliberately eliminating those Ukrainian fighters who have surrendered in order to cover up war crimes perpetrated against civilians in Donbass and thus force others to continue fighting instead of surrendering,” Pushilin said.

Kiev knew exactly where Ukrainian prisoners of war were being held when it ordered a strike on the detention facility in Donbass, Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the army of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), claimed.

In Basurin's opinion, the prison was targeted “after the Ukrainian prisoners of war began to talk about the crimes that they had committed on the orders of their commanders”. As the orders to conduct those crimes, according to Basurin, had been issued by Kiev, the Ukrainian “political leadership” ordered the strike on the detention center using U.S.-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers “to hide those crimes about which Ukrainian prisoners of war began to speak”.

“I would like to note that even the lack of ammunition did not stop them from shutting the mouths of those Ukrainian prisoners of war who began to tell how they killed, where they killed and why they killed the civilian population,” Basurin said.