Kiev Regime Kills Its Own Troops in Russian Custody

July 30, 2022 (EIRNS)—During the overnight hours of July 28-29, local time, rockets struck a detention facility in Yelenovka, about 23 km southwest of downtown Donetsk, where the D.P.R. militia was holding 193 Ukrainian POWs ahead of their being tried for war crimes. According to a statement issued this morning by the Russian Defense Ministry, 50 Ukrainians died, 48 in the blast and 2 more died later of their injuries. About half the survivors were wounded and are reported to be receiving medical treatment. Both the Russians and Donetsk People’s Republic officials have maintained that the strike was carried out using U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets and was a deliberate attempt to kill Ukrainian prisoners, reported to be members of the Azov Battalion, who were preparing to testify to the crimes of the Kiev regime.

Ukraine’s military denied the accusation, claiming that the strike had been launched by Russian forces with the intention to frame Ukraine for war crimes and to “hide the torture of prisoners and executions” at the detention site, NBC reported yesterday. “The Russian enemy continues its propaganda methods of conducting an information war in order to accuse the Armed Forces of Ukraine of shelling civilian infrastructure and the population, thus hiding its own insidious actions,” a statement from Ukraine’s armed forces said July 29.

Moscow has called on the United Nations and the Red Cross to investigate, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, “in the interests of conducting an objective investigation.”

The Kiev regime’s claims make no sense. “Ukrainian propagandists are already saying Russia hit their own detention centers. —Yes, Russia killed their own witnesses which they could use on national television to support their narrative at home & to detain and prosecute Ukrainian military officers,” ASB Military News sarcastically commented on Telegram.

“It is evident that the shelling was purposeful, they wanted to liquidate members of the Azov Battalion who started to testify,” D.P.R. leader Denis Pushlin said, reported the Donetsk News Agency.

Officials of the Biden Administration claimed ignorance yesterday when asked about the Yelenovka strike. “We just now see some fresh reporting on this supposed strike on a barracks containing Ukrainian POWs and we just can’t confirm that so I think I just need to leave it right there. You just don’t have enough information to speak intelligently about these very early reports,” Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby said at the White House.