(Kyiv) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday called on residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate, to escape “Russian terror” and bombardments in this eastern region where Kyiv asks the Red Cross and the UN to go to its soldiers prisoners of the Russian forces.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
Updated at 5:34 p.m.
Continuing its standoff with the West, Russia once again reduced its gas deliveries to Europe on Saturday, suspending supplies to Latvia.
PHOTO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Olenivka prison was the target of a strike on Friday.
“A government decision has been taken on the mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region,” Zelensky said in a video address in the evening. “Please evacuate,” he demanded.
“At this stage of the war, terror is Russia’s main weapon,” he stressed.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk had previously announced the compulsory evacuation for the entire population of Donetsk, one of the two administrative regions of the Donbass industrial basin where Russia is gaining ground.
She had justified this decision, in declarations on television, by the destruction of the gas networks and the absence of heating next winter in the region.
Russian strikes on towns in the region cause casualties among the civilian population almost every day.
On Friday, the bombing of a barracks housing Ukrainian soldiers prisoners in Olenivka, in territory occupied by the Russians in the Donetsk region, left around fifty dead.
PHOTO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Olenivka Prison
A “deliberate Russian war crime”, according to Mr. Zelensky.
Ukrainian human rights official Dmytro Lubinetsk said on Saturday he had asked the Red Cross and the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission, which oversaw the Russian-brokered surrender of factory defenders in May. from Azovstal to Mariupol (southeast), to get to Olenivka.
After long weeks of siege and resistance at the steel site, around 2,500 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered and Moscow had let it be known that they would be imprisoned at Olenivka.
“When the defenders of Azovstal left the factory, the UN and the ICRC acted as guarantors of the life and health of our soldiers,” said Mr. Zelensky on Friday evening, calling on the UN and the Red Cross to “react”.
“terrorist state”
The European Union condemned Friday evening “the atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces and their auxiliaries”, in a statement by its head of diplomacy Josep Borrell targeting both the bombardment of the prison and accusations of torture and emasculation of a Ukrainian prisoner, a video of which circulated on social networks.
France expressed “its horror at the reports of murders and acts of torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war, in the detention center of Olenivka, under the protection of the Russian Federation”, adding that the case if necessary, those responsible will have to “answer for their actions”, in a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tension over the fate of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the hands of the Russians or Donbass separatists was further heightened by a tweet on Friday evening from the Russian Embassy in the UK, specifically targeting the Ukrainian nationalist regiment Azov.
“Azov fighters deserve to be executed, but not by firing squad, by hanging. They are not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death,” the tweet read in English.
The nationalist Azov regiment fought in Mariupol.
Andrii Iermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, saw it as proof that Russia is “a terrorist state”.
“There is no difference between Russian diplomats calling for the execution of Ukrainian prisoners of war and Russian troops doing so at Olenivka. They are all complicit in these war crimes and must be held accountable,” Ukrainian diplomatic spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on Twitter.
The Russian Investigative Committee announced the shelling of Olenivka on Friday, saying that Ukrainian forces had themselves “fired on the prison where members of the Azov battalion are being held, using American projectiles from the Himars system”, rocket launchers high-accuracy multiples delivered by the United States.
“The Wagner Division”
Russian public television broadcast images presented as those of charred barracks and destroyed metal bed frames, and showed blurry images of what appear to be human bodies.
UKRAINIAN MINISTRY OF EMERGENCY SITUATIONS VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A fire broke out in a market in Bakhmout, in the Donetsk region, after shelling.
The Ukrainian general staff dismissed these accusations, saying that it was for the Russian or separatist forces to “camouflage the torture of prisoners and the executions” which had been “perpetrated”.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the attack “was carried out by mercenaries from the Wagner division”, a Russian company of mercenaries whose men have been accused of crimes in Syria and Africa in particular.
As for the Ukrainian human rights officer Dmytro Lubinetsk, he affirmed that according to the analysis of the Russian video, the only element available at this stage, “the explosion occurred inside” the barracks and not after a bombardment. .
On the ground of military operations, the Ukrainian authorities announced on Saturday that Russian bombardments had targeted several localities in the south and east of the country, killing at least one person in Mykolaiv (south) and one in Bakhmout (east).
In Kharkiv (north-east), the second Ukrainian city, three S-300 missiles fell on a school which caught fire, announced the town hall.
The gas tap
Russian gas giant Gazprom announced on Saturday that it has suspended gas deliveries to Latvia.
It had already drastically reduced its deliveries to Europe this week via the Nord Stream gas pipeline, officially due to the maintenance of a turbine.
Regarding cereals blocked in Ukraine since the start of the war, the resumption of exports is still pending and could occur “in the coming days”, according to Kyiv.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure, 17 ships have already been loaded with grain in Chornomorsk and Odessa, and ten are ready to leave.
Ukraine, like Russia, are among the world’s largest grain exporters. Kyiv claims to want to sell some 20 million tonnes for around 10 billion dollars under this agreement.