Red Cross says request to visit POWs in Olenivka 'not granted'; terms it 'an obligation'

Red Cross Ukraine on July 30 stated that its request to access the site where the Prisoners of War (POWs) were targetted via a missile at the Olenivka penal facility was rejected by the pro-Russian DPR authorities. In a tweet fired on Sunday, the humanitarian organisation said: "To be clear, our request to access the POWs from Olenivka penal facility yesterday has not been granted." It continued to inform that the organisation was denied access to POWs, which they wrote "is an obligation of parties to conflict under the Geneva Conventions." 

The humanitarian body's response came as Russia's Ministry of Defense announced that it has invited experts from the United Nations and the Red Cross to launch an investigation into the military attack on a pre-trial detention centre near Olenivka. The prison facility is located in the Donbass region and was targetted with US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems which killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war, the Russian Defense Ministry asserted. Red Cross, however, stated that the DPR authorities restricted its staff access to inspect the site. 

“In order to conduct an objective investigation of the attack on the pre-trial detention centre in Yelenovka, which led to the death of a large number of Ukrainian prisoners of war, the Russian Federation has officially invited experts from the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross,” the Russian defence ministry said, according to state-affiliated Sputnik. 

Red Cross denied visiting Lugansk People’s Republic’s prisoners of war

The International Committee of the Red Cross officials had earlier claimed that it was denied visiting the Lugansk People’s Republic’s prisoners of war. LPR’s ambassador to Russia, Rodion Miroshnik, had blamed Ukraine for causing disruptions, adding that the ICRC staffers must be allowed to regularly visit the POWs held on the territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republic. The denial of the humanitarian organisation to visit the POWs-held areas has been widely questioned since the launch of the military intervention by the Russians. 

"In contrast to the Ukrainian side, we allow ICRC personnel to visit us and to look into the conditions at the detention centres. In Ukraine, they are not permitted to do the same. There has been no reaction from the ICRC regarding our men," LPR’s ambassador to Russia Miroshnik had claimed on Russia’s Channel One, criticising Ukraine. Meanwhile, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, had said that the ICRC staff was allowed to inspect the Ukrainian military personnel who had surrendered from the stronghold of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol while they were in custody. 

On July 29, Russia's defence ministry claimed that the Ukrainian military forces fired a US-supplied long-range missile in the separatist-held territory that has claimed the lives of over Ukrainian prisoners of war. At least 75 others were critically injured. Moscow's MoD claimed that the Ukrainian forces had fired the rocket from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that landed on the colony in the village of Yelenovka. It slammed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's 'criminal' regime and Ukraine's ally the United States for what it described as the 'carnage' against the Ukrainian forces, who, as per DPR officials, were on Russia's side.