Moscow: Russia on Sunday invited Red Cross and UN experts to investigate the deaths of several Ukrainian prisoners held by separatists with Moscow's support. In the early hours of Friday, a missile strike or explosion in the front-line town of Olenivka in eastern Donetsk killed dozens of Ukrainian POWs, prompting retaliation from both Ukraine and Russia.
According to the Defense Ministry on Sunday, Russia invited UN and Red Cross experts to look into the deaths "in the interest of conducting an objective investigation". Claiming to be a Ukrainian military strike using US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, the ministry published a list of 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were killed and 73 who were wounded (HIMARS).
The Ukrainian military denied involvement, claiming that Russian artillery had targeted the prison there to hide abuses. Russia has committed a war crime, according to Foreign Minister Dimitro Kuleba, who on Friday called for international condemnation.
Some of the deaths in prison were confirmed by Reuters reporters, but they were unable to immediately confirm conflicting accounts of what happened. If both sides agreed, the United Nations said it would be ready to send investigators. The International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it was requesting access and offered to assist in the evacuation of the wounded. More than 10,000 possible war crimes are cited by Ukraine as evidence that Russia has committed atrocities against civilians. Russia denies conducting a "special operations" offensive that involves targeting civilians and committing war crimes.
The Kherson region, which is the center of Kyiv's counter-offensive in that region and a key link in Moscow's supply lines, was one of the southern regions where more than 100 Russian soldiers were killed and seven tanks destroyed on Friday. According to Ukrainian army on Saturday.
The Army's Southern Command reported that rail traffic across the Dnipro River to Kherson was halted, potentially cutting off supplies to Russian forces west of the river from occupied Crimea and to the east. In recent weeks, Ukraine has seriously damaged three Dnipro bridges with long-range missile systems from the west, cut off Kherson and, in the opinion of British defense officials, Russia's 49 on the west bank of the river. Made the army very weak.
The battlefield report could not be independently verified by Reuters. Earlier this week, representatives of the Russian-appointed government in charge of the Kherson region rejected assessments of the situation by the West and Ukraine. After losing thousands of soldiers in the conflict, the Russian government was described on Friday as "increasingly desperate" by the British ministry. The head of the British MI6 foreign intelligence agency Richard Moore also noted on Twitter that Russia is "running out of steam."
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