AP: UN investigation finds Russia planned Olenivka attack

Internal UN analyses indicate that Russia planned and carried out the attack on the Olenivka colony. However, the organization has not publicly accused the Kremlin of executing the Ukrainian prisoners of war, according to the Associated Press.

On the night of July 29, 2022, Russia shelled a barracks in the penal colony in Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast, where Ukrainian prisoners of war were being held. The explosion killed at least 50 defenders of Azovstal.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had previously condemned Russia’s crime, saying that despite international obligations to protect the lives of prisoners of war, the Russian authorities “took measures that hindered independent efforts to clarify the background to the explosions in Olenivka.”

The statement added that Russia had not allowed UN observers to enter the site, nor had any other independent expert analyses been conducted.

AP recalled that while the UN rejected Russia’s claims that the explosion was caused by a HIMARS missile fired from Ukraine, it did not accuse Moscow of organizing the crime, despite the numerous witness statements collected.

There is currently no active international investigation into these events, except for the Ukrainian investigation, which is one of tens of thousands of investigations into Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Five months after the tragedy, the UN disbanded the mission investigating the circumstances of the events because Russia refused to guarantee the safety of the experts. They did not travel to the occupied territories in the east of Donetsk Oblast or to areas controlled by Ukraine.

Meanwhile, UN officials have gathered further evidence, analyzing 70 open-source images, 20 statements by Russian officials and 16 interviews with survivors broadcast on Russian television. They also conducted in-depth interviews with 55 released prisoners of war who were in the barracks or elsewhere in Olenivka during the attack.

According to the agency, their conclusion is that Russia was responsible for planning and carrying out the attack. The 100-page analysis was circulated at the highest levels of the UN but was never intended for full publication. Some pieces of evidence were included in broader UN reports on the war in Ukraine, including one that said the missile flew from east to west. So the UN never publicly accused Russia of its crime.

Recently, Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets called on the UN to reopen the investigation, arguing that “the UN mission had never agreed to review the Ukrainian documentation on the explosion in the colony.”

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