Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday July 30 called on residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate to escape the “Russian Terror” and the bombardments on this eastern region where kyiv asks the Red Cross and the UN to go to its soldiers prisoners of the Russian forces.
“A government decision has been taken on the mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region”Mr. Zelensky said in a video address in the evening. “Please evacuate”he asked, before adding: “At this stage of the war, terror is Russia’s main weapon”.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk had earlier 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.
Independent investigation demanded in Olenivka
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. A “deliberate Russian war crime”according to Mr. Zelensky.
Ukrainian human rights official Dmytro Lubinetsk announced on Saturday that he had asked the Red Cross and the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission, which had supervised in May the surrender negotiated with the Russians of the defenders of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol (southeast), to go 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”Mr. Zelensky said on Friday evening, calling on the UN and the Red Cross to “react”. The European Union condemned Friday night “the atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces and their auxiliaries”in a statement by its head of diplomacy Josep Borrell targeting both the bombing of the prison and accusations of torture and emasculation of a Ukrainian prisoner, a video of which has circulated on social networks.
“They deserve a humiliating death”
France expressed “his horror at reports of murders and acts of torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Olenivka detention center under the protection of the Russian Federation”adding that, where appropriate, those responsible should “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”could we read in this tweet in English.
The nationalist Azov regiment fought in Mariupol. Andrii Iermak, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian president, 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.”for his part underlined on Twitter the spokesperson for Ukrainian diplomacy, Oleg Nikolenko.
The Russian Investigative Committee had 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”, high-precision multiple rocket launchers delivered by the United States. The Ukrainian general staff dismissed these accusations, saying that it was a question of Russian or separatist forces “cover up the torture of prisoners and the executions” who had been “perpetrated”.
Reduced gas deliveries
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.
Continuing its standoff with the West, Russia once again reduced its gas deliveries to Europe on Saturday, suspending supplies to Latvia. 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 beginning of the war, the resumption of exports is still pending and could occur “in the next few 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.