According to Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate, Russian-installed militants, together with the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group mercenaries, tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war. Russians had no intention of exchanging POWs, preferring to murder prisoners to hide the evidence of torture, the report reads.
Ukrainian officials said Russia deliberately shelled a prison camp in occupied Olenivka, killing at least 53 POWs. Many of the victims in the attack on the Olenivka prisoner camp in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast were members of the Azov Regiment.
"It was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war," said President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Read more: Over 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war killed in Russian captivity