At least 206 of the 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers repatriated to Ukraine died in Russian captivity, the Associated Press (AP) reported on May 27, citing Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) data.
There have been multiple reports of Ukrainian POWs being tortured or killed while in Russian captivity. As of May, the Prosecutor General's Office said criminal investigations were underway regarding the execution of 268 Ukrainian POWs.
Violence in Russian prisons is likely to have been one of the factors that caused a large number of deaths of Ukrainian POWs, the AP reported, citing previous reports of human rights groups, the United Nations, the Ukrainian government, and a Ukrainian forensic expert who conducted the autopsies of the POWs.
Out of 206 Ukrainian soldiers who died in captivity, more than 50 were killed during a Russian missile attack on Russia's notorious Olenivka POW camp in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast.
Ukrainian authorities said that days before the explosion in the Olenivka prison, Russian occupation authorities singled out Ukrainian members of the Azov Regiment, who were captured in Mariupol and were awaiting a prisoner exchange, to a separate part of the prison building — the one that was destroyed.
The Prosecutor General's Office said that Russia likely used a thermobaric munition to strike the prison. Russia rejected the accusations and instead blamed the explosion on a Ukrainian HIMARS strike, an assertion rejected by the U.N.
In March, the U.N. confirmed 27 cases of executions by Russian troops, which resulted in the deaths of 84 Ukrainian soldiers since August 2024.
Victoria Tsymbaliuk, a representative of the Ukrainian Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs), said in October 2024 that at least 177 Ukrainian prisoners died in Russian captivity since the beginning of Moscow's full-scale invasion.
Daria Shulzhenko
(Updated: )
