Even before the deadly blast that killed at least 53 Ukrainian soldiers last week, the Olenivka prison in the country’s separatist-controlled eastern Donetsk province was known to human rights groups as a lawless place where pro-Russian forces hold civilians flagged as potential enemy “collaborators” and military prisoners of war.
ocated just a few kilometres from the war’s front line, it has served as a detention facility for several thousand people brought from Mariupol after Russia captured that southern Ukrainian port city in May following a brutal and protracted siege.