Former prisoners at Ukraine jail cast doubt on Moscow’s account of deadly explosion

Among them were hundreds of soldiers who fought back from the city’s last stronghold, the Azovstal iron and steel works plant, before finally surrendering.

In March, nearly three dozen humanitarian aid workers volunteering to rescue civilians from Mariupol ended up in Olenivka because Russian officers and separatist forces considered them suspect.

They were freed barely two weeks ago, and their accounts of conditions and treatment inside the prison bolster Kyiv’s accusations that the Ukrainian fighters killed were deliberately moved to an abandoned warehouse there – a location that then was destroyed.

Moscow quickly alleged that the Ukrainian military had targeted its own, hitting the building with a US-supplied Himars rocket attack to prevent the soldiers from testifying about “crimes against humanity” committed by Ukrainian forces.

To support this narrative, Russian state media later broadcast a video showing a charred structure with a large hole in its roof, crushed bunk beds and burned body parts.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky angrily denounced the Kremlin’s scenario, calling the attack on the prison a “deliberate Russian war crime”.

The Ukrainian General Staff contended that Russia staged it “to cover up the torture and execution of prisoners”.

Three volunteer aid workers, who spent about 100 days in Olenivka, said the building identified by Moscow as “a detention centre” was located in a separate area of the complex that had not been used to hold prisoners.

“I can tell you definitively that the video doesn’t show the prison barracks, and (the demolished building is) not part of the living quarters,” said Evgeny Maliarchuk, who was arrested by Russians in Mariupol while trying to evacuate about 20 civilians in a bus he had driven from Kyiv.

According to Mr Maliarchuk, the prison was shut down for about eight years and reopened by pro-Russian separatists shortly before the invasion. One section of Correctional Facility No 120, as it is officially known, includes barracks and detention areas; the other is an industrial zone filled with ageing equipment where convicts once worked.

“The building in the video looks like these workshops located directly in the industrial zone,” he added. “So if it was a planned action and prisoners were transferred from the barracks, the question arises: Why?”

Satellite imagery of the jail, reviewed by open-source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander, supports this account.

Russian propaganda has taken particular aim at the Azovstal fighters – especially the Azov Regiment, considered one of Ukraine’s most effective units but controversial for its far-right links.

Moscow portrays both as living proof that Ukraine is overrun by “neo-Nazis” and requires “denazification”.

Mariupol’s fall and the soldiers’ capture were paraded as key wins on Russian TV.  

In May, the Kremlin vowed that Azovstal fighters would be treated “in accordance with international standards” and said Russian president Vladimir Putin had guaranteed this.

Yet reports from Ukrainian and Russian human rights groups say the captured soldiers have been severely beaten – and worse – by prison guards and military officers.

Two of the aid volunteers said they had heard “cries, awful sounds” while at Olenivka, where cells designed for a half-dozen people were sometimes packed with as many as 30.  

A man named Dmitry, identified only by his first name because of concerns for the safety of relatives living under Russian occupation, said he spent weeks in a cage in the prison’s detention centre and witnessed multiple “initiation rituals” of newly arrived Ukrainian soldiers.

The new prisoners were told to disrobe and kneel with their heads pressed against a wall as guards beat them with batons, according to Dmitry. Then they were forced to crawl upstairs before being pushed into their cells by a kick in the back, he said.

Last Friday’s attack apparently injured none of the Russian guards at the prison.

An official for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway state within the region, said “only the prisoners suffered”.

(© Washington Post)