The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine stated that the Russian military attacked the prison in Yelenovka in order to accuse Ukraine of war crimes, as well as to hide the torture and execution of Ukrainian prisoners.
According to the commander of the missile forces and artillery of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not carry out rocket and artillery strikes in the Yelenovka area. The Armed Forces of Ukraine fully comply with the norms of international humanitarian law, they have never conducted and are not conducting shelling of civilian infrastructure, especially those places where prisoners of war are kept, the General Staff emphasized.
“Such statements about the alleged shelling of civilian infrastructure and the population by the Armed Forces of Ukraine are an outright lie and a provocation, for which Russia, the aggressor, occupier and sponsor of terror, is responsible,” the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement.
Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky's office, also called the attack a "Russian provocation": "Another very cynical provocation by the Russian occupation forces since the beginning of the war. The scale and speed of the information campaign of Russian propagandists indicate that it was just a planned, organized action. We know that some of the captured defenders were transferred to a barracks, which was then fired upon, a few days before the crime. Classic, cynical, thoughtful false flag operation <operation under a false flag – The Insider> ".
The Office of the President demanded an immediate response from the UN and other international organizations to the actions of the Russian authorities. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba also called on "all partners to strongly condemn this gross violation of international humanitarian law and recognize the Russian Federation as a terrorist state."
The authorities of the “DPR” and Russia claim that Ukraine hit the prison with HIMARS projectiles, killing at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and injuring 73 more.