French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack on Yelenovka "a massacre perpetrated by the Russian armed forces", and also said that France would send a team of forensic experts to the site of the strike to investigate. Macron said this in a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“A few days after the new massacre perpetrated by the Russian armed forces in Yelenovka, the President of France reaffirmed his support for the Ukrainian people and declared his determination to ensure that these crimes stop and do not go unpunished. France continues to provide support to [Ukraine] by sending a team of forensic experts and a mobile laboratory for DNA analysis to the [strike] site, ”the French president’s website says.
In a conversation with Zelensky, Macron also welcomed the departure of the first ship carrying Ukrainian grain from the port of Odessa.
On July 29, the authorities of the “DPR” reported that Ukraine had hit a prison in Yelenovka in the Donetsk region, where Ukrainian prisoners were kept, as a result, 53 people were killed and another 130 were injured. The Armed Forces of Ukraine claim that the strike was carried out by the Russian military in order to accuse Ukraine of war crimes and to hide the torture and execution of Ukrainian prisoners. The Insider wrote that the propagandists reported on the preparation of a "provocation" as early as June. Volunteer from Mariupol Vitaly Sitnikov, who himself spent more than three months in prison in Yelenovka, said that no prisoners were kept in the industrial zone where the shells hit. The industrial zone was empty almost until the shelling, but a few days before that, hangars were set up there and the Azov fighters were placed in them, which, as it turned out, no one was going to exchange. He also reported about the constant torture in the colony and the fighter who committed suicide because of this.
On July 30, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, condemned the "atrocities" of the Russian armed forces in the form of torturing prisoners of war and shelling the colony in Yelenovka. He stressed that Russia killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Yelenovka, including defenders of Azovstal, who surrendered and were under legal protection under international law.