YELENOVKA /DPR/, August 10. /TASS/. Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) leader Denis Pushilin did not rule out that the tribunal against Ukrainian militants could use statements that POWs had provided before being killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on a pre-trial detention center in Yelenovka.
"Investigative action now makes it possible to create a coherent picture: the testimony from POWs, their fellow servicemen, who are also in captivity, is being studied. Given the fact that we are liberating the territory, we are receiving additional evidence at their command centers, additional information from residents of the liberated territories, which were occupied back then, who also testify to the crimes on the part of these militants. It is not ruled out that this data, too, <...> with a high degree of probability, will be added within the framework of the process," Pushilin replied to a question about the possible regard for the statements from the POWs killed in the strike.
DPR investigative authorities told TASS that in a strike on the detention facility in Yelenovka, Ukrainian troops killed about 20 militants of the Azov nationalist battalion (outlawed in Russia), including the defendants whose materials were being prepared to be referred to the Supreme Court. It was also reported that their testimony was used in the trial of other criminal cases.
According to the DPR Prosecutor General's Office, the investigation classified the strike on the correctional facility in Yelenovka as an act of terrorism, which killed 51 people and left 142 injured.
Earlier, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov reported that on July 29, Ukrainian forces launched a strike using a US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launcher at a pre-trial detention center in Yelenovka, where captured Ukrainian troops are kept including members of the Azov battalion.