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DPR leader sees attempt to hide Zelensky’s crimes in Kiev’s strike on Yelenovka

It is reported that the investigation qualified the strike on the correctional facility in Yelenovka as an act of terrorism, which left 51 people killed and another 142 injured

YELENOVKA, August 11. /TASS/. The recent strike Kiev made on a pre-trial detention center in Yelenovka where Ukrainian prisoners of war were held was an attempt to hide the crimes committed by the country’s officials, including Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, said the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin.

"The motive here was clear. First, it was to hush it up, to prevent them from speaking, from confessing those crimes. For not only were they the executors of war crimes, they were also witnesses. And specific people were giving them orders, and, according to our data, Zelensky himself often directly interfered here," Pushilin told reporters, when asked about the motives for the strike.

The DPR leader said the attack was made after Ukrainian POWs began to give testimony to identify people who had been giving them orders "which led them to commit war crimes against civilians." "The strike was delivered immediately after those video confessions emerged," Pushilin emphasized.

Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported earlier that On July 29, Ukrainian forces delivered a strike from an American HIMARS multiple launch rocket system on the Yelenovka pre-trial detention center. Russia’s top brass said later that Moscow had officially invited experts of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to conduct an impartial investigation of the attack.

DPR investigative authorities told TASS that in the strike in Yelenovka, Ukrainian troops killed about 20 militants of the Azov nationalist battalion (outlawed in Russia), including defendants whose materials were being prepared for submission to the Supreme Court. It was also reported that their testimony was used in other criminal probes.

According to the DPR Prosecutor General’s Office, the investigation qualified the strike on the correctional facility in Yelenovka as an act of terrorism, which left 51 people killed and another 142 injured.