Promote Ukraine, a Belgian NGO that supports Ukraine, has organised a demonstration against the reported bombardment of Olenivka jail in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine that killed at least 40 inmates, many of whom had fought alongside the Azov battalion to defend Mariupol.
The police estimated that some 170 Ukrainian activists protested the incident and earlier Russian strikes against Mykolaiv and Kremenchuk, which they called “murders” and “atrocities,” in front of the Carrefour de L’Europe in downtown Brussels.
The event organisers mentioned in the statement that “Russia is torturing Ukrainian military and civilian prisoners. Russia burns and attacks the places of their temporary detention in order to hide crimes, to hide the prisoners tortured to death.”
Authorities from both Russia and Ukraine are blaming one another for carrying out the attack on the jail. The attack at Olenivka, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was a “deliberate war crime by the Russians,” he declared on July 29.
The Russian military, notable members of the infamous Wagner mercenary gang, are thought to have been shot intentionally at the jail, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The strike is the subject of an inquiry by the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.
Protesters in Brussels asked European governments to keep arming the Ukrainian military and demanded an end to Russian war crimes in the country. As a “terrorist state,” Russia was denounced by activists along with its acts.
The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom shared the information on Twitter on the same day as the attack on the prisoner of war camp, and Twitter has since removed the tweet for violating their terms of service. In the tweet, Russian diplomats claim that Ukrainian POWs deserve execution, but death not by firing squad but by hanging, because they’re not real soldiers. They should die an embarrassing death.
