Former head of notorious penal colony in Donetsk dies in car explosion
- 9 December, 10:11
Former head of a penal colony in Ukraine’s Russian-held eastern Donetsk city has been killed in a car explosion, Russian media reported on Monday. Serhiy Yevsyukov’s car exploded in Yelenovka settlement. He died on the spot, while his wife, who was sitting next to him, has been injured.
Commenting on the incident, Ukrainian blogger and journalist Denys Kazansky accused Yevsyukov of killing dozens of Ukrainian inmates in 2022 in the penal colony in Olenivka. “Yevsyukov was among the organizers of that murder. Fifty-three Ukrainian POWs were killed. The bastard got what he deserved,” the journalist wrote.
The mass killing that Kazansky mentioned refers to the explosion that occurred in a penal colony where Ukrainian prisoners of war, among them defenders of Azov steel factory, were held in Olenivka in Donetsk region on the night of July 29, 2022. Ukraine recovered 23 captured soldiers who had survived the blast. One of them, a 30-year-old combat medic from the Azov unit Ostap Shved, testified about the circumstances of the most massive murder of Ukrainian defenders in Russian captivity ever recorded. In July this year, on the second anniversary of the explosion in the penal colony, Dmytro Lubinets, Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights called on the United Nations to resume the inquiry into the killing of POWs in Olenivka prison. Lubinets condemned lack of reaction from the international community over the deaths of POWs in Olenivka.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced in August 2022 that the organization was setting up a group of experts to investigate the incident. However, five months later, the mission was disbanded due to “lack of security guarantees”.
