
The aftermath of the car bombing in Russian-occupied Donetsk, 9 December 2024. Photo: Investigative Committee
A car bomb in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine has killed the former director of a penal colony wanted by investigators in Kyiv in connection with a July 2022 massacre of Ukrainian prisoners of war, Telegram channel Mash wrote on Monday.
Sergey Yevsyukov, the former warden of a prison in the Donetsk region village of Olenivka, was killed by a bomb that had been planted under his Toyota Land Cruiser, according to Mash, adding that Yevsyukov’s wife lost a leg in the incident, which took place on Monday morning, and has been hospitalised.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office opened a case against Yevsyukov and his deputy for causing the deaths of 53 Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) soldiers being held as prisoners of war in Olenivka after an explosion at the penal colony in July 2022, in which another 130 prisoners were injured.
The prisoners were mainly from the Azov Battalion, which defended the Azovstal complex, the last Ukrainian stronghold during the siege of Mariupol. The AFU General Staff said at the time that Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group had blown up the penal colony to destroy evidence of the torture and murder of Ukrainian POWs that had been taking place there. Meanwhile, officials from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic accused the AFU of attacking the Olenivka penal colony.
Attacks by the Ukrainian intelligence services on those it deems to have betrayed Ukraine by collaborating with the Russian-installed authorities in eastern Ukraine are relatively common, with AFP reporting last month that the Security Service of Ukraine was behind a car bomb that killed a senior officer in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the city of Sevastopol in Russian-annexed Crimea.