"Lost in their own lies": ombudsman comments on Russian media claims about Azov soldier’s death in jail

UKRAINSKA PRAVDA – TUESDAY, 9 AUGUST 2022, 16:28

Dmytro Lubinets, human rights ombudsman for the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament), reported that Ukraine didn’t receive any information about the death of an Azov regiment war prisoner in a pretrial detention centre – news which had been reported the day before by Russian media.

Source: Lubinets in a commentary for Ukrainska Pravda

Quote: "The Ukrainian side doesn’t know the first or last name of the deceased soldier, and as of now hasn’t received any official reports from the Russian side about the death of the Ukrainian prisoner of war. The National Information Bureau hasn’t received any information either, though it is this institution which, according to Geneva Conventions, conducts the exchange of information with the Russian side about prisoners of war with the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross."

Details: In his opinion, the Russian media has spread disinformation and "got lost in its own lies."

Quote: "The death of the prisoner of war was only reported on 9 August 2022 in the Russian media, but in the article it is stated that he ‘died in the pretrial detention centre of the Donetsk People’s Republic before the investigation concerning all the accused was finished and taken to court."

The report about taking the case to court was released a month before that, on 5 July 2022, when the so-called ‘prosecutor’s office of the DPR’ transferred the case to the so-called ‘Supreme Court of the DPR’. The prosecutor’s office requires that the 10 prisoners of war from the ‘Medvedi SS’ group receive capital punishment. On 1 August 2022, the kangaroo court began to hear the ‘case’ in Donetsk. The sentence is to be announced tomorrow, on 10 August 2022."

Details: Thus the report about the death of the prisoner of war was published a month later, i.e. the day before the public sentencing. Lubinets thinks this was done on purpose because they intend to rely on the testimony of a prisoner whose death was allegedly accidental. It also shows that there are no real facts of the crimes committed by the Ukrainian soldiers.

Lubinets added that this Russian information operation aims to put pressure on prisoners of war and their families, Ukraine and international partners.

Quote: "This is a component of the same process, just like sentencing three people to death from the temporarily occupied territories: Saadun Bragim from Morocco, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, citizens of Great Britain who defended Ukraine in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Any organisation of the court process and any decisions of the quasi-courts in the temporarily occupied territories aren’t recognized by Ukraine and the world. Russia’s attempts to raise the stakes and make the Ukrainian side and its partners negotiate with proxy-formations, such as the so-called ‘DPR’, won’t have any success."

Background:

• On 9 August the Russian Kremlin-aligned information agency TASS reported that one of the Ukrainian soldiers who left Azovstal "died from drug use in a pre-trial detention centre". Russia also claimed that the "case" against the deceased will be closed but "his testimony will be taken into account."
• In May, Denis Pushilin [Kremlin-appointed leader of the separatist militants in temporarily occupied Donetsk] spoke for the first time in favour of the "international tribunal" for the Ukrainian soldiers from Azovstal.

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