The International Committee of the Red Cross cannot guarantee the safety of Ukrainian prisoners of war – General Director Mardini

OLENA BARSUKOVA – UP. LIFE JOURNALIST, 5 SEPTEMBER 2022

The International Committee of the Red Cross explained the reasons why they cannot guarantee the safety of Ukrainian prisoners of war,in particular regarding the defenders of Azovstal in Olenivka.

ICRC General Director Robert Mardini commented on this issue in an interview to Ukrainska Pravda. Life. 

According to Mardini, the organisation registered an estimated 1,800 combatants who left Azovstal - as was agreed upon by both sides.

"We registered them with the understanding that we would be able to visit them. But we could not… The ICRC is unable to guarantee the safety of Ukrainian prisoners of war. We neither have an army nor weapons." said Robert Mardini.

According to Mardini, the safety of prisoners of war is the responsibility of those holding them.

"Of course, we are devastated to know that prisoners of war are dying in a detention facility, suffering and dying from a lack of medical care, or because of shelling or attack. This is unacceptable.

However, we cannot guarantee their safety because we are not there. This is the responsibility of the parties in accordance with the conventions they adopted, signed and ratified," says the general director of the ICRC.

You can learn more about what the ICRC knows about military and civilian prisoners, and why the organisation necessarily remains "neutral" during wartime from the interview.

It is to be recalled that the Ukrainian troops, defended  Mariupol up until the last, and then had to retreat from Azovstal, where they became  POWs under the control of the Russian Authorities.

The Ukrainians hoped that the safety of the POWs would be guaranteed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, but the Russians staged a terrorist attack in Olenivka and failed to provide lists of Ukrainian PoWs killed.

International organisations are not allowed to visit the prisoners - representatives of the ICRC were given the limited opportunity to examine only a few hundred POWs "on both sides". Russia has violated and continues to violate  numerous regulations agreed upon and clearly stipulated by the Geneva Convention.

So far, ICRC representatives have not yet been allowed to visit Olenivka.

At the same time, General Director Mardini guaranteed that they are doing everything possible in their correspondence with the Russian Federation to have access to the POWs.

See also:

We cannot be sure that other prisoners will not be harmed - wife of marine held in Olenivka"

An Island of Hope: How the Azovstal defenders got out and where they are now

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