2 years after Ukrainian POW prison attack, survivors and leaked UN analysis point to Russia as culprit

FILE - Journalists visit the destroyed barracks at the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison holding Ukrainian POWs in eastern Ukraine, Aug. 10, 2022. Russia blamed Ukraine at the time but interviews with survivors and an internal U.N. analysis point to Russia as the culprit. FILE - Tetiana Poltorak, left, and Tetiana Artemenko place flags to honor Ukrainian prisoners of war killed in the Olenivka region at a memorial site near the Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 5, 2023. FILE - This image from video shows the damaged barracks at the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison in Olenivka, eastern Ukraine, on July 29, 2022. FILE - Soldiers lower the coffin of Andrii Konyaev during his funeral in Fastiv, Ukraine, on May 23, 2023. He and more than 50 Ukrainians died in the July 29, 2022, explosions at Olenivka, a Russia-controlled prison camp in eastern Ukraine. FILE - People hold signs outside the Russian embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 29, 2023, to mark the anniversary of the explosions at the Russian-controlled prison barracks in Olenivka, eastern Ukraine, which killed dozens of Ukrainian POWs.

The former prisoners of war still puzzle over the strange events leading up to the night now seared into their memories, when an explosion ripped through the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison barracks and killed so many comrades two years ago.