Russia on Sunday invited experts from the United Nations and the Red Cross to investigate the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners held by Moscow-backed separatists, while Ukraine’s president ordered the evacuation of residents of the eastern region of Donetsk.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said hundreds of thousands of people are still exposed to fierce fighting in the Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
“Many refuse to leave, but it still has to happen,” Mr Zelensky said in a televised address on Saturday.
“The more people leaving the Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill.”
Ukraine and Russia have exchanged allegations of a rocket attack or explosion early Friday that appeared to have killed dozens of Ukrainian POWs in the frontline town of Olenivka in eastern Donetsk.
Russia invited UN and Red Cross experts to investigate the dead “in the interest of an objective investigation,” the defense ministry said on Sunday.
The ministry had published a list of 50 Ukrainian POWs killed and 73 injured in a Ukrainian military attack with a US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
The Ukrainian armed forces denied responsibility, saying Russian artillery had attacked the prison to cover up the beatings there.