The UN (United Nations) has chosen General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz to head a mission that will investigate the explosion at the Olenivka detention center in Ukraine, which killed dozens of prisoners of war.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres made the announcement this Thursday (18) in a conversation with journalists in Lviv, Ukraine. He was alongside the presidents of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The mission led by Santos Cruz will be installed at the request of the governments of Ukraine and Russia to the UN. Former minister of the Bolsonaro government, Santos Cruz is known at the UN for having worked in two peace missions, in Haiti and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the United Nations news agency, Guterres highlighted in the announcement that the Brazilian military officer is “a respected officer with more than 40 years of experience in public and military security, including commanding peace missions.”
The Olenivka detention centre, where Ukrainian prisoners were being held, came under attack on 29 July. Since then, Russia and Ukraine have traded mutual accusations about who ordered and carried out the operation.
The Russian Defense Ministry said attacks from Kiev with US-made Himars systems hit the site, killing at least 40 prisoners and injuring another 75 overnight. The folder alleges that the prison housed, among others, members of the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi group incorporated into the Ukrainian Army.
“This is a provocation aimed at scaring the soldiers and dissuading them from surrendering,” the agency said in a statement. Russian state channels have released images of burning buildings, but the information could not be independently confirmed.
Kiev has denied the attack and blamed the bombing on the Russians, saying Moscow forces attacked the prison in an attempt to accuse Ukraine of committing war crimes and hide the torture and executions of prisoners of war it allegedly carried out.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba used the episode to ask for international help. “I appeal to everyone to condemn this brutal violation of international humanitarian law and recognize Russia as a terrorist state,” he wrote on Twitter.
