On the night of July 28-29, 2022, the Russian occupiers carried out a terrorist attack, during which at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war died in one of the barracks of the former Volnovakha penal colony No. 120 in Donetsk region, known as “Olenivka”. The bombed-out barracks housed captured Azov combatants who defended Mariupol and left Azovstal. Only last fall, the occupiers began to return the bodies of the fallen soldiers. Two DNA tests had to be done on each of them. Therefore, it was possible to bury some murdered a year after their death. This year, on July 24, Vitalii Zinchuk, a 25-year-old senior rifleman and gunner of the 1st anti-tank unit of the anti-tank platoon of the Azov regiment (nickname “Radio”), was given the last honors in Dnipro. On July 22, 24-year-old Vitalii Lytvyn (nickname “Kadet”) was buried in Pavlohrad. He was a gunner-driver of the “Azov” regiment.

Relatives want a fair investigation into the Russian terrorist attack. Vitalii Zinchuk’s sister, Oleksandra, says that she still cannot understand that her brother is no longer alive. She wants an objective investigation so that the guilty are punished:

“This is a very difficult topic. No proper investigation, as our families would like, is being conducted. Unfortunately, in January, I think, many people heard that the UN mission regarding this terrorist attack was disbanded due to the impossibility of obtaining evidence from the scene of the crime.”

The community of the families of those killed in “Olenivka” requests at the state level to initiate Days of mourning and commemoration of the victims of the terrorist attack. At present, the families of the dead Ukrainian soldiers still hope for an objective investigation of the terrorist attack in Olenivka.