International organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross or the UN had no access to the defenders of Azovstal held prisoners in either Donetsk hospital or the POW camp in Olenivka, Azov regiment fighters say.
Even now, no international organization, such as the ICRC, the UN, or Amnesty International, records testimony from Azov fighters, even though some of them have already been released.
Dmytro Usichenko, nom de guerre Vyshnia (Cherry), an Azov regiment fighter, said that he saw the ICRC banner only during his evacuation. According to him, people from the ICRC tried to visit the camp in Olenivka, but they weren’t allowed. Neither did they speak with him later.
Vladyslav Zhaivoronok, nom de guerre Wikipedia, also says that no international organization interviewed him after he was released.
"The only agency that recorded information about the conditions of our imprisonment was our Security Service of Ukraine. They actually cared about what happened to us. When I was imprisoned, I never saw a single representative from any international organization. And also now, there’s an information vacuum, since we’re not interesting to them," he says.
Denys Chepurko, nom de guerre Mango, says that he saw representatives of the ICRC in a bus that evacuated him, where they gave out forms to record those who had been taken prisoner.
Vladyslav says he doesn’t understand how the ICRC could assert that they controlled the imprisonment of the fighters and ensured their well-being while the Committee had no access to them.
Chepurko says there were occasions when prisoners were taken for interrogation and never came back.
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