White House expects Russia to try to frame Ukraine for attack that killed POWs

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The Biden administration believes Russian officials will attempt to frame Ukrainian forces for the July 29 attack on Olenivka Prison that killed more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that it would begin a fact-finding mission into the strike just days after both sides, who have blamed one another, called for independent investigations.

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“We expect that Russian officials are planning to falsify evidence in order to attribute the attack on Olenivka Prison on 29 July to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF),” a U.S. official told the Washington Examiner on Thursday based on downgraded intelligence. “We anticipate that Russian officials will try to frame the UAF in anticipation of journalists and potential investigators visiting the site of the attack.”

“We have reason to believe that Russia would go so far as to make it appear that Ukrainian HIMARS were to blame before journalists arrive,” the official said, referencing the U.S.-provided Lockheed Martin-built high mobility advanced rocket systems that have proved to have made a significant difference in the battle.

A senior military official told reporters last week that the Pentagon couldn’t definitively confirm who launched the strike, but the official advised reporters to “apply some caution specifically to what the Russians are telling us, just because we know that they have made several claims in the past that have not been close to correct.”

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The Russians have repeatedly proven throughout the war that its leaders are willing to lie about the status of the situation and for their reasons of even invading in the first place. They have repeatedly denied hitting civilian infrastructure, including indiscriminate attacks that have resulted in the deaths of thousands, and Kremlin leaders claimed their ambitions in the war was to rid Ukraine of neo-Nazis.

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