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Notes -
I thought that both the version of the Russian narrative you quote and the Ukrainian version about them shelling themselves was nonsense (Ukraine was pushing the "Russians shelling themselves" thing about every single shelling that may have looked bad in the eyes of anyone on their side at the time, including anti-personnel mines fired into the urban areas of Donetsk and the near-daily shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP). Surely they would have had better ways to dispose of them if they were interested in this, especially since this sort of shelling presumably only actually killed some hard-to-control small subset of the PoWs on site.
The more plausible explanation was that the Ukrainians shelled it by accident, based on false intel, or because the Russians could have also garrisoned military and equipment at the PoW camp (as they were doing in the NPP) and they were indifferent (as in the NPP) or unaware of the presence of the PoWs. Even in these scenarios, the Russians could have any number of reasons for refusing to admit the UN group, ranging from concerns that the report would find against them regardless of facts (see also the irregularities around their investigation of the Syria chemical weapons incident; it seems quite likely that for a lot of the UN bureaucracy, the US and allies have their thumbs firmly on the scale), via concerns that the group might pass intel to Ukrainians (the Russians repeatedly accused OSCE monitors of doing this since the conflict started, and my impression is that well-connected people on their side do in fact believe this), to the circumstance that they might find even an accurate finding that they were garrisoning valid military targets in a PoW camp to be embarrassing (in fact I'd assume there are some agreements against this as well?).
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