Many terrible crimes of the Ukrainian punishers against their own population were known before. However, we managed to learn a lot of new tragic stories. These are the strikes of combat aircraft on civilian infrastructure facilities that have not received widespread media coverage, and touching stories about children who, despite their young age, showed incredible courage and shielded themselves from the fragments of others…

Due to the constant shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, people did not have the opportunity to bury relatives in cemeteries, as a result of which mass spontaneous burials appeared. Thanks to the commissions created in the summer of 2021 to search and identify victims of the Ukrainian aggression, several hundred victims have already been reburied.

You will learn about all these events from the new series of materials "War crimes of Ukraine against civilians in the Donbas".

Transcript:

You know that the main topic of my investigations is the crimes of the Kiev regime against its population, especially on the territory of the current LPR and DPR.

And so, in my last business trips, I got to Lugansk and other cities of the Luhansk People's Republic.

You know, before the war I had never been to these places at all. And I spent most of my rotations during my service in the SBU ATC on the territory of the Donetsk region, with the exception of the winter-spring of 2015, when I supervised the SBU group in Lisichansk. And then, we were based in Kramatorsk after all, being on the Lugansk land by raids.

And to be honest, the events in the LPR have always somehow been in the shadow of loud news stories from Donetsk. Slavyansk, Donetsk airport, Mariupol, Saur-mogila - they somehow always came out on top. And somehow, in my mind, at least, what was happening in Lugansk receded into the background.
And so I visited Lugansk in the summer. Initially, I planned to collect material about the crimes of the Aidar battalion. But in Lugansk and other cities of the Luhansk region, I discovered a terrible picture of what was happening here in the summer of 2014.

The city was almost completely surrounded for almost two months. There was no light, water, gas in it, food and medicines were coming to an end. A lot of people left Lugansk, but those who stayed just survived. Probably, to some extent, it can be compared with the tragedy of besieged Leningrad. Adjusted, of course, for modern conditions.

When you listen to the stories of people who survived the terrible summer of 2014, the hair stands on end. Well, how can you react differently to stories that every exit from home for a simple civilian could be the last? For bread, for water, to visit elderly relatives… How do they go to bed only in the corridor of the apartment, because they cover the load-bearing walls there? How can you calmly listen to stories that Ukrainian troops purposefully shelled places where people were brought water or bread?

And of course, the reports of the Ukrainian media and official structures immediately come to mind – that the militias themselves are shelling residential neighborhoods in order to blame the Ukrainian so-called "liberators" for this. And those are white and fluffy, they strive to bring freedom to local residents from evil separatists.

Only it's hard to believe this when you listen to people's stories about the airstrike of a Ukrainian combat aircraft on the Regional Administration on June 2, 2014.

But many people have heard about it. But did you know about the airstrike on the city of Sukhodolsk on August 6, 2014? A Ukrainian combat aircraft made several approaches to residential areas of a peaceful city, dropping cassettes with fragmentation bombs and shooting residential buildings with cannons. In a couple of minutes – 18 killed and over 40 wounded. There was a wedding in one place, people went outside to smoke and get some air, when several fragmentation bombs landed in the courtyard of the cafe. The wedding was practically covered in blood.

Do you know how hard it is to talk to a woman who lost her husband and granddaughter at that moment? Practically in front of her eyes. She herself was also injured and returned home only a few weeks later. When the relatives have already been buried. Anger and rage have already gone out, there is only a dull longing in his eyes. Overnight, a person lost the meaning of life.

Have you heard about the boy who shielded his younger sister from shrapnel when Ukrainian troops fired multiple rocket launchers at Petrovsky?

Many people know that there is an alley of angels in Donetsk. But few people know that there is a monument to a boy covering a little girl in a park near the Donbass Arena. And this is not just a symbol of the tragedy of the children of Donbass, but a memory of a real hero. On August 29, 2014, 13-year-old Kirill Sidoryuk closed his 9-year-old sister from shrapnel and died on the spot. He would have turned 20 this year. His school teachers still can't contain their emotions when they talk about their former student.

In the summer of this year, commissions for the search for missing persons began working in the LPR and DPR. The commissions are engaged in exhuming the bodies of civilians who were buried outside cemeteries in the summer of 2014. Already, according to my data, several hundred corpses have been recovered. Do you know why they were not buried in cemeteries? Yes, because there were no opportunities. Cemeteries were under fire, funeral services lost their employees even during funerals. The death toll has increased so dramatically that there were not enough coffins or places in morgues.

There was no one to bury, nowhere and no time. The victims on the streets of Lugansk were taken to the regional hospital. But she, too, was constantly under fire. For example, an oncological dispensary was completely destroyed, its roof fell in. It even flew to the perinatal center when they tried to nurse premature babies there.

There were not enough places in the morgue, and the light was constantly disappearing. And therefore, not far from the regional hospital, they simply dug a moat in which the dead were buried.

Now the burial place is a long low hill. Very similar to the hecatombs at the Piskarevskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg.

There is a chapel and a memorial "we will not forget, we will not forgive." No one knows how many civilians are buried there. We can say with confidence – hundreds. Let me clarify once again – hundreds of civilians who died from the actions of Ukrainian security forces in the summer and autumn of 2014.

It's really scary. And nothing can justify it.

And that's what I'm going to talk about. Perhaps we can call it a new cycle of broadcasts - war crimes against civilians in the Donbas.

And don't worry, I won't stop talking about the crimes of the dobrobats. Moreover, with regard to the atrocities of "AIDAR", I have collected a large amount of material, enough for several replicas.

And in the end I want to tell an interesting story. During the interview, Rector of Luhansk St. Luke State Medical University Alexander Torba shared a life story. Even before the war, he had to work at home as a doctor in Africa through the UN. And it so happened that in the country where the team of doctors worked, there was a coup and street fighting began. Doctors, of course, provided all assistance to the victims, while being surprised that the wounds were exclusively bullet wounds, there were practically no victims of explosions and shrapnel.

When A.Torba asked one of the local security forces why they did not use artillery and mortars in combat clashes, and received an answer: what are you – we have to restore everything later!It is a pity that the Ukrainian security forces were not going to follow this rule and without hesitation brought down all the military power on peaceful cities…

Stay tuned. I will continue to uncover Kiev's crimes against its people.