Provocations in Donbas continue
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For the first time in Russia, they officially started talking about mass graves in the Donbass, these reports are not new and contradictory.
Literally the next day after the statement of Russian President Vladimir Putin that “what is happening in the Donbass” is “genocide”, the Investigative Committee (IC) of Russia published a report on a criminal case in connection with “mass graves of civilians” allegedly found on the territory of Donbass controlled by militants. persons”. The message contains direct accusations against the Ukrainian military. It is about the “death and injury of thousands of civilians, Russian-speaking groups”, and about the “intent to destroy the inhabitants of Donbass”, and the underlined information about the “bodies of women of different ages” among the allegedly found and exhumed remains of “at least 295 civilians who died as a result of indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian armed forces in 2014”.
Contradictory data of the RF IC
Why the graves were found on the territory not controlled by Ukraine, and how the Investigative Committee came to the conclusion that all of them were civilians and victims of shelling by the Ukrainian military, it’s not clear from the message.
It also ignores the fact that throughout the entire conflict in Donbass, shelling and ceasefire violations are observed by militants, which is clearly recorded in their daily reports by observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Most of the settlements mentioned in the message of the Investigative Committee, where the graves were allegedly found, are located on the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed “Luhansk people’s republic” (“LPR”), one – the “Donetsk people’s republic” (“DPR”).
This is the first mention of the mass graves found in the Donbass by official Russian authorities. Earlier, the Investigative Committee had already opened a criminal case in connection with the death of a child and his grandmother in 2021 as a result of shelling (supposedly by the Ukrainian military). And in 2015, the Investigative Committee opened cases against the then Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov and a number of other officials in connection with “shelling of residential areas of Donbass, as a result of which local residents regularly die.” But it is the mass graves in the Donbass that are being officially announced in Moscow for the first time.
Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation spoke about burials months after the “find”
It is noteworthy that the information about the burials itself is not new. As far back as the fall of 2021, the pro-Russian separatists of Donbass started talking about burials, apparently the same ones that the RF Investigative Committee has now reported. At least, it was about the same settlements. In addition, the UK report explicitly states that “5 spontaneous mass graves” were discovered in “August-October 2021.”
In early November 2021, the militants announced the exhumation of the bodies of hundreds of people from several burial sites both in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. According to the militants, all the people whose remains were found died in the first months of the conflict in Donbass, namely “in the summer and autumn of 2014.” The figures then spread by the “DNR” and “LNR” do not coincide with those cited now by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. Fighters in Donetsk and Luhansk spoke about the found remains of 47 and 267 people, respectively.
And already in February 2022 – a few days before the announcement of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation – the so-called “head of the DNR” Denis Pushilin made statements about mass graves in the Donetsk region. In total, in the territory controlled by the Donetsk militants, according to him, “more than 130 places of mass and spontaneous burial of victims of Ukrainian aggression” were discovered and opened.
People were buried in common graves by “occupation authorities”
As early as November 2021, a member of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbas from Ukraine, Serhiy Garmash, drew attention to the organized nature of the information campaign of militants related to mass graves, with the obligatory mention that all the dead found were “victims of the Ukrainian aggression”. “Indeed, 7-6 years after those tragic events, when active hostilities were carried out in the Donbass, work has finally begun in ORDLO to open mass graves and identify the remains in them, that is, work to search for the missing,” he said. he attention on his Facebook page. “Moreover, it was the occupying ‘authorities’, and not the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who buried people who died in the territory they controlled in common graves, without even identifying their identities,” Garmash wrote.
To reinforce his words, he cites a message from the information resource of the Luhansk separatists “Lugansk Information Center”, dated October 8, 2021. It mentions that in July-August 2014 “a decision was made to temporarily bury the dead on the territory of the regional psycho-neurological dispensary near the village of Vidnoe in the south-east of Lugansk.” This village is among those mentioned in the current report of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.
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