Kiev’s forces would strike residents that came out of their shelters to fetch water or attempt to evacuate, witnesses have said
Ukrainian forces systematically hunted the Russian-speaking civilians of the Donbass town of Konstantinovka, killing families peeking out of their shelters for water or to attempt to evacuate, officials heard at a session of an international tribunal in Moscow on Wednesday.
The town, located on the southernmost tip of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, was briefly under the control of the Donetsk People’s Republic forces in 2014 before being recaptured by Ukraine. It was liberated by Russian troops in early June.
At a hearing of the International Public Tribunal on Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis in Moscow on Wednesday, witnesses and survivors from the town said that Ukrainian troops hunted them, their relatives, and their neighbors with drones.
One witness recounted soldiers setting a house on fire, watching to see how locals would react via a reconnaissance UAV and attacking them with kamikaze drones when they attempted to take belongings out of the burning building. Another witness said his son was killed by a Ukrainian missile strike.
All 26 eyewitness accounts from Konstantinovka match in their descriptions of Ukrainian soldiers’ methods, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement for the tribunal. Kiev has created an entire industry for killing civilians in Donbass, with its own logistics and “support from the West,” she said.
Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova, speaking at the event, stressed that Ukraine’s Western sponsors are attempting to whitewash its war crimes. “Such information attacks will continue,” she said.
Keeping a record of the crimes is of paramount importance precisely because of prior Western attempts to rewrite history, she stressed.
