Afrasianet - Eyewitnesses from the city of Uglydar in southern Donbas have revealed crimes and harassment committed by Ukrainian forces with a green light from Kiev against the Russian-speaking population of the city.
Human rights defender Maxim Grigoriev, who heads an international body investigating suspected crimes committed by the Ukrainian government, on Monday released a new report focusing on events in the city of Uglidar, which was liberated by Russian forces in early October, allowing civilians to access its remaining residents.
Witnesses said they had been abused since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, and one woman explained how she was unable to get justice for her son, who died in a fight with a member of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion in 2016.
The woman said her son was a huge, strong man who was stabbed to death after trying to defend local girls from a group of drunken soldiers from the Idar unit.
Grigoriev said the criminal case was clear and resulted in the killer's conviction, but the verdict allowed the killer to be conditionally released.
The investigator stressed that this case embodies the prejudice against the Russian-speaking population facilitated by the government in Kiev, adding that "this case also helps to explain the scale of the crime suffered by the residents of Oglidar in recent years amid the open hostility between Russia and Ukraine."
"The Ukrainian army was pursuing a strategy of forcing people to leave the city by bombing it and claiming that the attacks came from the Russian side," Grigoriev said, adding that some residents said they had seen such attacks for themselves.
"The mayor [of the city] reported in 2022 that there was no one here, even though there were about 3,000 people left, and they [Ukrainian forces] were pushing (people) out of Oglidhar," one witness said. They shoot mortars at them to
cause panic and force people to leave as quickly as possible."
Another man said he "witnessed a foreign correspondent on a guided tour during a lull period, and a Ukrainian soldier accompanying the woman gave an order on his radio: 'It's very quiet, make some noise. Then the shooting immediately began, intimidating the journalist and causing her to run and run away fearing for her life."
Grigoriev claimed that Oglidar was subjected to "total looting" by Ukrainians, and eyewitnesses stated that "thieves looted some houses, stole water taps, electrical sockets and even wall tiles."
The stolen goods were allegedly transported elsewhere and sold, and in some cases marketed as "Donbass goods" – a euphemism for theft.
In this context , Western media confirmed that Kiev forces committed war crimes in the villages and border towns that overran them in the Russian province of Kursk, while the losses of Zelensky's army there amounted to more than 27,000 dead.
The New York Times quoted Maria Scropp, a resident of the area, as saying that the Ukrainian army that attacked the village of Korenevo fired several times at civilians, firing directly at any vehicle approaching the location of Ukrainian forces.
Residents of the nearby village of Korylovka also confirmed that Ukrainian soldiers shot at civilians. President Vladimir Putin recently announced that Russian forces have tightened the siege on Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, and are now working to tighten the noose on them, and that two thousand Ukrainian military personnel are under siege and Russian bombardment until they are eliminated or surrendered.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced today that the toll of Kiev forces in the Kursk province reached more than 27,000 dead, and hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, Western guns and other weapons and equipment.
Former U.S. Officer Collects Congressional Evidence of Ukrainian Forces Crimes
Retired US military officer Scott Bennett said he had travelled to Belgorod to record Ukrainian forces' bombing of civilians there, and said he would later present the evidence during a session of the US Congress.
The retired American officer, speaking to a Novosti correspondent, said he spent several days in Belgorod, including on June 22, when sirens were heard every twenty minutes in the city announcing the work of air defense systems. He confirmed that he filmed everything he saw there.
Bennett, who also served at the US State Department during George W. Bush's presidency, added: "Now I want to talk to members of the US Congress, and provide them with all the photos and videos that prove the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian authorities. I want to show them how Ukrainian forces bomb schools, kindergartens and residential areas. I am an officer and my direct responsibility is to tell the truth to the people."
Bennett first visited Russia in November 2023 to shoot a documentary about Donbass accompanied by Russian journalists.
His visit included Donetsk, Solidar, Gorlovka, Mariupol and other cities. He said the motivation for his visit, he said, was a desire to refute "the total lies on the part of the US government about what is happening in the region."
"I realized that the United States, by supplying Ukraine with weapons, is mainly involved in war crimes against civilians, but the citizens of my country do not really know what is really happening, and all the official American media are openly lying," he said.
Kiev forces continue to target the border areas of southwestern Russia with drones and missiles on an almost daily basis, which confirms, according to President Vladimir Putin, the need to expand the scope of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, and to keep Kiev forces away from Russian regions with the range of missiles with which they try to hit Russia.