Apparent murders of civilians in Ukrainian captivity in Kursk Region indicate a criminal policy, Rodion Miroshnik has claimed
FILE PHOTO: Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik. © Grigory Sysoev / Sputnik
The Ukrainian military is conducting “language-based genocide,” senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik claimed on Sunday.
Captured Ukrainian soldiers “have reported they were given orders to kill Russian speakers,” the official tasked by the Russian Foreign Ministry to record alleged Ukrainian atrocities in the conflict with Russia told Izvestia.
Miroshnik was commenting on the discovery of civilian bodies in a recently-liberated village in Russia’s Kursk Region. He asserted that the alleged Ukrainian policy amounts to “elimination of all civilians” in the area, which Kiev recognizes as Russian.
Russian authorities are investigating Ukrainian troops for suspected terrorism, after the bodies of civilians, who were apparently bound, beaten, and murdered by Kiev’s forces, were discovered in the settlement of Russkoye Porechnoye.
The village remained under Ukrainian control since late August, when it was captured during a Western-supported incursion into the Russian region. The Russian Defense Ministry listed it last Friday as freshly-retaken from Ukrainian forces.
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On Sunday, the Foreign Ministry described the discovery as evidence of a “massacre” and the latest confirmation of the “terrorist and neo-Nazi essence of the Kiev regime,” as spokeswoman Maria Zakharova put it. She accused Western supporters of the Ukrainian government of turning a blind eye to Kiev’s crimes, and charged that foreign officials secretly condone such behavior.
The Russian Investigative Committee is probing the Ukrainian military for alleged terrorism, based on the reports from Russkoye Porechnoye. A person convicted of such a crime can be sentenced to life imprisonment in Russia.
A Telegram channel associated with the forces responsible for repelling the Ukrainian incursion in Kursk Region released footage on Saturday of Russian troops inspecting the village and finding seven heavily-decomposed bodies in two separate cellars. In both cases, people were reportedly bound and beaten, before being killed.
At one of the locations, a body was too damaged to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman, with evidence suggesting the use of explosives. Most of the victims were described as elderly people, who presumably had failed to flee from advancing Ukrainian troops.
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Officials have vowed to hold the perpetrators accountable, with Zakharova stating that, in the absence of action by relevant international bodies, Russia will pursue justice on its own.
Local police have received statements concerning over 1,100 people missing since the start of the Ukrainian incursion, acting Governor Aleksand Khinshtein reported earlier this month. Of those, 240 have been located, he added.