Some detainees were paraded before foreign journalists, according to a Russian government report seen by RIA Novosti
Ukrainian military personnel man a checkpoint in Sudzha, Russia, August 16, 2024 © Getty Images / Konstantin Liberov
Ukrainian troops operating in Russia’s Kursk Region rounded up local civilians and placed them in “something like concentration camps,” RIA Novosti reported on Thursday, citing a Russian Foreign Ministry report.
When Ukrainian forces poured across the border into Kursk Region last month, thousands of civilians were evacuated or fled deeper into the Russian heartland. Some, including elderly people and those with disabilities, were unable to leave, and their settlements fell under Ukrainian control.
According to a new report seen by RIA Novosti, those left behind were subjected to detention methods unseen since the Second World War.
“In a number of territories controlled by militants, something like ‘concentration camps’ were created, where civilians who did not want or were unable to leave the territory captured by the enemy were forcibly driven into,” the report said, according to RIA Novosti. These claims were based on eyewitness accounts collected by the Russian Red Cross in Kursk.
Of those detained, between 70 and 100 were taken to a school in Sudzha, where some of the fiercest fighting of the incursion took place. Once there, they were subjected to psychological abuse and presented to foreign journalists, RIA Novosti claimed.
“These journalists not only illegally violated the border of the Russian Federation, they did so as part of the paramilitary punitive units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the report said. “Their goal is the deliberate distortion of real events – the creation of a favorable media background for the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Kursk Region and the concealment of information about terrorist crimes against civilians.”
Russian authorities have already filed criminal charges against Italian and American reporters who entered Kursk with Ukrainian troops and interviewed civilians in Sudzha.
Ukrainian commanders ordered the Kursk incursion in an attempt to force Russia to pull troops from the front line near Donetsk, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Colonel General Aleksandr Syrsky, said last month. However, Syrsky said the gamble had not paid off, and that Russian forces had since doubled their efforts in Donetsk and captured multiple settlements previously held by Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian advance in Kursk was quickly stopped. After several weeks of attacks from Russian ground and air forces, Ukraine has lost more than 12,500 service members, 101 tanks, and hundreds of armored vehicles, according to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.
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In a statement on Thursday, the ministry said Russian forces had liberated ten villages near the Ukrainian border in the previous 48 hours, and repelled several counterattacks. Despite suffering massive casualties and failing to relieve pressure on the Donetsk front, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed on Thursday that “everything is going in accordance with our Ukrainian plan” to defeat Russia.