Ukrainian Militants’ Vengeful Backlash Against Civilians
Retreating AFU Troops Attack from Schools and Hospitals, Burn Church, Set Fire to Grain — Russian MoD
Russian forces continue to drive Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and neo-Nazi militias out of the Donbas region, home of the break-away People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk.
As of Tuesday, June 7th, 97% of the Lugansk People’s Republic is free from Ukrainian control, according to Russia’s National Center for State Defense. And, investigators say, retreating Ukrainian troops are showing their rage in vengeful retaliation against churches, schools, hospitals, and even grain elevators.
Grain fields turned into minefields, grain stores burned
More than 50,000 tons of grain at a seaport in Mariupol were burned by Ukrainian militants, according to a statement issued Tuesday, June 7th, by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The statement says that “fighters of the nationalist battalions, leaving the captured territories and refusing to leave supplies of grain to Mariupol residents, deliberately set fire to a large grain storage facility in the seaport.”
In the Kharkov Oblast, the AFU has deployed armored vehicles and set up firing positions next to grain elevators in the village of Gubarevka, the MoD reports, and at a grain elevator in the township of Zolochevskyi, AFU units have deployed artillery guns, presumably American M777 howitzers. These have been used to shell bordering areas within the Russian Federation, the MoD says.
AFU troops also took refuge inside grain and potato storage hangers in territory claimed by the Donetsk People’s Republic, investigators say, deploying heavy armored vehicles and large-caliber artillery in the surrounding area. And in nearby Novodonetskoe village, nationalist militias of Ukraine have deployed artillery and MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) at a grain elevator, using it for cover while they shell nearby settlements.
Russian authorities believe that the AFU are trying to provoke retaliatory fire, to trick Russian servicemen into firing on civilian infrastructure and use that to further smear the Russian Armed Forces in the eyes of the world, a scenario which has already happened repeatedly with devastating effects in western media.
The attacks on food supplies come in the wake of looming concerns over food shortages worldwide.
Even in areas of Donbas freed from Ukrainian control, farmers, desperate to begin spring planting, must wait until their fields are demined. Russian Airborne troops are working methodically but quickly to remove active explosives from agricultural lands.
“The fields were mined, it was scary,” an unidentified farmer says in the above video, relieved that for him at least, the danger has abated. “We have already started cultivating, fertilizing the soil, as well as sowing fields. Everything is getting better”
Wooden Church set ablaze in Ancient Monastery
On Saturday, June 4th, retreating units of the 79th Air Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, no doubt furious at their ouster from Donetsk People’s Republic, set fire to a wooden skete at the All Saints of the Russian Land monastery at Svyatogorsk Lavra, according to a statement from the Russian MoD. The monastery was built in the 17th century. The skete was originally built in 1947 and had been rebuilt in 2009.
According to local residents, the MoD says, the wooden walls just below the dome were shelled by incendiaries from a high-caliber machine gun mounted on a Kozak Ukrainian armored vehicle.
During a Tuesday briefing, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, Chief Spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Defense, says eyewitness confirmed it was Ukrainian nationalists who set fire to the building and that Ukrainian military had arrived at the Svyatogorsk Historical and Architectural Reserve as early as June 2nd.
The Reserve is located south of the city of Svyatogorsk, across the Seversky Donets (the Northern Donets) River. Konashenkov believes that the AFU were surveying the area in order to set up artillery positions on higher ground where they would have a clear shot at Russian troops on the other side of the river. The nationalists allegedly blew up a bridge crossing the river on June 6th.
Konashenkov surmises that the retreating Ukrainian fighters, who had already lost control of the city on June 4th, used the Orthodox shrines of Lavra as a “shield,” knowing that Russian servicemen would not shell places of worship and cultural monuments.
Monks and local territorial defense fought unsuccessfully to put out the fire, Konashenkov says, hindered by Ukrainian militants firing shots to prevent their efforts. Fortunately, no further damage was done to the Orthodox monuments, according to the MoD, and the militants fled southward towards Ukrainian-controlled areas in Sviridovo.
Schools, Hospitals used as Shields
In a June 4 statement, the Joint-Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response says that it continues to document inhumane treatment of civilians and use of residential buildings, schools, kindergartens and other social infrastructure facilities taken over for military purposes by armed Ukrainian groups.
In Kharkov, investigators say, the nationalists set up firing positions and artillery guns in the courtyards inside of apartment blocks, and residents were not allowed to leave their homes under the pretext of “security.”
In Slavyansk, Donetsk People’s Republic, militants belonging to nationalist groups set up in schools №. 5 and №. 6, in a music school, in a vocational school for railroad workers, in a technical school and in a boarding school, according to investigators, and deployed heavy armament and armored vehicles at a compound feed plant.
In Druzhkovka, Donetsk People’s Republic, the AFU set up a command post in school № 1, investigators say, and deployed multiple rocket launchers in apartment blocks located nearby, while residents were intentionally not evacuated.
Investigators believe, once again, the goal is to inflict as much damage as possible on Russian troops from locations which Russian servicemen are not willing to strike, or to provoke a counter-attack so that they can accuse Russian troops of attacking civilians.
The same actions are described in a June 6 statement. Here, investigators report that hospitals and clinics were used as strongholds, firing points and ammunition depots by AFU and territorial defense units while staff and patients were forcibly detained, again, under the pretext of ensuring their “safety.”
In Kharkov, investigators say, the AFU set up firing positions in the buildings of the Road Clinical Hospital, City Hospital №. 25, the Endocrinology Clinic of the Institute of Endocrine Pathology and Children’s Polyclinic №. 23. In the city of Nikolaev, Ukrainian territorial defense battalions took position in the buildings of the medical center and the hospital, placing artillery and MLRS in the surrounding territory.
In Kramatorsk, Donetsk People’s Republic, Investigators say, Ukrainian militants set up a stronghold and ammunition depot in hospital № 2 and mined the approaches to the medical facility. Some 360 kilometers away, in Ugroedy, DPR, Ukrainian armed formations set up another stronghold in a local hospital, placing MLRS and artillery guns right on the grounds of the medical facility.
An unnamed AFU fighter who surrendered to Russian forces describes, his eyes downcast, his body intermittently trembling, how his unit hid in an empty school:
“Many civilians stayed in their houses in the settlement,” he says in the June 6th video, “So we hid in an empty school, we didn’t expel the civilians from their homes. We stayed in that school for some time and then we left.” He goes on to describe his unit’s harrowing retreat and his eventual surrender to Russian forces.
Investigators say that their repeated statements about violations of international humanitarian law remain unnoticed so far by international humanitarian organizations such as the WHO (World Health Organization).
Russians provide 27,000 tons of humanitarian aid
Meanwhile, Russian forces continue to supply civilians with food and other humanitarian aid.
On Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that within 24 hours, more than 624 tons of essential goods and food were handed over to the populations of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the regions of Kharkov and Zaporozhe. Additionally, more than 20,000 people have been evacuated to Russia from dangerous areas of Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics.
In the above June 4 video, which was translated with help from Lilya Takumbetova, Russian servicemen deliver humanitarian aid to veterans of World War Two, or “The Great Patriotic War,” as it is known in Russia and the former Soviet Bloc. The soldiers handed out orange-and-black ribbons of St. George, “as tokens of victory,” recalling to memory their victory over Nazi Germany.
The recipients of these gifts, mostly elderly women including a 103-year-old, expressed their gratitude in a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian and some even prayed for the soldiers. The Russian MoD states that additional assistance was provided to families with children and those with disabilities.
More than 27,000 tons of goods have been handed over to civilians, the MoD reports.
Finally, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held a telephone conversation on Tuesday with Turkey’s Minister of National Defense, Hulusi Akar. The main focus of the discussion was “an exchange of views and assessments of the situation in Ukraine and Syria,” however the defense ministers also talked in detail about how to safely allow grain exports to continue from the territory of Ukraine, through the Black Sea.
In late March, Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) accused Ukraine of placing mines in the Black Sea, which broke loose from their moorings near Ukrainian ports and drifted away in a storm. Ukrainian authorities claimed that the mines were Russian despite ample evidence of their origin.
Though several countries have assisted in the removal of the mines, it’s not certain at this time whether all have been retrieved and neutralized.
