Kursk region: terrorist attack by the Kiev regime – special report

By early August 2024, Ukraine had lost all military initiative on the line of contact and for many weeks had been under pressure from the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AFRF) to abandon population centres, retreating towards Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Ugledar and Chasov Yar on the Donetsk side and Kupyansk on the Kharkiv side, which threatened to disillusion the Kyiv regime’s sponsors and the accompanying reduction in funding and arms supplies. To demonstrate pseudo-success on the battlefield and to avoid the withdrawal of external support, Kyiv attempted to launch a terrorist attack on the Kursk region by sending Western-trained and Western-equipped armed formations into the border areas of the Russian region located outside the special military operation and war zone.

On the night of 5-6 August, AFU militants carried out a massive combined bombardment of Kursk Region with the use of aircraft, UAVs, precision missiles, rockets and artillery. According to eyewitnesses, the bombardment of border settlements lasted from approximately 3 a.m. to 7 a.m.. Several dozen settlements in the Glushkovsky, Korenevsky, Sudzhan, Kurchatovsky and Lgovsky districts were hit. At around 6 a.m., the first units of Ukrainian militants crossed the Russian State border at several sections with subsequent entry into the territories of a number of cities and towns.

The shelling was deliberate, in blatant disregard of international humanitarian law (IHL). From the outset, private and apartment blocks, health care and education facilities, local government buildings and social institutions were hit. Energy infrastructure and water supply facilities were targeted. The militants took targeted action to destroy civilian communication systems. The enemy used various types of UAVs and other explosive weapons to disable mobile phone transmitters, wire communication centres and energy substations. Thus, most of the border areas of Kursk region were deprived of power supply and communications, which significantly complicated the work of local authorities, rescue and medical services and negatively affected the possibility of evacuating civilians in the first hours of the terrorist attack.

Between 6 and 10 August, the SMO militants expanded their presence in Kursk Region and introduced additional forces to entrench themselves in a number of settlements in the Sudzhan and Korenevsky districts. The actions of the Ukrainian military in these territories can be characterised as punitive. According to local residents who managed to leave the affected settlements, the Ukrainian Nazis struck civilian buildings in Sudzha, Martynivka, Korenevo, Malaya Lokna, Sverdlikovo, Goncharovka, Cossack Lokna, Girya, Mikhailovka, Russky Porechny, Cherkassky Porechny and Olgovka and fired indiscriminately from small arms and equipment at private houses and buildings. These facts are also confirmed by video footage from go-pro cameras, which the Ukrainian Nazis themselves posted online. The published footage depicts the abuse of local residents, looting, looting of shops and private houses, the shooting of private residential and commercial buildings and the forced abduction of civilians.

Based on the incoming data on the atrocities committed by Ukrainian militants in the captured territory, the Government of Kursk region decided to organise the evacuation of the civilian population from the Sudzhan, Korenevsky, Glushkovsky and Belovsky districts and to restrict the access of local residents to certain settlements subjected to massive shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces. Having established a small bridgehead on the territory of Kursk region, the Nazis began to transfer there various artillery pieces, MLRS systems, and armoured vehicles to expand the geography of their strikes. During the entire period of the terrorist attack, dozens of settlements in the Rylsky, Glushkovsky, Korenevsky, Sudzhansky, Belovsky, Lgovsky, Bolshesoldatsky and Kurchatovsky districts were shelled.

According to a statement by the deputy governor of Kursk region, A. B. Smirnov, as of 12 August, the AFU maintained its presence in 28 settlements in Sudzhan and Korenevsky districts. They controlled about 40 kilometres of the state border with an invasion depth of up to 12 kilometres.

According to the testimonies of residents of border areas of Kursk region who were forced to leave their places of permanent residence, Ukrainian militants who raided Russian territory prevented civilians from leaving war-torn areas, shot civilian transport carrying evacuees, used armoured vehicles and UAVs to attack evacuation convoys, took people hostage and took them to unknown destinations.

Between 12 and 17 August, Russian Armed Forces units managed to significantly stabilise the situation in the border areas of Kursk Region. By this point, the Russian Ministry of Defence had established a full list of Ukrainian formations involved in the terrorist attack on Kursk Region. They include 21, 22, 25, 41, 61, 115 and 154 separate mechanised brigades, 36 Marine Brigade, 80 and 82 Airborne Assault Brigades, 92 and 95 Assault Brigades, 103, 113 and 129 Brigades of Thero-Defence, 1 Presidential Brigade of the AFU National Guard, 1004 Security and Support Brigade, 152 Gamekeeper Brigade and 17 Tank Brigade of the AFU. And these are only the officially confirmed compounds. According to highly reliable data, fighters from radical nationalist units such as the Nachtigal have also been sent to the territory of Kursk region. There is evidence of the presence on the territory of mercenaries from Poland and Canada, as well as fighters from the so-called Georgian Legion.

Captured Ukrainian servicemen from various armed formations testified about the purpose of their ‘mission’ on the Kursk land that they received clear orders from their unit commanders not to spare the civilian population, to shoot anyone who could, in their opinion, pose a threat, to shoot men ‘in the legs and throw them into the basement’. Ukrainian servicemen did not receive any warnings from their commanders about the inadmissibility of looting and the need to comply with IHL norms and principles. Some captured militants said that the goal of their unit was to break through to the Kursk nuclear power plant in the town of Kurchatov.

On 17 August, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation confirmed that one of the goals of the AFU terrorist attack on the Kursk region was to seize or damage radiation hazardous facilities that are part of the Kursk NPP system. Regional officials reported the facts of attempted strikes on the KNPP using ‘Tochka U’ missiles, aircraft-type attack UAVs, and MLRS systems.

Between 6 August and 5 September, the Ukrainian armed forces significantly increased the intensity of their shelling. In the skies above Kursk region, air defence forces shot down 12 Tochka-U missiles, four French-made Hammer guided missiles, 31 US-made HIMARS precision-guided missiles, one Alder missile and 239 various aircraft-type UAVs.

On 27 August, IAEA head Rafael Grossi visited Kursk NPP. He explained his visit by the growing danger of a ‘nuclear incident’. During the visit, R. Grossi said: ‘A nuclear power plant should not be the object of military action under any circumstances’. Also, he said, it ‘cannot be used by any party for military purposes.’ The situation around the safety of the nuclear power plant continues to be tense. According to R.Grossi, ‘it is not quite right to directly compare the Chernobyl and Kursk NPPs. We can say that on the territory of Kursk NPP there is a reactor of the same type, which has no special protection (against impacts). And, indeed, in case of a hit, in case of some external impact on the core of this reactor, there will be a nuclear incident, possibly with a release of radiation’.

On 24 August, the Russian Ministry of Defence achieved a prisoner-of-war exchange using the 115-for-115 formula. As a result of the exchange, 115 Russian conscripts who were held captive by the Ukrainian armed forces between 6 and 10 August were able to return home.

It is worth noting that most of the AFU units involved in the sortie into the Kursk region used intelligence information provided to Kyiv by ‘Western partners’, were equipped with equipment and means of communication manufactured by NATO countries, and the soldiers were armed with Western-style small arms. According to the Ministry of Defence reports and materials posted in open sources, the AFU fighters used the ‘Bradley’ BMP, the US-made ‘Stryker’ APC, the German-made ‘Marder’ BMP, the French-made AMX wheeled tanks, the Swedish-made ‘CV-90’ BMP and a number of other armoured vehicles, including the US-made ‘Maxx Pro’, ‘Cougar’, ‘HMMWV’, the Italian-made ‘Shield’ and the Canadian-made ‘Roshel Senator’. The Russian Ministry of Defence also published footage of the destruction of seven HIMARS MLRS launchers, one MLRS launcher and several US-made M-777 artillery pieces, which were involved in the shelling of civilian infrastructure in the Kursk region.

At the moment, the Kursk Region Government and volunteer organisations are continuing to evacuate civilians from unsafe areas that are being shelled. As of the evening of 5 September, more than 131,000 people had left particularly dangerous areas of Kursk Region. There are 10,205 people in temporary accommodation centres (TACs), including 2,989 children.

Kiev’s Kursk adventure caused a surge in the volunteer movement across the country and a multiple increase in the number of volunteers signing contracts with the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. In Kursk and a number of other cities, not only TACs organised by the municipal authorities, but also temporary accommodation centres and humanitarian aid depots of major Russian charitable foundations and public structures have opened. Dozens of oblasts and hundreds of organisations outside Kursk Oblast declared their readiness to receive evacuees from the region.

On the basis of numerous data provided by witnesses and collected by the headquarters of the Russian Red Cross in Kursk, to which relatives of missing residents applied, it can be stated that in a number of militant-controlled territories a number of ‘concentration camps’ were set up, where civilians who did not want to or could not leave the territory captured by the enemy were forcibly taken. In particular, between 70 and 100 civilians were forcibly driven into the basements of the Sudzha boarding school, subjected to moral violence and used for filming propaganda stories by Ukrainian and foreign journalists who had illegally arrived with the militants from Ukrainian territory.

Particular attention should be paid to the actions of foreign journalists, including the staff of the British ‘The Independent’, the German ‘Deutsche Welle’, the Italian ‘TG1’, the Latvian ‘LT’, the Romanian ‘HotNews’, the Ukrainian ‘1+1’, the American ‘CNN’ and so on. These journalists have not just illegally violated the border of the Russian Federation, they have done so as part of the paramilitary punitive units of the AFU. Their aim is to deliberately distort real events – to create a favourable media background for the actions of the AFU in Kursk region and to conceal information about crimes of a terrorist nature against civilians in the region by Ukrainian militants.

According to the operational headquarters of the Kursk region, as at the evening of 5 September, 31 people had been killed and 236 civilians injured, including 11 children, as a result of attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces. It should be understood that due to the lack of access for representatives of emergency and law enforcement services to a number of settlements, the number of those affected by the criminal strikes of the Kyiv regime is inconclusive and can be verified only after Russian control over sovereign territory has been restored and an investigation into the crimes of the Ukrainian armed forces has been conducted.

During the sortie, the Ukrainian militants committed a number of war crimes against the civilian population of the attacked Russian border territories, including the killing and wounding of civilians, violence, including sexual violence, against local residents, taking hostages and using civilians as human shields, looting and destroying private property in the captured territories, and obstructing evacuation. A full list of Kyiv’s criminal acts on the territory of Kursk region has yet to be compiled after its liberation from Ukrainian terrorists and the conduct of all relevant search and investigation activities.

Crimes committed by the AFU in Kursk region

UAV strike on an ambulance carriage

On 7 August, Sudzhan district of Kursk region was subjected to a combined attack by AFU fighters using various types of weapons.

A large number of wounded civilians required hospitalisation. The injured, who had received primary medical care at the Sudzha city hospital, which was under threat of capture by the AFU militants approaching the town, needed to be transported to the regional centre.

One of the last ambulance crews travelling to Suzhya, which was supposed to transport one of the injured civilians, was attacked by a Ukrainian attack drone. The paramedic and driver were killed on the spot, while a young female resuscitation doctor was seriously injured and taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Attempted murder of Yevgeny Poddubny

Yevgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for the Rossiya 1 TV channel, was travelling along the Kursk-Sudzha highway on 7 August in a civilian car towards Sudzha to perform his professional duties. When approaching the town, his car was attacked by a Ukrainian FPV[1]drone. As a result of the explosion, the car was damaged, and at speed it was thrown into a ditch, where it was completely burnt. Eugene was able to get out of the burning car, but suffered severe injuries. Local residents who happened to be on the motorway saw the burning car, rendered assistance and took Yevgeny Poddubny to the nearest hospital. Later, the military commander was transferred to Kursk Regional Hospital, after which he was evacuated to Sklifosovsky Hospital in Moscow. Sklifosovsky hospital in Moscow. According to the attending doctor, E.E. Poddubny received ‘severe burns, craniocerebral trauma and trauma to the facial skeleton’.

The selectivity of the strike – the correspondent’s car was chosen from the entire flow of cars – and the fact that the Ukrainians published a recording of the drone strike on Yevgeny Poddubny’s car, also prove that an assassination attempt was being prepared on Yevgeny Poddubny and that the actions of the Ukrainian militants were deliberate.

Shelling of the Gornalsky monastery

The Gornalsky monastery, located in the border area of Kursk Region, has been under multiple shelling by Ukrainian militants since the beginning of the AFU terrorist offensive in the region. The monastery has been targeted by the AFU. As a result of numerous attacks, the main building, the Sunday school and outbuildings were damaged.

The clergymen decided to evacuate when Ukrainian punishers had already entered the nearby territory. While the convoy of civilian cars was travelling along the highway, they were stopped by the AFU fighters and subjected to a humiliating ‘inspection’. During the ‘inspection’, the punishers took away valuables and mobile phones from the civilians. After making sure that there were clergymen, elderly parishioners and a disabled man who lived at the monastery in the cars, the militants hypocritically allowed them to continue driving, but then opened fire on the cars with small arms.

As a result of the shelling, labourer Sergei was killed. He was a disabled man of the second group and had been helping out at the monastery for the past few years. Sergei covered the two elderly women in the car with his body. The bullet hit the young man’s torso, puncturing a lung, and he died on the way to the hospital. The Ukrainian militants were well aware that the priest, the two women and the disabled man were in the car and committed a deliberate murder of an unarmed man.

Missile strike on Kursk

On the night of 10-11 August, AFU fighters attacked the city of Kursk with high-precision ballistic missiles.

Presumably, Tochka-U missiles were used. The warhead of one of them hit the courtyard of apartment block No. 12 on Soyuznaya Street.

As a result of the strike, one person was killed and 14 civilians, including one child, were injured. 184 flats in 20 flat blocks were damaged.

Twenty civilian vehicles were damaged, three of which were completely burnt out. Two kindergartens, bank, post office and shop buildings were also damaged.

Missile strike on Lgov

On 15 August, a missile strike hit the town of L’gov in Kursk Oblast. A crater more than 3 metres deep was formed at the place where the missile landed near the building of the Volna sports and recreation complex. Presumably a high-precision munition ‘HIMARS’ was used. The missile exploded only a few metres from the sports complex, causing minor damage. A woman walking nearby was injured and other casualties were avoided because the sports facility was suspended due to the shelling.

Destruction of a bridge over the Seim River

From 16 to 18 August, the Kiev regime militants systematically destroyed road bridges over the Seim River, which were used by civilians to evacuate from the border part of Glushkovsky district. On 16 August, the AFU militants launched another attack on the bridge with HIMARS MLRS. At the time of the strike, there was a vehicle carrying volunteers who were evacuating civilians from border settlements and delivering humanitarian aid to the civilian population. Two volunteers from the DPR, Nikolai Kovalyov and David Sokolov, were killed on the spot. Another person in the car was taken to hospital with burns and shrapnel wounds.

On 18 August, the AFU destroyed all road bridges across the Seim River using MLRS. Pontoon crossings were set up to resume evacuation of civilians across the river. Subsequently, they were also subjected to artillery fire, including during the evacuation of civilians. On 29 August, at around 11 a.m., one guided aerial bomb was dropped on a bridge over the Seim River near the village of Karyzh. A civilian Logan car was hit by the bomb. A family was killed: a man born in 1973, a woman born in 1962 and their daughter born in 2002. Another man was injured. The pontoon crossing was destroyed.

Mass shooting of civilian vehicles in Korenevo village

Between 7 and 10 August, AFU fighters entered the village of Korenevo. As part of punitive measures, the militants established fire control over Sovkhoznaya Street, which local residents used to evacuate from the village. The Ukrainian perverts targeted civilian vehicles with small arms fire. As a result of their criminal actions of a terrorist nature, at least 7 civilian vehicles were shot at, on which local residents were trying to evacuate to safe areas.

At least 8 civilians were killed as a result of this carnage. These figures are not definitive. Emergency services are unable to access the area and ascertain the exact number of casualties.

Eyewitness testimony

The AFU launched drone strikes on civilian evacuation transports

Evacuation of the Lyushnykh family from the town of Sudzha

On 7 August, Anna Ivanovna Lyushnaya together with her husband evacuated from Sudzha in a civilian car. When leaving the city on the ring road, their car was attacked by an AFU drone.

Anna recounts: ‘We were travelling out in the evening. It was already starting to get dark. We drove fast, there were no oncoming cars. There were no hitchhikers either. We reached the fork for Kursk and then the roundabout for Sumy and Sudzha. My husband, without stopping, skipped through, and immediately something sharply poured down on us from the side. Like from a puddle. Some black circles.

I didn’t realise it at first. My leg got warm, I didn’t realise. And then I saw blood. I said to my husband: ‘Give me a towel, I’ll bandage my leg.’ I bandaged my leg. We drove five kilometres and the car stalled. It hit the radiator, punctured the battery, the washer tank, the rear light, the side door where I was sitting’.

The spouses were picked up by soldiers. Anna was taken to hospital. Her husband is now undergoing treatment in Kursk.

Evacuation of the Lukyanchikov family from the village of Belitsa, Belovo district

On 14 August, 38-year-old Sergei Lukyanchikov and his wife decided to leave the village because of the deteriorating situation. When leaving the village, the car was attacked by an AFU drone.

Sergey received a mine blast injury and a soft tissue shrapnel wound. His wife, fortunately, was not injured. They managed to get out of the car. The car was attacked again by an AFU drone, after which it caught fire.

Sergei recounts: ‘We were leaving the village. We had already left the village, and before reaching another village, Kommunar, we were met by a drone. So it hit this side, my wife was sitting next to me, she didn’t get anything. But it hit me. So we jumped out of the car. And it’s good that a man drove by from my village about 10-15 minutes later. He picked us up. We were a hundred metres away from our car, and another UAV flew in. And it kills my car. And it explodes.

The couple were first taken to Oboyanskaya Central Regional Hospital, where they received first aid, and then the man was transferred to Kursk Regional Hospital.

Ukrainian militants shot at the evacuation transport like in a shooting gallery

Evacuation of the Samborsky and Sergienko families from Kazachya Loknya

On 7 August, an acquaintance – Nikolai Sergienko – came to Samborskaya Galina Dmitrievna and offered to evacuate from the village. They left the village in two civilian cars. In the first one were the Sergienko spouses together with their 93-year-old grandmother, and in the second one were the Samborski spouses. They decided to take a diversion to Sudzha, as by that time there was already information about the shooting of civilian cars by AFU fighters on the ring road and on the Sudzha-Lyhov motorway. However, despite their precautions, they were attacked by Ukrainian fighters.

Galina Dmitrievna recounts: ‘We had just reached this crossroads, and suddenly I saw a man in camouflage uniform with a machine gun standing there. And he shot at the front car, which was ahead of us, in one direction and in the opposite direction – at us. He fired. A line on them, a line on us. Two civilian cars, he queue on that one gave on the top of the car, and we got a few below. Just to go, and my husband says: ‘We are on three wheels, where are we going to go?’, and the first car – our friends, I say: ‘Why did he get so off, he gained so much speed that he kind of throws us, but what to do?’. We drove a short distance away on three wheels.

And my husband, although he is 78 years old and disabled, he quickly changed the spare with trembling hands. We sat down, the fuel leaked, he found a medical glove, tied it, he sat down again, the petrol pipe leaked. Well, in general, our car was almost out of order. We drive 300 metres away – the car is warming up. And with such small jerks we reached Bolshezoldatsky. And my husband must have thought it would be bad, but I don’t feel any pain at all. I only see that I had corduroy breeches, thick enough, they were light – they were completely red.

After the Samborsky family reached the hospital, they were treated by military medics. Already in the hospital they met Nikolai Sergienko. Galina Dmitrievna tells: ‘And there we meet our friend, he is already there. We started talking, and it turned out that his wife was instantly killed there. As it was higher, she was hit in the chest from above, burst bullets. She managed to repeat twice: ‘Kolya, I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit’ – and that was it, it was fixed. And he left us, trying to save his wife, he still thought he would save her’.

Galina Dmitrievna describes the actions of the Ukrainian punisher who shot their cars: ‘It was a man of about 35 years old in a light camouflage uniform with no identifying marks, and he was shooting as if having fun, like in a shooting gallery.

Nikolai Pavlovich Volodkov: UAV strike on a lorry in Sudzha.

Nikolai Pavlovich Volodkov lives in Sudzha, Makhnovka village. Makhnovka. Nikolai works as a driver of Sudzha DRSO No. 2. On 7 August he was carrying a load of crushed stone from Diakonovka to Sudzhaand was attacked by an AFU drone.

Nikolai Pavlovich recounts: ‘Not reaching Sudzha, there on the descent in front of Sudzha, we call Martynovskaya hill. I looked at the column, a lot of people started to leave Sudzha already, cars. I looked at the sky, there was nothing. I lowered my eyes down and there was a bird – a drone. It flew right into my windscreen, just below the windscreen, where the panel is. As I remember now – red with white stripes, a box black something big, even with blue tape wrapped around it. And then there was an explosion. I was stunned, my eyes went black, I just held on to the car by a miracle. If I’d gone on the opposite side of the road, I would have blocked the traffic, because I was downhill and loaded. But I held on and put the car as it was going, I got out on the kerb. My head was buzzing.

After Nicholas left the car, an acquaintance who was driving nearby came to his aid and helped him extinguish the lorry twice. Afterwards, he took Nikolai to Bolshezoldadst hospital.

As a result of the drone strike, Nikolay received multiple shrapnel wounds and third-degree burns.

On his way to the hospital, Mykola witnessed other crimes of Ukrainian militants against civilians. Mykola said: ‘Already when he was taking me, already cars were burning, standing on the roadside. It’s not far there. Already, maybe a kilometre away, already drones were using all this’.

Nikolay Pavlovich also told about a comrade who became another victim of the Ukrainian punishers: ‘Vorontsov Misha, he came under fire. He said that I was only driving out on the bypass. Two people jump out of the bushes. One of them cocked his automatic rifle and started firing at him.

Mikhail received bullet and shrapnel wounds and was miraculously saved. Being wounded, he reached the hospital himself, where he was treated.

A Ukrainian tank shot at a car carrying civilians leaving Sudzha

Testimony of Natalia Kasyanova

Natalya Kasyanova lived in the village of Pogrebki, Sudzhansky district. On 7 August she left with her family to Lgovsky district. On the morning of 8 August she received a phone call from acquaintances saying that the village was quiet and calm and that she could return. However, on the way to their home village they were met by a column of AFU military equipment.

Natalia Vladimirovna recounts: ‘And we came back. We came back. The guys in front were travelling in one car – my husband and brother. And we were in another – my nephew, me and my sister-in-law. And there were already 300 metres left. I look, they are already starting to turn to our country road to Khitrovka. And I said: ‘Look, there’s a column coming.’ I look – a red flag, I look – a flag, a piece of black. And then I see an APC moving away a little to the side, and there’s a tank. And shoots at the first car. In general, half my life was cut short. The car exploded, took off, caught fire. I don’t know where the strength came from, what came into me. I said: ‘Ilyusha, we have to do something, we have to go back, because now we’ll probably be in trouble.’ He turned sharply, we wanted to turn, and we were swept into the ditch. And before that I opened the door. And the first car was on fire, and they probably thought we had split into two sides. We were in the ditch, the car was smoking. I said: ‘Ilyusha, we’ll burn to death. God willing.’ I looked at the APC. It was on the edge of the roadside, but this one went in the middle. And I see it started shooting. I said: ‘Get down.’ And I covered my nephew. And they were shooting on this side and that side. Such hysterical laughter, such screaming, such shouting. And this column went to L’gov, towards L’gov. We stayed in the car a little longer. By that car, I realised it was too late to do anything. We cried, but we had to do something else. I said: ‘Let’s go, we have to hide, otherwise they might come back, no matter what.

Due to the shock, Natalia did not feel how she was wounded. Then Natalia and her surviving relatives reached Ivnitsa on foot. There, local residents provided her with first aid and bandaged her wounds. In the village they met their acquaintance Vladimir, who had evacuated people from Ivnitsa to Kursk in his car. He offered his help.

Natalia recounts: ‘At first we were doubtful, because they were shooting back and forth there too. In general it was whistling, humming, flying. In general, Vladimir Samoilov took me out. He drove me to the roundabout before Kursk. I shouted when he was driving: ‘Vov, let’s keep it down, otherwise it’ll be bad.’ And he said: ‘Natasha, when we get to the track, you’ll see, then you’ll feel bad’. And when he took me to the motorway, the cars were on fire. He says: ‘Those were the 80 cars, the drones are catching up with them. ‘The bigger ones, they’re not catching up. I said to him, ‘Drive, Vova, as you were driving.’ We saw a lot of damaged cars. Some were burnt, some were torn up, some were burning. This is the Sudzha-Kursk motorway’.

Vladimir handed Natalia over to the military, who transported her to the hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, Natalia found many wounded civilians: ‘And when they brought me to the hospital… I, when I looked… I relaxed, I guess… I was howling a little. When they brought me to the hospital, I looked at what was here, I said to myself: ‘So Natasha, collect your snot, because it’s not as hard for you as it is for everyone else. There were a lot of wounded people.

The next day, Natalya’s brother, who was in the first car that was shot at by the tank, was brought to the hospital. Unfortunately, Natalya’s husband died on the spot. Natalia recounts: ‘Then, 24 hours later, my brother was found – alive. He is now here on the 9th floor in the burn centre. Burned, his arm, his leg. It’s a good burn. It happened when they were in the first car with the husband. The husband died. He told me about it later. She cries: ‘When we drove up, we turned round. I said: ‘Son-in-law, there’s a Miratorgovskaya site – a pigsty in Khitrovka. Look, probably evacuate their equipment.’ And he said: ‘Sashka, what equipment, it’s tanks coming, can’t you see?’ And then when the tank fired, I said: ‘That’s it, son-in-law, goodbye’. So that’s the story.

In the village of Giryi, militants burned private houses, blocked roads to prevent civilians from travelling, and shot civilian cars.

Alexander Zuyev, who lives on Savelovskaya Street in the village of Giryi.

Alexander tells about the situation in Giryi village: ‘Over the last few days, at least yesterday (22 August), two houses were burning. Yesterday two in the morning and one later. Ukrainians send Ukrainians ‘birds’ with phosphorus or incendiary shells and directly into civilian houses. They send them here on purpose, and the houses catch fire. At the moment there are probably 8 houses in Girya (burnt). In the first days they were shot from APCs.

Alexander also shared information about the situation in a neighbouring village: ‘Well, yes, 8 houses were burnt down here. In Kamyshnaya, of course, it is more serious there, 20 houses were destroyed there – by ‘birds’, mortars were fired, cannons were fired there as well’.

Alexander witnessed the terrorist actions of Ukrainian punishers who entered the village of Giryi: ‘At 6 a.m. on 12 August, they came, they drove past my house. At first some car passed by, like a mine-clearing vehicle. Then came 3 APCs, they were shooting at poles, shooting at fences with large-calibre machine guns.’

Alexander, together with local residents, found a wounded AFU fighter who had been abandoned by his comrades-in-arms while fleeing the village: ‘We even found one prisoner. He did not say what unit he was from. He said he was from Sumy. I don’t know from which brigade, he was barely alive there. We handed him over to Akhmat, they had to rescue him. And the second one was the 200th, we took him away. He was Orthodox, because he had a cross. But by his appearance he was either Georgian or Polish. I found Polish licence plates in the woods. I have them in my car. Plus Ukrainian dry rations scattered all over the woods. Yesterday I drove round there, there’s porridge and a lot of other things they’ve scattered there. They scattered their own mines, not Ukrainian mines, but mines from NATO weapons, because neither we nor they have such mines. One hundred per cent.

Alexander draws attention to the absence of any identifying marks on the AFU fighters: ‘Everything was in blue duct tape. There were armbands in blue duct tape, helmets wrapped in blue duct tape. That was the only thing.’

Alexander also said that Ukrainian fighters prevented the evacuation of civilians from the village: ‘They drove around, breaking trees so that the roads were blocked. They were shooting at poles. The poles were simply backed up with APCs so that the poles fell on the asphalt, so that the car could not pass. The locals have now stretched these poles so that they can drive at least somehow, bring humanitarian aid.

Among other things, Alexander told about the shooting of civilian cars by Ukrainian militants: ‘A civilian car was travelling on Zelenaya Street. The driver then shared: ‘I was driving, an APC came at me, just 100 metres away. I put the car in the bushes. He drove up to the car and shot the car. Whether civilians were there or not, they (the militants) did not even see it. They, thank God, and their wife managed to jump off and run away. Literally 20 metres away. Then a large-calibre machine gun went off – the car caught fire. It burned to the ground. And plus they started shooting at the bushes. And not only they started shooting from automatic weapons, but they also started throwing grenades, because my wife had two lacerations and shrapnel wounds.

Shelling of a music school in the village of Belaya, Kursk region

Natalya Leonidovna Vashchenko, resident of the village of Belaya, Kursk Oblast

Natalia witnessed a strike by AFU fighters on a civilian facility in the first days of the terrorist attack: ‘Yes, there was a music school. On that day, when the missile came, or I don’t even know what it was, we slept with the children here at home. It was very scary. It was half past six. A bang. The blast wave ripped everything apart. They even found rocket fragments in the house. I even have a piece somewhere, I saved it. We jumped out on the landing, because we’re on the first floor – me and the kids. We were afraid to go out. Then, when I heard shouts: ‘Is anyone alive?’, I went out, opened the door. And there were people standing in the courtyard, wanting to know if we were alive or not.

The AFU used a drone to kill the driver of a civilian car, blew up a bridge at the exit from Sudzha, and Western journalists filmed only the surviving houses

Gennady Makhankov, deputy head of the Sudzhansky district, was actively engaged in evacuating the civilian population during the first days of the terrorist attack

Gennady tells about the events of 8 August: ‘On the 8th I was already in Sudzha, and we tried to evacuate the residents of Sudzhan district, wherever we could reach. We went out and took people away. There were beaten civilian cars on the road, in Sudzha city itself there were also a lot of civilian cars beaten by copters. Some were damaged by shelling and shooting. The copters were chasing civilian cars.

Also Gennady Vladimirovich told about a specific episode of killing a person by the AFU fighters: ‘We recently buried Yuri Petrovich, he was a villager in his time, Mikhnovsky. The situation happened in such a way that a Kamaz was travelling and jumped out into the field. He stopped to help, and a drone flew into it, right away. So it was just a civilian car, and he died immediately.’

Gennady described the actions of foreign journalists who illegally crossed the state border of the Russian Federation as part of paramilitary units and filmed in occupied Sudzha: ‘Foreign media that come, they only show the sections that are intact’.

Gennady described the circumstances of the last trip to Sudzha: ‘On 10 August we drove through Magnovka, there were a couple of destroyed houses on fire. We drove across the Zamostyanka bridge, where we had the prosecutor’s office, which was already broken, because after the 6th of August, MLRS worked there. And there was damage there. We drove closer to the market – on one side the house was burnt down. We turned to the 8th of March Street, there were whole houses there. But when we got there, the artillery shelling continued. We drove over the bridge, they were hitting the bridge, but they didn’t hit it. It was just being pelted. And when we left, they hit the bridge. And the iron fence blocked our way. We were lucky there was a span left, so we jumped out. We took the people and left.

In the first hours of the Ukrainian armed forces’ attack in Suzha, they fired artillery at residential buildings, shops and the administration.

Sergey Kondoyanidi, director of school No. 1 in Sudzha and a deputy of the local council.

Sergey Aleksandrovich told about the beginning of the terrorist attack on the Kursk region on the night of 6 August: ‘At about half past three in the morning we woke up because we could clearly hear that the bombings had started. This had not happened before. That is, bombarded, nightmarched by drones, exactly such a strike had never happened before until then. I mean you could clearly hear the squeals of rockets flying, artillery shells. There was a sense that everything was laying down literally right next to each other. We sat in this mode, probably, until about 7 am. There was a little lull. We usually had it like that before. I managed to sleep a little bit. Woke up around half ten. Went to work around 10 o’clock. Already had no lights on and no water. I wanted to get some information. It was impossible to get through.

Sergey Aleksandrovich told about the shelling of the city: ‘It was scary to go out, frankly speaking. Because there was constant shelling. We were sitting in the school and literally every three minutes it was flying. Pause. It was flying in a row. There 10-15 minutes. We went outside the school, the building was burning. There was a fire, I thought it hit the houses right outside the school. I went up to the third floor, I can’t see it. There’s an old MREU behind the houses. That’s where it flew in. The fire was crazy. Probably more than one building burned down there.’ ‘We had a former hotel, they rebuilt it. There’s a four-storey good building there. Good flats. People lived there. There was a flight directly into the roof. <…> There were a lot of hits on the police building. Civilian buildings were completely burnt out. There’s video of it already. They’re just two-storey houses built before the revolution, 1800 something. Just standing walls. <…> The neighbourhood of the second school, the intersection of Pionerskaya and Oktyabrskaya. There were two dormitories there – they are almost gone. Shop ‘Magnet’ on the corner – it’s gone. ‘Wildbury’s at the traffic lights – it’s gone. We have a furniture shop behind the three-storey building where I live at the station, on Oktyabrskaya, in front – it’s not there.’ Also, a neighbour of Sergei Alexandrovich spoke about the fact that in the yards in the immediate vicinity of the house where they lived, there were traces of at least sixty arrivals.

Killing of civilians by drones in the village of Bolshoye Soldatskoye

Tatiana Nikolaevna Zibrova, who lived with her family in Bolshoye Soldatskoye village.

Due to the beginning of massive shelling of the village by the AFU and the threat of capture of the settlement by Ukrainian militants, Tatyana’s husband decided to evacuate their relatives. Tetyana described the circumstances of their family’s evacuation from the village of Bolshoye Soldatskoye: ‘I went out at the beginning of the fourth day. And I felt on the ground as if there was a blow and explosions somewhere nearby. One, second, third. As my husband later explained, it was a tank firing somewhere nearby. It was heard right through the ground. The glass windows rattled. It was as if they were hitting somewhere near the house. It was so scary! Then I got a phone call and was told: ‘Get in your car, if you are still at home, and drive away. It’s not our tank, but an AFU tank that is driving along the motorway and shooting cars. Be careful. Go away!’ We went to pick up my mother, took her and another woman, she asked to come with us, because there was nothing to leave with.

Tatyana was shocked by what she saw on the motorway: ‘When we drove a bit away from Bolshesoldatskoye, there were several burnt-out cars. One of them even had a silhouette in the front seat. It was not military cars, but civilian cars that were burnt. Then there was another one, but I didn’t have the strength to look at it. I tried to close my eyes not to see this nightmare.

Tatyana Nikolaevna also told about acquaintances and neighbours killed by AFU drones: ‘Some acquaintances were hurt. I don’t remember the 7th or 8th (August). Seryozhka and Masha, they were killed by a drone. The day before yesterday (20 August) two more acquaintances were also killed. There’s a park opposite my mum’s, they were killed there too. <…>Friends who go to feed the farm called and said that Igor and Oleg were killed. The drone dropped explosives, and they were killed. They’re lying in the park. And Masha and Seryozha went to feed the farm. The drone flew, they started to run away. And they were also (killed).

Ukrainian militants shot a pregnant young woman in front of her family

Story of the victim’s spouse

On 7 August, AFU fighters killed a young woman in Sudzhansky District, Kursk Region, as she was driving out of the shelled area with her family – her mother, husband, and one-and-a-half-year-old child. The punishers shot the pregnant woman at point-blank range in front of her family. The murdered woman was 24 years old.

The husband of the victim, Artem Kuznetsov, shared the circumstances of the murder of his pregnant wife by Ukrainian punishers: ‘When the intense shelling began, I decided that we had to leave there. At least a little bit further away. We packed our things and left the village in two cars. And when leaving the village (from Kurilovka) we met – well, I saw one soldier – maybe we met a group. That is, they were already on their way to the city. Military, soldiers, that is, it was not just arrivals, but soldiers were already walking towards the settlement – the town of Sudzha. When leaving the village, I saw an AFU soldier on the roadside. At first, the shelling started on me. They opened fire on my car from weapons. From a Kalashnikov assault rifle, or what kind of rifles they had, I don’t know. About 70 metres away, they started shooting at me. I felt as if the car was being pelted with stones. I didn’t understand at first what was happening. And then, when I got closer to him, one bullet hit me in the passenger compartment. And I turn my head to this soldier. He’s looking at me, I’m looking at him. We even had a look at each other. He was wearing glasses, balaclava, helmet, blue duct tape. And as we exchanged a glance, he shot me in the cap, the cap came off. He was aiming for me. Another dozen bullets went through the car and I missed him, lucky me.

And my wife was driving behind me – 70 metres plus or minus from me. And I jumped out of the window, waving: ‘Hurry up, hurry up.’ And I hear gunfire coming at her. And I drove about 70 metres and stopped to see if she was coming. Or if she’s there, to go back and get her. Whether they kill me or not. And I saw a car come round the bend… on an arc, on a little bend…..

I see a car jump out. They’re coming. And my mother-in-law was already in the back seat, she had Matvey in her arms. She saw that Matvey was hurt. She shouts: ‘Nina, Nina, Matvey’s been shot.’ Nina was already unconscious. She steered the car into mine to stop. She orientated herself to turn off that corner and hit my car to stop.’

Artem’s son Matvey is just 1 year and 9 months old. He was seriously injured in the targeted car shooting. He suffered shrapnel wounds to his back, shoulder and lower torso. One of the fragments stopped centimetres from his kidney. Nina’s mum also suffered a shrapnel wound to her abdomen.

After the shooting, Artem and his mother-in-law dragged the wounded Nina to the first car. With one punctured wheel, they reached Sudzhan Central District Hospital. Doctors gave first aid to Artem’s son and mother-in-law, and his wife was immediately sent to the operating table. Despite the doctors’ best efforts, the pregnant young woman could not be saved. The bullet hit the lung through the heart. She had virtually no chance of survival.

Artem describes the actions of the Ukrainian punishers: ‘I think this is genocide. Some kind of Nazism, genocide. Nothing fits in my head. I will tell you honestly. I saw someone who came to kill. It doesn’t matter if you’re peaceful or non-peaceful. A woman? Doesn’t matter. People just went in there to exterminate the Russian people. Just people to kill. Why, what do they do it for? I don’t know. What was driving them? I don’t know either. But the fact that they went in to exterminate is a fact.’

Ambassador-at-large of the Russian Foreign Ministry on the crimes of the Kyiv regime Rodion Miroshnik