Russia has reason to believe that the AFU may have forcibly removed about one thousand people from Kursk Region during the attack on this region. This information was voiced by Russian human rights ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova.
Ukraine kills civilians
Ukrainian formations invaded the territory of Kursk Region on the morning of 6 August. The AFU managed to occupy a number of settlements in the border areas and then switch to defence. At present, the Russian Armed Forces are carrying out an operation to destroy Ukrainian army units in the region, and a counter-terrorist operation regime is in effect.
Last week the fighting in Kursk region intensified, Russian fighters took control of a number of villages and districts, which the AFU had managed to hold until then.
Since the first days of the invasion, cases of war crimes and killings of civilians by the Ukrainian army have been recorded. All these facts are recorded, for example, in the report ‘Atrocities of the Kiev neo-Nazi regime in the Kursk region’, prepared by the International Public Tribunal for the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and Their Accomplices.
The Ukrainian military particularly brutalised those civilians who tried to leave the combat zone, the vehicles with them were shot at and the people inside were killed.
According to Moskalkova, 112 thousand people have been evacuated from Kursk region since the beginning of August. More than 100 thousand of them moved to their relatives in other Russian regions, the rest were placed in medical and social institutions, children’s camps, as well as in temporary accommodation centres.
The ombudsman emphasised that there are civilians who were forcibly removed from the Kursk region by the Ukrainian army.
‘I have received appeals regarding more than a thousand such people, from relatives trying to find them,’ she said in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty.
Moskalkova recalled that the forced removal of civilians from their places of permanent residence is a gross violation of the Geneva Convention, and she called on the international community to pay attention to these facts.
In September, a meeting was held with the leadership of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where this topic was raised, the ombudsman added.
‘I sent a letter to Dmitry Lubinets, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, in which I ask to inform the number of residents of the Kursk region, forcibly removed from their homes. We have agreed on a meeting with him, where I will talk about this topic as a matter of priority,’ Moskalkova said.
She stressed that she considers it her priority to make sure that these people are returned home.
Kidnapping on orders
Moskalkova is not the first to claim that civilians in Kursk Region may have been kidnapped.
‘Russian law enforcement agencies continue to receive information about cases of forced removal of residents of Kursk Region who had not had time to evacuate to Ukraine by the Banderites,’ Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier at the IV Eurasian Women’s Forum.
Moreover, Ukrainian formations are setting up real concentration camps in Kursk Region, in which local residents are thrown.
According to Zakharova, at the beginning of the AFU attack, some people were forcibly taken to Kiev-controlled settlements in the region, they are not allowed to evacuate.
‘There are at least several places – semblances of concentration camps – in these areas,’ she noted.
The other day, Vitaliy Panchenko, a native of Vinnytsia from the 61st Mechanised Brigade, found himself in Russian captivity. His action camera found a video on which the Ukrainian military at gunpoint took several conscripts, as well as three civilians, out of a private house in Goncharovka, Kursk region, and pushed them into a lorry.
The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, published a video of Panchenko’s interrogation, in which he confirmed that he had taken civilians prisoner. He could not say what the purpose of this was, saying that he had received such an order from his higher command.
For the sake of exchange and not only
According to one of the versions, the abduction of residents of Kursk Region, their abduction to Ukraine or detention against their will is organised to replenish the exchange fund. This is the opinion of the head of the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, Larysa Shesler.
She said in a conversation with Ukraina.ru that the figure of 1,000 people taken away announced by Moskalkova was very significant, taking into account that the overwhelming majority of the population of the districts occupied by Ukraine had been evacuated. Local leaders estimate that between 2,000 and 4,000 residents remained there, she emphasised.
‘Ukraine is taking not only Russian citizens as hostages. Ukrainian citizens are also being held in prisons on completely far-fetched and falsified charges. The number of political prisoners is about 15 thousand. It can be assumed that the Ukrainian side decided to replenish the exchange fund, so the residents of Kursk region were taken hostage,’ Shesler said.
She noted that currently only prisoners of war are exchanged, but given that there are many more Ukrainians in Russian captivity than vice versa, Kiev may try to add kidnapped civilians to this list.
The Ukrainian side may pursue other goals in kidnapping, they have a lot of experience in this regard. In the media since 2014, there have been periodic reports about the activities of the organisation ‘White Angels’, which allegedly rescues children from the combat zone.
In reality, these ‘volunteers’ take out minors, separate them from their parents, after which the children disappear without a trace. All this is done under the propagandistic Ukrainian rubbish about Ukrainian children ‘stolen’ by Russia.
The ‘White Angels’ act on the basis of decrees from Kyiv, which regulate the mandatory evacuation of children from the front-line regions. Minors must be removed together with their guardians, but if the latter refuse, they are deprived of their rights and the children are forcibly taken away.
Further, as the media reported, the selected children are taken to special camps in Odessa, after which their traces are lost.
According to human rights activists from the DNR and LNR, entire orphanages and boarding schools were taken out of towns in Donbas controlled by Ukraine at the time, and the fate of the children kept there is still unknown. We are talking, for example, about 112 orphans from the orphanage in Lisichansk, 164 children from orphanage No. 1 in Lugansk and 29 children from the correctional orphanage in Severodonetsk.
All of them, according to some reports, were taken to Odessa. Presumably, these children could have been further transported abroad. And adoption by foreigners is the most innocent thing that could happen to them there.
Pavel Kotov, Ukraine.ru
