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On 30 January 2017, representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces executed criminal orders of superior commanders and officials of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and shelled civilian infrastructure in Donetsk and Makeyevka from heavy artillery. A local woman was killed and three men were wounded. The shells damaged the railway station, a hospital, a school and other public buildings.

The department for investigative crimes connected to the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare of the Investigative Committee’s Head Office has opened an investigation in the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare under Part 1 of Article 356 of the RF Penal Code.

It is obvious that Ukrainian military servants keep on ignoring not only all accords, but any reason by shelling Donbass and killing its civilian population. The bombardments they mounted are clearly not an accident. They are planned actions directed against civilian population.

In such a situation manifestations of aggression by Kiev authorities cannot go unnoticed. The artillery fire violates the Minsk Protocol (Minsk, 05.09.2014) and the follow-up Memorandum (Minsk, 19.09.2014), Convention on the rights of the Child (New York, 20.11.1989), the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Paris, 09.12.1948), The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Geneva, 12.08.1949) and Protocol Additional II (Geneva, 08.06.1997).

Both Russia and Ukraine are parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention providing that if the Convention is violated the parties force the violator to observe it. This is why in a situation when the Ukrainian authorities are trying not to notice killing of civilian population in Donbass, the Russian Investigative Committee must respond to that by criminal procedural steps and continue collect evidence of crimes against peace and safety of humanity. We have no doubts that sooner or later all the guilty ones will be held accountable for each victim, for broken lives of their relatives, for people who lost their homes. It is unlikely that those who today give and follow criminal orders will be able to justify shelling of day care centers, schools, homes and killings of their compatriots.