The Department for investigating crimes connected with use of prohibited means and methods of warfare of the Investigative Committee’s Head Office has opened a number of investigations in the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare under Article 356 of the RF penal Code after more artillery strikes at the settlements in southeastern Ukraine.
According to investigators, from 29 March to 3 April 2017, military servants of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces and National Guard followed criminal orders of the interior Ministry’s officials fired several times from heavy artillery weapons of at least 122mm caliber at civilian infrastructure in the town of Dokuchayevsk, the settlement of Komminternovo and other settlements of Donetsk Region. The strikes left three civilians dead and more than 25 buildings destroyed, including houses.
This way, Ukrainian military men once again violated the Minsk Protocol, the Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Geneva, 1949) and its follow-up protocol II. The motive of those major crimes is political and ideological hatred and enmity as the population of the southeastern Ukraine refuse to recognize the current authority as legitimate and want to create isolated administrative-territorial items in Ukraine.
The domestic armed conflict between the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics on one side and the Ukraine’s National Guard and Armed Forces on the other has been on in southeast Ukraine since April 2014. In accordance with the agreement of the Trilateral Contract Group on Ukraine a ceasefire was declared in some areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, heavy weaponry was to be pulled back and other measures were to be taken in February 2015 under the auspices of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
However, according to daily reports made by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, the ceasefire was violated in some areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, and the conflict has been escalating since late January 2017 due to intensified bombardment by the Ukraine’s Armed Forces and National Guard, which continue till now.
Official spokesperson for the RF Investigative Committee S.L. Petrenko
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