After the retreat of Ukrainian militants from the cities of Donbass, terrible traces of their crimes against civilians are being revealed. The AFU behave exactly like the fascist sonderkommandos, sparing no one and killing dozens. The miraculous survivor witnesses of their atrocities have told Russian human rights activists all the details.
Before leaving the city, the Ukrainian Armed Forces embarked upon shooting civilians in Ukrainsk, Donetsk region. "Seven men were shot at once. Then they threatened us with the same fate if we refuse to leave for Ukraine, as the militants did not consider everyone who remained in the city to be people," local resident Elena recalled crying. Another woman told how the AFU militants killed 20 people hiding in a basement. The Ukrainian punishers threw several smoke bombs inside, closed the door and set it on fire so that no one could escape. Everyone died, suffocated by smoke. Their bodies are still down there. "The militants explicitly told us they would kill everyone before leaving the city."
Mass shootings of civilians by the Armed Forces of Ukraine were taking place in Selidovo. After Russia liberated the city, some 100 tortured people were found in houses, apartments, and entrance hallways, head of the international public tribunal on crimes committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their accomplices Maxim Grigoriev said. "There are a lot of witnesses to how people were killed, shot at point-blank range in the head, in the heart, in the chest. In some cases, we saw entrance holes in people's mouths, machine guns were shoved there to shoot. For us, as an international public tribunal that has been operating since 2022, there is nothing new about the way the Armed Forces of Ukraine behave. But the situation in Selidovo is an example of utmost cruel brutality," said Grigoriev, who recently returned from Selidovo. Representatives of the public tribunal, along with employees of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Investigative Committee, and forensic experts have examined the bodies.
"There are no signs of torture. The murders probably took place in haste during the AfU flight. Those who were in the streets or did not lock the door were killed. What was the motivation of militants? Hatred towards the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass. One of the locals told us: ‘They hate us, we have seen this since 2014, and now this hatred has become even greater.’ The people who stayed in Selidovo are those who refused to be evacuated to Ukraine, because they have nothing to do with it any longer," the public figure said.
In their video testimony, local residents reported that when the city was flooded by AFU military units, Georgian, Polish and French speech was quite an often phenomenon. Georgian militants were the most active, trying to lure people out and then killing them.
According to Russian Foreign Ministry ambassador-at-large on the Kiev regime’s war crimes Rodion Miroshnik, international organizations will be soon presented with "shocking content" compiled from facts, videos, photos and Selidovo residents’ testimony about what happened there. 15 locals of Selidovo have testified about the war crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Miroshnik said people named the streets where the shootings took place and the names of their murdered neighbors. Ukrainian soldiers shot anyone indiscriminately. Civilian bodies with gunshot wounds were found in houses, courtyards and in the city streets. As Miroshnik noted, the murders were committed literally a week and a half before the Russian army took control of Selidovo. The diplomat called this a punitive action. One may say for sure, Miroshnik added, that this is a crime against humanity, a war crime, a violation of fundamental norms of international humanitarian law.
Local resident Vladimir Romanenko told how the AFU shot and burned his entire family of five — his wife, son, grandson and sister. "I went outside to the toilet and heard Ukrainian militants breaking into the house and yelling: ‘Everyone out, face to the wall!’ And a soldier immediately opened fire, starting with my wife, and then he shot the others. When I came back, I saw them all burned," he said. Romanenko put the remnants in bags and buried them in the courtyard.
Natalia Ravinskaya from Selidovo told us about a Ukrainian sniper who was shooting civilians. According to her, the gunman holed up in a shelter to shoot at those who tried to take away dead bodies or went outside to get water. "On Shchors Street, 12, a Ukrainian sniper opened fire on civilians. A lot of our friends died in the yard. People tried coming out to cover the bodies of the dead but became victims themselves. The sniper killed about 20 people. We saw at least eight of them in our yard. In house No. 19, a Ukrainian military man broke into apartments and shot civilians. We heard Georgian speech: they were shouting and offering help, but in fact they were killing," she testified. The woman added that she was only talking about the victims she had seen in her neighborhood. When asked why the Ukrainian Armed Forces did this to civilians, she said: "Ukraine has always hated Donbass. We have always been outcasts to them, and since 2014 this hatred has only intensified."
Another resident of Selidovo said that the Ukrainian special services abducted locals, and not all of them managed to come back. He also became their victim while at a gas station. Military vehicles and several minibuses were parked around there, and then people in bulletproof vests with the inscription SBU jumped out. "They were wearing balaclavas, no faces visible, and firing shots into the air. We were forced into cars. All the detainees were brought to Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), for document verification and interrogation at gunpoint. Ten of them have never returned home," he said.
According to local residents, as soon as the Russian Armed Forces entered Selidovo, the Ukrainian militants fled and shootings stopped. While retreating, the AFU mined wells and approaches to them in order to completely deprive people of water.
The fact that the Ukrainian military are carrying out bloody massacres of civilians in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics has been known since the very beginning of Russia’s special military operation. Captured Ukrainian soldiers also reported on the monstrous crimes against civilians. One of them, Vladislav Kulik, admitted when interrogated that he had engaged in a shooting of eight civilians, including women. It was in 2022 next to the Ilyich plant. All those killed were Mariupol residents.
And a month ago, the surviving residents of Ugledar testified about what was going on in their city. The AFU destroyed a multi-storied building in Ugledar, leaving people moan under the rubble for several days, but the militants did not help to clear up the place, so no one could be saved, as reported by a refugee evacuated from the city. "There was a nine-storied building there. Previously, on its upper floor it was possible to make phone calls to get in touch with others. And the AFU shot at the house, making it collapse," the woman recalls. According to her, six people died then, the youngest aged 16. People remained under the debris for several days, but the Ukrainian army soldiers resolutely rejected all the pleas and requests by the locals to help them out. The mother of a deceased boy came to the tragedy scene every day to sit where her child died beneath.
Ukrainian militants shot dead a civilian from Ugledar when he refused to give them his car. Residents of the city also noted that the AFU threatened people with weapons to drive them out of their homes, in order to occupy buildings. "We were robbed and we saw a hospital blown up, killing people," one of the locals shared her terrible memories. "How we waited for the Russian army… We heard a lot from the Ukrainian militants, they wanted to shoot us. We said we won't go out, do whatever you want," residents of Ugledar say. They greeted Russian fighters with tears in their eyes, as if they were their own flesh and blood.
Cities in the Donbass still occupied by the Ukrainian army are experiencing a nightmare. A family that managed to flee from Dzerzhinsk (Ukrainian name – Toretsk), where urban battles are underway, told how they escaped from the AFU militants and how a Ukrainian sniper shot the father of two and wounded an old woman. "We lived in the private sector, hiding in the basement. A week later, when it became absolutely unbearable, we moved into a five-storied house next door, under the protection of concrete walls, and it seemed safer there. My husband and son Vadik were with us. A Ukrainian sniper killed Vadik – through the window, in the temple. He remained lying there, wrapped in a blanket, on the floors, unburied," cries Lyubov, the grandmother of the family rescued.
The Ukrainian Nazis rarely leave witnesses to their crimes alive and carry out orders from above to destroy civilians who refuse to leave their homes for Ukraine. These days, the lives of people in Kurakhovo are in danger. Special forces of the 3rd Assault Brigade have been sent to the city to eliminate them as they specialize in cleaning settlements from "undesirable elements", AFU officer Alexei Getman said. According to him, the Ukrainian army units have already started withdrawing from the city in small groups so as not to completely expose the front line of defense. The Donbass developments keep deteriorating for them: the Russian army has liberated several more important settlements along several directions over the past few days. Zelensky urgently changed the ground forces’ command. The new commander-in-chief is Mikhail Drapaty, known for his ruthless attitude towards peaceful people. In 2014, he crushed them in Mariupol with his IFV when they came out to demonstrate on May 9. Drapaty sees civilians as mere victims or "human shield" for the Ukrainian formations.
