KIEV, January 25. /TASS/. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council on Sunday asked the government to file an action with the Hague tribunal into the crimes against humanity committed in 2014-2015, the organization’s press service said.
The council has also ordered the launch of a procedure of recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics in eastern Ukraine as “terrorist organizations.”
The organization has decided on “the application on the territory of Ukraine of sanctions introduced by the EU countries, Switzerland, the US and the G7 countries” against Russia.
Meanwhile, since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine’s southeast, international observers have registered numerous human rights violations on the part of Ukraine’s military.
In particular, the Human Rights Watch organization blamed Ukraine’s troops for using the banned cluster munitions against the civilians and also indiscriminate shellings of the populated areas from multiple launch rocket systems.
Ukraine also took the first spot in the anti-rating of experts from the Reporters Without Borders non-profit organization. In 2014, a total of 119 reporters were abducted around the world, with most cases reported in Ukraine (33). Another 47 journalists were arrested there and 215 cases of attacks or threats against media representatives were registered, the Paris-based press freedom watchdog said.
In the more serious category, the killings of journalists, Ukraine came third, after Syria and Palestine. Out of six journalists killed between May and August 2014 in Ukraine, four are Russian citizens - Anatoly Klyan, Anton Voloshin, Igor Kornelyuk and Andrei Stenin.
Besides, in its White Book, Russia’s Foreign Ministry mentioned various facts of abductions, tortures and killings of Donbass citizens. Moscow has repeatedly called on international organizations to carry out an objective investigation into all these crimes.