MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/. Ukrainian troops have deployed an artillery battery in the Kharkov region to conduct provocative shelling of residential quarters in Kharkov, Mikhail Mizintsev, the headquarters head and chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Monday.
"According to verified information, the Kiev regime organized another provocation against the local population in the Kharkov region to subsequently accuse Russian forces of alleged indiscriminate strikes at civilians and to drive people from their apartments and organize combat emplacements in vacant premises," said Mizintsev, who also heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.
According to Mizintsev, for these ends Ukrainian troops have deployed an artillery battery in the Kharkov region, which periodically opens fire at Kharkov’s residential quarters. They also plan to invite Ukrainian and foreign journalists to make fake photos and videos about alleged "killings of the city’s dwellers by the Russians."
He stressed that these facts once again demonstrate the utter disregard of international humanitarian law by Ukraine’s authorities, which is happening under the passive eye of Western countries.
Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have deployed artillery weapons and multiple-launch rocket systems, as well as arranged ammunition depots in schools and kindergartens of Lisichansk, Mizintsev said.
"In the town of Privolye (part of the Lisichansk city council - TASS), nationalists have set up sniper positions, deployed heavy weapons and MLRS in the kindergarten Kalinushka, they forcibly hold residents of nearby houses in the kindergarten," said Mizintsev, who heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.
According to him, Ukrainian military units equipped strongholds and ammunition depots in three schools and a kindergarten of Lisichansk, also setting up firing and sniper positions in multi-story apartment buildings. Armored vehicles, artillery weapons and multiple-launch rocket systems were deployed in the areas adjacent to the buildings. Local residents were not evacuated intentionally, Mizintsev said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics, made a decision to conduct a special military operation. He stressed that Moscow's plans did not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories. He assured that the goal is the demilitarization and denazification of the Eastern European country.