MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/. The Ukrainian side has again prepared a large-scale provocation to accuse Russia’s armed forces of military crimes, according to an urgent statement by the Interdepartmental Coordination Center of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine released on Sunday.

"Ukraine’s special services have prepared a new large-scale anti-Russia provocation aimed at discrediting the Russian armed forces and accusing the Russian military of allegedly committing military crimes," the statement reads.

On Christmas eve representatives of Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation and the Security Service opened up graves at cemeteries in the settlements of Kazachya Lopan, Veliky Burluk, Shipovatoye and Khatnoye in the Kharkov Region, in which citizens that died of natural causes from February 24 to September 6, 2022, were buried, according to the statement. "After the exhumation the bodies of Ukrainian citizens were additionally deformed and thrown into specially readied pits on the outskirts of the mentioned settlements for creating a false evidence base, alleged tortures and execution of civilians by the Russian military," the statement said.

According to the Interdepartmental Coordination Center, the representatives of the Ukrainian special services and law enforcement bodies are currently taking photographs and videos of the bodies of dead Ukrainian citizens, as well as imitating the work of ‘forensic medical experts’ and ‘procedural actions’ in the presence of counterfeit witnesses.

"The Kiev regime is attempting to use those anti-human means amid the lack of any success on the battlefield to hold the attention to it of the Western audience and convince its foreign partners of the necessity to keep supporting it," the statement said.