LUGANSK, April 16. /TASS/. The International Public Tribunal on Ukraine has started gathering information about military crimes committed in liberated territories of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), the tribunal’s chair, Russian Public Chamber member Maxim Grigoryev, has said.

"The International Public Tribunal on Ukraine began its work in liberated areas of the Lugansk People’s Republic," Luganskinformtsentr quoted him as saying.

According to Grigoryev, the amount of reports about purported military crimes is huge.

"Our task is to gather the information, and to present it publicly. Members of our international tribunal - let me remind you that social activists from over 20 countries are taking part - will hand over this information to their national judicial systems. We, for instance, are handing over the information to the Russian Investigative Committee," he said.

The decision to establish an international tribunal of human rights activists and journalists to investigate Ukrainian nationalists’ actions and human rights abuse in Ukraine was made in March 2022, during a conference that brought together delegates from 20 countries.

Russian President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.

The DPR and the LPR launched an operation to liberate their territories under Kiev’s control.