MOSCOW, September 12. /TASS/. Mercenaries are shooting residents of the Kharkov Region and filming it on camera in order to later accuse Russian servicemen, Vitaly Ganchev, head of the military-civilian administration of the region, said during a Rossiya-24 TV broadcast.
"The situation is complicated and still alarming due to the fact that those people who were able to get out, say terrible things about what is now happening in Kupyansk and Veliky Burluk. It seems that mercenaries are driving around and shooting people, and all this is being filmed," he said, "I take it they need to clean up these towns and pretend that it were in fact Russian troops, that they tortured people, [and that is why] corpses lying in the streets."
Earlier, Ganchev reported that 5,000 people were able to evacuate from the territory of the Kharkov Region to the Russian Federation in recent days. At the same time, it is already impossible to leave the north of the region, and the Ukrainian armed forces started repressive measures there.
A representative of the region's security services specified to TASS that some 2,000 foreign mercenaries from the United States, Britain, Poland and other countries are present in the Ukrainian units fighting in the Kharkov Region.