MOSCOW, September 12. /TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry has information that Ukrainian forces set up "something like concentration camps" for civilians in the Kursk Region.
The information is laid out in a report by Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik, which was obtained by TASS.
"Based on numerous data, which were provided by witnesses and collected by the headquarters of the Russian Red Cross in Kursk, a place where relatives of missing persons came to, it can be stated that in a number of militant-controlled territories something like 'concentration camps' were set up, where civilians were forcibly taken if they did not want to, or could not leave the territory captured by the enemy," the report said.
"For example, from 70 to 100 civilians were forcibly taken into the basements of the Sudzha boarding school, where they were subjected to psychological abuse and used for filming propaganda stories by Ukrainian and foreign journalists, who had illegally came along with the militants from the territory of Ukraine," the report went on to say.
Foreign reporters
The report paid special attention to activities of foreign reporters from such news organizations as the UK’s Independent, Germany’s Deutsche Welle (designated as a foreign agent news organization in Russia), Italy’s TG1, Latvia’s LT, the Romania’s HotNews, Ukraine’s 1+1, and America’s CNN.
"These journalists did not just illegally violate the border of the Russian Federation, but they did it under the escort of Ukrainian paramilitary punitive units. Their goal is to deliberately distort real events, to create a favorable media background for the actions of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk Region and to conceal information about terrorist crimes against civilians in the region committed by Ukrainian militants," the report said.
Kiev’s crimes
The report also stated, citing data from the Kursk Region Task Force, that 31 people were killed and 236 civilians injured, including 11 children, in attacks by Ukrainian forces as of the evening of September 5.
"It should be assumed that due to the lack of access of first responders and members of law enforcement services to some settlements, the number of victims of the Kiev regime's criminal strikes is not final and can’t be verified until after the restoration of Russian control over the sovereign territory and an investigation of crimes by Ukrainian forces," the report said.
"During the incursion, Ukrainian militants committed a whole number of war crimes against the civilian population of the Russian border territories that came under attack, including killing and wounding civilians, violence, including sexual violence, against local residents, taking hostages, using civilians as a human shield, looting and destroying private property in the captured territories, preventing evacuation," the report went on to say. "A full list of Kiev's criminal acts on the territory of the Kursk Region is yet to be compiled after its liberation from Ukrainian terrorists and all relevant search and investigation activities."