NOVOSIBIRSK, June 27. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukrainian refugees who keep arriving in Russia can turn for help to territorial investigative units of the Russian Investigation Committee if they want to defend their rights that were violated during the armed conflict in Ukraine.

The Russian Investigation Committee has initiated criminal proceedings in connection with the application of prohibited means and methods of warfare in Ukraine, the press service of the Investigation Committee branch for the Novosibirsk region told ITAR-TASS on Friday.

Novosibirsk has started receiving first refugees from Ukraine, many of whom are coming without any identity papers. The local department of the Russian Investigation Committee is trying to establish their identity.

The materials of the criminal case say that in April-June 2014, unidentified servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as well as armed members of Ukraine’s National Guard and militants of the Right Sector nationalist movement who shelled the East Ukrainian cities of Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Donetsk, Mariupol and other populated localities of the proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics had intentionally used heavy offensive indiscriminate weapons against peaceful civilians.

They grossly violated the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

In its criminal case, the Russian Investigation Committee noted that the actions of Ukrainian troopers had led to the deaths of peaceful civilians and had incurred harm of various degree of gravity to their health. Besides, the Ukrainian army partly destroyed life-support and public health facilities and urban infrastructure in the above-mentioned cities and populated localities.

For that reason, a considerable part of the populations of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, predominantly women and children, were forced to leave their places of permanent residence for Russia. The Ukrainian refugees are being received in all regions and territories of Russia, including the Novosibirsk region.

In this connection, the Russian Investigation Committee has urged all refugees, who seek the protection of their rights violated back home, to turn to territorial investigative departments of the Russian Investigation Committee.