GENEVA, October 1. /TASS/. Russia cannot let crimes in south-eastern Ukraine remain unpunished, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and Supremacy of Law Konstantin Dolgov said on Wednesday, October 1, in Geneva.

“We keep demanding that all attacks against civilians, all murders should be properly investigated under effective international control. We shall be demanding that all those responsible are identified and put on trial,” the diplomat said.

In particular, Russia will not let May 2 tragedy in Odessa sink into oblivion, Dolgov said. “We, the international community, will not permit it (May 2 tragedy in Odessa) to be left unpunished,” he noted. “Russia keeps this situation under constant control,” Dolgov added.

“All existing violations of human rights and norms of international humanitarian law must be investigated by the international community. They must get proper assessment,” Dolgov said. 

Commenting on mass burial sites near Donetsk, he said, “We saw information with reference to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) that about 400 bodies had been found." "Many of them were shot in the head,” Dolgov said, adding that the place where mass burial sites were found had been under the control of the National Guard at that time.

The commissioner also condemned the shelling on a school in Donetsk that was carried out by Ukrainian servicemen. He said Ukrainian troops continued shelling on civilian facilities.

The UN says some 3,500 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s war-torn south-east as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev’s military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).

May 2 tragedy in Odessa

Unrest in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa started on May 2, when football fans from the east Ukrainian city of Kharkiv marched along city streets with Right Sector radicals and supporters from Kiev's Maidan Self-Defense Force. Clashes broke out between them and activists seeking a referendum on the issue of Ukrainian federalisation and Russian's official status as a state language. At least 48 people died and more than 200 were injured in clashes in Odessa after radicals set ablaze the regional House of Trade Unions, where pro-federalisation activists had taken refuge, and a tent camp near it where they had been collecting signatures in support of the referendum.