MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. NATO’s leadership prefers to turn a blind eye on crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine and continues to step up provocations in the region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Wednesday.
"Most of those civilians who died in the east of Ukraine were put to death or tortured to death during the hot phase of the conflict in 2014-2015. That was done by the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian nationalists from the volunteer battalions, supported by the regime in Kiev," Zakharova said. "Local civilians had to bury their neighbors and members of their families in the backyards of their homes, because cemeteries were mined. This is not just cynicism or humiliation, but a very special kind of extermination of civilians. In the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics ever more graves continue to be found of civilians who were killed by retreating Ukrainian soldiers."
Zakharova stressed she was referring to not minefields that "separate parties to a conflict or conflicting territories within one state."
"Those were not mines planted in order to stop an offensive by combat vehicles and personnel and to prevent the seizure of territories. Those mines were meant to kill people who would be burying their near and dear ones at a cemetery," she said.
"In the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics ever more graves continue to be found of civilians killed by retreating Ukrainian soldiers," Zakharova said. She urged the Western human rights activists and NATO leaders to pay attention to this at last and instead of fanning tensions in the region and to take a closer look at the ordinary people’s conditions in countries that enjoy Western and NATO patronage."
In this connection she said that "last week at the initiative of a number of non-governmental organizations of Donetsk and Lugansk a special Internet resource Donbass Tragedy was launched. It has collected documentary evidence of crimes by the Ukrainian forces and information about those missing as a result of the conflict in the east of Ukraine."
Zakharova added that a joint inter-departmental commission, which the Lugansk and Donetsk authorities had created last August, was searching for missing persons and improvised mass graves.