MOSCOW, February 18. /TASS/. Kiev's crimes during the 2014 coup d'etat, the burning of the Trade Union House in Odessa, and the punitive operations in Donbass are being hushed up by Washington and Brussels, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Friday.
The Duma Speaker recalled that mass graves of civilians have been unearthed on the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR). "Russia's Investigative Committee opened a criminal case over the brutality committed against the civilian population, and these means and methods during armed conflicts are prohibited based on international accords," he added.
"Kiev's crimes are swept under the rug by Washington and Brussels. We see no condemnations or investigations of [these] crimes against humanity. We are talking about the deaths of people during the 2014 coup d'etat, when the Trade Union House in Odessa was set ablaze and during the punitive operations in Donbass," he wrote on his Telegram channel. "If this is not genocide, then what is?" Volodin argued.
The Duma speaker noted that such crimes have no statute of limitations, that is why the facts of the crimes should be established now, "so that the perpetrators will undoubtedly be punished." "But instead of condemnation and a desire to get to the bottom of the matter, lawmakers from European parliaments, PACE and the OSCE PA stick their heads in the sand. There is a double standard here," Volodin concluded.
On February 16, the Russian Investigative Committee announced that it was opening a criminal case over the discovery of mass graves of civilians killed in the shelling of Donbass. Later, the same day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the report about the mass graves of civilians in Donbass could be misinformation. In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged Psaki not to speculate on this tragic topic without knowledge of it, especially "when it comes to civilian casualties." As proof corroborating her words, Zakharova attached photos of tombstones honoring the victims slaughtered by Ukrainian security forces in the Donbass republics to her commentary.