MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. The Ukrainian army has detained seven students from Sri Lanka and taken them to an unknown destination, the head of the region’s military-civilian administration Vitaly Ganchev has said.

"Seven citizens of Sri Lanka, who studied at the Kupyansk Medical College, have been detained and taken to an unknown destination. Given the notorious methods the Ukrainian special services employ, we do not rule out provocations against the military-civilian administration of the Kharkov Region," he said.

Ganchev previously said that Ukrainian forces and foreign mercenaries were torturing and shooting civilians in their zone of control. He stressed that this was happening in many places, including Izyum, Kupyansk, Veliky Burluk and Volchansk. He pointed out that it hard to say if those responsible for torturing and humiliating civilians were regular army soldiers, members of nationalist battalions or Ukraine’s security service SBU, but "there are now quite a few people who do not speak Russian or Ukrainian."

Earlier, he told TASS that Ukraine simply sacrificed its civilian population in order to try to stage once again the Bucha scenario by speculating about the discovery of a mass grave in Izyum.