NEW YORK, September 25. /ITAR-TASS/. The Kiev authorities did not order the Ukrainian armed forces to use weapons against civilians in the country’s embattled east, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk claimed in a speech in the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Asked by a Human Rights Watch (HRW) representative why Ukraine uses artillery and other weapons against civilians in the country’s east, Yatsenyuk said the army had not been given such an order.
He also said the Ukrainian authorities are ready to investigate such cases and recommended the HRW representative to send any evidence she may have to the Kiev authorities.
According to UN data, some 3,500 people, including hundreds of civilians, have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Ukraine’s war-torn southeast 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 republics.
The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on cessation of fire during OSCE-mediated talks on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk. The long hoped-for ceasefire took effect the same day.