MOSCOW, February 18. /TASS/. The prosecutors of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic have opened a criminal case against the Ukrainian leadership accusing it of having launched an aggressive war in the country’s east that has killed thousands of civilians, the Donetsk news agency has reported.

The Prosecutor-General’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Secretary of National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov are suspected of having "planned, prepared, unleashed and conducted an aggressive war."

"The Ukrainian leadership, which disagreed with the expression of will of the Donbas population that had proclaimed the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, organized the invasion of illegal armed groups and punitive battalions on its [Donbas] territory," the statement quoted by the agency says.

The Donetsk republic’s prosecutors say that as a result of military actions, terrorist acts, artillery and mortar shellings of the self-proclaimed republics, the total death toll among the civilians has exceeded 4,000.

According to the United Nations data as of mid-February, since April 2014 a total of 5,665 people have been killed and another 13,961 have been wounded in the armed conflict in the country’s east.