The Interdepartmental Working Group (MRG) on the search for burial sites of Ukrainian aggression victims, their identification and perpetuation of memory, together with activists and Investigative Committee officers has exhumed the remains of ten civilians from a mass grave outside Severodonetsk.
The mass grave appeared in the summer of 2022 at the entrance to the Shchedrshchevo settlement which is actually a suburb of Severodonetsk, said MRG field team deputy commander Yulia Kozhevnikova.
“We see a mass grave here, a trench with 26 remains. Our field team, together with the Investigative Committee travelled to the scene where the remains are being exhumed. As of today, ten bodies have been retrieved; the work is ongoing,” she said.
Local residents who buried their relatives here actively help the working group, Kozhevnikova said.
“It was in the spring and summer (of 2022) during massive artillery attacks; residents say that Ukrainian tanks drove in and shot at houses with civilians inside,” she said.
The mass grave was used to bury both Shchedrishchevo settlement residents and Severodonetsk residents.
MRG Head Anna Soroka earlier said that the remains of 500 people had been exhumed in the Severodonetsk area in the period from August through December 2022.
LPR ombudsperson Viktoria Serdyukova said that the ongoing shelling of Severodonetsk area settlements by Ukrainian forces complicates the exhumation of bodies of Ukrainian aggression victims. According to her information, some 3,200 LPR residents including 57 children had been killed in the LPR as a result of Kiev aggression in the period from 2014 to March 2, 2023.
The Ukrainian government launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation against Donbass in April 2014. The peace talks that began soon thereafter failed to reach tangible results due to Kiev’s position to settle the conflict by force.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation to protect Donbass residents from Ukrainian aggression on February 24, 2022. Prior to that, LPR and DPR Heads Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin asked the Russian leader to provide military assistance.
The Lugansk People’s Republic acceded to Russia on September 30, 2022 following the unification referendum. *i*ie
