Officers of the Investigative Committee (SK) Department forSK the Lugansk People’s Republic have retrieved from mass graves in the LPR the remains of 49 victims of Kiev artillery attacks, the SK press service told the Lugansk Media Center.
“As of now, 49 bodies have been exhumed; the SK has identified 17 victims and found their relatives,” the report said.
Exhumation is part of the SK investigation into the criminal case over genocide and use of banned methods and means in the armed conflict by Kiev forces.
The SK said that Ukrainian armed formations delivered 3,000 artillery attacks on civilians and civil infrastructure killing 800 people including children in the period from 2916 through December 2022. Proceedings have been instituted against 16 Ukrainian servicemen, and courts ordered their arrest in absentia. The criminal case comprises some 600 volumes.
SK personnel, forensic experts continue exhumation works in Shchedrishchevo, a satellite settlement of Severodonetsk.
Some victims were clad in Russian military uniforms, and some were found with missing body parts and showing blast traumas which apparently caused their death, the SK press service said.
Earlier this month, the Interdepartmental Working Group (MRG) on the search for burial sites of Ukrainian aggression victims, their identification and perpetuation of memory and “We Won’t Forget, Won’t Forgive social organization activists exhumed the remains of six Lugansk People’s Republic militiamen shot dead by Kiev forces outside Severodonetsk in the summer of 2022.
MRG Head Anna Sorokina said that the Group exhumed the remains of 500 people 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 exhumation works. According to her information, some 3,200 LPR residents including 57 children were 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*v
