Residents of Lugansk, Russian activists and refugees who fled the zone of fighting have honored the killed civilians on the Day of Remembrance for victims of Ukrainian aggression.
The participants observed a minute of silence and laid flowers at the ”We Won’t Forget, Won’t Forgive” memorial built on a mass grave of Lugansk residents.
Kiev servicemen who had surrendered to LPR forces in the Rubezhnoye area were convoyed to the venue. As the ceremony was drawing to a close, they all sank to their knees.
“Eight years have passed since that terrible date when the Ukrainian authorities unleashed a terrible war against us, peaceful Donbass residents, a war against their own people,” said LPR Deputy Foreign Minister Anna Soroka who chairs the LPR fact-finding commission on Ukrainian war crimes against the local population.
The Kiev servicemen present at the event abetted the crimes even if they had not shot at civilians, LPR parliamentarian Svetlana Gizai said.
“They (Kiev servicemen who surrendered to the LPR) are guilty because they had not laid down their arms (before the beginning of the Russian special operation) and had not risen against the fascism that emerged in Ukraine,” she said.
On 13 April 2014, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine decided “On urgent measures to overcome the terrorist threat and to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine” which launched armed aggression against Donbass. The decision was made effective the next day, April 14, by Verkhovnaya Rada (parliament) speaker Alexander Turchinov who was acting president at the time.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation to protect Donbass residents from Ukrainian aggression. Earlier, LPR and DPR Heads Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin asked the Russian leader to provide military assistance. As of now, some 80 percent of the LPR territory has been liberated. *i*s
