There aren’t any mass graves in the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told DPR Ombudsman Daria Morozova to RIA Novosti.
Earlier, the ex-official of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasily Prozorov at a press conference in Moscow said that it wasn’t Kiev’s intention to resolve the conflict in Donbass peacefully from the very beginning. He also told about secret prisons of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Azov division (a Ukrainian nationalist organization; criminal cases have been filed against many of its participants in the Russian Federation) where people were tortured and killed.
“In the territory of Donbass, which is now under control of Ukraine, a big part of the population disagreed with the government. There could have been mass executions and mass graves of those dissenters. I have every reason to believe that there are graves of civilians in the territory of Ukraine and that we will find some of those. There are many civilians among missing persons. My guess is that these graves might be near the so-called secret prisons. Many people died from torture. Many of those detained in 2014 by nationalist battalions or armed forces of Ukraine are now missing. When we take control over this territory, we will find a lot there,” – told Daria Morozova to RIA Novosti.
She added that mass graves of militiamen also might be there. “At the negotiations (in Minsk on settlement in Donbass) last year, one of the representatives of Ukraine stated that they have about 4 thousand of such unidentified graves with identified human remains. We have to start the work, to check the DNA. I understand that the Ukrainian side has no interest in that, because every exhumation requires initiating a criminal investigation,” she added.
The Ombudsman noted that there are no such graves in the territory of the DPR. The work to find the deceased is constantly ongoing. We always keep in touch with some representatives of Ukraine. When we find a grave (usually there are single graves) somewhere in the territory of the DPR, we exhume the remains and identify whether they belong to the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) divisions or to the DPR. There are no mass graves in our territory. All the remains and bodies found have been transferred to the Ukrainian side. We have never used this issue to manipulate. When we find a body, we transfer it as soon as possible,” Daria Morozova noted.
