New facts of war crimes of national battalions in Mariupol are documented – Daria Morozova

Events News

Daria Morozova visited the Novoazovsk district, which today is the Republic’s largest accommodation centre for refugees from the zones of hostilities in Donbass. In particular, the Ombudsman visited the deployed temporary accommodation centres (TAPs) in the city of Novoazovsk and the village of Bezymennoye. Now residents of Mariupol are coming here. Monitoring the observance of their rights is the most important task. Especially considering the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe in which they found themselves through the fault of Ukraine. 

The Ombudsman talked to people, controlled the conditions of their accommodation, clarified the current humanitarian needs, and also recorded evidence of war crimes of the AFU in Mariupol.

According to Daria Morozova, the evacuated residents of Mariupol are in a difficult moral and psychological state. Basically, these are residents of the left bank, the Vostochny microdistrict. Almost all lost their homes. Many relatives and friends died. The situation is aggravated by the inability to bury the dead. People were forced to flee, leaving the bodies of the dead in the yards and basements. Another common problem is the lack of information about the fate of relatives from other parts of the city, with whom there has been no contact for many weeks.

“It is difficult to describe in words what these people went through. Even men do not hold back tears, telling how their families did not have enough elementary things like water and bread. It should be also noted that in the course of interviewing of citizens who arrived from Mariupol, new egregious facts of the criminal actions of the national battalions in the city were revealed. This is the deployment of military equipment in apartments, and the shelling of the civilian population when they tried to leave the war zone, and the destruction of housing and infrastructure during the retreat. Ukrainian militants took away food from the population, kept them on the territory of mined objects. All these data will be included in the general database of war crimes of the AFU in Donbass,” the Human Rights Ombudsman in the DPR noted.

The work of the Republican Human Rights Institute with refugees from the zones of hostilities in Donbass continues. The number of evacuated citizens is increasing every day. Guaranteeing their rights and providing the necessary assistance in a timely manner are priority tasks.