Statement from Daria Morozova in connection with increased number of civilian casualties

Comments and statements of the Ombudsman News

Ahead of the working meeting in the framework of the Minsk negotiation process, which is scheduled for June 5, we are obliged to note a significant deterioration of the situation along the line of contact – from Donetsk to Novoazovsk, and from Gorlovka to Dokuchaevsk.

Thus, only since the beginning of the week seven peaceful citizens of the Donetsk People’s Republic became victims of aggression by the armed formations of Ukraine: on May 27, a woman born in 1948 and a child born in 2013 were injured as a result of attack by an unmanned aerial vehicle in the Nikitovsky district of the city of Gorlovka; on May 30, a man born in 1955 and a child born in 2011 were injured as a result of shelling with the use of anti-tank missile systems in the Kuibyshev district of the city of Donetsk; on June 1, a woman born in 1956, resident of Kominternovo, was injured, and a man born in 1965, Leninskoe settlement, fell under mortar fire. According to the latest updates, his wife, born in 1956, sustained contusion.

Targeted aggressive actions of the Ukrainian side against the civilian population of Donbass not only violate all previously achieved agreements enshrined in the Minsk Agreements, but also directly contradict the norms and principles of international humanitarian law as regards the use of prohibited methods of warfare. Part 2 of Article 13 of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions relating to the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts prohibits acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population; civilians must not be the object of attack.

Reiterating commitment to the principles of international humanitarian law, as well as the agreements reached in the framework of the Minsk negotiating process, the Donetsk People’s Republic calls upon the world community and the guarantor countries of the Minsk agreements to use all available measures to de-escalate the conflict, resume peaceful dialogue and prevent targeted attacks on civilians by armed formations of Ukraine.