We, the members of the Russian Public Organization for family protection "All-Russian Parents Resistance", are deeply outraged by the terror being inflicted upon peaceful civilians, including children, in the South-East of Ukraine. By the terror, that the Kiev authorities for some reason call "anti-terrorist operation." Even more, we are amazed at the lack of effective reaction on behalf of the main international body chaired by You, which is designed to protect world peace and freedom for all nations. We are extremely concerned that the children in this region are the most affected victim of festering conflict.
What the population of towns and cities of the South-Eastern Ukraine is experiencing is a genocide. No other definition would suffice. The residential areas of the Donetsk region are subjected to the heavy artillery shelling and air strikes. A number of settlements have been actually razed to the ground, the electricity and water supplies have been cut off. It did not happen because of the "random" hits, but as a result of deliberate blows at the water supply facilities and other life-sustaining nodes.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed and injured. Others have lost their homes. Children in their arms, they rush away from their native places, but the present-day Ukrainian authorities do not ensure their safe travel. On the contrary, there is shelling of refugees on the roads. The vehicles under the white flag with the red cross and words "children" on it are pointedly exposed to mortar fire. All these is recorded by a variety of evidence, including video films.
War crimes staggering by their cruelty are not singular, they tend to obtain massive systemic character. Ukrainian authorities use heavy artillery, tanks, attack jet bombers, army helicopters, multiple rocket launchers against its own population. They also use anti-personnel mines and cluster bombs prohibited by international conventions, as well as incendiary bombs with white phosphorus against civilian targets.
We would like to remind, that in the end of February, 2014, an actual coup took place in Kiev. It caused the protests of citizens in many cities of Ukraine, and until the beginning of May, protests in the South-East were purely of a peaceful nature. However, on May 2, the massacre of unarmed civilians was organized in Odessa. This happened with the active participation of radical and neo-Nazi groups, encouraged by the authorities. According to official figures, 48 people were burned at the House of Trade Unions in the center of Odessa. The real number of victims is not established and cannot be established without responsible international investigation of this crime. According to authorities, condoning Nazi thugs, all driven into the building, burned and suffocated people allegedly were "terrorists and separatists" who came from Russia and Transnistria. But it was soon discovered that the victims were not only citizens of Ukraine, but also natives of the city of Odessa. They just did not share the political choice made by the part of population at Maidan. Why Odessa crime has not received due international assessment and even adequate publicity up till now?
It is this crime in Odessa that became the watershed. The protesting South-East realized what awaits it, if the current political line of Kiev persists. Its attitude was unequivocally expressed at the referendum on May 11. May we remind You, that even when heavy armaments have been sent to Donetsk and Lugansk unarmed civilians at first tried to stop them with a "human shield." Only after the presidential elections on May 25, the conflict turned into military confrontation with unequal opportunities.
It is already three weeks that the eviction of the indigenous population from the land, the pogroms in settlements occupied by the army and massacre of their inhabitants are taking place. With the use of completely unlawful methods activists of protest movements are abducted in the cities of Ukraine and delivered for fee to Igor Kolomoisky, one of the interested parties of the February coup.
This is the "classic" example of genocide by the state with respect to the significant part of its citizens. Kiev alleges that it is struggling with the Russian occupation, but so far have not provided any evidence of involvement of the Russian servicemen in fighting on the side of the volunteer corps. Whereas Kiev authorities use foreign mercenaries (as have been recorded).
We appeal to You as an international umpire and call You to respond to the blatant facts of mass violations of human rights, of the bloody suppression of any dissent by the Ukrainian authorities, of the catastrophic increase in the refugees flow from the areas being destroyed in the South-East of Ukraine. We, and the vast majority of Russia's population, regard unwillingness of the international community to take notice of the crimes against humanity committed by the authorities of Ukraine as condoning atrocities, as the actual complicity in war crimes.
We demand to:
- strongly condemn the aggressive actions of the Kiev authorities and compel them to end the armed terror against the peaceful population in the South-East of Ukraine;
- close the airspace over the Donetsk and Lugansk regions;
- oblige Kiev authorities to start negotiations with the popular leaders of the South-Eastern regions;
- engage international organizations in fighting humanitarian disaster in the South-East of Ukraine.