You're reading: Lawmaker: Evidence ties Russia to Donetsk killings

A Ukrainian lawmaker claimed on Jan. 29 that proof had emerged of Russia’s involvement in the deaths of at least eight civilians in Donetsk on Jan. 22.

The report comes amid mounting evidence of the presence of Russian weapons, mercenaries and regular army units in Donbas. During the Donetsk attack, eight to 15 civilians were killed at a bus stop, according to different sources cited by Amnesty International.

Anton Gerashchenko, a parliamentarian on the People’s Front’s list, wrote on Facebook that separatists had inadvertently confirmed Russia’s involvement in the attack.

“A subversive group of the enemy has been detained in Donetsk,” Svodki Novorossii (the Novorossiya Newsletter), a major separatist portal,​ reported on Jan. 28, apparently implying that the group was on the Ukrainian side in the war. “Three people were traveling by car and shelling the city from a mortar. All of them are Russian citizens: two are from Krasnodar, and one is from Krasnodar Oblast.”

He said Ukrainian intelligence agencies had confirmed the report.

“The detainees are likely to be subversive agents of the GRU (Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate) sent there to fuel the hatred for Ukraine by organizing the murder of Donetsk civilians,” he said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, to which the GRU reports, declined to comment.

According to Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), the pro-Russian insurgency in Donbas was launched by GRU units in April 2014. Igor Strelkov, who seized Slovyansk in Donetsk Oblast on April 12, is a GRU colonel, according to the SBU, though he denies it. Ukrainian authorities have also accused the GRU of killing Volodymyr Rybak, a member of Horlivka’s city council, in April 2014 and of organizing terrorist attacks all over Ukraine over the past months.

Gerashchenko said that the Donetsk attack could have been Russian intelligence agencies’ attempt to portray Ukrainian troops as murderers of civilians in order to offset the negative impact of the Jan. 13 Volnovakha attack on Kremlin-backed separatists’ image. Due to the shelling of a bus in Volnovakha by Russian-backed troops, 12 civilians were killed.

Vladimir Kononov, defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, confirmed by phone that the subversive group had been detained but said information about it was secret, and an investigation was under way. He dismissed the report that the detainees were Russian citizens.

“I think it’s nonsense and looks very funny,” he told the Kyiv Post. “Either someone is trying to compromise Russia or it’s another journalist hoax.”

Ukrainian authorities and Kremlin-backed separatists have blamed each other for the Donetsk attack.
Andrei Lysenko, a spokesman for the anti-terrorist operation’s headquarters, said on Jan. 22 that, according to preliminary information, the bus stop had been shelled from a vehicle-mounted mobile mortar going around Donetsk. Ukrainian troops’ nearest positions are in Pisky, and mortars based there cannot shoot at such a distance, he added.

Gerashchenko wrote on Jan. 22 that, based on the size of impact craters, 82 mm mortar ammunition had been used for the attack. The maximum range of such mortars is 4 kilometers, while the nearest Ukrainian units are 8-10 kilometers away, he added.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) commented on the incident on Jan. 29.
“(The OSCE’s special monitoring mission) conducted a crater analysis on both craters, and determined that the rounds that caused the two craters had been fired from a north-western direction,” the OSCE said in a report. “The special monitoring mission also determined that the weapon(s) used was most likely either a mortar or an artillery piece.”

Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, said by phone that the organization had no information on whether the bus stop was shelled from Ukrainian or separatist-controlled territory. Nor does it have any information on the subversive group detained in Donetsk, he added.

Another alleged proof of the GRU’s activities in Donbas came as a resident of Vyazma in Smolensk Oblast was arrested for allegedly divulging secret information about Russian troop deployments. She faces up to 20 years in jail on treason charges.

Svetlana Davydova was arrested last week, was subsequently sent to Moscow and is now being held at the Lefortovo detention facility, Russia’s meduza.io news site reported on Jan. 29.

Davydova has noticed that the local GRU barracks were empty and overheard a serviceman saying in a minibus that GRU employees were being transferred to Moscow and subsequently sent “on an assignment” elsewhere, Davydova’s husband said, as cited by meduza.io.  She made the conclusion that they would be sent to fight against Ukrainian troops in Donbas and informed the Ukrainian embassy about it, the husband said.