DISINFO: Kyiv pursues its criminal plan to "slaughter every single Ukrainian"
SUMMARY
Kyiv continues to persistently pursue its criminal plan to "slaughter every single Ukrainian", blatantly ignoring the catastrophic consequences that the deliberate placement of heavy equipment and anti-personnel mines in residential areas has for civilians.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives obfuscating atrocities against Ukrainian civilians committed by the Russian armed forces, during Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The narrative presents the repeated pro-Kremlin narrative, of the Ukrainian army fighting and killing its own population, which is untrue.
Kyiv has no plans to "slaughter every single Ukrainian". The war in Eastern Ukraine was a well-documented act of aggression by Russian armed forces, but not a punitive military operation of the Ukrainian authorities. Russia was supporting its proxies with weapons, its active-duty soldiers served there and its top military commanders visited the war zone to coordinate joint efforts with the separatists. Despite all this Russia officially denied its military presence in Donbas for the past 8 years.
The situation escalated on 24 February 2022, when Russia launched an unjustified wide-scale invasion of Ukraine, which started the largest military conflict in Europe since WWII. One of the pretexts for the so-called military operation is “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine according to official Russian statements.
The International Criminal Court has launched a war crimes investigation over Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. According to multiple international media reports, Russian troops are regularly shelling and bombing residential areas, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, orphanages, churches and other civilian objects. They are also planting mines in cities.
Russian troops are reportedly also using cluster bombs which are prohibited by the Convention on Cluster Munition, as well as thermobaric weapons, which may be subject to prohibition by the Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons if used against civilian targets.
See the EU's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine here along with EU vs Disinfo's Guide to Deciphering Pro-Kremlin disinformation around Putin's War.