16:24 14.08.2018

Report of UN Office for Human Rights on events in Ilovaisk in 2014 contains inaccuracies, untruth – Donbas battalion volunteers

3 min read

KYIV. Aug 14 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Volunteers of battalion Donbas accuse the Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights of bias in preparing a report on human rights violations during the fighting for Ilovaisk in August 2014.

"The events listed in the report concern August 24-28. According to the authors of the report, these days there were tortures, detentions in inhuman conditions, executions. It tells about some Donbas fighters who did it all, for example, some fighter with the call sign Executioner," founder and honorary commander of the battalion Donbas, Ukrainian MP Semen Semenchenko said at a press conference in the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

In turn, the second battalion commander Anatoliy Vinohrodsky noted that the report does not accurately indicate the chronology of events and the participants in the battles.

"The first battles for Ilovaysk began on August 4. There the battalion Kryvbas and the Armed Forces of Ukraine took part, but the report indicates that this happened only on August 10 and the battalion Kryvbas is not mentioned there. The first unsuccessful assault on Ilovaisk - battalions Donbas and Shakhtarsk, but for some reason they forgot about the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the regiment Azov. School No. 14 was not occupied on August 18-19, but on the early hours of August 17," he said.

Also, according to Vinohrodsky, the report contains information about alleged torture and inhuman treatment of Ukrainian volunteers to local residents, but in fact, there were no such facts.

According to him, the authors of the report did not apply for information to the fighters of the battalion Donbas.

In this regard, Semenchenko noted that on Tuesday he is scheduled to meet with head of the UN Monitoring Mission for Human Rights Fiona Frazer. "I plan to draw her attention to the need to act in accordance with the treaty, which clearly states that monitoring should follow the principles of the UN - impartiality, objectivity and transparency. If you take data from the occupied territories, then take the data from the people you accuse," he said.

The deputy was also outraged by the fact that the report uses the terms "armed groups" instead of "invaders" and "Russian military."

Semenchenko also stressed that the battalion Donbas consisted mainly of the inhabitants of the occupied Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions," therefore, there is no talk of any hatred attributed to us - I have never come across with a situation where our fighter behaved hostile to local residents."

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