Civilians hiding on the territory of the Azot plant in Severodonetsk before its liberation were used by Ukrainian formations as hostages and human shields.
The Chairman of the International Public Tribunal for Ukraine, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Maxim Grigoriev, reported this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We have collected a lot of evidence that Ukrainian troops and national units used civilians as hostages, which is a war crime. People were physically prevented from leaving the enterprise. That’s what they said: “If you try to escape from Azot, we will bury you. Behind the fence there is only one road for you - to the cemetery."
They placed heavy equipment right at the entrance to the bomb shelter and basements. They covered themselves with civilians as a human shield. For any disobedience, they threatened to kill me,” the social activist told Moskovsky Komsomolets.
According to him, they were not told about any humanitarian corridors organized by the Russian army together with the LPR.
At the same time, he admitted that individual Ukrainian military personnel, but not commanders, helped civilians.
“I would like to note that not all Ukrainian military officers behaved like scoundrels. Among them were those who had not lost the remnants of their conscience. They, as a rule, were not from the leadership, but simple, demobilized soldiers.
We were told that some of them complied with the pleas and requests of women and released them with their children from the territory of the enterprise. They went out in small groups. There were also such cases,” Grigoriev added.