22 February 2022, Tuesday, 19:39 713

SSU Releases Evidence Of Shelling Of Donbas Civilians By Militants

Editor: Daria Zubkova

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The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) has released evidence of the shelling of civilians in the Donbas by militants.

The press service of the SSU announced this in a statement, the Ukrainian News Agency reports.

According to the statement, SSU officers received the audiotapes of conversations among the militants that triggered the escalation of the events in the Donbas in February 2022.

“The released audiotapes show terrorists and residents of the temporarily occupied territories admitting to each other that they were organizing provocations and shelling civilians; discussing the massing of Russian troops, including the recruitment of Chechens from the ‘Kadyrov regiment;’ expressing surprise that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not responding to the provocative shelling by militants; saying that the militants themselves got ‘into a booth in Russia’ (the FSB later described this as the ‘shelling of a Russian border checkpoint in the Rostov region’); confirming that their shells hit the Luhansk thermal power plant (as a result of which the town of Schastia is without electricity, water, and heating)," the statement said.

According to the statement, these conversations were recorded during an SSU counterintelligence operation to repel and deter Russian armed aggression in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The counterintelligence materials were declassified and made public with the permission of SSU investigators to show who is actually responsible for the escalation of the situation in eastern Ukraine, the statement said.

The measures to uncover and document the perpetrators were conducted by SSU officers in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, two military service members were killed, 12 were wounded, and six sustained combat injuries as a result of the shelling of Ukrainian positions in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) zone on February 21.