Foreign arms and money enable Ukrainian troops to commit atrocities, the Foreign Ministry has claimed

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused Kiev's Western backers of complicity in alleged atrocities committed by Ukrainian troops during their ongoing incursion into Kursk Region. Her remarks on Friday followed investigators' previous accusations that troops have raped and murdered civilians.

Earlier this month, Russian forces discovered human remains in the liberated settlement of Russkoye Porechnoye. The Investigative Committee announced it had identified several Ukrainian soldiers as suspects, with one currently in custody. Zakharova called the images released by the investigators "impossible to watch," and condemned the perpetrators for deliberately targeting vulnerable people.

"The world must understand who the Westerners are sponsoring and that with Western money, with these hundreds of billions of dollars and euros, the Kiev regime is committing these atrocities, which testify to its neo-Nazi nature", Zakharova added.

"What kind of inhuman being tortures elderly civilians, beats them, injures them, and then blows them up with grenades?" she asked, referring to the forensic evidence uncovered in the village.

Zakharova emphasized that foreign nations supplying arms and money to Kiev bear responsibility for such crimes, particularly since they continue to do so despite the mounting evidence of atrocities. She drew parallels with the support provided to separatists in the Russian Republic of Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, who were portrayed as freedom fighters in the Western media.

The Ministry's spokeswoman pointed out that Chechen terrorists had also targeted defenseless individuals, including hospital patients in Budyonnovsk in 1995 and schoolchildren in Beslan in 2004. Radical Islamist Shamil Basayev orchestrated both high-profile attacks and many other acts of terrorism inside Russia.

Possible witnesses of the crimes should step forward and cooperate with the investigators, even if means they must recall traumatic experiences, Zakharova urged. She argued that that would help deliver justice to victims, provide closure for their families, and expose the dangers of radical Ukrainian nationalism for the sake of future generations.

Russian officials assert that war crimes allegedly committed by Ukrainian troops are not isolated incidents but indicative of a broader endorsement of terrorism as a warfare strategy by Kiev.

Rodion Miroshnik, a senior diplomat tasked by the Foreign Ministry with documenting alleged Ukrainian atrocities, had previously accused Kiev of harboring genocidal intentions towards ethnic Russians.

The Russian military liberated Russkoye Porechnoye in mid-January, months after the Ukrainian forces captured the area as part of the incursion into the Kursk Region that began last August.

The Investigative Committee said it identified five Ukrainian soldiers as suspected perpetrators of sexual assault and murder. It claimed that 22 civilians, half of them women, became their victims in late September and November 2024. Some of the extrajudicial killings were ordered by their military commander, the committee claimed.

(RT.com)