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Hours after the launch of Russian-initiated hostilities in Ukraine on February 24, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that they were targeting only Ukrainian military facilities and that nothing was threatening the civilian population.
“The Russian armed forces do not deploy any artillery or air strikes on Ukrainian cities. Military infrastructure is hit by high-precision weapons. There are no threats to the civilian population,” the Russian Defense Ministry stated.
This statement has been actively circulated by almost all official Russian media resources since yesterday, moreover, noting as a counter argument that Ukraine is shelling the civilian population of Donetsk and Lugansk.
However, contrary to Russia’s claim, examination of videos and photos circulating on the Internet shows that the Russian military is targeting peaceful civilians.
Fact Investigation Platform examined one of the videos and noted that it was made in one of the southern districts of Kyiv.
The video vividly shows that a residential building was shelled, as a result of which a fire even started. It is more obvious from the video shot in the morning that the damaged “facility” is not a military infrastructure, but a residential building.
With the help of some of the photos available on the Internet, it was possible to find out some details of the area which made it possible to locate the area that had been shelled by the Russian military.
The building is located in the southern part of Kyiv, on Alexander Košice street in the vicinity of which there is a park, a number of public and private institutions, educational institutions, but there is no facility of military purpose.
The photos taken by Google Earth near this building in 2019 show that this is an apartment building, inside of which there are business companies of civil character (law firm, notary offices, real estate agency, insurance company, etc.).
Լուսանկարը՝ Google Earth-ից
Thus, contrary to the statements of the Russian Ministry of Defense that the Russian armed forces target only the military infrastructure of Ukraine, the civilian population was also targeted from the very first day of the war
Sevada Ghazaryan
