Ukraine military shell International Red Cross office in Donetsk

(from the briefing by Russian Foreign Ministry
Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, December 22, 2022)

On the night of December 20, 2022, an office building of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Kapitana Ratnikova Street in Donetsk was shelled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. According to the committee’s information, the office building and several cars were damaged. Fortunately, no Red Cross employee was reported injured. A hospital that operates with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross was also fired on. Two patients were killed and several injured.

We consider the shelling of the Red Cross facility in Donetsk a natural result of the Kiev regime’s many years of indiscriminate shelling of the city’s neighbourhoods, which has recently intensified. It is impossible to further deny reality which, unfortunately, is what many international humanitarian organisations have been doing, including those that showed a certain detachment, without establishing who is guilty of what and who needs to be held accountable, while declaring assistance. It’s like carrying water in a sieve. It is impossible to continue winking at the Kiev regime’s lies that have resulted in the shelling of civilian facilities for many years. Over the past two weeks alone, 21 Donetsk residents were killed, 94 injured and 460 houses damaged.

These criminal actions show the Kiev authorities’ blatant disregard for international humanitarian law, as well as the cynical trampling of the special status of the International Committee of the Red Cross as a reputable neutral organisation with a solely humanitarian mandate. Its commonly accepted status is outlined in the Geneva Conventions.

We believe that the international humanitarian community must not leave such barbaric acts unanswered.

Russia expresses its solidarity with the Red Cross and urges it to demand that Kiev adhere to international humanitarian law.

The most important thing is that nothing will happen without an honest conversation about these issues and preventing those horrible false ideas developed inside NATO to be put into the mouth of Vladimir Zelensky and company. If they are not stopped and this horrible infodemic continues, any attempts to improve the humanitarian situation on the ground will be futile. It is impossible to supply the Kiev regime with weapons from Western countries and at the same time pretend to be helping civilians through humanitarian organisations. Something must be wrong here. The West is either for the war, combat and killing, or for peace, assistance for civilians, stopping violence and recording the actual facts. It is impossible to deliver weapons and talk about civilians and protecting their rights. It is impossible, and yet that is what the West is doing. At some point, Western liberal society is going to find itself in a massive dead end.