MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow will demand an independent international investigation to establish facts about mass graves recently discovered in eastern Ukraine’s war-torn Donetsk region, a senior Russian diplomat said Friday.
“We will insist on a serious investigation, preferably independent and preferably international. Facts must be established, and these facts must be made public and investigated,” Russia’s envoy to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Andrei Kelin said.
He said that Russia requested the OSCE chairmanship to oversee the investigation into the mass killings.
“The observers should visit the site and monitor activities there,” the diplomat said.
On September 23, three mass graves filled with bodies of massacred civilians, killed execution-style, were discovered near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Two graves were unearthed on the territory of a coal mine near the village Nyzhnia Krynka north-east of Donetsk, and another one inside the village.
According to Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Aleksander Zakharchenko, two of the graves contain bodies of civilians. Another one is filled with killed independence forces and Ukrainian soldiers. About 40 bodies have been unearthed so far, Zakharchenko said.
Earlier on Wednesday, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission investigating the site of the mass graves found signs indicating that the crime could have taken place in late August.
Russian Foreign Ministry called the massacre a war crime and suggested that pro-Kiev National Guard volunteers might have been involved in the incident. Moscow urged international organizations to make a practical contribution to the investigation of the massacre.
