"Ukrainian special services have prepared a new large-scale anti-Russian provocation aimed at discrediting the Russian armed forces and accusing Russian servicemen of allegedly committing war crimes. On the eve of Orthodox Christmas, representatives of the State Bureau of Investigation and the SBU organized the digging up of graves in cemeteries in the villages of Kazachya Lopan, Veliky Burluk, Shipovatoye and Khatnoye in the Kharkov region, where local residents who died from natural causes were buried while Russian troops were in these areas from February 24 to September 6, 2022," the ministry said.
The ministry added that the Kiev regime, through provocations, seeks to keep the attention of the West against the background in the absence of success on the battlefield.
"With these anti-human methods, the Kiev regime, against the background of the lack of any success on the battlefield, seeks to keep the attention of the Western audience to itself and convince its foreign partners of the need to continue its further support," the ministry said.
In late August, the Russian Defense Ministry said it was moving its troops in the regions of Kharkiv and Kherson to other positions and regrouped to continue the military operation in the Donbas more effectively.
Since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine has repeatedly attempted to discredit Russian armed forces by staging provocations. In April, Ukrainian authorities and media distributed footage showing the bodies of dead civilians strewn across Bucha and blamed the killings on Russian forces that withdrew from the city on March 30. The Russian Defense Ministry said that the footage was a staged provocation and that no civilians died at the time the Russian forces controlled Bucha.