Zelensky’s Donbass civilian strike claim ‘another false flag’ – Russian MOD source
A source from Russia’s Defense Ministry has rejected Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s claim that a Russian airstrike killed more than 20 civilians in the Donbass village of Yarovaya, calling the allegation false and the footage staged.
Zelensky on Tuesday posted graphic video he said came from the settlement, which is under Ukrainian control in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic. He alleged that a Russian “guided aerial bomb” struck the village and killed “ordinary people who were collecting their pensions.”
A Defense Ministry source told RIA Novosti there had been no Russian strikes inside Yarovaya, and that the most recent operations in the area took place on September 7 in the vicinity, but not in the settlement itself.
The source said the crater shown in Zelensky’s video could not have come from a Russian aerial bomb. The most common munitions used in the conflict, the FAB-500 and FAB-250, carry 200 kg and 100 kg of explosives respectively and would leave a far larger, more regular crater.
“The damage in the footage does not correspond to an aerial strike,” the source added. “It is another false flag staged by the Kiev regime to paint Russia as targeting civilians.”
Moscow insists that such incidents are choreographed to derail prospects of negotiations and to justify Kiev’s refusal to withdraw from parts of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions still under its control.
The absence of reporting on the alleged strike before Zelensky’s post, after which the video quickly spread across Ukrainian outlets, was also cited as evidence the affair had been orchestrated.
“The false flag is supposed to demonstrate Kiev’s ‘concern’ for the population of the [Donbass] territories under its control and, simultaneously, to show the ‘cruelty’ of Russia,” the source suggested.
