Medical staff who tried to stop the militants were assaulted, the head of National Defense Control Center said
FILE PHOTO: Sleeping baby clenches his parent’s fingers © Getty Images / bernie_photo
The Ukrainian military drove mothers and their newborn babies out of maternity hospitals in Odessa Region in southern Ukraine, while medical staff tried to stop them and were assaulted, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Wednesday.
“In the settlements of Dobroslav and Krasnoselka of the Limansky district in Odessa Region, Ukrainian militants use hospitals and ambulance stations as command posts and barracks. At the same time, all the patients, regardless of their health condition, as well as maternity ward patients and their newborn children, were ruthlessly kicked out of medical institutions, while medical staff who tried to prevent the neo-Nazis’ cruelty suffered from physical violence,” Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of Russia’s National Defense Control Center, said.
He added that the Ukrainian armed forces set up barracks, firing positions, and ammunition depots in a clinic in Ugledar, Donetsk People’s Republic, with heavy weaponry, artillery, and mortars stationed nearby.
Mizintsev urged international organizations, including the World Health Organization, to influence Kiev to put an end to the use of medical facilities for military purposes.
“Such actions of the criminal Ukrainian authorities show their complete indifference to the fate of their own citizens and absolute disregard for all moral norms and principles of international humanitarian law,” he said.
Mizintsev’s comments come in the wake of Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-controlled city of Novaya Kakhovka in Kherson Region, which reportedly killed two people and injured at least 90, with seven still missing after a fertilizer storage depot was hit. The explosion also damaged several civilian sites, including a market and a hospital.
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Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
