Russian troops used Ukrainian civilians as cover during their retreat near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said this.
According to him, Ukrainian forces recorded Russian troops moving civilians, including children and elderly people, through a gas pipeline towards the temporarily occupied territory.
“People were forced to move under threat of the use of weapons,” the foreign minister stresses.
Earlier, the 2nd Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine’s ‘Khartiia’ reported that on 27 September, reconnaissance drones recorded civilians being moved from the Kupiansk community. The published footage shows nine people, including children, elderly people and a person on crutches. Alongside them were men of conscription age in civilian clothing.
Khartiia suggested they could be Russian soldiers who had taken off their uniforms.
The people were taken through the village of Holubivka to the “Shebelinka–Ostrogozhsk” gas pipeline and led inside the pipe. Ukrainian troops said they did not open fire on the group because civilians were present.
Sybiha stressed that civilians cannot be used as an instrument of war or forcibly displaced. He called for such cases to be documented and investigated.
“Such actions are gross violations of international humanitarian law and must be properly documented and investigated, and those responsible must be held to account,” the foreign minister said.