Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on the Ukraine crisis

The criminal Kiev regime continues to deliver strikes at innocent civilians in Russian cities and villages. While suffering setbacks in the zone of combat operations, Ukrainian neo-Nazis carry out deadly terrorist attacks against the civilian population.

On July 31, a Ukrainian drone attacked a municipal tram in Gorlovka as it followed its regular route. The driver was killed and another three people were wounded. 

On August 1, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) launched a drone attack at a passenger bus in Shebekino, Belgorod Region, wounding three people.  

On August 2, the AFU fired at Volnovakha from multiple rocket launchers, killing a civilian and wounding another one. On the same day, a Ukrainian drone attacked a bread delivery lorry in Gorlovka, wounding the driver. 

On August 4, the AFU fired a salvo of NATO’s long-range ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles at Lugansk. A concerted response from the Russian air defence forces made it possible to avoid casualties and much devastation on the ground. 

On the same day, Ukrainian neo-Nazis sent a drone into a window of a five-storey residential building in Shebekino, killing an elderly woman. Posted in the internet, a video of this cynical crime shows that the drone operator deliberately directed the vehicle towards a room with an open window, seeing that there were civilians.

On August 5, the Armed Forces of Ukraine used a drone to attack a civilian bus of an agricultural enterprise in the village of Vyazovoye, Krasnoyaruzhsky District, Belgorod Region. The driver died before the ambulance arrived, three people were wounded. On the same day, Ukrainian criminals fired on Gorlovka with 155 mm shells, killing a woman at a local bus stop.

On the night of August 6, Ukrainian militants attacked the town of Sudzha in the Kursk Region. Five people, including three children, were wounded and several residential buildings damaged.

On August 6, Ukrainian armed units used a drone to attack a moving vehicle in the Graivoron urban district in the Belgorod Region, killing one civilian.

On August 6-7, Ukrainian neo-Nazis launched a mass terrorist attack in the Kursk Region using considerable infantry forces and heavy armoured vehicles. Vladimir Zelensky sent Ukrainian citizens into this meat grinder in order to quietly extend the deadly Ukrainian mobilisation for another three months. Today he signed the relevant law.

Russian armed forces fought back strongly against the enemy that sustained substantial losses. Meanwhile, according to the available information, 24 civilians, including six children, were wounded and injured in the Kursk Region as a result of the shelling by Ukrainian militants. A drone strike on an ambulance killed a paramedic and the driver.

By their barbarous attack in the Kursk Region Ukrainian Banderites attempted to spread panic among local population and show at least some activity amidst permanent drawbacks of the Ukrainian armed forces in the conflict area. Obviously, the neo-Nazis’ plans failed here as well.

All these bloody crimes are taking place against a background of cynical silence on the part of the West, which continues to cover up for its puppets in Kiev. All this only strengthens the feeling of impunity of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, who are confident that they can get away with any atrocity. We call on the international community not to stand aside and resolutely denounce the criminal actions committed by the Kiev regime.

Russian courts continue to pass judgments on Ukrainian neo-Nazis who committed grave crimes against civilians, based on the evidence produced by the Russian Investigative Committee.

Ukrainian militant Alexander Mandzak was sentenced to 27 years in prison for shelling civilian infrastructure in Sakhanka, Novoazovsky District of the DPR, in late February 2022. His criminal actions resulted in one civilian sustaining mine-blast trauma and damage to three residential buildings and a vehicle.

The Supreme Court of the LPR sentenced Ukrainian Armed Forces militant Andrey Zamlinsky to 20 years in prison in absentia for his criminal order to open mortar fire at houses in Tryokhizbyonka in the LPR, damaging five houses.

Finnish mercenary Topi Huhtala was sentenced to 14 years in absentia for fighting on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine between March 2022 and May 2024. He is on the international wanted list.

On July 31, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court sentenced Ukrainian television presenter Natalya Moseichuk to five years in prison for encouraging violence against Russian officers and their families. She has been on the wanted list since 2023.

None of the criminals will evade punishment. They will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

On August 4, a grandiose handover ceremony took place in Ukraine for the F-16 fighter aircraft from NATO. Attending Zelensky was falling over himself saying thank you to his NATO sponsors. According to The Economist, the first ten fighter jets out of possible 79 arrived in Ukraine in late July and their number will reach 20 by the end of the year. The rest are expected to arrive in 2025.

This step is part of the Western course for escalation of the Ukrainian crisis and does not create conditions for political and diplomatic settlement. By injecting more lethal weapons into the Kiev regime, the United States and its satellites are staking on continuing the hostilities at all costs. Obviously, Washington and London have been carried away by the dream of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia, ignoring the consequences of their irresponsible actions.

The F-16 supplies for the Ukrainian Army will not become the magic pill that Kiev is betting on and will fail to have an effect on the situation in the combat zone. The Russian Armed Forces will consistently destroy them.

Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry Kirill Budanov once again declared plans to strike the Crimean Bridge. He claims that preparations are underway for more terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, on June 17, Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmitry Pletenchuk admitted that the Crimean Bridge no longer plays the same role for military logistics and, therefore, does not constitute a military target. Apparently, Kiev terrorists are maniacally seeking to destroy this civilian facility mainly to create panic among the population of the peninsula and tourists. Millions of Russians, including families with children, are using the Crimean Bridge for tourist purposes.

The Kiev junta continues to demonstrate fervency in destroying Soviet and Russian memorial heritage. The country carries on with its large-scale campaign to demolish monuments and rename landmarks and locations related to the Great Patriotic War, Russia, and Russian culture. At times, functionaries of the Zelensky regime show particularly strong cynicism and excessive creativity. In a recent example from the Zhitomir Region, the statue of Vladimir Lenin was transformed into the monument to ‘Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’ by replacing its head. A monument to Soviet soldiers who died for the Ukrainian land was destroyed, with ostentation, in Luka, Kalushsky District of the Ivano-Frankovsk Region. The region plans to get rid of 78 monuments to the liberators.

The Dnepropetrovsk Region government said that it would change the names of some 300 streets and other locations, including 135 in Krivoy Rog. Odessa’s City Council adopted a decision along similar lines. Having dismantled monuments to Alexander Suvorov and Empress Catherine II, it went on to rename several streets, including those named after Pushkin, Ilf and Petrov, and Zhvanetsky. This campaign is just another attempt by the radicals, who seized power in Kiev, to condemn to oblivion the feats accomplished by those who fought Nazism, as well as prominent cultural figures, including their fellow countrymen whenever discovering a Russian trail in their lives.

On August 3, a memorial plaque was torn down in Kharkov. It contained an inscription in Ukrainian on the fighters against fascism and was installed in 2005 to mark 60 years of Victory over Nazi Germany.

Against the backdrop of all these destructive efforts by the Kiev regime, the media reported on a symbolic fact. Just one year after a Ukrainian trident replaced the USSR’s emblem on Kiev’s Motherland statue in what amounted to a barbaric outrage, the trident started showing signs of corrosion on its welding. It is also noteworthy that this barbaric act brought about a corruption scandal last year. It turned out that Ukraine lacked the high-quality steel it needed, so it had to import it which almost tripled the project costs.

It is not surprising that the new symbols of Ukraine’s would-be statehood are showing signs of corrosion, while its government is plundering the country and selling it to the West.

We are convinced that these primitive methods will never succeed in erasing the true historical memory. The Kiev regime will not be able to escape accountability for its sacrilegious crimes of vandalising monuments, which have no statute of limitations.

These facts prove yet again that the special military operation pursues timely objectives dealing with de-Nazifying and demilitarising Ukraine and removing threats coming from its territory. Make no mistake, we will deliver on all these objectives.