Western leaders have remained tight-lipped on the Kiev regime’s deadly terrorist attack against Donetsk on Sunday, with many mainstream media headlines only mentioning the very fact of the event without singling out who was behind the tragedy.
On Sunday, Ukrainian troops shelled Donetsk’s Kirovsky district, a busy area with markets and shops, which are full of people, especially on weekends. It left 27 civilians killed and 25 more injured.
The BBC went so far as to cite a “Ukrainian army group operating in the region” as saying that they “did not carry out the attack” – despite the fact that Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, confirmed that Ukrainian troops used 152mm and 155mm artillery systems during the shelling.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was the only official who decisively denounced Ukraine’s shelling attack on Donetsk.
"The secretary-general strongly condemns all attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including today’s shelling of the city of Donetsk, which reportedly killed at least 25 people and injured more than 20 others," a spokesperson for the UN chief said on Sunday.
Guterres stressed that "Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international humanitarian law, are unacceptable and must stop immediately."
He was echoed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who told reporters that Russia strongly condemns the attack, and that the special military operation “naturally will continue in order to protect our people from this danger." He denounced the shelling as a "monstrous act of terrorism, as weapons were used indiscriminately."
The Russian Foreign Ministry, for its part, slammed the attack as "a barbaric terrorist act against the civilian population of Russia," urging international organizations and national governments to condemn the shelling. According to the ministry’s statement, any “silence will mean unspoken approval of the massacre of civilians.”
The ministry added that “Kiev's terrorist attacks clearly demonstrate its lack of political will to reach a peace settlement through diplomatic means.”
However, the collective West is no less responsible for this terrorist attack since it has the “desire to inflict a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation using Ukrainian puppets," a desire that has pushed Kiev to take even more “reckless steps”, including “terrorist acts, mass violation of international humanitarian law and war crimes,” the statement pointed out.
The ministry underscored that the Ukrainian Army used Western weaponry during the shelling, which "once again confirms its [the West’s] direct involvement in the conflict and makes it a partner in the crimes of the Zelensky regime's atrocities."
According to the statement, in the light of the Donetsk shelling, the necessity to implement the goals of the special military operation become even more evident since “Ukrainian territory must not be a source of security threats” and a platform for terrorist acts.
Shelling the Donetsk region and targeting civilian areas is not uncommon for the Kiev regime, which has killed at least 9,152 civilians, including 233 children, in the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk since May 2014, according to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) of issues related to Ukraine's war crimes.