Kiev Deprives Eastern Ukraine Residents Of Right To Vote - Russian Prosecutors

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2021) The Russian Prosecutor General's Office said in its inter-state complaint that Ukraine has been waging a civil war against its breakaway republics for seven years under the guise of a counter-terrorist operation, also condemning Kiev for torturing residents of the southeaster regions and depriving them of the right to cast votes in elections.

The prosecutor general said it has filed its first ever inter-state complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. In an accompanying statement, the prosecutors refer to Kiev's "depriving residents of certain territories of south-eastern Ukraine of the possibility to participate in elections to national authorities."

"A civil war has been going on for seven years in Donetsk and Lugansk regions under the guise of a counter-terrorist operation," the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said in an additional document, pointing to the Ukrainian armed forces' "practice of killing civilians, causing harm to their health, using intelligence agencies to persecute and intimidate citizens, destroying peaceful civilian homes and critical infrastructure facilities through deliberate and indiscriminate shootings" in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The "violent coup" in Ukraine in February 2014 expanded into "nationalist terror in Ukraine" and a civil war with "thousands of casualties," the Russian Prosecutor General's Office recalled.

"Since April 2014, a mass systemic administrative practice of kidnapping the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk regions (including torture and inhuman and degrading treatment) by representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine and other military divisions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that is complicated by the total absence of independent and effective investigation of such crimes, as well as domestic remedies, has been established in Ukraine," the Russian prosecutors continued.