The car of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. File photoMOSCOW, April 15Russian investigators will analyze the information of an American journalist about the discovery in Mariupol of the bodies of civilians left there after the withdrawal from the positions of the Ukrainian Azov regiment militants, said the official representative of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Svetlana Petrenko. According to the agency, American journalist Patrick Lancaster reported the discovery of a large the number of civilians killed after the departure of the Azov militants. «The Investigative Committee will analyze the indicated data, comparing them with the information already recorded in the materials of the criminal case on crimes committed by representatives of the security forces of Ukraine against the population of Donbass,» the report says. At the time of the proclamation of the DPR in 2014, Mariupol, with a population of about 450 thousand people, was the second largest city in the republic after Donetsk. However, in June of the same year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol. On March 7, 2022, Alexander Semyonov, deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, said that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of some of its districts had begun. Currently, the allied forces of the DPR and Russia are fighting for the final liberation of the city. Among other Ukrainian units, they are resisted by the nationalist Azov regiment, against whose militants a criminal case has been initiated in the Russian Federation. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.» According to the Russian Defense Ministry, as of March 25, the Armed Forces completed the main tasks of the first stage — they significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.
