Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. File photoMOSCOW, April 25Russia will continue to expose the fakes that are multiplying after Bucha, including around Azovstal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. «We will expose the fakes that are now multiplying after Bucha. They are still trying to imagine the situation at Azovstal created by Russia, in which Russia prohibits the civilian population from leaving, they lie left and right, including that we «do not open» humanitarian corridors, when this is loudly announced daily — buses are being driven, ambulances,» the minister said in the Big Game program on Channel One. He added that the Ukrainian side is holding the civilian population as a «human shield» not only in Mariupol, but also in other parts of the country where hostilities are taking place — it either does not notify the civilian population , or forbids them to leave, forcibly holding them in. “And those who manage to get out on their own, they tell how they are treated by the servicemen of the Azov battalion (against whom a criminal case has been opened in Russia) and other territorial bodies,» Lavrov added.Lavrov: Russia hopes the West will not send NATO troops to Ukraine At the time of the proclamation of the DNR in 2014, Mariupol, with a population of about 450,000 people, was the second city of the republic after Donetsk, but in June of the same year, Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol. On March 7, 12 days after the start of the Russian special operation to demilitarize Ukraine, the deputy commander of the Vostok battalion, Alexander Semyonov, announced that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of its individual districts had begun. On April 16, the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, announced that the entire city territory had been cleared of the Ukrainian army, foreign mercenaries and neo-Nazis from the Azov regiment (against whose militants a criminal case was initiated in Russia). The remnants of the Ukrainian group are blocked at the Azovstal metallurgical plant. 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 bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and On March 25, they 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.
