The Russian army blows up residential buildings. But the Ministry of Defense constantly denies this

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On June 29, 2022, a Russian missile hit a five-story building in Nikolaev, killing six people. According to the Ministry of Defense, on this day, not a residential building was destroyed, but warehouses of ammunition and weapons.

On the evening of July 9, the Russian army launched a missile attack on a five-story dormitory in the town of Chasov Yar and damaged a residential building next to it. As a result, 48 people died, including a nine-year-old child. Two days later, the Ministry of Defense reported that “high-precision ground-based weapons in the area of ​​​​the settlement of Chasov Yar of the [self-proclaimed] Donetsk People’s Republic destroyed the temporary deployment point of the 118th territorial defense brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” As a result of the strike, "about 300 nationalists" were allegedly killed.

At the same time, the next day, an anonymous source from law enforcement agencies actually confirmed to TASS that the Russian army had attacked "two residential buildings." But he clarified that the Ukrainian military were located in them and that their bodies were being taken out from under the rubble, and that civilians allegedly were not injured. The New York Times, citing eyewitnesses , wrote that two days before the strike, Ukrainian servicemen actually settled in the hostel, but only two of them died under the rubble. The rest of the dead are civilians.

On the morning of July 14, the Russian army fired rockets at Vinnitsa, according to official figures destroying 55 residential buildings, a medical center and the House of Officers, from the Ukrainian government. 28 people died, including three children. The Russian Defense Ministry commented on this only a day later, claiming that "precision strikes" destroyed the House of Officers, where "a meeting of the command of the Ukrainian air force with representatives of foreign arms suppliers was held." Despite numerous photographic evidence of bombed civilian facilities, the Russian agency did not mention either the strike on residential buildings or the dead civilians, and the pro-state publication RT supported this position, focusing on footage of the destroyed House of Officers.

On November 11, when a Russian missile hit a residential building in Nikolaev, nine people were killed. But in the reports of the Ministry of Defense it was reported that "in the area of ​​​​the city of Nikolaev, an ammunition depot of the 28th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was destroyed."

Periodically, the Ministry of Defense does not comment at all on the destruction of residential buildings by Russian missiles.

In some cases, the Ministry of Defense ignored in its reports settlements where residential buildings were bombed by Russian missiles. That is, they did not even talk about the destroyed ammunition depots or other military facilities.

On October 17, kamikaze drones fired at Kiev, one of the shells hit a residential building - according to the mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko, four people were killed. At the same time, Kyiv was not even mentioned in the summary of the day of the Russian Ministry of Defense either on this or the next day: they only reported on strikes “on military command and control facilities and the energy system of Ukraine.”

The Ministry of Defense also ignored strikes on a residential building in the city of Volnyansk, Zaporozhye region on November 17, when 10 people were killed. In the official channel, the department did not mention Volnyansk at all, either that day or the next. It was only reported that in the city of Zaporozhye, rockets destroyed “the workshops of the Iskra research and production complex, which produced electronic components for the repair of radar stations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and multiple launch rocket systems.”

The same happened in the case of Vyshhorod , where on November 23 a strike on a residential building killed seven people, and Kryvyi Rih , where five people were killed.

The situation is similar with the shelling of the center of Kherson on December 24: rockets damaged civilian infrastructure , including residential buildings, office buildings and vehicles - at least 16 people were killed. This was not mentioned in any way in the official telegram of the department, but in the pro-state media they called the shelling a “monstrous crime” in Kiev. Sometimes the Ministry of Defense itself did the same.

Several times, the Ministry of Defense accused the Armed Forces of Ukraine of blowing up civilian objects "for the purpose of provocation"

On November 15, the Russian army shelled Kiev again: rockets hit residential buildings and at least one person died . The next day, a post was published on the telegram channel of the Ministry of Defense, in which the department denied that it had carried out strikes. It blamed the Ukrainian military itself for the destruction of residential buildings: “All the destruction demonstrated by the Kiev regime in residential areas of the Ukrainian capital is a direct consequence of the fall and self-destruction of anti-aircraft missiles fired by Ukrainian troops from Ukrainian and foreign air defense systems located within the city.”

This is not an isolated case when the Ministry of Defense claimed that the Ukrainian Armed Forces inflicted strikes on residential buildings, and the news about the bombing by Russian missiles was called provocations. On the night of July 1, three Kh-22 missiles hit a nine-story residential building and recreation facilities in the Odessa region: 22 people were killed, including a 12-year-old boy. On the evening of July 1, the Ministry of Defense published a statement that a provocation was being prepared “to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of killing civilians (including minors).” The department claimed that foreign journalists and UNICEF representatives were brought to Sergeevka for this, and the administration of the Odessa region organized a “staging of the destruction of a social facility” with extras consisting of Russian activists who would be paid $500.

On August 20, Russian troops shelled a residential building in Voznesensk - four children were seriously injured. Then the Ministry of Defense stated that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had mined the bridge across the Ingul River and the approaches to it, as well as the sides of the adjacent highway, without warning the local residents about it. According to the Russian agency, the Ukrainian “militants” planned to blow up the bridge and “according to an already worked out scenario with wide coverage in the Ukrainian and Western media, accuse the Russian Armed Forces of supposedly indiscriminate strikes on transport infrastructure facilities.” The Ministry of Defense did not comment on the strike on the residential building.

The Defense Ministry says it uses precision-guided weapons. But it's not like that

In many final reports, the Ministry of Defense writes that it destroys targets with "precision weapons." At the same time, according to the official data of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a residential building in the Dnieper was destroyed by an X-22 missile. It was designed back in the 1960s in the USSR. The X-22 was designed to hit aircraft carriers.

Military expert, Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the reserve Roman Svitan called the Kh-22 low-precision missiles: “The Kh-22 has a circular deviation of 300 meters, but there is only a 50% chance that the missile falls into a given circle. The remaining 50% is that it will fall into a circle with a diameter of two kilometers. She flies like that because her tactical and technical data are configured like that. ”

about this Russian military expert Pavel Luzin also spoke : “This is a missile that is aimed at an aircraft carrier. On a huge pile of iron, metal, steel, on what is visible to the homing head. This missile was mainly supposed to be nuclear-powered. Plus or minus 200-300 meters - what, in general, is the difference?

The speaker of the Air Force of Ukraine, Yuriy Ignat , said that the Ukrainian army has long been out of service with Kh-22 missiles. In the 1990s, Ukraine handed over hundreds of missiles of this type to Russia as payment for an external debt, the rest were disposed of.

According to the Ukrainian command, the Russian military repeatedly fired X-22 missiles at civilian targets. For example, rockets of this type hit shopping centers in Kremenchug (21 dead) and, presumably, a shopping center in the village of Fontanka and the House of Culture in the city of Lozovaya, Kharkiv region.

According to Yuri Ignat, Kh-22 missiles (and their more accurate Kh-32 modification) were also used in a massive attack on Ukraine on December 29. In addition, he said that Russia uses S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to attack front-line cities: such missiles are designed to destroy air targets. Ignat said that the Ukrainian air defense does not have time to shoot them down, because they are of the high-speed type.

According to the official data of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the morning of December 29, about 69 missiles (including S-300) were fired in Ukraine, 54 of which were shot down by air defense. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko spoke of three victims that day, including a 14-year-old girl. Missile debris damaged two residential buildings, an industrial plant and a playground. It is impossible to verify the information of the Russian Ministry of Defense that there were Ukrainian soldiers in some of the buildings mentioned in the text during the war.