On February 22, 2014, an unconstitutional violent coup d’etat and a change in the socio-political course occurred in Ukraine. Several regions in the south-east of Ukraine, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, did not recognize the legitimacy of the new Kyiv authorities. On May 11, 2014, referendums on the status of the regions were held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and on May 12, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics declared themselves sovereign states.
On April 14, 2014, the new government of Ukraine, headed by the acting president of the country Oleksandr Turchynov, launched a military operation in the Donbass against residents of the region who were dissatisfied with the coup d’état that took place in February. Thus, since the beginning of the conflict and as of February 24, 2022, as a result of armed aggression by Ukraine, 4,374 civilians, including 91 children, have been killed in the territory of the DPR alone. Almost 8,000 civilians got injuries of varying severity, including 323 children.
On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched a military operation in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin called its goal “to protect people who have been subjected to genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years”. During the first month of the military operation in Ukraine, the armed forces of the Russian Federation, together with the servicemen of the DPR and LPR, carried out tasks aimed at reducing the combat potential of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
On the entire line of the Donetsk front, the positions of the Ukrainian armed forces were constantly attacked by the DPR people’s militia and the armed forces of the Russian Federation. In response to this, the Ukrainian military carried out indiscriminate shelling of densely populated residential areas of cities not controlled by them. Residents of the Donetsk People’s Republic, including its capital, Donetsk, were under constant artillery fire.
On March 14, 2022, at approximately 11:30 a.m. local time, the center of Donetsk was shelled for the first time during the special operation using the Tochka-U tactical missile complex.
A rocket with a cluster warhead was fired at the city. The spread of cluster munitions was recorded on the site in the immediate vicinity of the House of Government (34, Pushkina Blvd.) with an area of approximately 7 hectares. The affected zone looks like a circle with a radius of 150 meters, the center of which is located in the area of the south-east corner of the residential building at 30 Pushkina Blvd.
According to the Ministry of Health of the DPR, as a result of this shelling, 21 people died and 37 people were wounded.
Thus, the head of the Donetsk city administration, Aleksey Kulemzyn, reported the death of Svetlana Semyonovna Gladkoskok, chief officer for the prevention and social protection sector of the Family and Children’s Department of the Donetsk city administration, born in 1961.
As a result of the detonation of cluster munitions, an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sergei Hrushevsky, was killed. He was supposed to have a day off on March 14, but he was released on duty. Sergei died in the hospital due to blood loss after being wounded in the stomach and back. He has four children left.
Pavel Tomashevsky, a resident of Donetsk, lost his father-in-law during shelling. At that moment Pavel was inside the branch of the Central Republican Bank located in 30 Universitetskaya St., and his father-in-law was waiting for him outside. As a result of the detonation of the cluster ammunition, his father-in-law was mortally wounded and died on the spot.
Donetsk resident Lyubov Grakova told the Izvestia TV channel correspondent that her 60-year-old husband, who was traveling in a bus at the time, was killed as a result of the Tochka-U rocket hitting the city. He was a construction engineer, held the position of director of a concrete plant.
Svetlana Vasilieva, a woman from Donetsk, was among the dead. In an interview with the correspondent of the Izvestia TV channel, her husband Vasyliy told about the death of his wife.. At that moment Svetlana was in the exit way of the Central Republican Bank branch located in 30, Universitetskaya St., and when one of the cluster munitions detonated, she received a fatal injury.
The destructing elements of cluster bombs overtook ten-year-old Kirill, who was waiting for his grandmother on the porch of the bank branch. However, he managed to escape from them, only receiving a leg wound. He and another 25 victims of the missile attack were admitted to the Republican Trauma Center (RTC). According to the deputy director of RTC Vadym Onoprienko, 17 of them underwent operations, two more died due to fatal injuries.
Head of Department of Neurosurgery No. 1 of the Donetsk Clinical Territorial Medical Association named after Kalinin Sergey Korovka reported that four victims were brought to the department, two of whom required surgical intervention.
One of them was Viktor Gaidai, a resident of Donetsk. He and his wife also found themselves in the zone of destruction of cluster munitions not far from the intersection of Universitetskaya Street and Oreshkova Lane. When they were heading to the store, cluster munitions began to explode. Viktor was injured in the head as a result of being hit by fragments of glass knocked out at a public transport stop.
The second victim, who was operated on, was a 24-year-old woman who was admitted to a medical institution in a coma. She was diagnosed with a penetrating wound to the head, an injury to the brain substance and the presence of a mass of foreign bodies in the brain. After the operation, the head of the department of neurosurgery No. 1 noted positive dynamics.
As a result of the detonation of cluster munitions, civilian objects were damaged, including more than 15 buildings and 56 passenger cars in Universitetskaya Street, Teatralnyi Ave., and Pushkina Blvd. The destructions were recorded in the library named after Krupskaya, art museum, nursery garden, and bank branch; 12 shops, cafés and residential apartment buildings were damaged in Pushkina Blvd.
Noteworthy, the cluster munitions hit the densely populated central district of the city 30 minutes before next to the Government House building located at 34, Pushkina Blvd., the gathering of wives and mothers of mobilized citizens of the Donetsk People’s Republic was supposed to begin. On the eve of the shelling, a Telegram channel was created on behalf of the “Union of Mothers of Donbass”, in which they called on the wives, girlfriends and mothers of the DNR servicemen to come to the building of the House of Government at noon on March 14 to learn about the fate of the servicemen (see Fig. 1, Fig. 2). However, after the missile attack, the Telegram channel and all messages with the appeal were deleted.
As a result of the investigation, it was established, on March 14, 2022, at approximately 11:30 Moscow time, the Voroshilovsky district of Donetsk came under missile fire using the Tochka-U tactical missile system. The missile flew in a direction from the northwest to the southeast — from the area of Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) in the direction of Donetsk. The shelling was carried out using a 9M79-1 missile equipped with a 9N123K cluster warhead.
The missile launching sector was entirely controlled by the UAF. Moreover, the Tochka-U TMS is in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, while this TMS was withdrawn from service with the Russian Armed Forces during the 2010s.
The shelling led to the death and injury of the civilian population, and damage to civilian objects. Thus, the principles of selectivity and proportionality were violated.
In the shelling sector, one of the divisions of the 19th Guided Missile Brigade “Saint Barbara” under the command of Colonel Fyodor Yaroshevich could be located. Responsibility for the illegal actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also lies with the highest military-political leadership of Ukraine — President and Supreme Commander Volodymyr Zelensky, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine General Valery Zaluzhny, and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant-General Serhiy Shaptala.
Download the full version of the investigation (рус.)