Ukraine timing tragedies to coincide with important international events – Kremlin
Kiev is deliberately using tragedies for publicity ahead of important international events, such as this week’s NATO summit in Washington, so that Vladimir Zelensky can push for more support from the West, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed.
In an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin, Peskov suggested that Ukrainian authorities are effectively organizing PR campaigns “on blood,” referring to Monday’s deadly tragedy at the Okhmatdet children’s hospital in Kiev, where a missile killed two people and injured dozens more.
Kiev and its backers have blamed Russia for the incident. Moscow has denied the allegations, insisting that it has never targeted civilian facilities. Instead, it claims that the hospital was struck by a Ukrainian air-defense missile.
Peskov claimed that such tragedies in Ukraine often occur right before international events that are important for relations between Kiev and the West. “I believe that there are no coincidences in this regard,” the spokesman said, suggesting that the Okhmatdet incident had been another “PR operation.”
“This is truly a tragedy, but it is being deliberately used to create a backdrop that would accompany Zelensky’s participation in the NATO summit,” Peskov said, adding that Kiev’s methodology is “quite unclean, jesuitical, well-known, and has been repeated many times.”
The Kremlin spokesman also noted that it was “very difficult” for Russia to get its point across to Western audiences regarding such incidents.
“They do not want to hear anything,” Peskov said, adding that the “hysteria” in Western newspapers and TV channels “is likely due to the monopolistic dominance of Anglo-Saxon media there.”
Nevertheless, Peskov said Russia would continue to “tell the truth about what has happened, both domestically and in countries where the audience is ready to hear us and where we have technical means to reach them.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzia, has also insisted that Moscow had no involvement in the Okmatdet incident. Speaking at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, he suggested that if a Russian missile had struck the hospital, there would be “nothing left of the building” and that “children and adults would have died rather than being injured.”
Nebenzia explained that Russia had, in fact, been targeting the Artemov missile plant in Kiev, which is located approximately 2km from the Okhmatdet hospital. “There is every reason to believe that the Ukrainian air-defense missile that hit it was intended for a Russian missile that hit the plant,” he said, noting that the tragedy could have been avoided if Ukraine hadn’t deployed air defense in residential areas.
