Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Region are abducting civilians and imprisoning them in Nazi-style concentration camps, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
Speaking at the Eurasian Women’s Forum 2024 (EAWF) on Friday, Zakharova drew parallels between the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II and the actions of Ukrainian troops during the cross-border incursion launched last month.
Russian law enforcement agencies continue to collect data on cases in which Ukrainian nationalists “forcibly took to Ukraine residents of Kursk Region who did not have time to evacuate,” Zakharova stated.
“This is… a typical practice of the Nazi occupiers. Do you remember how they took the Soviet people... into captivity and slavery?” she asked.
According to Zakharova, the Russian Red Cross has collected numerous eyewitness accounts of the abductions in Kursk.
“In fact, there is evidence that Ukrainian fighters are creating a kind of concentration camps in the Russian border area, where they are placing at gunpoint local residents who, for various reasons, have been unable to leave unsafe areas,” she claimed.
Russian officials have repeatedly accused Ukrainian troops of committing atrocities in Kursk Region, including indiscriminate killings and sexual violence, alleging that scores of people were “forced into trucks and taken in an unknown direction.”
In mid-August, a video surfaced on social media that appeared to show Ukrainian fighters in Kursk Region forcing Russian citizens – some of whom were beaten, blindfolded, and handcuffed – into a truck to be transported elsewhere. Footage that emerged earlier this month appeared to show Ukrainians torturing a captured Russian soldier by electrocuting him.
Other video footage featured Ukrainian troops taunting an elderly Russian man while wearing helmets with an insignia similar to that of the Nazi Waffen SS.