MOSCOW, July 30 (RIA Novosti) – The Ukrainian Army has been lowering the death toll in the operation against the militia in eastern Ukraine by listing dead soldiers as defectors in order to avoid paying compensation to their families, the head of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Donbas told Latvia’s Baltkom radio.
Semen Semenchenko, the chief of the Donbas battalion, said earlier that up to eight Kiev-backed soldiers are lost daily in the operation in the country’s east. The Donbas militia said Kiev lost 1,600 soldiers over July 9-15.
“The Ukrainian Army is downgrading its losses…It is regrettable that conscript soldiers are dying. This war is not their war; they were forced to go. Parents are tired of burying their children,” Irina Popova said.
In Savur-Mohyla, on the border between the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, people say the smell of corpses is unbearable as temperatures there reach over 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).
According to a UN report, the conflict claimed the lives of 1,129 civilians from mid-April through July 26, with another 3,442 injured.
