DISINFO: An Ukrainian drone kills a 5 years old child near Donetsk
SUMMARY
On Saturday 3 April 3, a 5 years old child perished in the western suburbs of Donetsk in a drone attack with an explosive device by the Ukrainian army.
The Ukrainian armed forces used an unmanned aerial device equipped with an improvised explosive device, which was dropped on the village of Aleksandrovka. As a result, a child born in 2016 died and a resident born in 1954 was injured.
At that time, two civilians were in their garden. As a result of the criminal actions of Ukrainian activists, a child born in 2016 was killed, while a local woman born in 1954 was injured and taken to hospital where she received necessary medical treatment.”
This tragic incident strongly reacted to the President of the Russian Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, who denounced the guilty silence of the West. “The European media don't talk about it. There are no statements from the European Parliament or the US State Department. The foreign ministers of European states do not talk about it. No decision has been taken on the expulsion of diplomats. And we do not stigmatise a president of the country who sent a military drone to war against his own people.
There are no big initiatives on behalf of the dead child to impose sanctions on Kiev, there is no reaction at all. The West in general simply ignores the crimes in Kiev. [...] On the geopolitical chessboard, Brussels and Washington are trying to play a bloody gambit, hardly realising that the game cannot be won "
OSCE agents report the case of a five-year-old child killed on April 2 outside his grandmother's house by an explosive device. According to the authorities of the DPR this tragedy results from the shelling by the Ukrainian army of a village close to the line of contact.
RESPONSE
The claim is doubtful and unverified. The case has been covered by Euvsdisinfo, Stop Fake, The Insider, Censor.net. The involvement of Ukrainian drone is a striking story but very unlikely, the probable hypothesis is that the child died from a mine stored by his family members since the most active period of the war 2014-2015.
It attracted emotional reaction at highest political level since the death of a 5 year old child is striking and triggered narratives about the cruelty of Ukrainians and the heartless western world that doesn't react.
The OSCE reported about this accident on 6 and 8 April:
The Mission continued to follow up on the death of a five-year-old boy on 2 April in non-government-controlled Oleksandrivske (47km north-east of Donetsk), a settlement located about 14km south of the contact line (for previous observations, see SMM Daily Report of 6 April 2021). On 7 April, in Yenakiieve (non-government-controlled, 41km north-east of Donetsk), the parents of the boy (man and woman, in their thirties) showed the SMM a medical certificate which states that the boy had died on 2 April due to blast trauma and multiple shrapnel wounds.
On the same day, about 6.5m south-west of the house at 36 Dorozhna Street on northern edge of Oleksandrivske, which the boy was visiting, the SMM saw a crater (20cm in width) assessed as recent. It saw multiple holes (2mm-7cm in width) in: the main gate and wooden shed about 12m north-east and 1m south-west, respectively, of the crater, in two metal water tanks about 4m south-west of the crater, and in a wooden fence surrounding a garden about 3.5m south of the crater. It also saw multiple holes (2mm-7cm in width) in two south-western-facing walls of the house as well as in its south-facing wall and front metal door. It also saw that three window panes of a window in one of the south-western-facing walls were shattered. Inside the house, the Mission saw a hole (5cm in width) in the ceiling of the kitchen and two holes (4-5cm in width) in the living room, both located on the south-western side of the house. The SMM could not assess the type of ordnance that caused the crater. It assessed all the above-mentioned damage as recent and probably caused by shrapnel.
On the same day at the house, the grandmother of the boy told the SMM that she had also been injured on 2 April when the explosion occurred. The SMM saw a cut and bruise behind her ear, reportedly caused by glass from a shattered window.
While both RT and Sputnik in French reported on 3 and 4 April an Ukrainian drone strike. On 7 April Sputnik removed the drone from the story and linked the explosion with artillery shelling in a different region.