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Summary
Ukrainian drone killed a child in Donbas.
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The escalation organised by the Ukrainian military in the Donbass since the end of March has come to a logical end. In this case, civilian casualties. And not just peaceful citizens, but children. On Saturday, April 3, a tragedy broke out in the village of Aleksandrovskoye near the city of Yenakiyevo.
The Ukrainian military from the 59th brigade dropped an explosive device from an unmanned aerial vehicle in a residential area of the village. As a result of the criminal actions of Ukrainian soldiers, a child born in 2016 died. A drone with a dropping explosive device is not an accidental arrival of a mine or a projectile. It is always equipped with a video camera, it is always controlled by the operator, and it is he who decides when and at what moment to send a lethal charge to the ground. So the drone operator could not ignore what he was doing and who he was condemning to death.
Disproof
The claim is unverified. The village of Oleksandrivske (Aleksandrovskoye in Russian media) is located 15 kilometers away from the front line. The Russian Investigative Committee announced a probe into the death of a child there reported by pro-Kremlin media. The OSCE's special monitoring mission to Ukraine did not report the incident so far.
A report by the DPR's so-called news agency, republished by pro-Kremlin media, did not provide any images of the aftermath of the attack allegedly carried out in the village of Oleksandrivske. The claim cannot be independently verified, notes AFP.
For further details, see debunks by the Insider and StopFake.
No witnesses of a Ukrainian drone aiming at the child have come forward so far. Contradictory accounts of local residents (including that the child accidentally died because of an explosion of a shell dating from 2014-2015 when the village was on the front line) are available on social media. At this stage, it is too early and misleading to spread the theory that a Ukrainian "drone operator" deliberately killed a child in Oleksandrivske.
Russia always blames Ukraine for escalations in Donbass. Ukraine is not at war with millions of people from Donetsk and Luhansk as pro-Kremlin media often presents the situation. The aim is to present the situation in Eastern Ukraine as an internal conflict, ignoring irrefutable evidence of direct Russian military involvement in the region. These claims intentionally misrepresent the reality of Russia's direct and crucial important support to separatist militant groups in Eastern Ukraine.
Background: on July 12, 2014, Pervy Kanal showed an interview with a woman who claimed to be a local of Sloviansk in Eastern Ukraine. The woman described how she had seen a three-year child being crucified by Ukrainian nationalists while his mother was forced to watch.
The story was one of the peaks of the Kremlin-orchestrated campaign targeted at inciting hatred against Ukrainians. Journalists from Novaya Gazeta debunked the story, and other testimonies disproving the story by Pervyi Kanal appeared. In December 2014, Channel One's presenter recognised herself that "journalists did not have and do not have evidence of this tragedy". The false story of the crucified boy has reached at least 250 million viewers worldwide.