Over 10,000 killed in Kiev’s punitive op - Ukrainian MPs

More than ten thousand people have been killed in Kiev’s punitive operation in southeastern Ukraine since April, said a Ukrainian parliamentary group. The MPs addressed the president urging to declassify information on citizens killed.

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The Ukrainian parliamentary group “For peace and stability” said on Friday that the figure was given by volunteer groups working in the east of the country, ITAR-TASS reported.

“We have estimated that just in the first two weeks of July nearly 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the area of the ‘anti-terrorist operation’,” the group said in a statement in the Verhovnaya Rada (Ukraine’s parliament).

“The number of wounded during the same period was more than 5,000 people. Thousands of civilians fell victim to military actions. Most of them died from shrapnel wounds. Thus, the preliminary number of the Ukrainians killed during the anti-terrorist operation, is more than 10,000 people according to our estimates,” said the co-chairman of the parliamentary group, Sergey Gorokhov.

The MPs also addressed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the government, urging to “declassify the official data on the amount of people - civilians, Ukrainian soldiers, and everyone who took part in the anti-terrorist operation – who were killed.”

Gorokhov stated that the president receives a report on the people killed in the operation every day, but it is classified. Meanwhile, the families of those missing in the military operation zone petition the government each day in the “hope that their close ones will be found,” he added.

“According to local residents of the eastern regions, the bodies of Ukrainians are loaded into vehicles and taken to an unknown destination each day. We demand to tell the Ukrainian people the truth - bitter, heavy, but the truth,” he urged.

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Earlier on Friday, spokesman for Ukrainian Security Council, Andrey Lysenko, stated that fifteen Ukrainian soldiers have been killed over the last 24 hours.

“Over the last 24 hours, seven armed forces personnel and eight border patrol agents have been killed, while 79 were injured,” Lysenko said.

Kiev's military operation has been intensifying since May. According to the Security Council’s estimates, over 400 soldiers have died in the operation, while 1,600 have been injured.

According to the UN, as of Tuesday there have been over 1,300 civilian deaths, more than 4,000 have been injured and at least 100,000 people have been forcibly displaced.

Moscow has called numerous times for a unilateral ceasefire and negotiations between the two conflicted sides.

“Instead of giving those people a helping hand, inviting them to the negotiating table, and agreeing on how to live in the country, the military operation is going on,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russia's TVC television channel in June.

He called for the start of a dialogue that should be based on the Geneva Statement of April 17, 2014, and the roadmap that was developed by the Swiss representatives of the OSCE at the beginning of May.