Donetsk, May 21 - DAN. The Ukrainian population became a victim of grand political fraud a year ago when Vladimir Zelensky was elected president, a Donetsk People’s Republic parliament faction leader Valeriy Skorokhodov said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky gave a big press conference marking his first year in office.

“You can say that a year go, the Ukrainians became victims of grand political fraud,” Skorokhodov said. “Their choice of the president was forced, he doesn’t care about Ukraine or peaceful settlement; he doesn’t take responsibility for his words or his team members’ words.”

In actual fact, Zelensky hasn’t delivered on any of his programme promises over a year; the most important of them was to stop strikes at Donbass, Skorokhodov said.

He added that the news conference was full of cynicism and blatant disregard for the real situation, while Zelensky’s remarks on the Minsk Agreements and the economic situation in Ukraine and the situation in Donbass had nothing to do with the facts. Zelensky’s words that Ukrainian forces in Donbass “only shoot at terrorists” earned particular indignation.

“That’s a barefaced bloody lie. What we’ve seen in the past few weeks only gives new evidence of ruthless crimes committed by Ukrainian armed formations. You cannot write them off as accidents or mistakes. When a drone drops a grenade on a girl, you cannot say it was accidental. When a public place in a residential area comes under deliberate mortar fire, it cannot be a mistake. When children, adolescents or pensioners die or get wounded in strikes, these are deliberate actions for which the international tribunal will demand strictest punishment,” the parliamentarian said.

Skorokhodov believes that the Ukrainian president shows absolute contempt for human lives: “He’s just running the scenarios prescribed by his western supervisors; he doesn’t give a damn about people. Nor does he care for Ukrainian citizens, judging by his answers to other questions. We heard nothing except his praise for his own inaction.”

Vladimir Zelensky, who became Ukraine’s 6th president, was inaugurated on May 20, 2019. His key election campaign slogan was the soonest end to the Donbass conflict. However, the situation worsened as he came to power. Since he took office, Kiev army units have fired nearly 50,000 rounds of ammunition at the DPR in some 5,000 ceasefire violations, in which six civilians were killed and another 72 were wounded.*jk