Donetsk, Aug 5 - DAN. Ukraine is using all means  including the army to drive away Russian residents of Donbass from their territory, chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic parliament committee for foreign policy, international relations, information policy and information technology Vladislav Berdichevsky told the Donetsk News Agency on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky earlier said in an interview with the Dom television channel that it was a big mistake to stay in Donbass for the residents who considered themselves Russians, and urged them to leave for Russia.

“Zelensky’s statement is an open acknowledgement of genocide: it was in the past, it is happening now and will continue in the future. It answers why the strikes at DPR settlements are ongoing. There is the objective and strategy to drive people away from here and free the territory. They did it with economic, political and military ways to make people leave,” Berdichevsky said.

He expressed confidence that the international community would ignore Zelensky’s statement. People in Donbass who until now have believed in the adequacy of Ukrainian authorities “must understand that they are confronted by a Nazi state whose objective is to destroy the Russian people of Donbass.”

“It wasn’t Ukraine that built Donbass, so our people will choose independently where they will live,” the parliamentarian said.

In July 2021, the Russian Federation lodged its first ever inter-state complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against another state, namely Ukraine. The complaint covers ten basic categories of human rights violations such as Kiev’s responsibility for civilian casualties, illegal deprivation of freedom and cruel treatment, including on Kiev’s Maidan and in the Trade Unions House in Odessa in 2014, as well as in Donbass during the so-called anti-terrorist operation. Russia also complained about Ukraine’s practice of suppressing the freedom of expression and persecution of dissenters by banning mass media outlets and Internet platforms, persecution of journalists from Russia, Ukraine and other states, politicians and ordinary citizens, the policy of discrimination against the Russian-speaking population, the forcing of the Russian language out of the public sphere etc.*jk