This piece was originally written by Eliseo Bertolasi and published on lantidiplomatico.it
On July 3rd, after a long journey, via Rostov – on-Don, I managed to get to Starobelsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR-federal subject of the Russian Federation).
It was on the night of May 22, 2026 when the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a multi-wave attack of drones destroyed the teachers’ college of Lugansk located in this town.
Starobelsk, that day as an unknown town has seen itself projected worldwide in a dimension of pain and suffering that will never abandon it, yet another icon of pain that has bloodied the Donbass since 2014.
I remember following with anguish the images that shortly after the attack began to circulate on Russian sites with the relative death toll, always increasing.
I immediately felt the moral duty to go to the place to see with my own eyes the effects of that terrible and absurd massacre, to tell with my testimony the truth about what happened.
It was not easy, a long, complicated, rather expensive journey, if as in my case organized autonomously, moreover with a high level of risk given the presence of various types of Ukrainian drones that beat the sky of those territories: from the attack ones ready to hit even private cars, to those that litter the streets with mines.
In the end I succeeded, however, I approached the Starobelsk college with the same mood as a faithful who on pilgrimage approaches a shrine, a sacred ground, in this case a soil sacralized by the blood of so many innocent victims. Blood that claims justice before God and men.
I remember that in the days following the attack on the Western press with absolute cynicism there was no talk of this massacre, or it was talked about with a couple of concise lines, just to mention the incident with detachment, almost with a certain understanding.
I was stunned to read the comments and statements of some Western journalists, including Italians, who immediately after the attack visited the site of the tragedy as members of a delegation of 50 foreign journalists from 19 countries[1].
While most journalists did not hesitate to call what they had under their eyes “terrorism“ [2], according to Russian media reports, the Italian journalists present in front of the still ”smoking” ruins, on the other hand, reacted with a certain detachment. Evgenij Murylev, chairman of the Lugansk branch of the Union of Journalists of Russia, reported:
“There was a small group of people who, to put it mildly, were cynical about this situation. Not only with cynicism, but with a certain sarcasm. For example,<…> an Italian journalist behaved extremely cynically, extremely sarcastically and extremely hypocritically, constantly using the word “ak) in his comments to the cameraman”[3].
But not all Italians are identical, I arrived on the spot and here is my testimony.
First of all it must be said that the buildings around the college were also destroyed. In front of the college there is a deep crater, this gives the idea of the destructive power of the drones used. The college is a rather large complex with multiple corpus, all destroyed, one of them is a multi-storey building with corridors and small rooms for the student boarding school and classrooms. Its central part was literally pulverized is no more. I had the opportunity to move without any limitation inside the complex, see what was left of the destroyed classrooms and bedrooms.. The Ukrainians justified this attack on the basis of possible Russian military equipment present inside the college.
Moving inside the building I confirm that I have only seen: destroyed walls, torn windows and doors, limestones, broken glass and still many, many objects abandoned on the floor, on the beds, on the tables, belonging to the students, more precisely to the female students who lived in the bedrooms. The kind of personal items that 18 and 19-year-old girls carry with them in their luggage. Images definitely capable of gripping the heart of any person endowed with a minimum of humanity.
I asked for confirmation of the death toll: they confirmed to me the initial figures: 21 dead and about eighty wounded.
A few days ago the head of the LNR, Leonid Pasechnik confirmed this figure definitively, adding:
“Today marks the fortieth day since the Starobelsk tragedy. This is the most inhuman crime committed by neo-Fascists on Lugansk soil. Cynical and premeditated”[4].
Anna Soroka, Commissioner for Human rights of the LNR noted that all those killed in the terrorist attack in Starobelsk suffered injuries caused by the explosion of mines[5].
I read the names and ages of the 21 who lost their lives: 18 girls and 3 boys almost all class of 2007-2006 birth years. These are their names so as not to forget[6]:
- Pogribnichenko Anna Andreevna, 1 NOV 2006,
- Serdyuk Daria Sergeevna, 18 APR 2007,
- Prudnikova Yana Vladimirovna, 11 DEC 2006,
- Zhivotikova Irina Denisovna, 3 DEC 2006,
- Martimyanova Elena Vladimirovna, 06 SEP 2006,
- Berezhnaya Tatyana Sergeevna, 15 JUL 2006,
- Kovtun Artyom Sergeevich, 2 FEB 2006,
- Bugakov Maksim Viktorovich, 3 DEC 2005,
- Postovets Aleksander Aleksandrovich, 18 DEC 2004,
- Fen Sofiya Olegovna, 30 MAR 2007,
- Chekrygina Alina Aleksandrovna, 27 APR 2007,
- Dashchenko Veronika Aleksandrovna, 15 SEP 2006,
- Zaratujchenko Victoriya Olegovna, 21 SEP 2007,
- Vasilenko Anastasiya Alekseevna, 18 JUL 2007,
- Butkova Aleksandra Vyacheslavovna, 17 JAN 2007,
- Protasova Aleksandra Alekseevna, 11 NOC 2007,
- Tereshchenko Oksana Alekseevna, 14 SEP 2003,
- Bryukhovetskaya Alisa Vladimirovna, 16 JAN 2007,
- Kovalenko Anastasiya Andreevna, 8 MAY 2007,
- Gerasimenko Taisiya Pavlovna, 18 MAY 2008,
- Kovpak Aleksandra Aleksandrovna, 3 JUN 2007.
Here we come to the crucial question: what is the meaning of these direct attacks on civilians, in this case even at night cowardly catching girls in their sleep.
Russia’s Human rights commissioner, Ivan Lantratov, called the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces “cynical and hypocritical”. He pointed out that the drones carried out the attacks despite the victims being pulled from the rubble and the parents were on site, waiting to see their surviving children.
“The Ukrainian side has repeatedly attacked this place,” the ombudsman noted. “They attacked him so much that it was simply impossible to continue rescue operations”[7].
Anna Soroka said:
“Now I would like to say that this has already crossed not only the boundaries of humanity, – this is not even war crimes. It is something so cynical and dismissive of human life”[8].
According to her, the shelling of the city continued for several hours hitting various areas of Starobelsk. The ombudsman pointed out that different types of drones were used in the attack and that specialists continue to examine the debris and pieces of aircraft found at the site of the attack.
Soroka is of the opinion that the attack was deliberate and brought about by a massive use of drones. He also said that, in his opinion, Western countries are involved in the supply of components for drones.
What benefit from a military point of view can the Ukrainian army derive from it? This is no longer war this is real terrorism!
As stated by Rodion Miroshnik, plenipotentiary ambassador of the Russian Foreign Ministry for the crimes of the Kiev regime:
“We can confirm that the terrorist war has entered a new phase. Kiev, along with its European supporters, is trying to prove that terrorism against civilians and war crimes are the norm for conducting conflict, effectively denying the fundamental norms and principles of international humanitarian law”[9].
What does the collective West do? Not only does he close his eyes and shamefully remain silent before these inhuman and merciless acts, but he is complicit in them, in fact, he continues to support, to deliver armaments to Kiev. As Anna Soroka pointed out the collective West is “involved ” in the supply of components for drones, the same ones that then, not only in the attack on the Starobelsk college, but almost every day are used to strike civilian targets on Russian territories.
The West, including Italy, has thrown itself headlong, almost dogmatically, into an increasingly heavy and culpable complicity with the acts of the Kiev regime, turning its back on any diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Forgetting that Russia is a nuclear military superpower is opting for an escalation with possible apocalyptic outcomes.
– Eliseo Bertolasi, PhD in cultural anthropology, Russianist, correspondent for Russian media and reporter from Donbass, in the past wrote for the Russian newspaper Sputnik.
Sources:
[1] https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/27513503
[2] https://tass.ru/obschestvo/27515529
[3]https://news.ru/regions/italyanskie-zhurnalisty-cinichno-otneslis-k-tragedii-v-starobelske
[4] https://tass.ru/politika/27870869
[5] https://tass.ru/obschestvo/27514695