The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced the capture of the village of Grabovske in Ukraine, with Kiev accusing Moscow of forcibly relocating local residents.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Monday that it had captured the village of Grabovske in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region. In December, Kiev accused Moscow of forcibly relocating thousands of people in the region. TASR writes about it according to AFP.
If the capture of the village is confirmed, it would mark a new shift of the Russian army in the Sumy region, which was spared most of the fighting after the retreat of the Russian army at the beginning of the invasion in 2022.
Forcible removal of residents
In December, Kyiv accused Russia of illegally detaining about 50 residents of Grabovsky. Ukraine’s ombudsman said Russian forces held them in isolation in poor conditions and then “forcibly took them to the territory of the Russian Federation.” The head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Andriy Sybiha, compared Russia’s actions to “medieval raids” and called for the return of the abducted people.
The AFP agency reminds that the Sumy region is not one of the five Ukrainian regions annexed by Moscow after manipulated referendums. However, Russia has declared that it wants to create a “buffer zone” in the border areas of Ukraine.
