Starobilsk, the Ukrainian massacre that the Kremlin wants to turn into a symbol

Starobilsk, occupied UkraineAs soon as we set foot in the student dormitory in Starobilsk, in the occupied region of Luhansk, it became clear that this was not a command post of the elite drone branch of the Russian army, as Kyiv claims. Last Friday, Ukrainian aircraft killed 21 young people there, mostly girls, who were sleeping at the time of the attack, and injured dozens more. Ukraine's denial and the West's silence pushed Russian diplomacy to organize a guided tour for foreign journalists to the scene of the tragedy. The expedition, in which ARA participated and which took place hours after a massive retaliatory bombing by Moscow, became an attempt by the Kremlin to accuse Volodymyr Zelensky of a war crime and to impose its narrative on the international community.

Last Friday, Ukrainian devices killed 21 young people, mostly girlsNext to the dormitory, in front of the remains of the university college where the young people were studying to become teachers, the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights, Yana Lantratova, called the attack a "war crime" and accused the Ukrainians of "deliberately murdering children." With the aim of appealing to international law, the authorities claim that the deceased were between 14 and 18 years old, data that does not match the birth dates published by the administration itself, which indicate that all the people who lost their lives were between 18 and 23 years old.

Hours before the visit, the Russian army had launched nearly 700 drones and 90 missiles against Ukrainian cities, including the Oreshnik, intended to become the most powerful weapon in the Russian arsenal and which had only been used twice in the entire war. When asked if the deaths of young Ukrainians in Russian bombings, a circumstance that has been repeated over the last four years, should be condemned in the same way, Lantratova limited herself to responding:

Voiceless victims

However, in Starobilsk, civilians had no say; only the authorities did. The few local residents who gathered near the devastated area refused to speak with international journalists in the presence of the police. The tour organizers took us to the hospital where the injured and their families were admitted, but unlike the Russian media, we were not allowed access. Representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs justified this by the severity of the injuries, although they admitted the victims' low predisposition to communicate with foreign journalists. Following this, the Russian governor of Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik, appeared at the entrance of the center to declare that “these kinds of fascist acts in the 21st century are unacceptable”.

This was the latest example of an effort designed to remotely control and politicize the narrative of events. Instead of presenting the disaster in its raw state and facilitating testimonies from those affected, we were only allowed to interact with the authorities, to the point of offering a confusing image: that of a group of people dressed in black, holding photos of dead students, who turned out to be officials. We were also not allowed to leave the marked route, which did not include the memorial honoring the victims, just a few hundred meters from the ruined building.

Furthermore, the Kremlin sought to make the presence of international journalists a central element of its propaganda campaign. As soon as we got off the bus in Starobilsk, a crowd of Russian journalists was already waiting for us to film us. Insistently, we were the target of state media cameras, which pressured us to make statements about how we felt after contemplating the degree of destruction and whether it all seemed like a staged event or was real. And the answer is that it was all real: the 21 dead, the Oreshnik against Kyiv as retaliation, and Moscow's spectacle to instrumentalize grief.