News of the Week published a story under the heading “Ukrainian punishers shoot people and loot.” The plot is frankly frightening – there are fuzzy shots taken from nowhere with bodies lying on the ground, provided with the comment “creepy shots from Izyum – these people were shot right on the street for being suspected of collaborating with Russia”, and the statement that “teachers, those who worked under the Russian school curriculum face up to fifteen years in prison,” as allegedly stated by Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk, and the completely unsupported story of the head of the occupation administration of the Kharkiv region, Vitaly Ganchev, about how “black mercenaries drive around Kupyansk and shoot people ". And the plot ends with this accusation:
“It’s not for nothing that Butch sounds [in Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech] – the Ukrainian authorities intend to make a second such anti-Russian project from Izyum, and for this purpose the Western press was specially brought to the city. <…>
What else to pay attention to, the Ukrainian president directly pointed out: “A mass grave of people was found in Izyum. The necessary legal proceedings have already begun there. The delegation, of course, goes there and finds whole rows of unmarked graves. Immediately, in the presence of reporters, an exhumation is being carried out.” <…>
It is well known how this spontaneous cemetery actually arose, all local residents are aware of it. There are even footage taken at the same place in May: they are burying the Ukrainian military, whose bodies the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine refused to take from the battlefield.
All the dramatizations were prepared in a hurry and do not stand up to criticism, but Kyiv does not need this.”
The RF Ministry of Defense announced the complete capture of Izyum under control on March 24, and Vesti Nedeli does not explain why the occupiers buried Ukrainian soldiers only in May.
But, according to the prosecutor of the Kharkov region Alexander Ilyenkov, during the exhumation in the first grave they found the corpse of a woman with a rope around her neck and broken limbs. Other bodies with traces of torture were also found. The Ukrainian edition "Grati" published a photograph of the mutilated body of a man with cut off genitals, buried in Izyum.
Deputy Prime Minister Vereshchuk has never threatened teachers with terms of up to 15 years. Soon after the liberation of Kupyansk, information appeared , which was subsequently not confirmed, about the detention of Russian teachers who had come to the occupied cities to establish the educational process according to Russian programs. Vereshchuk, commenting on this, said that such teachers would be tried under Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – "Violations of the laws and customs of war." A term of up to 15 years implies only the 2nd part of the article – "the same acts, if they are associated with premeditated murder." Under this article, Russian serviceman Vadim Shishimarin was sentenced to 15 years for shooting a civilian in the village of Chupakhovka, Sumy region. Obviously, this part of the article does not apply to Russian teachers who arrived in the occupied territory for its Russification. The 1st part assumes a period of up to 12 years.
But by the time Vesti Nedeli was released, it had already become known that there were no Russian teachers in the Kharkiv region, and that the occupiers forced local teachers to work in schools. It is unlikely that Article 438 can be applied to them at all. But the story says nothing about what kind of teachers they mean, and it seems that the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister threatens his fellow citizens with long terms only because they submitted to the occupation administration.