MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th July, 2022) The Ukrainian forces have been deliberately setting crop fields on fire using helicopters and artillery in Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Kherson regions to frame Russia as a threat to food security, head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, said on Monday.
According to the senior army official, Ukraine deliberately carries out provocations at agricultural facilities � despite the unfolding food crisis at home and around the world � to use them as proof of Russia's allegedly indiscriminate strikes against civilian infrastructure.
"In Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions, Ukrainian military, together with militants of nationalist battalions, intentionally set fire to crop fields using helicopters and artillery," Mizintsev said.
Similarly, Ukrainian soldiers in the village of Kalinivka in the Donetsk People's Republic, currently under Kiev's control, deployed artillery and multiple rocket launchers in a grain depot and repeatedly attacked the Russian troops, baiting them to open retaliatory fire, the official said.
Mizintsev added that Kiev uses such ploys against the backdrop of Western hysteria and false accusations of Russia as the country responsible for triggering international food crisis. The army official lamented the fact that the global community has effectively turned a blind eye to such provocations and urged the UN, the WHO and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent to pressure Kiev to stop the attacks against Ukrainian civil population.
On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces.
