🎙 Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on Ukraine crisis (October 8, 2026)

💬 The Kiev regime continues its terror campaign against Russia’s civilians and civilian infrastructure using Western weapons and money.

The number of casualties over the past week exceeded 200, of whom 29 people, including two children, were killed. Nineteen minors, including a two-year-old child, were injured. The largest number of casualties was reported in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Belgorod, Bryansk, Zaporozhye, Kursk, and Kherson regions.

Alongside the efforts to repel these attacks on the battlefield, substantial legal work is under way to document the Kiev regime’s crimes.

Russian law enforcement agencies continue to hold Ukrainian militants and foreign mercenaries criminally liable.

Nikita Gasparov, a UAV operator with a Ukrainian State Border Guard Service unit, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for a terrorist attack in the Kursk Region on March 23, 2025, which resulted in the death of a civilian.

The complicity of former Ukrainian defence ministers Alexey Reznikov and Mikhail Fyodorov in crimes against the civilians has been established. In 2021-2023 and 2026, respectively, they issued criminal orders to their subordinates to conduct punitive military operations in Donbass, resulting in mass deaths and injuries of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.

In addition to the charges previously brought in absentia, the involvement of Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry Oleg Ivashchenko and Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Unmanned Systems Forces Robert Brovdi in terrorist attacks carried out in Russia in 2026 has been established. These attacks, among them a drone strike on a beach in the village of Arkhipo-Osipovka outside Gelendzhik on August 3, resulted in numerous civilian casualties, including children.

The above individuals have been placed on an international wanted list.

Long prison sentences have been handed down to Azov militants Nikolai Gnidin, Alexander Kuranov (20 years each), Sergey Krivosheyev (19 and a half years), Alexander Zasenko (19 years), Ivan Kvasov (seven and a half years) and Igor Zvonar (six years), who engaged in terrorist activities in the Donetsk People’s Republic from February to May 2022.

The court sentenced Spanish and American mercenaries Abraham Pardo Robles and Jonathan David Milford, who fought on the side of the Kiev regime, to 14 years in prison each in absentia. They have been placed on an international wanted list.

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