Odesa journalists present an investigation into a Russian strike on a resort village
Odesa journalists presented their investigation film "Terrorist Attack in Serhiyivka: the Russian Officers Complicit in the Murder of Ukrainians".
The film was released by journalists from the Odesa Center for Public Investigations on September 19, reports the IMI representative in Odesa oblast.
The documentary is about the Russian shelling strike on a small resort village on the Black Sea on July 1, 2022. Three Kh-22 missiles reached the target in just a few minutes after the launch, killed dozens of civilians, destroyed the recreation center "Goji" completely and significantly damaged a nine-story residential building.
"Currently, tens of thousands of war crimes have already been recorded in Ukraine – primarily in the temporarily occupied regions, but, unfortunately, there have also been some in our oblast. Several of them are triggers that we could not ignore. The first such significant crime was the attack on the residential complex 'Tiras' and the second one was the shelling of Serhiyivka. Our first investigation was about 'Tiras', and the second one is about Serhiyivka," said the CPI chair Valeriy Bolhan.
Reporter Olena Chernyshova, the author of the investogation, recalled that last year, in the first months of the full-scale invasion, the air raid alerts in Ukraine would last for long hours and there were many strikes and tragedies.
"Then there were the blackouts, which was also difficult. Now the enemy has changed the tactics again and is terrorizing us nightly. But all these experiences and hardships are nothing compared to what our military is going through. I would not separate the soldiers from civilians, because our soldiers did not choose to be in the army. They are defending us from invaders. The experience of the Second World War tells us that not all war criminals get punished. But the modern world gives us a lot of tools to identify the criminals, there will be a tribunal and there will be retribution, and we have to work on it," she says, confident.
A year since the tragedy, journalists found those who were in the resort village at the moment of the strike and found out which Russian servicepeople were complicit in the crime.
The CPI website editor, Nata Chernetska, told the IMI representative about the positive impact of the journalistic investigation.
"When we went to Serhiyivka, we filmed the high-rise building that was damaged by Russian shelling. We made a report, and then we released our investigation. Recently, Oleh Kiper, the head of Odesa OMA, said that he noted the problem building. Now a different contractor has been hired there and repair work has resumed," she said.
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