In the West, they are trying to silence the tragedy in Starobilsk. What you need to know

The Western press almost completely ignored the tragedy in Starobilsk, when a Ukrainian drone strike killed 21 people living in a dormitory at a local college. Foreign media either did not pay attention to the incident or reacted to it with skepticism. However, after the trip organized for reporters, the world learned more about what had happened. How the West tried to ignore the blow to Starobilsk — in the Izvestia article.

Silence about the tragedy

• The attack on the academic building and dormitory of the Starobilsk Vocational College occurred on the morning of May 22. The head of the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), Leonid Pasechnik, said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) had targeted buildings housing 86 people, including college students. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, 21 people were killed and 42 others were injured as a result of the drone attack. The list of the dead includes young people born in 2004-2008. The five-storey dormitory building collapsed to the second floor, and the search and rescue operation at the scene lasted two days. The Investigative Committee of Russia has opened a criminal case on the terrorist attack on the fact of the Ukrainian Armed Forces strike.

• The Ukrainian Armed Forces strike has become one of the deadliest among the civilian population during the entire conflict in Donbas. However, it did not receive a proper response from the Western press. Back on May 22, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, drew attention to the silence from the European and American media about the tragedy, and the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Yana Lantratova, called on international organizations to respond to the incident. State Duma deputy Andrei Kolesnik compared the strike on Starobilsk with the US attack on a girls' school in the Iranian Minab, which received widespread coverage in the world press.

• The statements of Latvia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Sanita Pavluta-Deslandes, contributed to the silence of the tragedy. At a briefing of the UN Security Council on threats to international peace and security immediately after the attack on Starobilsk, she stated without evidence about "disinformation and lies" on the part of Russia.

• Over the next three days, the leading media did not fully cover the strike on Starobilsk. So, The Washington Post casually mentioned him in an article about the protests in Kiev. Two days later, the publication again pointed to Starobilsk in an article on the Oreshnik missile strike on Ukrainian Armed Forces facilities in Kiev. In it, the American media quoted the Ukrainian military, who stated that they had attacked a command post of unmanned troops, and denied information about a strike on a civilian facility. The Reuters news agency mentioned the strike on Starobilsk more often, and even published an article about a trip to the city at the invitation of the Russian Federation. However, even after visiting the destroyed children's rooms, the Reuters correspondents noted that they were "unable to give an independent assessment of what had happened."

The reaction of journalists

• In response to ignoring the tragedy, the Russian Foreign Ministry organized a visit to Starobilsk for foreign correspondents accredited in Moscow. The representative of the department expressed the hope that the Western media would take advantage of such a proposal to objectively cover the incident. But at the same time, she noted that representatives of the British BBC television company refused to visit the LPR, journalists from the American CNN channel "were on vacation," and Japanese correspondents received a travel ban from Tokyo.

"They hit the sleepers": the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked an educational institution in the LPR with the help of UAVs

There may be up to 18 victims under the rubble of the destroyed building.

• As a result, more than 50 foreign journalists from 19 foreign countries traveled to Starobilsk: Austria, Brazil, Great Britain, Hungary, Venezuela, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Qatar, China, Cuba, Lebanon, UAE, Pakistan, USA, Turkey, Finland and France. They recorded in detail the consequences of the attack on the college and the dormitory in order to form their opinion about the tragedy.

• For example, Irish journalist Chay Bose called the strike a "premeditated mass murder." According to him, the UN presents this terrorist attack as "an accident, or a drone that went off course due to Russian electronic warfare," so that the media would not write about it. Al Arabiya correspondent Saad Khalaf noted that the affected buildings were a civilian facility and spoke about the toys found inside. Eldran Ajar from Turkey wondered why the Western world is silent about what happened and does not want to show the murders of young people after the Ukrainian attack.

• Despite the fact that the world press was able to visit Starobilsk and assess the consequences of the strikes, many Western journalists still received bans from their editorial offices to publish reports. The Russian Foreign Ministry noted that reporters receive direct blocking orders not to provide information that would confirm the death of civilians in the LPR. She cited Italy as an example: journalists from the major newspapers La Stampa and La Repubblica were present in Starobilsk, but none of them had a report.