A projection appeared on the facade of Moscow’s U.S. Embassy overnight blaming the United States for children killed in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, according to a video shared by Russian state media.
“The blood of Donbas children is on the hands of U.S. warmongers,” one of the projected images read.
The video’s creators, who remained unnamed by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency, told the outlet that they timed the projection for Children’s Day, which is celebrated across the former Soviet bloc on June 1.
“Today we remember the children of Donbas killed by Ukrainian Nazis with support from American warmongers,” the projection read, referring to President Vladimir Putin’s claims that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was an attempt to “denazify and demilitarize” the country.
The overnight projection was followed by a slideshow and a list of two dozen children presumed to have died during fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
The United Nations estimates that 152 children have been killed in the Donbas conflict between the spring of 2014 and late 2021, with 3,400 civilian deaths overall.
It also believes that at least 264 children had been killed since the start of Russia’s three-month invasion of Ukraine in late February.
