In mid-December, the Ukrainian military attacked the village of Lantrativka in the occupied part of the Luhansk region. More than 80 construction workers from the Russian Novosibirsk who came to build defensive fortifications could have died there.
This is stated in the investigation of the publication Radio Svoboda.
The attack took place on December 16. At the time, the occupation authorities reported 11 dead, including in the building of a local school. Pro-Russian bloggers reported that the dead were wage earners who had come to “restore the infrastructure of Donbas.” Journalists managed to find out that people are being hired by the company StroyKom, which announced on its website that it was participating in the construction of the Kerch bridge. Those willing to go to the occupied parts of Donbas for construction were promised to pay up to 210,000 rubles a month.
One of the “workers” anonymously confirmed to the journalists of Radio Liberty that he worked at the construction site. “Now they took us out, they said that military operations had begun. Two buses from Novosibirsk with roofers and carpenters came with us to Lantrativka. We were driven across the border every day, and were placed in a school. Officially there were 11 corpses, unofficially — 84. At three oʼclock in the morning, three rockets, one, then 5 seconds later, the second and the third. The masterʼs room was blown to pieces,” he said.
Thanks to photos from social networks, journalists managed to find out that the Russians were building defensive fortifications one kilometer from Lantarivka. This is also confirmed by satellite images.