kyiv assures that its priority is to protect civilians after the international organization has warned that it “violates the laws of war” by locating “military objectives” in residential areas
Amnesty International (AI) has accused the Ukrainian forces on Thursday of “violating the laws of war” by “establishing bases and operating weapons systems in inhabited areas”, which “puts the population at risk”. The organization, after an exhaustive investigation on the ground in Donbas, Kharkov, and Mykolaiv, reminds the Zelensky government that international humanitarian law “requires that all parties to a conflict avoid as far as possible the location of military objectives within densely populated or in their vicinity.
This is the first time that a recognized international institution, and not suspected of alliances with Russia, questions some of the Ukrainian military practices with such severity and with testimonies. Amnesty International emphasizes, in any case, that its conclusions do not hide or excuse Russia’s atrocities, although “being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian Army from respecting International Law,” AI Secretary General Agnès Callamard said yesterday.
The report is also not exactly lax with the Kremlin troops, to whom it attributes war crimes and criticizes their indiscriminate bombings, the use of cluster projectiles and other missiles that cause destruction in “wide areas”. «The practice of the Ukrainian Army of locating military objectives within populated areas does not in any way justify the indiscriminate Russian attacks. All parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects, and take all possible precautions, including in the choice of weapons, to minimize harm to civilians. Indiscriminate attacks that cause death or injury to civilians or damage civilian objects are war crimes », he warns. Beyond triggering a controversy, his criticism of kyiv reveals an urgent request for the Government to ensure “immediately that it places its forces away from populated areas or evacuates the civilian population from areas where the Army operates” .
The response of the Ukrainian Executive has not been long in coming. The foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has been “outraged” by the demonstrations of the civil organization while the presidential adviser Mijailo Podoliak has said that “preserving the life and health of all citizens” is the “absolute priority” of his country. It adds that the Kiev government “strictly adheres to all the laws of war” and considers that Amnesty International’s conclusions are aimed at discrediting its armed forces and making it difficult to send weapons from the West, especially at a critical time when Volodymyr Zelensky requires the US to supply him with HIMARS rocket launchers to counteract the Russian troops and try to reconquer the occupied territories.
Podoliak has stressed that the cabinet is “constantly” taking measures to help Ukrainians move from the zone of hostilities to safer areas” and has given as an example the order issued by the president last Saturday night to evacuate civilians from Donbas. Zelensky apparently gave this order the day after Amnesty International forwarded its report to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. The head of the Government justified the evacuation in that “the more people leave the region, the less time the Russian Army will have to kill people.”
The field work of the observers was carried out between April and July. A team toured vast devastated areas, interviewed survivors, conducted ballistic surveys and satellite tracking. He also reported the presence of Ukrainian soldiers stationed in schools and armored vehicles parked under the groves of residential avenues.
nineteen locations
The team confirmed the brutalities of the Russian invaders. And he explains that he also found evidence that the Ukrainians had launched attacks from “populated areas” and “civilian buildings” in 19 locations, “exposing the areas to retaliatory fire from Russian forces.” The military were also quartered in five hospitals and several empty schools.
A firefighter fights the fire after the shelling of a house in Donbas /
“In 22 of the 29 schools it visited, the research team found soldiers using the facilities or indications of current or past military activity, including the presence of military attire, discarded ammunition, army ration packs, and military vehicles.” “Russian forces attacked many of the schools used by Ukrainian forces. In at least three cities, after the Russian bombing of schools, Ukrainian soldiers moved to other nearby schools, putting surrounding neighborhoods at risk of similar attacks.
The team emphasizes that these positions were kilometers from the front and that the kyiv Army could have used other “viable alternatives” and “away from residential areas” to fire their batteries; including military bases and forests. It also denounces that the questioned units did not previously alert or evacuate their neighbors and, therefore, “did not take all possible precautions to protect the population.”
In some of these cases, Ukrainian soldiers were the main victims. “In Bakhmut, they were using a university building as a base when a Russian attack hit it on May 21, reportedly killing seven soldiers. The university is adjacent to a high-rise apartment building that was damaged in the attack along with other civilian homes some 50 meters away. The investigation team found the remains of a military vehicle in the courtyard of the bombed-out university building. Among the testimonies collected by the observers is that of a woman who lost her son when the invaders located and destroyed a Ukrainian position installed in an adjoining house. Mykola, a survivor living in Lisichansk, commented: “I don’t understand why our Army shoots from the cities and not from the countryside.”
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