Amnesty accuses Ukraine forces of endangering civilians, angering Kyiv
- Amnesty report says Ukraine putting civilians in danger by setting up military bases in residential areas
- While the report was widely covered by Russian media loyal to the Kremlin, Kyiv slammed it
Ukrainian forces have exposed civilians to Russian attacks at times by basing themselves in schools, residential buildings and other places in populated areas, according to a new report from Amnesty International.
President Volodymyr Zelensky led fierce Ukrainian denunciations of Amnesty’s allegations, accusing the group of abetting what he called Russia’s unprovoked attacks on Ukraine. The human rights group, he said, was “trying to shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”.
Journalists on several occasions in recent weeks saw attack sites in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and communities in the eastern Donetsk region where Ukrainian fighters, their vehicles or other items such as ammunition were still present.
At two locations, the Associated Press was told a soldier or soldiers had been killed. At a third, emergency workers blocked media from filming victims of a Russian strike on a residential building, which was unusual; locals said military personnel had been staying there.
In a report released on Thursday, Amnesty International said its researchers between April and July “found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas, as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages” in three regions of the country.
Amnesty also said it found Ukrainian forces using hospitals as military bases in five places, which the human rights group called “a clear violation of international humanitarian law”. The report noted that international humanitarian law requires the parties to a conflict “to avoid locating, to the maximum extent feasible, military objectives within or near densely populated areas.”
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Combatants also must remove civilians from the “vicinity of military objectives” and provide warnings about possible attacks, the report said, adding that “viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas.”
At the same time, its authors stressed that the “Ukrainian military’s practice of locating military objectives within populated areas does not in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks.”
Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly asked the remaining residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate, but starting anew elsewhere is not that easy. Tens of thousands of people who left their homes since Russia’s invasion have returned after running out of support or feeling unwelcome.
It was reported last week that one evacuee was killed in a missile strike two days after returning home to the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk. Neighbours expressed anger that Ukrainian fighters had set up base in their residential area on the city’s outskirts. As the AP journalists looked at the missile crater, a uniformed fighter walked over from the adjacent plot of land and questioned their presence.
In the city of Kramatorsk, closer to the front line, residents said after a strike in a residential area that soldiers had been staying there. Soldiers were seen entering and leaving a Kramatorsk flat building hit by a separate strike.
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And in Kharkiv, the AP saw soldiers and military vehicles at a teaching university that was hit. Soldiers and supplies also were present at a school for the disabled where a Russian strike left two craters in the schoolyard.
Aside from witness accounts, Amnesty International relied on satellite imagery and remote sensing. Its researchers heard outgoing fire from nearby Ukrainian positions while examining damaged residential areas in the regions of Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Donbas. The Donbas region, which consists of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, is where the war’s most intense fighting has taken place since April.
The mother of a man killed in a rocket attack in a village near Mykolaiv told researchers that Ukrainian forces had stayed in a house next to theirs. The researchers found military uniforms and equipment there, according to the report.
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Zelensky, in his nightly video message, said the group was trying to “amnesty the terrorist state” - a term he often uses for Russia.
“There are no conditions, and nor can there be, even hypothetically, under which any Russian attack on Ukraine becomes justified,” said Zelensky, clearly agitated.
“Anyone who amnesties Russia and who artificially creates such an information context where some attacks by terrorists are supposedly justified or supposedly understandable, cannot fail to understand that, in doing so, they are helping the terrorists. And if there are such manipulative reports, then you share with them the responsibility for the killings of people.”
Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said failing to criticise Russia’s actions in the report “is like studying the actions of the victim without considering the actions of an armed rapist”.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he was “outraged” by the report, and urged Amnesty to “stop creating a false reality”.
Russian state and pro-Kremlin media have extensively quoted the report, whose findings somewhat align with Moscow’s official narrative. Russia has justified attacks on civilian areas by alleging that Ukrainian fighters are setting up firing positions there.
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“We’re talking about it all the time, calling the actions of Ukraine’s armed forces the tactics of using the civilian population as a ‘human shield’,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram of the report.
Ukrainian soldiers also have routinely based themselves in schools, Amnesty said. Even though Ukraine’s schools have been closed since Russia’s invasion, most are close to residential neighbourhoods. The rights group’s researchers found soldiers or evidence of military activity at 22 out of 29 schools visited.
“In at least three towns, after Russian bombardment of the schools, Ukrainian soldiers moved to other schools nearby, putting the surrounding neighbourhoods at risk of similar attacks,” the report said.
The full scope of the issue is unknown. A separate report last month by Human Rights Watch identified three occasions when Ukrainian forces were based among residential homes and four occasions when Russian forces set up military bases in populated areas of Ukraine.
Additional reporting by Reuters
