“I don’t understand why our army shoots from the cities and not from the countryside”, a resident ofaround Lyssytchansk, in the Donbass, quoted by Amnesty International. The NGO investigated whether Ukraine’s military tactics were dangerous for its own people. At the end of its research, Amnesty accuses the Ukrainian army to settle in areas inhabited by civilians, and thus turn them into targets.
“These combat tactics violate international humanitarian law and seriously endanger the civilian population, as they transform civilian objects into military targets,” writes Amnesty in a press release published Thursday, August 4.
These accusations are not to the liking of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who sharply criticized the report of the human rights organization. Amnesty International “transfers the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”he reacted in his daily video statement, accusing the NGO of “attempt to grant amnesty to the terrorist state” from Russia. Responding to these criticisms, Amnesty International said it maintained “fully” the content of his report. Franceinfo takes stock of what denounces specifically this investigation.
Army positions too close to civilians
Between April and July, Amnesty International researchers investigated Russian strikes in several Ukrainian regions: in the east of the country, in Donbass and the Kharkiv region, and in the south, in the Mykolaiv region. The organization inspected the sites hit by strikes and interviewed survivors, witnesses and relatives of victims, in order to find out whether these Russian strikes had hit civilian areas where the Ukrainian army had settled.
The NGO thus cites a Russian strike which on May 18 hit a building in the town of Bakhmout, near Kramatorsk (east of the country). Just across the street was a building used by the Ukrainian army before the attack, according to three testimonies collected by Amnesty. On site, researchers from the international organization report having found signs of military presence, including sandbags, black plastic sheeting covering the windows, as well as new first aid equipment made in the United States. “We have no say in what the army does, but we are the ones who pay the price”regrets a resident, quoted in the press release, whose house suffered damage because of this strike.
Attacks launched from inhabited areas
Amnesty International also accuses the Ukrainian army of launching strikes from these residential areas. “We have documented a tendency for Ukrainian forces to endanger civilians and violate the laws of war when operating in populated areas”said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
According to Amnesty, most of the residential areas where the soldiers were located were located miles from the front lines. The NGO indicates that to its knowledge, the soldiers who settled in these residential areas did not ask the civilians to evacuate. And suggests that other options, less dangerous for civilians, were available to the Ukrainian army, which for example could have settled “at nearby military bases or densely wooded areas”.
From army bases to schools and hospitals
According to the organization, the Ukrainian army has established bases in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in the surveyed regions. In five localities, hospitals were used as military bases by Ukrainian forces, according to Amnesty experts on the spot. “In two towns, dozens of soldiers were resting, working and eating in hospitals. In another town, soldiers were firing from positions near a hospital,” they testify. A violation “obvious” international humanitarian law for the NGO.
Hospitals are not the only public buildings invested by the army. In 22 of the 29 schools they visited, Amnesty International researchers found that soldiers were using these buildings or found evidence of past or present military activity – including military fatigues, abandoned ammunition, pouches military rations and military vehicles.
In a town east of Odessa, Amnesty International found that Ukrainian soldiers had used two schools located in densely populated residential areas. “Russian strikes near these schools killed and injured several civilians between April and the end of June, including a child and an elderly woman who were killed in their home by a rocket attack on June 28,” reports the press release.
The Russian army still not cleared
“All parties to a conflict must in all circumstances distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects”, recalls Amnesty International. The NGO therefore wishes to recall that the actions of the Ukrainian forces “do not justify the attacks carried out indiscriminately by the Russian forces, which have caused numerous deaths and injuries among the civilian population”.
Amnesty also points out that it has concluded in other cases “that Russia had committed war crimes, in particular in certain sectors of the city of Kharkiv”, without having found any evidence that Ukrainian forces had established themselves in the targeted civilian areas.
“Unfair” accusations according to kyiv
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Amnesty’s investigation. “The aggression against our state is unjustified, invasive and terrorist. If someone writes a report in which the victim and the aggressor are in some way put on an equal footing, if some data on the victim is analyzed and the actions of the aggressor ignored, this cannot be tolerated.”condemned President Zelensky.
Earlier in the day, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, said he was “outraged” by the accusations “unjust” of Amnesty International which, according to him, creates “a false balance between oppressor and victim, between the country that destroys hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories and the country that desperately defends itself”.
“We fully maintain our conclusions,” said the secretary general of the NGO, Agnès Callamard, stressing that these conclusions were “based on evidence obtained from extensive investigations subject to the same rigorous standards and vetting process as all of Amnesty International’s work”.