“Ukrainian war tactics put civilians in danger” – a press release with this title, distributed on 4 August by the international human rights organization Amnesty International, had the effect of a bombshell on the media. News with such headlines was reported by dozens of major Western publications and news agencies. The statement by human rights defenders says that units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine regularly occupy positions in residential areas, in particular on the territory of schools and hospitals, which puts the civilian population at risk.

Excitement in Russia, outrage in Kyiv

The human rights activists’ statement was widely reported by Russian state media, despite Amnesty International’s activities being recognized as undesirable in Russia, and its Russian-language website being blocked by Roskomnadzor. The statement was also released by Russian diplomats in Western countries. “Kyiv’s criminal regime does not feel any compassion for its own population,” the Russian Embassy in the United States wrote on Twitter in private.

But in Kyiv, Amnesty International’s statement caused outrage. President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message that the organization “is trying to amnesty the terrorist state and shift responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim”. The following day, August 5, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba also spoke out. “The report distorts reality, draws a false moral equality between perpetrator and victim and contributes to Russia’s disinformation efforts,” the minister said in a statement on Twitter. With this post, Kuleba responded to the post of Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnes Kallamar, who called her critics “trolls” and the organization’s accusation of prejudice as “military propaganda”.

Isolated cases or “model behavior”?

Amnesty International says the deployment of Ukrainian units in residential areas are not isolated cases, but a “pattern of behavior”. “These tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger the civilian population, turning civilian installations into military targets. Further Russian attacks on residential areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure,” the press release said.

However, it is difficult to judge the systemic nature of this phenomenon. The fact is that Amnesty’s press release does not come with a detailed on-the-spot report, as the organization is wont to do, documenting war crimes or systematic human rights violations.

Cloudy Evidence

The current Amnesty International press release contrasts sharply, for example, with the situation when, in June, the organization published a report on the systematic use by the Russian armed forces of cluster munitions prohibited by international conventions in the bombing of Kharkov. The conclusions of the June report were based on a study of 41 bombings that left 62 civilians dead and 196 wounded. To prove the Russians’ use of banned ammunition, AI researchers interviewed 160 witnesses, victims, doctors and victims’ relatives. The report contains numerous photographs of the bombing sites, including photos of fragments of ammunition.

There is no evidence of all of this in support of the Aug. 4 statement. Instead, there are criticisms from the mouths of anonymous witnesses and isolated examples of bombings in unidentified towns in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions and in the Donbass. A representative from the organization’s Moscow office responded to DW’s appeal to the press service at Amnesty International’s London headquarters on the morning of 5 August and promised to provide information at a later date. However, when the article was published, no one had contacted DW.

One in over four hundred

Amnesty International says its researchers have seen the UAF use hospitals as “de facto military bases” on five occasions. What exactly is meant by “military bases” is not explained. In two of these cases, dozens of soldiers “rested and ate on the hospital grounds.” Only in one case is it a case of shooting, however, not from the hospital’s territory, but “from a nearby location”.

In total, according to the WHO, since the start of the Russian military invasion on February 24, hospitals in Ukraine have been bombed at least 421 times. As a result of these attacks, 181 people died and several hundred doctors and patients were injured. The AI ​​press release cites only one specific case of bombing a medical facility: on April 28, two employees of a medical laboratory in a suburb of Kharkiv were wounded after the Ukrainian military was deployed nearby.

No information about the other party

The press release also notes that researchers have recorded more than 20 cases of placement of Ukrainian military personnel in schools in the Donbass and Mykolaiv region. At the same time, however, it is specified that all schools were closed for classes. This approach by Amnesty surprised Volodymyr Yavorsky of the Kyiv Civil Liberties Center. In conversation with DW, the human rights activist cited the example of Bakhmut, from the Donetsk region. An Amnesty International report mentions that on 21 May seven soldiers died in the university building in Bakhmut, shortly after Amnesty researchers visited the site and saw an armored car destroyed there. But there is not a single mention of schools in this city.

Aftermath of the bombing in Bakhmut (July 2022)

“There are a total of 14 schools in Bakhmut. 12 of them were damaged by Russian military attacks. At the same time, it is known for sure that in Bakhmut the Ukrainian military had orders not to even approach the schools. to mention any of these attacks. to schools where there are no “military. And this despite the fact that in their previous report on Kharkov they themselves wrote that the Russians were attacking everything in sequence where there were crowds of people”, Yavorsky criticizes the report. He says that the Russian military, in overthrowing the Armed Forces of Ukraine of cities, they simply “bomb everything, square by square”.

However, according to Yavorsky, the main problem is the one-sidedness of Amnesty International’s accusations against the Ukrainian military. After all, we are not talking about how the Russian military behaves in residential areas.

Human Rights Watch: Focus on both sides

By the end of July, the problem of locating combat units in residential areas was already in the focus of Human Rights Watch (HRW). In their report, human rights activists carefully described the circumstances of seven cases of deployment in residential areas – in three of them were about units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and in four – about the Russian army. In conversation with DW, an HRW representative noted that the Russian side does not allow human rights activists to enter Russian-occupied territories. “We visited territories that had been under Russian occupation for more than a month, after the withdrawal of Russian troops. We received evidence of several cases where Russian troops occupied positions in residential areas, mainly schools, and did not take any steps to evacuate. a civilian population,” said Belkiz Ville, a researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Crisis and Conflict Unit. The human rights activist stressed that criticism of the lack of measures to protect the civilian population against both sides of the war cannot be equated with war crimes committed by the Russian Federation’s military and repeatedly described by the organization. “In this case, we wrote to the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries, gave examples and asked what the departments are doing to protect the civilian population. We have not received any response,” said the Human Rights Watch representative.

Vladimir Yavorsky agrees: correcting possible violations of international humanitarian law is an important human rights work. However, it must be complete, he says. “It is very easy to come and take a picture of the military on the school grounds. It is much more difficult to understand all the circumstances of the conduct of hostilities. We, as human rights activists, note that the Ukrainian side is making efforts for the safety of the population. and in this case, it seems that the Ukrainian side is supposed to behave as inhumanely as the Russian”, criticizes Yavorsky. According to him, Amnesty International’s statements could be useful for Western politicians who oppose the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

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