War in Ukraine: what does the Amnesty International report say, accused of serving Russian propaganda? – Ukraine-Russia War

The head of Amnesty International in Ukraine, Oksana Pokaltchouk, has just resigned this Saturday in protest against the NGO’s report, published on August 4, accusing it of “serving Russian propaganda”. It reveals the endangerment of civilians by the Ukrainian army, with attacks launched from inhabited civilian areas, but also military bases established in hospitals and schools, according to Amnesty International. But what does this report really say?

> Attacks from inhabited areas

“We have documented numerous cases where Ukrainian forces have endangered civilians and violated the laws of war by operating in populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. Victims and witnesses of Russian strikes said that the Ukrainian army was “conducting operations near their homes at the time of the attacks”, which left them exposed.

The NGO gathered several testimonies, such as that of the mother of a 50-year-old man, killed on June 10 during a rocket attack in a village south of Mykolaiv: “The soldiers had settled in a house next to ours and my son often went to see the soldiers to get food from them. I begged him several times to stay away from this place. That afternoon, at the time of the strike, my son was in the yard of our house and I was inside. He was killed instantly,” she said. Equipment and military uniforms were reportedly found at the scene by Amnesty International.

In another testimony, “a peasant was injured in early July when Russian forces targeted an agricultural shed in the Mykolaiv sector. A few hours after this strike, Amnesty International researchers witnessed the presence of Ukrainian military personnel and vehicles in the vicinity of the agricultural shed,” the report said.

> Military bases in hospitals and schools

Amnesty International researchers witnessed “the use of hospitals as military bases in five localities”. An attack also reportedly hit a medical laboratory in Kharkiv on April 28, injuring two employees, “after Ukrainian forces set up a base in the complex,” the report said.

The schools also serve as a base camp for the Ukrainian military, according to Amnesty International, which found “evidence of past or present military activity”, including the presence of military fatigues and abandoned ammunition, in “22 of the 29 schools that ‘they visited’.

“Military personnel must not use hospitals in any way to wage war and they must only use schools or civilian apartment buildings as a last resort, in the absence of any other viable solution,” said Agnès Callamard. .

> Russian forces also accused

“The Ukrainian army’s practice of placing military objectives in inhabited areas in no way justifies indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces”, recalls Amnesty International, which has noted the use by the Russians of “prohibited cluster munitions” or “other wide area explosive weapons”.

The NGO also concluded that the Russians had “committed war crimes, in particular in certain sectors of the city of Kharkiv, without having found evidence that Ukrainian forces had settled in the civilian areas targeted illegally. by the Russian army.

> How Amnesty conducted its investigation?

To carry out its investigation, the NGO investigated for several weeks, between April and July, in the regions of Kharkiv, Donbass and Mykolaiv. “The organization inspected strike sites, interviewed victims, witnesses and relatives of attack victims, used remote sensing and analyzed weapons,” Amnesty International said.

> How does Ukraine react to the report?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the report on Thursday evening, accusing Amnesty International of “attempting to amnesty the terrorist state” of Russia. “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 certain data on the victim is analyzed and the actions of the aggressor are ignored, that does not can be tolerated,” he added in his daily video statement.

For his part, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, said he was “outraged” by the “unfair” accusations of the NGO. Amnesty International “creating a false balance between oppressor and victim, between the country that is destroying hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories and the country that is desperately defending itself”.

During her resignation on Saturday, the head of Amnesty International in Ukraine, Oksana Pokaltchouk, claimed that the report served, unwittingly, “Russian propaganda”. According to her, Amnesty “gave very little time” to the ministry “for a response”, while the report indicates that the NGO “contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense” and “had not received any response, at the time of publishing”.