In a report published Thursday after a four-month investigation, the NGO Amnesty International accused the Ukrainian army of setting up military bases in schools and hospitals and launching attacks from populated areas. A tactic that, according to her, violates international humanitarian law and endangers the civilian population.
“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. But “being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian army from the obligation to respect international humanitarian law,” she added.
Between April and July, Amnesty International researchers investigated the Russian attacks in the Kharkiv (east), Donbass and Mykolaiv (southeast) regions, inspecting the places affected by the attacks and interviewing survivors, witnesses and relatives of the victims.
The NGO says it found evidence that Ukrainian forces launched attacks from populated residential areas and at times set up bases on civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in these regions.
Attacks from civilian areas
Most of the residential areas where the soldiers were located were kilometers from the front, Amnesty points out, stressing that the army would have “still had the possibility to settle in other places that did not endanger the civilian population, such as military bases or nearby densely wooded areas, or other structures still located far from residential areas.”
We can read in the report testimonies of people who lived next to houses from which Ukrainian soldiers carried out operations against Russian forces and, on occasion, launched fire. Residents say they were then shelled in return, sometimes deadly attacks.
All of these attacks carried out from civilian areas by the Ukrainian army “exposed these neighborhoods to retaliatory attacks by Russian forces,” writes Amnesty International.
This while “international humanitarian law establishes that all parties to a conflict must avoid positioning, as far as possible, military objectives in or near densely populated areas.”
Military bases in schools and hospitals
Amnesty International also claims that Ukrainian forces have established military bases in schools and hospitals. “The use of hospitals for military purposes constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law, writes the NGO. And although “schools have been temporarily closed to students since the beginning of the conflict, in most cases, these buildings were close to inhabited areas.” by civilians, the report explains.
However, “armed conflict significantly impairs the exercise of children’s right to education, and the use of educational establishments for military purposes can lead to destruction that still deprives children of this right after the war.”
Amnesty International also notes that Ukraine is among the countries that have approved the Safe Schools Statement which aims, among other things, “to restrict the use of schools and universities for military purposes”.
However, the NGO specifies that in other cases “Russia had committed war crimes, in particular in certain sectors of the city of Kharkiv, without having found evidence that Ukrainian forces had settled in civilian areas illegally attacked by the Russian military” .
Non-evacuation of civilians
If the Ukrainian army cannot, for various reasons, base itself elsewhere than in these residential areas, “in this case it must inform the civilian population, evacuate and help the evacuation of the civilian population,” Jean explains on BFMTV. -Claude Samoeiller, president of Amnesty International France.
However, the NGO indicates that, to the best of its knowledge, the soldiers who settled in these residential areas did not request the evacuation of those present, “thus refraining from taking all possible precautions to protect the civilian population.”
On Twitter, the advisor to the Ukrainian presidency, Mikhaïlo Podoliak, however, assured that “the life of the people” was “Ukraine’s priority” and that in the cities near the front, the populations were evacuated. “Ukraine clearly adheres to all the laws of war and international humanitarian law,” he said in a statement.
For Amnesty International, Ukraine must “immediately take the necessary measures to move its forces away from inhabited areas and evacuate civilians in areas where the army is carrying out operations.” It must also use only schools and hospitals as a base, “in the absence of any other viable solution”, declared Agnès Callamard.
Russian attacks remain ‘unjustified’
President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the report Thursday night, declaring that the NGO “transfers responsibility from the aggressor to the victim” and accusing it of “trying 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 somehow put on an equal footing, if some of the victim’s data is analyzed and the aggressor’s actions are ignored, this cannot be tolerated,” added the head of state. .
“Amnesty International does not put Russia and Ukraine on the same footing, there is an aggressor, who violated the UN charter, and an aggressor who is Ukraine”, responds Jean-Claude Samoeiller.
If Amnesty denounces these Ukrainian tactics, it insists several times in its report that they “in no way justify the blind Russian attacks” that have hit the civilian population.
Source: BFM TV
