“We stand by our findings fully,” the rights group said on Sunday, but stressed that “nothing we have documented that Ukrainian forces are doing in any way justifies Russian violations.” Amnesty sparked outrage in Ukraine by publishing a report on Thursday accusing the military of putting civilians at risk by setting up bases in schools and hospitals and launching counterattacks from densely populated areas. The head of Amnesty’s Ukraine office has resigned in protest, accusing the rights group of parroting Kremlin propaganda. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the group tried to “shift the blame from the attacker to the victim”. Amnesty’s report listed instances in which Ukrainian forces appeared to have put civilians at risk in 19 towns and villages in Kharkiv, Donbass and Mykolaiv regions. In its statement on Sunday, the rights group refused to back down on that assessment. “Instances were found where Ukrainian forces were located right next to where civilians were living, potentially putting them at risk from incoming Russian fire.” “We made this assessment based on the rules of international humanitarian law, which require all parties to a conflict to avoid locating, to the greatest extent possible, military targets in or near populated areas,” it said. However, Amnesty acknowledged the scale of the backlash its report had provoked. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST “Amnesty International deeply regrets the distress and outrage our press release has caused regarding the war tactics of the Ukrainian military,” it said. Since Russia’s invasion in February, Amnesty said it had interviewed hundreds of Ukrainian victims “whose stories illuminate the brutal reality of Russia’s aggressive war”. “We have challenged the world to show solidarity with the Ukrainians through concrete action, and we will continue to do so.”
