The report accused the Ukrainian military of putting civilians at risk by stationing themselves in residential areas, saying soldiers should not be based in empty schools or repositioning civilian buildings in urban areas, as this meant the Russians would target them. and civilians will be caught in the crossfire. But critics say the report was poorly researched and written. They argue that the report ignores the reality of wartime Ukraine and draws a moral equivalence between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the victim. The report has been widely reported by Kremlin-run Russian media as a way to prove their false claims that Russian forces are only pursuing military targets in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, academics and civil society actors criticized the organization’s conclusions almost immediately after they were published. Maliar argued at a press conference in Kyiv that Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems should be based in cities to protect civilian infrastructure, and if Ukrainian forces were based only outside urban settlements “the Russian armed forces would simply be swept unopposed.” There has also been criticism from within Amnesty. The head of Amnesty’s Ukraine office, Oksana Pokalchuk, said the organization cut them out of the publication process when they raised concerns that the investigation, by foreign colleagues, was incomplete and unacceptable. Criticism later grew to include that of Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who called the report a “perversion,” and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, and then Zelenskiy himself. During his nightly speech, Zelensky accused Amnesty of “immoral selectivity” that helps a terrorist state by presenting the victim and the aggressor as the same and ignoring what the aggressor is doing. Zelensky said that there can be – even hypothetically – no condition under which any Russian attack on Ukraine is justified. Hundreds of Ukrainians also took to social media to post footage and stories of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine over the past six months, pointing to the fact that Russia, not Ukraine, harmed civilians in Ukraine. In response, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, Agnès Callamard, hit back, describing the criticism as an attack on Amnesty’s research by “mobs and social media trolls”. “This is called war propaganda, disinformation, disinformation. This will not affect our impartiality and will not change the facts,” Callamard wrote on Twitter. Amnesty International has not issued a statement since publishing the report and did not immediately respond to a request for further comment. Ukrainian and Russian mobs and social media trolls: all attacking @amnesty investigations today. This is called war propaganda, disinformation, disinformation. This will not affect our impartiality and will not change the data. https://t.co/YvMy2E3d6p — Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) August 4, 2022 Kuleba responded by saying that Callamard calling him a troll wouldn’t stop him from saying that “the report distorts reality, creates a false moral equivalence between attacker and victim, and reinforces Russia’s disinformation efforts.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed the report as evidence that Ukraine is using civilians as human shields. Obviously @amnesty SG calls me a “mob” and a “troll”, but that won’t stop me from saying that his report distorts reality, creates false moral equivalence between aggressor and victim, and reinforces Russia’s disinformation efforts. This is false “neutrality”, not truth. https://t.co/Kz2GBzSZr3 — Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) August 5, 2022 The US and UK ambassadors to Ukraine made statements critical of Amnesty’s conclusions. The UK ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, tweeted: “The only things putting Ukrainian civilians at risk are Russian missiles and guns and invading Russian troops. Perfect. If Russia stopped invading Ukraine there would be no danger.” The only things that endanger civilians are missiles and guns and invading Russian troops. Perfect. If Russia stopped invading Ukraine there would be no danger. — Melinda Simmons (@MelSimmonsFCDO) August 5, 2022 US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink tweeted: “After 163 days of an unprovoked war started by the Kremlin, it should be abundantly clear that Ukrainians are in danger due to the aggression of Russia, the brutality of its forces and their merciless barrage on the cities. across the country.” Stephen Haynes, professor of public international law at the University of London Greenwich, who has drawn up guidelines on the use of schools and universities by the military during conflict – which have been endorsed by 100 states, including Ukraine, but are not legally binding – said that Ukraine’s actions had not necessarily broken them. “The use of schools – if they are not also used for their primary purpose – is not always illegal. “Obviously, the situation in Ukraine counts as exceptional in that regard … so the Ukrainian military is not necessarily violating the guidelines,” he said. While Haynes agreed that buildings should be chosen that were as far away from residential areas as possible, he said that the nature of the invasion meant that urban warfare was inevitable. Meanwhile, Jack Watling, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London thinktank, said the Amnesty report “lacked understanding” of military operations and “indulged in insinuations without providing evidence”. Amnesty’s report concluded that Ukrainian forces had other viable options they could have chosen for bases that were further from populated areas, but did not include examples. “It is not a violation of IHL for Ukrainian military personnel to be on the territory they are tasked to defend and not in some random patch of adjacent forest where they can be bypassed,” Watling tweeted. Watling said Ukraine regularly encouraged civilians to leave conflict zones and that while changing the use of civilian buildings was not a crime, forcible displacement was.
