DISINFO: Amnesty International admits that Ukraine fights like terrorists and uses civilians as human shields
SUMMARY
Amnesty International has acknowledged that Ukraine is fighting like terrorists, and its practices constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.
The organisation's experts visited 29 schools, in the south-eastern part of Ukraine, and found that the Ukrainian armed forces were stationed in 22 schools. The organisation's report stated that the Ukrainian armed forces, when stationed in these locations, did not evacuate nearby buildings to reduce civilian casualties in the event of possible retaliatory strikes.
Using "human shields" is a terrorist tactics"
RESPONSE
This claim is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign regarding a recently published Amnesty International report on the war in Ukraine.
While the report did criticise the Ukrainian armed forces for launching strikes from within populated residential areas, it in no way used terms like "terrorist tactics" or "human shields". In fact, nothing in the report suggests that this was a deliberate policy by the Ukrainian armed forces. On the other hand, the report makes it clear that these violations should not be used to justify Russian indiscriminate attacks against civilians using internationally banned cluster munitions, a deliberate policy that constitutes a war crime. This section of the report was completely ignored by pro-Kremlin media. The report reads:
"Many of the Russian strikes that Amnesty International documented in recent months were carried out with inherently indiscriminate weapons, including internationally banned cluster munitions, or with other explosive weapons with wide area effects. Others used guided weapons with varying levels of accuracy; in some cases, the weapons were precise enough to target specific objects.
The Ukrainian military’s practice of locating military objectives within populated areas does not in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks. All parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects and take all feasible precautions, including in choice of weapons, to minimize civilian harm. Indiscriminate attacks which kill or injure civilians or damage civilian objects are war crimes."
The report has been crticised for being loop-sided, failing to adress the full scale of the Russian atrocities and becoming a tool in Russian propaganda. The head of Amnesty in Ukraine could not comment on the report before publication and she resigned.
The Kremlin’s information manipulation and disinformation attacks on Ukraine were launched years in advance of the war unleashed on 24 February 2022. See our webpages UKRAINE - EU vs DISINFORMATION.