DISINFO: Russia never attacks civilians and civilian infrastructure
SUMMARY
Russia never strikes civilians and civilian infrastructure. Every time Ukraine and its European masters start throwing tantrums, accusing Russia of destroying civilian targets and civilians, we see how the UN Secretariat supports statements and demands of the West and Ukraine that Russia be punished in some way. The Russian army never strikes civilian objects and civilians.
RESPONSE
A recurring claim denying Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine and evident repeated attacks against Ukrainian civilians.
The claim is demonstrably false. Russia has targeted hundreds, if not thousands, of civilian targets in several wars, including Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine.
There is substantial evidence of Russian troops committing war crimes and violating the rules of war, for example given their practice of positioning military assets in residential areas. The United Nations, Amnesty International and other organisations have documented numerous instances of such violations. Russia has stepped up terror against the civilian population of frontline cities in Ukraine – dozens of airstrikes per day are carried out on Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Sumy, Kherson, Odesa and other cities. The Russian military targets civilian infrastructure, including schools, kindergartens, hospitals, orphanages, and churches. One of the most notorious atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine was the airstrike on a maternity and children's hospital in Mariupol on March 9, 2022. The bombing of Okhmatdyt, a children’s hospital in Kyiv, is another example.
On 05 March 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against two Russian top officials considered responsible for “missile strikes carried out by the forces under their command against the Ukrainian electricity infrastructure" between October 2022 and March 2023, which are considered as war crimes.
On the night of July 3–4, 2025, Russia launched a massive aerial assault on Kyiv, involving 550 of drones and missiles hitting random civilian objects throughout the city. September 9, 2025, a Russian aerial bomb attack killed at least 25 people in a pension queue and wounded 19 more in the rural Ukrainian village of Yarova in the eastern Donetsk region.
On 31 July, a missile and loitering munitions attack on Kyiv caused the highest verified number of civilian casualties in the capital since the start of the full-scale invasion, with 31 people killed and 171 injured. The majority of those killed, including five children, were in a residential building that was struck by a missile.
The number of civilian casualties in Ukraine reached another three-year high in July, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said. With 286 civilians killed and 1,388 injured, the casualty number was the highest since May 2022, topping also those for June 2025.
Since the Russian Federation launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, HRMMU has documented the deaths of at least 13,883 civilians, including 726 children, and 35,548 injured, including 2,234 children.
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