DISINFO: Russian troops treat civilians with care, unlike Ukrainians
SUMMARY
The Russian Armed Forces treat civilians with care, unlike the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Russian military personnel are careful with civilians during the special operation. Earlier, a resident of the recently liberated town of Selidovo in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said that when this area was still under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Ukrainian soldiers evacuated children at gunpoint.
RESPONSE
This case contains graphic/distressing material.
This is a recurring disinformation narrative from pro-Kremlin outlets denying war crimes committed by Russian forces and accusing Ukraine of doing so. This claim was made in the context of Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine.
There is a large amount of evidence that the Russian military is deliberately targeting civilians in Ukraine. According to the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, there have been multiple instances where Russian troops were reported to have caused civilian harm, including cases of indiscriminate shelling, targeting civilian infrastructure, and other actions leading to civilian casualties in densely populated areas. The Bucha massacre is the most notorious example of Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Russian troops also committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kherson and its surrounding and in near Kharkiv. Russia has also indiscriminately stricken civilian infrastructure such as a residential building in Kryvyi Rih on 11 November 2024, a children’s hospital in Kyiv on 8 July 2024, a shopping mall in Kremenchuk on 27 June 2023, and other places. The European Union has condemned in the strongest possible terms such crimes.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that Bucha massacre is Ukrainian provocation, Western journalists hide truth, that Bucha is a Hollywoodian staging whose sole purpose was to stop peace negotiations, and that Ukrainian neo-Nazis are shooting residents in the Kursk region and the West remains silent.