Split
Amnesty International is dealing with very harsh and almost unanimous reactions to its “report”, which we have not been able to read because only a sparse communiqué was published on August 4 about alleged Ukrainian military tactics endangering the population. The (veiled) accusation of using civilians as human shields, setting up military posts in apartment buildings, schools and hospitals enraged President Zelenskyy, according to which the human rights organization did not say a word between August 6 and August 7, immediately after Iron and Fire in Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which endangered the entire European continent.
On Sunday 7 August, Amnesty again defended the report but expressed “regret for causing pain, anger and suffering”. Meanwhile, the organization’s Ukrainian manager, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned: “Unless you live in a country occupied by invaders who are tearing it apart, you probably don’t understand what it means to condemn an army of defenders,” commented he.
On the Russian side, Amnesty received a lot of praise. It was repeated on television in Moscow that “according to Amnesty, the Ukrainian armed forces are doing what we have been talking about for so long,” and indeed in these five months of war Russian forces have committed massacres almost every time. they justified themselves by having pursued military goals. If this were also true, it would mean an admission of indiscriminate and untargeted strikes, even with the notorious cluster bombs prohibited by the laws of war.
The unanimous criticism
Amnesty’s allegations against the Ukrainian army were met with almost unanimous disapproval by numerous experts and many newspapers. For the philosopher Bernard Henri Levy, “It is like accusing the French resistance of fighting in the streets of Paris in August 1944. It’s a mixture of stupidity and cynicism. It means playing Putin’s game”. Corriere war correspondent Lorenzo Cremonesi, who spent a long time in Ukraine during that war, wrote an editorial on August 7 with a very clear title: “Amnesty was wrong about Ukraine”. Journalist Cristiano Tinazzi, who has also been in Ukraine for an extended period of time in recent months, wrote a thread on Twitter to explain the errors in the Amnesty statement. But perhaps the most poignant editorial is that of the respected The Times: “The Times’ vision on Amnesty International’s report on Ukraine: Putin’s propagandists”.
Amnesty International did not take into account the context of the war, which is not being fought in open country. Since February 24, the Russians have been targeting towns and villages. We got acquainted with the names Mariupol, Irpin, Bucha: cities with 100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants. Urban spaces, with houses and streets. Could Ukraine have defended Mariupol, which was raided by the Russians in the countryside? Obviously not. Whatever has been verified by Amnesty (unverifiable quotes from ordinary people are mentioned in the available press release), the context must not be forgotten.
At the same time, contrary to what Amnesty writes in the communiqué, since the beginning of the war Ukraine has done everything possible to evacuate as many civilians as possible. Unfortunately, the safety regulations do not allow large numbers. For example, between August 5 and 6, 601 were evacuated from the Donetsk region. Sometimes these evacuations are genuine high-risk operations by armed forces special forces. In the past, attempts were primarily made (also with Turkish mediation) to agree on humanitarian corridors, but this did not always work. We reported in this newspaper about the escape of a woman from Kherson and what happened to the next caravan (shot and forced to return). And how can we forget the Russian missiles at Kramatorsk station on crowded civilians waiting for a train to escape?
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security (Spravdi) conducted a thorough investigation and concluded that the organization used testimonies from people who were in “filtration camps” and prisons of the occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk. The interviews, Spravdi writes on Telegram, were conducted “under obvious pressure from the security forces of the Russian Federation”. And again: “Sometimes this conversation was the only way (for the displaced, editor’s note) to pass through the filter and leave the borders of the occupied territories”. The interviews would therefore not represent an authentic and honest point of view, but only the one “fitting” to the circumstances.
No difference between pursuer and victim
The Amnesty communiqué makes no distinction between the persecutor and the victim, between the intruder and the intruder, between the aggressor and the attacked. No Ukrainian military would have had to shoot, hide in the trenches, if another country had not invaded free and independent Ukraine. So Amnesty has taken on enormous responsibility. First, filing inaccurate complaints without providing supporting evidence. And then the support of Russian propaganda, which has already begun to use the organization’s report to their advantage. Finally, to take the situation out of context and to accuse Ukraine, very seriously, of using civilians as human shields without any substantial evidence (and there cannot be) to prove it.
This invalidates Amnesty’s previous allegations against Russia, and a reputable newspaper like the Times can afford to claim that the report is the result of Putin’s propaganda.