A UN report says that Ukraine is partly to blame for a separatist attack on a nursing home two weeks after the war began, in which dozens of elderly people died.
Less than 30 minutes ago
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The Luhansk hospital was attacked on March 11 by Russian-backed separatists, and dozens of elderly and disabled patients were locked up without access to water or electricity.
The attack triggered a fire that spread throughout the building, killing many of the patients. A small number of patients and staff survived and got out into the surrounding forest.
In a war already marked by atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnjanka was particularly gruesome, and Ukrainian authorities did not hesitate to blame Russian forces and accuse them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
Much of the responsibility
But in a new one UN report It has emerged that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large part of the responsibility for what happened in Stara Krasnjanka. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers had taken up positions in the nursing home and thus made it a military target.
At least 22 of the 71 patients survived, but the exact number of deaths is still unknown. There were also 15 employees at the nursing home.
The report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights does not conclude whether a war crime has been committed by Ukraine or the separatist forces, but it is made clear that the incident is an example of the High Commissioner’s concern about the use of civilians as human shields in the brutal war.
Each version
Developments after the incident show how both sides quickly give their version of incidents on the ground, even when everything is still unclear. For Ukraine, it is important to have control over the narrative to ensure that foreign aid continues to come.
The often completely arbitrary Russian shooting with rockets, bombs and grenades at apartment blocks, schools, hospitals and theaters is by far the most important reason why thousands of civilians were killed in the war.
But Ukraine must also respect the international law of war, says David Crane, a former United States Secretary of Defense and veteran of the investigation of countless cases of war crimes around the world. He says that Ukraine may have been guilty of violating international law by not evacuating the nursing home.
Civilians cannot be targets
– The most important thing to the seventh and last is that civilians can not be conscious targets for attacks. Dot. Whatever the reason, Crane says.
– The Ukrainians placed these people in a situation that was a killing zone. You can not do that, he continues.
The Associated Press, together with PBS, has documented, on the basis of a large number of sources, hundreds of attacks in Ukraine that are probably war crimes. Russia represents an overwhelming majority. But a handful, including the nursing home in Stara Krasnjanka, show that Ukrainian soldiers are also guilty.
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