UN rights chief warns of 'war crimes' in Ukraine conflict
GENEVA, Switzerland — Russia's widespread and indiscriminate attacks in Ukraine are of "immense concern", the UN rights chief said Wednesday, warning that they could amount to "war crimes".
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet said that the entire population of Ukraine had been "enduring a living nightmare" since Russia launched its full-scale invasion five weeks ago.
Presenting her latest report on the rights situation in the now war-ravaged country, Bachelet voiced particular concern over the "persistent use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas."
Bachelet said missiles, heavy artillery shells and rockets and airstrikes were causing "massive destruction and damage to civilian objects."
In addition, she said her office had received "credible allegations that Russian armed forces have used cluster munitions in populated areas at least 24 times".
The office was likewise probing allegations that Ukrainian forces had also used such weapons, she said.
'Massive destruction'
"Homes and administrative buildings, hospitals and schools, water stations and electricity systems have not been spared," Bachelet said.
The UN rights office had verified 77 incidents in which medical facilities were damaged, including 50 hospitals, with 10 of the facilities completely destroyed, she said, stressing that the actual numbers are "likely to be considerably higher."
"Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited under international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes," Bachelet warned.
"The massive destruction of civilian objects and the high number of civilian casualties strongly indicate that the fundamental principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution have not been sufficiently adhered to."
Ukrainian ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko meanwhile thanked Bachelet for describing "in appalling details the horrors of Russia's assault on Ukraine and the war crimes committed."
She hit out at Moscow's "vicious methods" and warned that Moscow's "flagrant violation of the UN Charter and fundamental principles of international law" would "have long-lasting implications for the future of the world order and humanity."
'Sheer terror'
Bachelet said her office had verified 1,189 civilian deaths in Ukraine, including 98 children since February 24.
But she warned that the true toll was surely far higher, pointing out that her staff had little access to verify casualties in some of the hardest-hit areas.
Those include the besieged and devastated southern port city of Mariupol, where Bachelet said "people are living in sheer terror."
Russian forces have encircled the city and their steady and indiscriminate bombardment has killed at least 5,000 people, but possibly as many as 10,000, according to one senior Ukrainian official.
"Civilians are enduring immeasurable suffering, and the humanitarian crisis is critical," Bachelet said.
She also said her office was investigating claims that civilians in Mariupol had been "forcibly evacuated, either to territory controlled by Russian-affiliated armed groups or to the Russian Federation."
Filipenko charged that "an estimated 40,000 Ukrainian citizens have been trafficked in this way."
Representatives from a long line of countries chimed in to decry Russia's war in Ukraine.
US ambassador Michele Taylor slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin's "brutal, unprovoked and premeditated invasion."
"We are horrified by Russia's tactics," she told the council
"It is clear that President Putin is hell-bent on reducing Ukraine's towns and cities to dust," said British ambassador Simon Manley told the council, while EU ambassador Lotte Knudsen warned "Ukraine is becoming a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe."
Russia's representative Yaroslav Eremin meanwhile chose to counter-attack.
"We are extremely concerned with the mass violations of international humanitarian law and human rights by the Ukrainian military," he told the council, charging that Ukrainian militants were using civilians as "human shields."
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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