It was a bleak assessment from Rosemary DiCarlo, the political chief of the United Nations (UN), in a meeting of the UN Security Council on January 10th: Since the Russian attack on Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the UN confirmed the deaths of 10,242 Ukrainian civilians and more than 19,300 wounded.
And since Russia massively increased its attacks on Ukraine in December, the number of dead and injured Ukrainian civilians has increased dramatically. In December alone, the UN observer mission HRMMU confirmed deaths or injuries of 592 Ukrainian civilians because “the Russian Federation has intensified missile and drone attacks across Ukraine,” the mission said on January 16. The observers added that not all cases had already been examined and that the real number of victims was certainly higher.
Of course, Ukrainian rockets also kill civilians. Already on December 30, at least 25 civilians died in Belgorod, Russia, as Ukraine responded to massive attacks by the Russian air force in which, according to the UN, 58 Ukrainians died and 158 were injured on December 29 alone. And on Sunday, 27 people were apparently killed when artillery shells hit a market and the courtyard of a residential building in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, which Russia occupied and annexed in 2014.
Moscow speaks of “barbaric acts of terrorism” when it comes to attacks by others
The number of victims mentioned by Denis Pushilin, the head of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) appointed by Moscow, cannot be independently confirmed. But in addition to strictly censored Russian media, a local employee of the Reuters news agency also saw bodies lying on the snow at the site of the suspected artillery strikes and spoke to crying people who reported the deaths of relatives.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the alleged artillery attacks, for which a subgroup of the Ukrainian army denied any responsibility, a “barbaric act of terrorism.” demanded an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council. Moscow often tries to use Ukrainian attacks to distract from its own massive attacks, many of which hit civilian targets and constitute suspected war crimes.
And Kiev is stepping up its attacks on Russia’s infrastructure
On January 6, for example, according to the UN, Russian rockets hit the houses of two Ukrainian families in the small town of Pokrovsk near the front and the nearby village of Rivne: six adults and five children died in the rubble. Two days later, a Russian rocket attack in Novomoskovsk injured 31 civilians, including eight Ukrainians who were traveling to work in a minibus.
Such attacks outside the headlines are not isolated cases. “Most civilian casualties (84 percent) and damage to teaching and health facilities (92 percent) continue to occur on government-controlled territory” – that is, on Ukrainian territory controlled by Kiev, the UN observers said on January 16th firmly.
Since then, Russian attacks have continued unabated. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy mentioned the deaths in Russian-occupied Donetsk on Sunday at his evening speech not, but said that the previous day alone the Russians had bombed “more than 100 cities, towns and Ukrainian villages” with dozens upon dozens of rockets and grenades. “The most brutal Russian attacks took place in the Donetsk region,” said Zelenskiy. The suspected artillery attacks on the market in Donetsk may have been failed Ukrainian attacks on Russian artillery positions. The militaries of both sides sometimes station offensive weapons in or near civilian objects.
Ukraine in turn strengthened Attacks on infrastructure facilities in Russia. After Ukrainian drones set Rosneft oil tanks on fire on Thursday and Friday last week, bomb-equipped drones apparently sent by Ukraine’s secret services attacked targets in the Russian regions of Tula, Smolensk, Oryol and the surrounding area on January 21st Saint Petersburg: Ukrainian bombs caused a terminal belonging to the Russian natural gas company Nowatek in the port city of Ust-Luga to burst into flames, according to Russian Governor Alexander Drozdenko. In Tula, the Shcheglovsky factory was attacked Panzerir-missile defense systems, a factory in Smolensk Ch-59-Cruise missiles produced.
“Ukrainian-made drones are reaching Moscow, Saint Petersburg and oil depots in other cities. This is a very good sign,” said the Ukrainian air force spokesman, Yuri Ihnat.