Ukraine war
Grozny, Aleppo, Bucha: always the same accusations against the Russian war effort
Shelled apartment building on the outskirts of Mariupol in late March.
© Alexei Alexandrov/AP/DPA
Cluster bombs, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, shelling of hospitals: Russia’s actions are shocking, but they have been repeated for many years. A review.
The world will not soon forget the pictures from Bucha. Bodies on and off the streets, some tied up, many of the victims, presumed to be ordinary citizens, outright executed. But as bitter and heartless as it sounds: Unfortunately, it is not yet entirely clear whether the people killed are actually innocent civilians. In war, images are weapons too, and not even the most obvious horror always tells a clear story. But there is much, if not most, to suggest that it was actually Russian soldiers who killed the people in Bucha – because this type of war crime is not new, and the list of allegations against Putin’s troops is long.
“The same tactics as in Syria and Chechnya”
“What is happening in Ukraine is a repeat of what we saw in Syria,” Amnesty Secretary-General Agnès Callamard said recently. The port city of Mariupol alone is reminiscent of the fate of Aleppo: besieged and bombed to rubble and ashes. Amnesty Eastern Europe expert Marie Struthers says: “During an on-site visit to Ukraine, our investigators documented “the use of the same tactics as in Syria and Chechnya”.
Attacks on hospitals, schools and residential buildings, the kidnapping and murder of civilians, the wiping out of entire cities such as Mariupol is known from Grozny, the capital of the Caucasus republic of Chechnya.
A bloody war raged there twice. Between 1994 and 1996 the Chechens fought for their independence and surprisingly prevailed against a poorly organized Russian army. Because they had little to counter the Chechen guerrilla tactics, Moscow’s troops relied on sheer firepower: they besieged Grozny for two months and maltreated the place with incessant artillery fire. 25,000 people lost their lives as a result of the continuous attacks, large parts of the city were destroyed, apparently willfully and by untargeted shelling.
Between 150,000 and 200,000 Chechens lost their lives in the two wars. Many were killed by bombs and rocket fire, others were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Russian soldiers and secret service agents. This type of criminal warfare was apparently ordered from the top down.
Inhuman escalation of violence
“Six years after the official end, the capital Grozny looks as if the last battles were only six days ago. Residential areas resemble landscapes of ruins, shattered windows have been patched with cardboard, cupboards have been pushed in front of the shell holes,” he wrote star 2006. Three years later, the second Chechen war was officially over, and since then the region has been part of the Russian Federation again. The city has since been rebuilt, but its destruction is seen as the epitome of an inhuman escalation of violence.
Attacks, people fleeing, nuclear power plants and the proportion of gas: graphics on the conflict in Ukraine
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On March 10, two weeks after the start of the war, Russian troops destroyed a maternity and children’s hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol. There were many dead and injured. The shelling of the hospital was one of the first atrocities of the Ukraine invasion. The World Health Organization counted more than 60 attacks on health facilities in Ukraine in the first month of the war alone. These included attacks on clinics, medical practices, and the transport of medicines and materials.
The pattern is already known from the war in Syria. According to Amnesty International, Russian and Syrian forces are “deliberately targeting hospitals,” according to an investigation into attacks on schools and hospitals. In the report documents the human rights organization 18 attacks between January and February 2020 in Idlib, western Aleppo and northwestern Hama governorate.
So far no use of poison gas
In spring 2021, Russian human rights activists documented the consequences of their soldiers’ deployment in Syria for the first time. By doing Report entitled “A Devastating Decade” is also mentioned of targeted attacks on hospitals. It was the first time that the population received a detailed picture of the war in Syria from Russian organizations. However, not a pleasant picture. Arbitrary arrests, torture, indiscriminate attacks on civilians by the Syrian and Russian air forces are also reported in the “devastating decade”. Report on the use of cluster munitions and poison gas against the civilian population.
The use of poison gas has not yet been documented in the Urkaine. The one from cluster bombs, on the other hand, does. The “Cluster Bomb Convention”, which prohibits the use of these perfidious weapons, has been in place for twelve years. Almost 110 countries have now signed the waiver, except: USA, Russia and China. If, as Amnesty International is now accusing the Kremlin of using these explosive devices in Kharkiv, then the human rights organization may rightly speak of “war crimes” – but that will probably not impress the Moscow leadership. Because for the soldiers of Moscow, the mission is not taboo.
Cluster bombs are particularly nasty explosive devices. Because they unleash hundreds of smaller explosive devices the size of a soda can, many of which do not detonate immediately. They often lie around long after they are dropped, injuring or killing people as a kind of mine. Amnesty International accuses the Russian invaders of “relentless, indiscriminate attacks” on civilians as well.
Human Rights Watch also researches and reports alleged Russian war crimes. The head of the organization, Kenneth Roth, summed up the simple and recurring pattern of Russian warfare in an interview together: “Grozny and Syria have shown that the Russian military accelerates its attacks when there is real resistance. Not just by sending more troops, but by intensifying attacks on civilians.”
Swell: “Human Rights Watch“, “New Zurich Newspaper”, DPA, AFP, Amnesty International“Time“, daily News“Southgerman newspaper“, “medical journal“