In wanting to denounce “war propaganda through fear” on the part of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ségolène Royal’s remarks on BFMTV on September 1 caused indignation. The ex-ambassador of the Poles questioned the reality of the bombardment of the maternity hospital of Mariupol, in the south-east of Ukraine, last March.
According to her, Volodymyr Zelensky used the testimony of a woman without being able to mention her name. “We did not know the names of the victims,” she said. “You can imagine that if there was the slightest victim, the slightest baby with blood, in the age of cell phones, we would have had them [les images]… »
She also questioned the Boutcha massacre: “Let’s see the testimonies”, she said. Just like “the story of child rape for seven hours under the eyes of the parents”. “It’s monstrous to go out and spread stuff like that just to disrupt the peace process,” she said. Faced with French presenters pointing out that journalists have collected testimonies in Ukraine, Ségolène Royal replies: “Yes, but it must not be the victims provided by Zelensky’s propaganda. »
FAKE OFF
Ségolène Royal’s remarks provoked strong reactions from members of the majority, but also in her former camp. “War crimes are documented, denying it is an insult to the murdered, the raped, the tortured, reacted Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the PS, on Twitter. To say otherwise is propaganda! »
On the social network, this September 2, Ségolène Royal defended herself for having “denied war crimes”. “That’s not true,” she said. It is war propaganda through fear, through terror, which leads to escalation. Let us recall the criminal strikes in Iraq, on the lie, ”she justifies.
Preliminary investigations opened
However, for more than six months, testimonies, photos, videos have been collected and cross-checked by journalists, NGOs, the UN, magistrates from the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office in France, the International Criminal Court, in order to document and open investigations for war crimes or crimes against humanity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On March 3, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced the opening of preliminary investigations into these crimes and on May 17 deployed a team of 42 investigators and experts to the country.
The doubts expressed by Ségolène Royal concerning the bombardment of the Mariupol maternity ward on March 9, take up elements of Russian propaganda. Several debunkings have been carried out on this subject, defeating the rhetoric on the false victims, in particular by Release or in a report by Further investigation broadcast in June on France 2. Images of the evacuation of civilians and pregnant women exist and were shot by the Associated Press agency, present on the spot (photos that we had published here). The agency’s journalists documented and recounted the events. A video they shot shows a pregnant woman, with a large wound on her left side. This woman, that AP could not identify by namedied as well as her baby, had learned the agency.
The municipality of Mariupol had announced that at least three people had been killed, including a young girl. Since the start of the war, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has identified at least 5,663 civilians killedan underestimated number.
The work of NGO and UN investigators in Boutcha
Ségolène Royal also mentioned Boutcha. On the spot, at the end of March, the bodies of civilians were discovered after the withdrawal of the troops sent by the Kremlin. LONG Human Rights Watch investigated arbitrary killings, torture and disappearances in 17 towns and villages in the Kyiv region, including Butcha. False information about the massacre in this town had circulated in April, such as this video which would have shown a corpse moving its arm, which would have validated the thesis of a staging.
Amnesty International carried out meticulous work for twelve days on the spot. Its investigators collected the testimonies of the families of the victims, the bullets and casings on the scene of the crime, as well as Russian military documents allowing to identify more precisely the culprits.
Rape as a weapon of war
Similarly, investigative work has been carried out by prosecutors and NGOs in Ukraine on rapes, especially of minors, and published in media such as the New York Times, France info, The world. Lyudmyla Denisova, who was in charge of human rights in the Ukrainian parliament and a member of the opposition to Zelensky, told the World, in an investigation published on May 12, having received “testimonies concerning an 11-year-old boy who was raped for ten hours in front of his mother, tied to a chair”. She explained that rape was used as a weapon of war to terrorize the population.
But Lioudmyla Denissova was sacked at the end of May by the presidential party, which accused her of publishing “many details of sexual crimes and child rape” in the occupied territories that she “could not prove”. This would have diverted the attention of the international media from the “real needs” of Ukraine.
Diverted remarks
In June, in France, remarks by Lioudmyla Denissova were hijacked by a departmental delegate of the RN. According to him, she would have confessed to having “invented the rapes of children to push for war against the Russians”. What is wrong. An extract from an interview with a Ukrainian media has been isolated, in order to suggest a confession, explains TF1Info in a fact-checking article.
In this interview, Lioudmyla Denissova acknowledges having had “a very harsh vocabulary”, in front of the Italian parliament for example, using “the words suggested by the victims themselves”. “Maybe I went too hard, she pleads. But I was trying to achieve the goal of convincing the world to supply arms and put pressure on Russia. »
International humanitarian law is not respected
The UN has also investigated on its side: in a June 29 reportit reports, since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, thousands of civilians killed and injured, massive destruction of infrastructure and homes, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances, acts of torture and of sexual violence.
International humanitarian law is not respected, denounces the international organization. “The principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution […] were not respected in many cases by the Russian armed forces; and on a lesser scale by the Ukrainian armed forces, ”points out the report.