Monthly Archives: April 2023

Follow the latest news on the leak of classified documents.

Leak or hack? Information or disinformation? A coup for Russia or a ploy by the United States?

For days after U.S. intelligence documents were found circulating on social media, some marked top secret, questions swirled about how dozens of pages from Pentagon briefings became public, and how much stock to put in them.

Then the federal authorities made their first arrest in the case, taking into custody a young national guardsman who, they say, first posted the documents online. They now say that the disclosures were even more extensive than first appeared, and that the airman made repeated attempts to cover his tracks.

Here is what we know about the leak.

Federal investigators on Thursday arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old air national guardsman from Massachusetts. The airman was the leader of a small online gaming chat group where a cache of the documents first appeared.

Hours before the arrest, The New York Times reported that Airman Teixeira oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.

The material photographs of printed briefing reports eventually began circulating on platforms like Twitter, 4chan and Telegram, but the files had sat on Discord, a social media messaging platform, since early March, analysts said.

The images look like hastily taken photographs of pieces of paper sitting atop what appears to be a hunting magazine. Experts who have reviewed the material say it appears that a classified briefing was folded up, placed in a pocket and then taken out of a secure area to be photographed.

The Times later found evidence that Airman Teixeira had been posting sensitive information months earlier than previously known and to a much larger chat group on Discord.

Yes, officials say at least, for the most part.

Some of the documents were doctored, officials said, but those revisions appear to have been made after the material was initially uploaded on the internet.

It is unclear why the reports would have been altered, but some of the material, military analysts say, overstates American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understates how many Russian troops have been killed since Moscows invasion last year.

And although officials have confirmed that many of the documents are authentic, it is also unclear how accurate their intelligence assessments are.

The leak appears to go well beyond classified material on Russia and Ukraine, and the information revealed in the leak is remarkably timely.

Security analysts who have reviewed the documents on social media sites say the growing trove also includes sensitive briefing material on Canada, China, Israel and South Korea, in addition to the Indo-Pacific military theater and the Middle East.

On the war in Ukraine:

The documents do not fundamentally alter the understanding of what is happening at the front, nor do they contain specific battle plans. But they do detail secret American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military.

They also suggest that the Ukrainian forces are in more dire straits than their government has acknowledged publicly. Without an influx of munitions, the documents show, Ukraines air defense system may soon collapse, which could allow Russia to unleash its air force on Ukrainian troops.

Some documents paint a picture of the Russian government feuding over the count of the dead and wounded in the war, with a domestic intelligence agency, the F.S.B., accusing the military of obscuring the scale of casualties that Russia has suffered. The finding highlights the continuing reluctance of military officials to convey bad news up the chain of command, American intelligence officials said.

One document outlines four wild card scenarios that could affect the course of the war: hypothetical scenarios including the deaths of Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the removal of leadership within the Russian Armed Forces and a Ukrainian strike on the Kremlin. U.S. officials declined to say whether the document was genuine, but they did not dispute its authenticity.

U.S. officials prepared a dire assessment of one of the longest-running battles of the war, in Bakhmut, and pulled back the curtain on Ukrainian generals decision to use elite units to push back the Russians there.

To brace for the introduction of advanced NATO-supplied tanks on Ukraines battlefields, Russian forces are preparing to pay a bonus to troops who manage to damage or destroy one.

The leak itself in particular the confirmation that the United States spies on allies and adversaries alike may prove damaging to the unified coalition that has emerged to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion. It may also make allies think twice about sharing sensitive information.

Among the other disclosures:

A Russian fighter jet fired a missile at a manned British surveillance aircraft flying over the Black Sea in September but the munition malfunctioned, according to U.S. military officials and one of the recently leaked classified intelligence reports.

The documents shed light on why U.S. officials believed China was close to sending weapons to Russia to help its war. They cite signals intercepts from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reporting that Beijing had approved the incremental provision of lethal aid but that it wanted to keep the transactions secret and was prepared to disguise the military aid as civilian equipment delivered via sea, rail and air.

Officials in South Korea, a key American ally whose official policy is not to provide lethal weapons to countries at war, feared that the United States might divert South Korean arms to Kyiv. The South Korean government tried to downplay the disclosures, which opposition lawmakers criticized as possible evidence of U.S. spying.

A hacking group under the guidance of Russias Federal Security Service may have compromised a Canadian gas pipeline company in February and caused damage to its infrastructure.

The Pentagon documents offer a glimpse into the depth of U.S. knowledge into Russias security and intelligence services, allowing Washington to warn Ukraine about planned strikes and gain insights into the strength of Moscows war machine.

The material reinforces an idea that intelligence officials have long acknowledged: The United States has a clearer understanding of Russian military operations than it does of Ukrainian planning.

The military apparatus is so deeply compromised, the documents suggest, that American intelligence has been able to obtain daily real-time warnings on the timing of Moscows strikes and even its specific targets.

That may now change.

The leak has the potential to do real damage to Ukraines war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information.

Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Michael Schwirtz, David E. Sanger, Ivan Nechepurenko Anton Troianovski, Aric Toler, Christiaan Triebert, Malachy Browne and Chris Buckley.

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What Do the Leaked U.S. Intelligence Documents Say? - The New York Times

LVIV, Ukraine, April 30 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Sunday its troops were holding onto parts of the eastern city of Bakhmut, focus of a prolonged Russian assault, while the head of a major pro-Moscow force said his men were making progress.

Russian forces, which have struggled for months to capture Bakhmut, are slowly taking over more and more of the city.

"Fierce fighting continues in the city of Bakhmut. The enemy is unable to take control over the city, despite throwing all its forces into the battle and having some success," said Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar.

"The defence of Bakhmut is coping with its military tasks," she said in a Telegram post. The Ukrainian military does not reveal exactly how much of the city is in Russian hands.

Separately, Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukrainian troops in the east, told the ICTV channel it was still possible to supply the Bakhmut defenders with food, ammunition and medicine and evacuate the wounded.

Russia's defence ministry earlier said its forces had taken four blocks in western Bakhmut on Sunday. Reuters could not independently confirm the claim.

Ukraine, which says its forces are waiting for better weather before launching a long-promised counteroffensive, is pleading with allies to overcome their hesitation about supplying modern fighter jets.

"Without air cover, it is impossible to achieve good results in both offensive and defensive actions," air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told TSN television on Sunday, saying it would take months to train pilots on western planes.

The attack on Bakhmut is being spearheaded by the private Wagner Group militia, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Telegram that his men had advanced up to 230 metres (750 feet) in some directions on Sunday. Pro-Kyiv units control less than three sq km (1.2 sq miles), he said.

Prigozhin, who has clashed repeatedly with Russia's defence ministry, reiterated complaints that Moscow was not supplying his forces with enough ammunition. As a result, Wagner had suffered unnecessarily high losses, he added.

Additional reporting and writing by David Ljunggren

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Ukraine says it still holds parts of Bakhmut, Russia reports progress - Reuters

Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, we began tracking American public attitudes toward the war. In four polls conducted between March 2022 and October 2022, our University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll found consistently robust public backing for U.S. support for Ukraine. We set out to determine if this trend has continued a year after the war. Our latest University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos, which I direct with my colleague Stella Rouse, was carried out among 1,203 respondents by Ipsos probabilistic KnowledgePanel with a margin of error of 3.2% from March 27-April 5, 2023. We probed if public support remains strong, repeating some of the questions we have asked in the past. But we also asked new questions about the aims of American support and the degree to which the public is prepared to stay the course. Here are four key takeaways:

Asking what the primary U.S. objective in Ukraine should be, a plurality, 26%, chose helping Ukraine return to the status quo that prevailed prior to the invasion, while 18% chose helping Ukraine liberate all the territories occupied by Russia. Only 8% said the aim should be to weaken or defeat Russia, while 18% chose preventing Russian expansionism. It is notable that the differences between Democrats and Republicans on this issue are far smaller than on any other issue regarding Ukraine.

A plurality of Americans, 46%, said the United States should stay the course in supporting Ukraine for only one to two years, compared with 38% who said the United States should stay the course for as long as it takes. The partisan divide was notable on this issue, with 62% of Republicans wanting to stay the course for one to two years, compared to 51% of Democrats who wanted to stay the course for as long as it takes.

At the same time, the public is divided on the level of expenditure in support of Ukraine between those who say its too much (33%) and those who say its about the right level (30%). Only 12% said its too little. Half of Republicans said the expenditure was too much compared to 13% of Democrats.

The public was also divided about providing fighter jets and long-range missiles to Ukraine, but with more people favoring both than opposing them, and with more Democrats than Republicans favoring such supplies.

Since March of 2022, we fielded four other polls tracking the publics willingness to pay a price in rising energy costs, higher inflation, and loss of American troops. Public support had been relatively robust, with very little change over the months ending in October 2022. But the current poll shows a marked drop on all three measures ranging from 9-15 points.

What explains such a drop? Perhaps the realization that there is no end in sight for the war at its first anniversary was sobering to some. But there is one variable that we have been measuring that could account for at least some of the drop. As we have shown in previous polls, the degree of support for Ukraine is highly correlated with the publics evaluation of Ukraine winning or Russia losing. In the October poll, we noted stories stressing Ukrainian successes and Russian failures, which may have accounted for higher confidence in the outcome. In the newest poll, there is a marked drop in the assessment that Ukraine is winning, and Russia is losing a drop that echoes the decline in the publics preparedness to pay a price for supporting Ukraine: Overall, the assessment that Russia is losing fell from 48% in October to 37% in April, and the assessment that Ukraine is succeeding went from 43% in October to 26% in April. It is also notable that there were parallel drops in the assessments of both Republicans and Democrats.

It is hard to know if the change in the publics assessment of Russian and Ukrainian performance in the war may also account for the finding that only 8% of respondents said weakening or defeating Russia should be a primary U.S. priority in helping Ukraine, as we have not asked this question in prior polls.

It is nonetheless important to stress that the publics preparedness to support Ukraine remains highly partisan. Even with the drop in support for Ukraine since October, most Democrats remain prepared to pay a price in higher energy costs (65%) and rising inflation (60%), while only about one-third of Republicans say the same. And half of Democrats, 51%, say they are prepared to stay the course as long as it takes, even as only 25% of Republicans say the same.

But the marked weakening of Americans support must be concerning to U.S. policymakers. The 2024 presidential election campaign is bound to impact public attitudes on this issue given the partisan divide on Ukraine policy and in the narratives of some of the candidates. One of the critical factors will remain, however, the public perception of the unfolding battles in Ukraine itself, whether they see the tide favoring a Ukrainian victory, a Russian one, or a stalemate.

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Americans show signs of impatience with Ukraine war - Brookings Institution

The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker.

In part, the goal is to make sure that if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil, its atomic signature and Moscows culpability could be verified.

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago, experts have worried about whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would use nuclear arms in combat for the first time since the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The preparations, mentioned last month in a House hearing and detailed Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a federal agency that is part of the Energy Department, seem to constitute the hardest evidence to date that Washington is taking concrete steps to prepare for the worst possible outcomes of the invasion of Ukraine, Europes second largest nation.

The Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST, a shadowy unit of atomic experts run by the security agency, is working with Ukraine to deploy the radiation sensors, train personnel, monitor data and warn of deadly radiation.

In a statement sent to The New York Times in response to a reporters question, the agency said the network of atomic sensors was being deployed throughout the region and would have the ability to characterize the size, location and effects of any nuclear explosion. Additionally, it said the deployed sensors would deny Russia any opportunity to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine without attribution.

That statement goes to the fog of nuclear war and how the United States could use the new system to pierce it.

In one scenario, Washington could use information gathered by the network to rule out the possibility of misidentifying the attacker who set off a nuclear blast. That might seem like an unnecessary step given the distinctiveness of a mushroom cloud. But if a weapon was delivered by a truck, tank or boat instead of a conspicuous missile with a trackable flight path, figuring out its origins might prove near impossible.

Public knowledge of such defensive planning, nuclear experts say, can deter Moscow by letting it know that Washington can expose what is called a false-flag operation.

For instance, Moscow could falsely claim that Kyiv set off a nuclear blast on the battlefield to try to draw the West into deeper war assistance. But in theory, with the sensor network in place, Washington would be able to point to its own nuclear attribution analyses to reveal that Moscow was in fact the attacker.

Last fall, Russia, without offering any evidence, claimed repeatedly that Ukraine was planning to explode a bomb designed to spread radioactive material, a so-called dirty bomb. Washington warned that the Kremlin was trying to create a false-flag pretext to escalate the war.

The science of nuclear attribution underwent rapid development in the United States after the September2001 terrorist attacks raised the issue of domestic nuclear terrorism. While the science has secretive aspects, its outlines are publicly known.

Now, this newly acquired capability is being used on foreign soil in the context of a potential nuclear war or a Russian attack on Ukraines 15 nuclear reactors at four power generation sites.

If a nuclear emergency were to occur in Ukraine, whether a radiation release from a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon detonation, the security agency said in its statement, scientific analyses would be rapidly provided to U.S. government authorities and decision-making centers in Ukraine and the region to make actionable, technically informed decisions to protect public health and safety.

Nuclear experts say such defensive precautions could face their greatest test in coming weeks as the Ukrainian army launches its spring offensive. China has leaned on Russia to discontinue its nuclear saber rattling and Mr. Putin has not recently invoked a nuclear threat. But Western experts worry that Russias battlefield failures are making Mr. Putin, if anything, more dependent on his nuclear arsenal, and theyworry that fresh setbacks could increase his willingness to pull the nuclear trigger.

The security agency reports to Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary. Last month she told Congress of the general precautions for radiation detection in Ukraine and said the objective of the U.S. assistance was to make sure that the Ukrainians are safe and not exposed. She gave few details, however, saying that would require a closed session.

The Energy Department and the security agency say they are spending roughly $160 million on the atomic precautions in Ukraine this year, with a similar amount requested for 2024.

Jeffrey T. Richelson, author of Defusing Armageddon, a 2009 book on theNuclear Emergency Support Team, reported that it often teamed up with the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite military unit so secretive that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.

Experts say Ukraine needs all the help it can get because its nuclear infrastructure is so extensive and has faced heavy attacks by Russia over the past 14 months.

Shortly after the start of theinvasion, Russian forces seized control of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant, which in 1986 suffered a meltdown that sent radioactive clouds over parts of Europe and locally left a wasteland of contaminated soil. The Russian troops dug up a nearby section of earth, increasing radiation levels in the area but not enough to endanger workers.

The Russian forces also fired on and captured Europes largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, a complex of six reactors. A fire broke out during the assault, but safety officers detected no radiation.

A main Ukrainian site for nuclear research in Kharkiv the sprawling Institute of Physics and Technology suffered 100 strikes from Russian shells and missiles in the conflicts early days. The salvos damaged a nuclear facility used for the production of medical isotopes, but experts found no radiation leaks. The overall complex lost power for more than a month.

In Kyiv, Russian projectiles hit the Institute for Nuclear Research, starting a fire in a warehouse. The institutes small reactor was undamaged, and no radiation leaks were found.

Ukraines other atomic infrastructure includes additional power plants; storage sites for spent nuclear fuel; and facilities across the nation, including hospitals, that use radioactive materials for research and medical therapies.

The Energy Department, in addition to NESTs assistance, says itis providing support to partner agencies in Ukraine on measuring aerial radiation, modeling atmospheric plumes of radiation, countering nuclear smuggling and treating radiation injuries.

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear power expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists who has closely monitored the Ukrainian war, said a federal official told him of a possible reactor threat scenario. It posits that Russia, if it suffered a humiliating defeat and withdrew from Ukraine, might retaliate by firing on a reactor or its spent fuel storage areas in order to release high radioactivity into the environment.

Thats one of the biggest dangers, Dr. Lyman said. If they wanted to render as much of the countryside as they could uninhabitable, those reactors might become targets.

He was heartened, Dr. Lyman added, to learn that NEST and the Energy Department were being proactive and taking these threats seriously.

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U.S. Wires Ukraine With Radiation Sensors to Detect Nuclear Blasts - The New York Times

Ukraine's finance minister on Friday said Kyiv should use its bilateral relationship with China as leverage to bring an end to Russia's full-scale invasion.

His comments came shortly after a long-anticipated phone call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both leaders spoke earlier this week for the first time since Russia's war with Ukraine began in February last year.

"I am not fully convinced that we can emphasize something particular after this conversation but what I truly can tell you is that it is important to continue dialogue between our countries," Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko told CNBC's Silvia Amaro in Stockholm, Sweden.

"We really understand the importance of China and we really understand the importance for us to create our own relationship with China and to prevent China [from fully supporting] Russia."

When asked whether China could be seen as Ukraine's best friend in the bid to find a compromise for peace, Marchenko replied, "of course not," instead naming the United States, the Group of Seven nations and "all our partners" supporting Ukraine.

He added that Kyiv "should use China as leverage to win this war," saying the country must use every opportunity "to convince Russia to stop this bloody war in Ukraine."

China said Wednesday that it would send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties in an attempt to bring an end to the conflict. The intervention follows months of apparent reluctance to engage with Kyiv on the same level as Moscow.

Chinese state media said Xi told his Ukrainian counterpart on the call that Beijing would focus on promoting peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said via Twitter that the "long and meaningful" discussion could help to "give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations."

The timing of the call and China's decision to send emissaries to Ukraine has raised eyebrows among political and defense analysts, particularly as Ukraine is thought to be preparing to launch a large-scale counteroffensive against Russian forces in a bid to retake territory in the east and south.

CNBC's Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.

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Ukraine should use China as leverage to help win the war with Russia, minister says - CNBC

A Ukrainian Buk battery.

Russias winter offensive is grinding to a bloody halt in the ruins of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraines Donbas region. Yes, the Russians have occupied most of the devastated city. But its cost them thousands of their best troops.

Having defeated the Russian offensive without committing its 20 or so newly-raised brigades, Ukraine is poised to launch a counteroffensiveperhaps as soon as the spring mud finally dries up.

If theres a big potential spoiler, its the Russian air force. For most of the first 14 months of Russias wider war on Ukraine, Soviet-vintage Ukrainian air-defenses have kept at bay Russias hundreds of modern fighter-bombers.

But Kyivs old air-defense batteries are running out of missiles. If the surface-to air missiles run out before Ukraines foreign allies can deliver substantial numbers of new air-defense systems, the steel barrier that has blocked Russian air-strikes finally could fall.

Russias Sukhoi fighter-bombers then could range across Ukraine at altitudessay, 10,000 feet or higherthat are favorable to their relatively crude sensors and munitions.

Russian attack aircraft fleets have proven in Syria that they can be brutally effective against fixed defensive positions, cities and infrastructure targets if they are able to operate freely at medium altitude, Justin Bronk explained in a new report for the Virginia-based think-tank CNA.

Therefore, if Ukraines SAM systems cannot be kept resupplied, augmented, and ultimately replaced by Western partner nations, then the [Russian air force] could credibly threaten to overpower the Ukrainian air forces remaining fighters and gain control of the air space over the frontlines in key areas.

This would pose a serious risk to the Ukrainian armys ability to sustainably hold fixed defensive positions, assemble reinforcements and reserve units in rear areas, and safely marshal ammunition and logistics supplies, Bronk added.

However, if Ukraine can maintain its current levels of tactical and strategic SAM coverage, then it is unlikely that the [Russian air force] will be able to significantly change its fortunes so far into the war.

The Ukraine air war in many ways has defied expectations. Observers accustomed to the American way of war may have expected the war to begin with a concerted effort by the Russian air force to roll back Ukrainian air-defenses, shoot down Ukraines small force of Mikoyan MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-27 fighters then relentlessly bomb headquarters, army bases, arms plants, railways and highways in order to behead, gut, strangle and paralyze Ukrainian ground forces.

None of that happenedand for one main reason. The Russian air force is bad at suppressing and destroying enemy air-defenses, a mission the Americans call SEAD/DEAD. The main problem, for the Russians, is intelligence. More specifically, timely intelligence that can inform command and planning processes for finding and destroying air-defense systems that move constantly.

The most significant limiting factor in terms of the initial [Russian air force] strike campaign was that dynamic battle-damage assessment and retargeting processes were not granular enough or fast enough to account for Ukraines successful repositioning of most of its mobile air-defenses, Bronk wrote.

The unsuppressed Ukrainian missile batteries quickly inflicted a heavy toll. Russian flying regiments lost around 50 Su-25s, Su-30s, Su-34s and Su-35s in just the first six months of the wider war.

So the Russian air campaign over Ukraine shifted. Instead of targeting Ukrainian forces and infrastructure across the country, regiments focused on shallow attacks across narrow sections of the front: lobbing rockets, unguided bombs and, more recently, crude glide-bombs at targets no more than 20 miles from the line of contact.

The closer crews had to get to the front line to deploy their munitions, the lower they had to fly to avoid detection by Ukraines intact air-defense network. Low flying helped to staunch Russias aerial losses, but it also greatly increased time pressure and cockpit workload, Bronk explained. That has constrained pilots ability to find and strike mobile targets.

Now imagine if Russian pilots didnt have to fly a few hundred feet from the ground just to keep from getting shot down. Imagine hundreds of Sukhois streaking across Ukraine, dropping thousands of tons of bombs from comfortable altitudes.

Given the depleted state of Ukraines own fighter brigadesand the refusal by Kyivs bigger allies to provide modern warplanes such as F-16s as replacements for the 60 or so MiGs and Sukhois Ukraine has lostonly Ukraines ground-based air-defenses can forestall this aerial apocalypse.

But after firing scores of missiles from its best, Soviet-made S-300 and Buk air-defense batteries every day for more than a year, Ukraine is running outand replacement missiles all are made in Russia.

The classified documents that a braggadocious U.S. Air National Guard airman leaked online indicated the Buks and S-300s would run out of missiles in April and May, respectively.

Which helps to explain why deploying new Western-made air-defense systems might by Kyivs top priority right now. We have a Soviet [air-defense] system, and its missile reserves are depleting, Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov said. If we dont produce them and only nations from which we cant get them have more, we need to replenish them with something else.

Good news for Ukraine: the first of three long-range Patriot SAM batteriespledged by the United States, Germany and othershas arrived. Ukraines allies also have pledged 10 batteries of the medium-range National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System. As many as eight already are in Ukraine.

The problem for Ukraine is that these three long-range and 10 medium-range batteries are replacing at least 25 old S-300 batteries and a dozen or more batteries with Buks. Yes, Ukraine also is getting an assortment of other air-defense systemsold HAWKs, Aspides and Crotales, among othersbut the Patriots and NASAMS are the best and most numerous of Ukraines new air-defenses.

Theyre how Ukraine will maintain its air-defense network and prevent a profound shift in the aerial balance of power toward Russia. A shift that could disrupt Ukraines long preparation for a ground counteroffensive.

All that is to say, Ukraine needs more Patriots and NASAMS. And it needs them now.

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Just One Thing Is Keeping Russian Warplanes From Rampaging ... - Forbes

Ukraine

People turn to handouts and pawning goods as Kyivs bustling bars belie reality of life in wartime for many

In the Treasure pawn shop in Kyiv, Oleksandra, 40, a well turned out woman in a hooded wool coat and Nike trainers, has come to redeem her sewing machines. Like all those visiting the store, she does not want to give her family name.

She says that when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, she was working as an accountant for a firm that employed 14 people, who were all laid off because of the conflict. Since then she has struggled to find regular work. With savings running out, like many others in Kyiv, she turned to pawning her possessions to get by, only finding a job a year later that allowed her to claim back her machines.

As Oleksandra leaves clutching her belongings, save for a mobile phone she has decided not to redeem, the cashier, Oleksandr Stepanov, remarks from behind his hardened glass window that on a busy day the shop can get 50 people coming in to surrender mobile phones and household appliances.

Those who can afford it, he says, will come back to get their goods within two weeks. Almost half, he adds, will not, leaving Treasure to sell on the items from a back room with displays of phones and watches. People are struggling because of the war. They dont have money. Many have lost their jobs, he says, while prices have skyrocketed even for those who have jobs.

The scene in the pawn shop illustrates the crisis of growing poverty in Ukraine, the reality of which stands in contrast to the surface bustle of Kyivs busy restaurants and bars where it is often hard to get a table, with many living a precarious existence.

Poverty increased from 5.5% to 24.2% in Ukraine in 2022, pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty with the worst impact out of sight in rural villages, according to a recent report by the World Bank. With unemployment unofficially at 36% and inflation hitting 26.6% at the end of 2022, the institutions regional country director for eastern Europe, Arup Banerji, had warned that poverty could soar.

Behind his window in Treasure, Stepanov describes the hardships experienced even by those who have work. The price of everything has gone up. Food is the most expensive and then it is fuel for the car. Some things have gone up by 40-50%. Before the war my wife would go to the supermarket to shop and it would cost 200 hryvnia, now the same shop costs 400-500.

For those in the most difficult circumstances that has meant relying on handouts, no matter how small. In the town of Irpin just outside Kyiv, where heavy fighting took place at the beginning of the war as Russian armoured columns attempted to take the capital, the wrecked bridge that was used as an escape route by fleeing refugees is being rebuilt.

Elsewhere damaged buildings are being repaired, cranes and work crews busy. But while the ground war long ago receded from Irpin, the economic consequences of conflict are still being felt sharply in a town where the population has been swelled by internally displaced fleeing the frontlines in the south and east.

The most visible sign of the poverty crisis can be found at a protestant church in the town where priests have set up six distribution centres for free bread across the area, the busiest in Irpin itself. There, on most days, about 500 people can be found queuing for a free loaf, with tables and a tent also set up outside the centre on the day the Guardian visits, offering free secondhand shoes, clothes and childrens toys.

One resident of Irpin, Veronika Pravyk is looking through the clothes and trying to find free nappies and baby milk for her toddler, which are sometimes available but not today. She tells a typical story. Working in retail before the war, the 30-year-old lost her job and fled with her family to Spain for six months where she burned through her savings before returning to Ukraine in the autumn.

Im not working but my husband is, she says. But all the prices have gone up because of the war and my husbands salary buys less than it used to because of the falling exchange rate with the dollar. We still have to find the money to pay for our apartment and to heat it during this past winter. I just never imagined we would be living like this. Before the war we managed everything. Its very difficult and everyone is suffering the same.

In his office in the church, the pastor, Vitali Kolesnyk, who organised the bread distribution, which takes place five days a week, with his colleague Vasyli Ostriy, describes the situation in Irpin. One of the biggest private employers, he says, was a wood carving business with a workforce of 400 spread across three sites, but its factories were badly damaged during the fighting.

It relocated to western Ukraine and as a consequence the workers in Irpin were made redundant. A lot of people are ready to work for peanuts here, he says. The salaries are already less [than they were]. But people will do anything to earn some money.

While he says that some of those coming for bread are internally displaced, he offers an anecdote that describes how people are trying to manage their dwindling resources. You see some people come in cars for a free loaf of bread that would cost $1. That gives you an idea of how carefully people are watching every penny spend. We talk and pray with people about what is going on. They talk about the economy and tell us how hard it has become.

The economist Olena Bilan sees a deepening crisis, but says that without a huge package of financial support from the international community, including pledges worth $43bn (34bn), the situation would be worse.

Weve seen GDP decline by 30% in large part because Ukraine exports 80% of its goods through ports it no longer has access too. Weve had inflation of 26% again which could have been worse but peoples salaries have also been flat and the currency has devalued against the dollar by 20%. The biggest challenge is going to be how to create new jobs.

In Irpin, the long queue, snaking under the trees, to pick up loaves imprinted with the word victory is thinning. At one of the clothes stalls, a church volunteer, Larysa Kuzhel, 58, is not optimistic.

I think it is going to get more difficult especially for the younger people. The pensioners who you see here get support. Its only $50 a month but it is something. But it is the younger people who have lost their jobs who are really suffering.

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Pawn shops and bread queues: poverty grips Ukraine as war drags on - The Guardian

Wounded people, and wounded cities.

Ukraine today is a traumatised nation, but one with a deep, burning anger the sort of fury that comes from a person, or a country, knowing that an injustice is being inflicted upon them.

And it ismatched by a fierce determination that comes from knowing that you are fighting for your survival.

If the Russians lay down their weapons, their president Vladimir Putin will need only to manage his leadership elite, being unaccountable in real terms to the people of Russia.

If the Ukrainians lay down their arms, they lose their country.

Whatever is left of the military might that Russia has brought to bear when trying to push into the capital last year would be re-energised in yet another attempt to conquer Kyiv.

Since the invasion began, Russia has spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives, yet itshows no inclination that it hasgiven up.

Putin's family are not dying. Cannon fodder they are not. His children, his siblings, his nieces and nephews are nowhere near the human meat grinder that is the battle for Bakhmut and so many other parts of this 1300-kilometrefront line.

Hundreds of Russians lie dead in the place where they were shot, slowly becoming skeletons in this tragic reprise of the trenches of World Wars I and II.

Putin has not given up his ambition to claim Ukraine, to make it again part of aSoviet-era-type empire.

Driving around Ukraine for the past two weeks revealed to me the extent of devastation that Putin's war has wrought upon this country so rich in history, culture and potential.

Some cities have been both traumatised and hollowed out. Kharkiv, for example, which I visited over the last week, is a sad and battered city.

Once a thriving European university town, today street after street is destroyed. Entire neighbourhoods are now unliveable and abandoned.

In the centre of the city, many buildings have had their shattered windows boarded up, but many remain exactly as they were when Putin's army fired hundreds of missiles into the CBD and residential neighbourhoods.

What were once-thriving neighbourhoods are now ghost towns, with barely a person to be seen. High-rise residential buildings have had entire fronts torn off them by missiles.

I never thought I would feel sorry for a city, but this one certainly evokes that response. Vast numbers of the residents fled last year when the city came under attack, and in some neighbourhoods you barely see a person.

In one street earlyone evening, the only person I saw was a man taking his chihuahua for a walk before the nightly curfew came in at 11pm. One man, one dogand a city that was once one of the glories of Ukraine, now reduced to a shell of itself.

Putin has not just killed people, he's wounded the souls of cities and neighbourhoods, but he has not killed these cities.

There are large apartment buildingsabandoned after being hit by missiles and one can only imagine the horror for the people who had been living there when the missiles hit.

While in Kharkiv, I was shown the video of the explosion when a missile hit a large office building in the centre of the city. The missile tore off the corner of the building in a huge fireball.

In the video you can see a car preparing to turn the corner, then the massive explosion. The people in the car would have been instantly incinerated.

Russia rained missiles down upon the city. What you see when driving around Kharkiv conclusively puts a lie to the claim by Vladimir Putin and his apologists such as Sergei Lavrov and Dmitry Medvedev that Russia has been targeting infrastructure facilities and not residential premises.

Many of the residential buildings being destroyed at the moment in Ukraine and many of the civilians being killed are being killed by Russian guided aerial bombs.

These are called guided bombs for a reason. It is, of course, possible that every so often in a war a missile will be misdirected and hit a target for which it was not intended.

However, the thousands of Russian bombs that have hit and killed civilians and civilian targets are not accidental. They are deliberate attempts. They are the deliberate,guided killing of civilians.

And why should the targeting of electricity, power plants, and other infrastructure be seen as any less serious? The reason these are targeted is to try to cause maximum misery and problems for the people who rely on them.

Scores of large apartment buildings have had much of their fronts or sides ripped off from missile hits.

In Kharkiv, air-raid sirens go off frequently through the day andnight.

After 15 months of war, locals are so fatigued that most do not even bother to go to shelters.

When the curfew takes hold in Kharkiv,it takes on an eerie silence.What was one of the most vibrant cities in Europe goes into a foreboding hibernation.

Part of Putin's psychological war clearly relies on the fact that each night, when Ukrainians go to sleep, they cannot know whether missiles will be fired during the night.

While many Ukrainians do not bother anymore to go to bomb shelters, the sirens wreak havoc on institutions such as aged care facilities where staff are required to wake the elderly through the night and try to move them within 10 or 15 minutes into a bomb shelter.

Psychological fear. People never feeling completely comfortable. This is all part of Putin's war.

However, if Putin thinks that the trauma he's imposed on Ukrainians will translate into a military victory, he appears to have badly misread Ukrainians, again.

Over the past two weeks, I've driven from Warsaw to Lviv then Kyiv, to eastern Ukraine, close to the front line at the Donbas, and north to the border between Ukraine and Belarus.

The same determination seems to arise wherever you go and to whomever you speak: Afierce belief, here, is that Ukraine is preparing for the military battle of its life.

All around, you see the reinforcement of both resources and positions and large numbers of soldiers prepared for a looming battle.

So many parts of this country are now in ruin. The World Bank has estimated that, if the war were to stop now, it would cost more than $600 billion to rebuild the country.

Apart from killing Ukrainians, the war has also smashed the economy.

It's depressing in Kharkiv to see shops either with wooden coverings where the windows have been smashed or businesses which have not been shelled but which have closed: Who wants to go out for a coffee when there's a chance missiles will be fired into that cafe?

While the war has smashed much of the regular economy, it hasseen a boost in other less-desirable economic pursuits.

There are now an estimated 80 companies around Ukraine manufacturing drones, which are being used by the Ukrainian army, either for surveillance of Russian soldiers or to drop explosives on Russian positions.

There is also a tragic boom in demand for prosthetics. Ukraine cannot import enough prosthetic arms and legs to meet its current demand.

It's now trying to manufacture its own to try to make the lives of those who have had limbs blown off as manageable as possible.

There's a symmetrical increase in this lamentable new economy on the Russian side.

Putin has announced the need for Russia to build more drones, and the Kremlin has announced that it will allocate about $6 billion towards this.

Until now Russia has been primarily using the so-called Shahid drones made in Iran.

However,Iran complicit in this killing of Ukrainians cannot provide as many of these sinister birds of death as Russia wants. Russia wants these death drones all because of one man.

However, just as there are damaged and hollowed-out cities, so are there wounded and traumatised people.

You'll often see people on crutches, in wheelchairs or wearing prosthetics.

A doctor I spoke to said there had been a 400 per centincrease in the number of Ukrainians needing rehabilitation.

The damage isphysical and psychological:spinal cords, brain injuries, limbs blown off and the less-visible psychological injuries that go with exposure to trauma and the onset of PTSD.

It's hard not to conclude that, even if this war stopped now, that it could take many years, if not generations, to recover.

Just as there are traumatised people, so, too, are there wonderful and inspirational people.

I met one when preparing a story for the ABC's 7.30 program:Nine-year-old Yegor Kravstov, who was trapped for 96 days in Mariupol as the Russian and Ukrainian armies engaged in one of the bloodiest battles so far.

A Russian missile hit his house and the wall collapsed, injuring himselfand his sister, Veronika, 15.

It also injured his grandfather so badly that he was bleeding, and it could not be stopped.

Because of the war going on in the streets around their home, they could not get the grandfather any medical treatment. He died in slow motion.

How does a boy process watching his grandfather bleed to death over three days, an excruciating and undignified death? How does he process the fact that his two dogs were killed? How does he process the fact that, when the family could finally escape, they could not find his only pet that was still alive, his cat.

Remarkably, his uncle, who had stayed in Mariupol longer, found the cat and eventually brought it to Yegor and his family in their new home in western Ukraine.

So many people have been killed here that the media can barely keep up with their stories, but there are many remarkable cases: for example, two women who were killed this week.

What had they been doing that led to their deaths?

They'd been visiting the Museum of Local History in Kupiansk when one of Putin and Lavrov's missiles blew them up.

The responsibility for traumatising this nation lies with Vladimir Putin and those around him and around the world who enable thiscommission of mass misery and war crimes.

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Ukraine is traumatised, but it is filled with a deep, burning anger and its people won't surrender - ABC News

Artem Morozs four-mile race in Central Park in Manhattan this month didnt go as planned.

The former Ukrainian soldier had hoped to run on new prosthetics made for him in the United States, but they werent ready in time for the race. So he walked across the start using prosthetics he had brought from home and was pushed in a wheelchair the rest of the way.

As Morozs guide propelled him up the hill, he spread his arms out wide, like a child imitating an airplanes flight. The corners of a Ukrainian flag tied to the back of the chair rippled in the breeze.

He wasnt running yet, but knew that he would be soon.

Moroz, 44, had been running since he was a child. He and his family live in Irpin, just west of Kyiv, and it was impossible not to run, he said.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Moroz would start his day by running: at sunrise through a nearby forest before going to workat large construction sites, where he was a project manager.

Then war arrived.

Moroz joined the military in late March 2022, after watching Russian soldiers attack Irpin, and became a platoon commander. On Sept. 14, he and his unit were hit by a rocket in the Kherson region. If not for Polish doctors and paramedics, he would have died, he said, but both his legs were amputated below the knee. At first, he couldnt imagine being able to stand again, he said.

While in a hospital in Mykolaiv, he watched a documentary on YouTube about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and the way the city and running community had come back stronger in 2014.

The movie gave him a goal: Run the Boston Marathon, which was then six months away.

Social media facilitated a key connection as he began his pursuit. Nadiia Osmankina, a Ukrainian who came to the United States a year ago for the Boston Marathon and stayed because of the war, saw his story and reached out to him. Running Boston changed her life, she said, and she wanted Moroz to get that same opportunity.

She had connections with both the Ukrainian Running Club in New York City and the president of a foundation, Revived Soldiers Ukraine, that helps wounded Ukrainian service members. The foundations president, Iryna Vashchuk, had been a professional runner and was born in Irpin.

The foundation has a center in Orlando, Fla., where soldiers are fitted for prosthetics. They were able to provide Moroz with both regular walking prosthetics, for daily life, and a specialized type used for running, which are carbon fiber curves that have rubber treads around the edges of the feet.

Moroz arrived late last month and figured that while he was in the United States, he could run some races. The Ukrainian Running Club has a big presence at many races staged by the New York Road Runners, the organizer of the New York City Marathon, and they connected the Road Runners and Moroz so he could pick a race.

But becoming accustomed to new prosthetics, especially running blades, isnt like slipping on a new pair of sneakers.

Its a whole different muscle memory, especially for above-the-knee amputees, said Mary Johnson, who had one leg amputated above the knee after a traumatic injury.

You have to trust that your foot will hit the ground underneath you where you expect, or youll land on the ground, she said.

The Central Park race in early April came just a week after Moroz had arrived in the United States. By then, reality had set in: He wouldnt be competing on his new running blades. Still, he was back out there on a racecourse.

Organizers allowed Moroz and Osmankina to start 10 minutes early so he wouldnt be jostled in the crowded corrals. Except for walking across the starting line, this first race would be in a wheelchair. Some runners from the Ukrainian club cheered at a spot on the course.

Just after he finished, Moroz was already looking ahead to his next race: Boston, in two weeks. Not the marathon, but the five-kilometer race the Boston Athletic Association puts on two days earlier. This year, it fell on the 10th anniversary of the 2013 bombings. Even with his slow early progress, Moroz thought he might be able to run on his new blades in Boston.

Two days before the race, Moroz was practicingon his newwalking prosthetics in Orlando in a parking lot. The fit still wasnt quite right, he said. Small changes, even drinking a glass of water, altered how they would fit. Thats not unusual for amputees. The doctors would tweak one thing and he would try it, and then they would adjust again.

Sean Karpf, who was wounded while serving in the U.S. Army and lost part of one leg below the knee, said that during the first two to three years after his injury, he had needed adjustments every four to six months because of the changes in his residual limb not unusual for amputees.

In the United States, medical insurance doesnt cover adaptive sports equipment, which is not deemed medically necessary and can be expensive. A running blade can cost $12,000 to $15,000. Above-the-knee amputees also need a knee joint, which costs more.

While the Department of Veterans Affairs generally will cover the cost of that type of equipment for American troops injured during their service, the wait can be as long as 18 months. Americans who arent in the military often rely on fund-raising efforts or grants through nonprofit groups. Johnson got her running prosthetic through the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which provides grants for adaptive equipment and camps and clinics for people to learn adaptive sports.

Moroz finally got his running blades a few days before his Boston race, but he wasnt ready to run on them, so he instead used his walking prosthetics for the 5K event. After the race, he put on the running blades for photos at the finish line with Osmankina. He couldnt stand, much less walk, without leaning on someone for balance. When Osmankina stepped away, Moroz nearly fell.

Still, seven months and a day after Moroz had been carried from the battlefield by Polish medics, his life in danger, he ran for the first time, in Boston. It wasnt the marathon, as he had imagined, but that didnt matter. He was running.

Soon, Ukraine will have more capacity to help people injured in the war instead of relying on European and American medical centers. Unbroken, an organization focused on helping Ukrainians heal from traumatic injuries sustained in the war, is retrofitting an old military hospital in Lviv from the Soviet Unionera, said Dr. David Crandell, who is the medical director of the amputee center at a rehabilitation hospital in Boston and part of the World Health Organizations technical working group on rehabilitation for Ukraine. Next month, Unbroken expects to open the former hospital as a center focused on amputee and post-traumatic stress care.

Demand is high. The First Union Hospital in Lviv is receiving 25 to 100 new trauma patients each day, Crandell said. He estimates that the country will have to accommodate 5,000 to 6,000 new amputees because of the war.

You can imagine what Boston saw at the Boston Marathon, every single day for a year, Crandell said.

This race, which Moroz had been inspired to run only months earlier from his hospital bed, began with Osmankina riding in the wheelchair, holding a flag, as Moroz pushed her. A little farther on, a slippery patch on the road made him slide, and before the second turn on the course, they had switched positions. Osmankina pushed Moroz, his feet lifted so the heels of his everyday prostheses wouldnt catch on the ground. He lifted his arms up, encouraging the spectators who lined the course to cheer louder.

They arrived to fans. Andriy Boyko, a Ukrainian who lives in Melrose, Mass., a suburb north of Boston, showed up with his family to cheer from the sidelines. Moroz later said he had heard many people cheering for him and for Ukraine during the race, which he had not expected.

As they approached the end of the race, Moroz and Osmankina switched places again. Moroz ran, pushing his guide over the finish line.

The marathon would be there when he was ready. As he spoke, a good 20 minutes after he had crossed the finish line, his hand still trembled from the adrenaline.

It might be I will not sleep tonight, he said.

Read more:

He Lost His Legs in the War in Ukraine, but Not His Will to Run - The New York Times

WASHINGTON Amnesty Internationals board has sat for months on a report critical of the group after it accused Ukrainian forces of illegally endangering civilians while fighting Russia, according to documents and a person familiar with the matter.

The 18-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, underscores the complexity of applying international law to aspects of the conflict in Ukraine and the continuing sensitivity of a matter that prompted a fierce and swift backlash to the human rights group.

In a lengthy statement on Aug. 4, Amnesty International accused Ukrainian forces of a pattern of illegally putting civilians in harms way by housing soldiers nearby and launching attacks from populated areas. Russia, which has shelled civilian buildings and killed many civilians, portrayed the finding as vindication, but it otherwise incited outrage.

In response, the group expressed deep regret for the distress and anger its statement caused and announced it would conduct an external evaluation to learn what exactly went wrong and why. As part of that, Amnesty Internationals board commissioned an independent legal review of whether the substance of what it had said was legitimate.

A review panel of five international humanitarian law experts received internal emails and interviewed staff members.

In some respects, the report by the review panel absolved Amnesty International, concluding that it was proper to evaluate whether a defender, not just an aggressor, was obeying the laws of war, and saying that Amnestys records made clear that Ukrainian forces were frequently near civilians.

Under international law, it wrote, both sides in any conflict must try to protect civilians, regardless of the rightness of their cause. As a result, it is entirely appropriate for a rights organization to criticize violations by a victim of aggression, provided that there is sufficient evidence of such violations.

But the review panel nevertheless unanimously concluded that Amnesty International had botched its statement in several ways and that its key conclusions that Ukraine violated international law were not sufficiently substantiated by the available evidence.

The overall narrative of the Aug. 4 release was written in language that was ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable, the report found. This is particularly the case with the opening paragraphs, which could be read as implying even though this was not A.I.s intention that, on a systemic or general level, Ukrainian forces were primarily or equally to blame for the death of civilians resulting from attacks by Russia.

An earlier version of the report was harsher, according to the person briefed on the matter. But Amnesty International lobbied the panel to soften its tone, and it did so in some respects like revising its characterization of Amnestys conclusion that Ukrainian forces violated international law from not substantiated to not sufficiently substantiated.

The panel delivered its final revision in early February, the person said, and asked to be consulted if Amnesty Internationals board decided to release only excerpts. But instead, the board decided to merely use it as one of several sources for a lessons-learned document to circulate internally, the person said.

In an email, an Amnesty International spokesperson characterized the independent review as part of an ongoing internal process, and these findings will inform and improve our future work.

The statement did not indicate whether the group agreed with the reports critiques.

The panel consisted of Emanuela-Chiara Gillard of the University of Oxford; Kevin Jon Heller of the University of Copenhagen; Eric Talbot Jensen of Brigham Young University; Marko Milanovic of the University of Reading; and Marco Sassli of the University of Geneva.

Inside Amnesty International, the panel found, some staff members had expressed serious reservations about whether the group had sufficiently sought to consult with the Ukrainian government to understand why it deployed forces where it did and whether it would have been feasible to station them elsewhere.

These reservations should have led to greater reflection and pause before the organization issued its statement, the report said.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces appear to have committed a series of atrocities, indiscriminately shelling and killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. (The International Criminal Court recently accused President Vladimir V. Putin of the war crime of abducting and deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and issued a warrant for his arrest.)

Against that backdrop, Amnesty Internationals denunciation of Ukrainian tactics received a large amount of attention. Proponents of the Kremlin portrayed the findings as essentially showing that Ukraine was to blame for the deaths of Ukrainian civilians at Russias hands.

Russias ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, cited the findings as part of justifying Russias occupation of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

We dont use the tactics Ukrainian armed forces are using using the civilian objects as military cover, I would say, what Amnesty International recently proved in a report, which we were saying all the time in all the meetings with the Security Council, he said.

The statement did not, in fact, accuse Ukraine of using civilians as human shields, only of failing to take precautions to protect them. Still, the backlash was fierce. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused the organization of trying to shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim.

Inside Amnesty International, its statement was deeply contentious. Its Ukraine director, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned in protest, noting that Russia was accused of atrocities in the towns it occupied and Ukraine was trying to prevent more such places from falling. She accused the group of giving Russia a justification to continue its indiscriminate attacks. The groups branch in Canada issued a statement expressing regret over the magnitude and impact of these failings from an institution of our stature.

While condemning Amnesty Internationals analysis, the review panel agreed that the statement which had lacked much detail was backed in part by fact.

The report said the groups researchers had documented at least 42 specific instances in 19 towns and villages where Ukrainian soldiers were operating near civilians. It also determined that several attacks by Russian forces that appeared to be targeting the Ukrainian military resulted in death or injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.

That raised the question of whether the Ukrainian military had violated its legal obligations, under a 1977 expansion of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to take precautions to protect civilians in their areas of operations to the maximum extent feasible.

Essentially, that means if there are two equally good locations for the military to station itself, one closer to civilians and one farther away, combatants should opt for the latter so that any enemy does not kill civilians as collateral damage. If there is no equally good alternative, a military force should try to evacuate civilians to a safer place.

The news release accused Ukraine of a pattern of failing to take either step, while also saying it should have warned civilians. But the report said Amnesty International failed to meaningfully engage with Ukrainian authorities about whether equally good alternative locations, evacuations or warnings were feasible.

The report also said the descriptor pattern was imprudent because it implied that generally, many or most of the civilian victims of the war died as a result of Ukraines decision to locate its forces in the vicinity of civilians, as opposed to Russias willingness to target civilians or civilian objects deliberately or indiscriminately.

Lacking sufficient information, it said, the group should have used more cautious language.

Link:

Amnesty International Sat on a Report Critical of Its Ukraine Concerns - The New York Times