Ukraine has rebuked Amnesty International’s report on alleged Ukrainian war crimes. The international organization attempted to portray Ukrainians fighting in urban areas as endangering civilians, despite the reality of the war on the ground, as Russian forces continued to advance and push for urban population centers.
Currently, Russian forces are attempting to break through to Bakhmut and Kramatorsk, with troops massing in southern Ukraine purportedly to push for Mykolaiv. Though neither of these offensives shows much promise, they constitute recent examples of the constant push for control over cities, with sites like Mariupol, Kherson, and Kharkiv becoming hotly-contested battlegrounds in the war.
As fighting over Kherson will likely intensify before the end of the summer, Amnesty International’s proposition that Ukraine fight in suburban and rural areas is infeasible. Russia’s decision to launch a war of conquest beyond Ukraine, attacking from northern and southern Ukraine rather than across the militarized areas of the Donbas, precluded any notion that fighting would take place in wholly isolated areas. Whereas Ukraine has repeatedly called for citizens in areas near the fighting to leave by any means necessary, Russia has continued to advance under heavily populated areas. The defense of Lysychansk in particular was complicated by a large amount of citizens, and subsequent efforts to defend the remnants of the Donbas in Donetsk are being undertaken amidst calls for much of the populace to leave.
World Affairs International 