Amnesty and Moscow

Coverage over the last few days in both the MSM and on social media of what Amnesty International has written about the war in Ukraine has been astonishingly selective in a way which has been unwittingly helpful to Russian propagandists.

I understand that since the start of Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, Amnesty has published about forty reports into the war. And that all forty of those reports have been severely critical of Russia's actions. Thirty nine of these reports condemned just Russia. One report, published a few days ago, included criticism of both sides, though perhaps unwisely it was headlined "Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians."

I share some of the concerns which have been expressed by Ukrainian representatives from President Zelenskiyy downwards about this report. It is not surprising that Russian propagandists have selectively quoted it to bring out the criticisms Amnesty International made about the Ukrainian military while ignoring the far more serious criticisms Amnesty has also made about the Russian government and military.

However, I think it is important that we do not allow Russia to establish the false narrative that Amnesty has been critical of Ukraine's actions and not been far more critical of Russia's.

Even if we just looked at the recent report which included criticism of Ukraine, Amnesty also said in that report that the Ukrainian tactics of which it is critical, quote,

"in no way justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks, which have killed and injured countless civilians."

Amnesty International wrote that in parts of Ukraine in which, quote, 

"Amnesty International concluded that Russia had committed war crimes, including in some areas of the city of Kharkiv, the organization did not find evidence of Ukrainian forces located in the civilian areas unlawfully targeted by the Russian military".

The Amnesty international report also refers to, quote, 

"Indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces 

Many of the Russian strikes that Amnesty International documented in recent months were carried out with inherently indiscriminate weapons, including internationally banned cluster munitions, or with other explosive weapons with wide area effects."

Amnesty International has published plenty of other reports which are unequivocally critical of Russia's war crimes during the illegal invasion of Ukraine - which Amnesty describes in exactly those terms.

Amnesty calls "Russia's War on Ukraine," quote,

"a devastating human rights crisis," adding

"Right now, people in Ukraine are facing a human rights crisis. People are dying, including children, and many more are at risk.

As Russia continues its war against Ukraine, Amnesty International is exposing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and gathering evidence from our researchers on the ground and our Crisis Evidence Lab. From the devastation of Izium to the siege of Mariupol, from shelling in Kyiv to displaced people in Lviv, we’re helping to keep the world informed about what is happening in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, his government and the Russian armed forces are desperate to hide the truth about the war, including the possible war crimes they are committing in Ukraine."

Now, given Russia's track record of using and abusing any information it can to play into false narratives I do think that Amnesty International was very unwise to risk allowing their work to be misrepresented by Russian propagandists, as it sadly has been, and has a duty to be more vigorous than they have yet been in rebutting such false narratives.

Sadly, Amnesty has form for falling into this kind of Russian trap, as they did last year over the jailed Russian opposition leader and survivor of an attempted state Russian assassination attempt, Alexei Navalny.

Russia, on the other hand, has form for attacking hospitals which are full of patients and doctors and were not occupied by Ukrainian military personnel, and then publishing propaganda falsely claiming the hospitals concerned were no longer in use as medical facilities but had been taken over by Ukrainian military units and imaginary Nazis. 

Anyone reporting or commenting on the war in Ukraine has a moral duty and a duty to the truth to bend over backwards to avoid publishing anything which can be abused to play into such false narratives.

The truth is that most Ukrainian military units who are in or near residential areas are there because Russian forces are attacking those areas.

In Putin's illegal war, one side, Russia, is the aggressor and the other side, Ukraine, is the victim, and there is no moral equivalence between them.

In every war there will be mistakes and atrocities on both sides, and those responsible on each side must be held to account. But the current war is a war between good and evil, and there have been far more atrocities perpetrated on the Russian side than on that of Ukraine.