Amnesty International Accuses Russia of War Crimes in Kharkiv

On June 13th, Amnesty International has accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying it killed hundreds of civilians in Kharkiv, the northeastern part of Ukraine through shelling operations as well as widely banned cluster bombs.

During a two-week field investigation, Amnesty International said it investigated 41 attacks in Kharkiv that killed at least 62 civilians and wounded 196. It also obtained evidence that Russian troops in Kharkiv repeatedly used the internationally banned 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs with scatter mines to kill civilians. Donatella Rovera, a senior adviser on crisis response at Amnesty International, said these weapons should never be used, anyone could be killed at any time and the Russian troops must be held accountable for these horrific attacks.

The report, titled “Anyone Can Die at Any Time,” detailing how Russian troops began targeting civilian areas in Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion on February 24th. The report stated that “the repeated bombardments of residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and such constitute war crimes,” and that “the continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population.”