International human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Russian war crimes in Ukraine violate a number of norms of international humanitarian law, CNN reports.
In the rights group’s annual report reviewing human rights standards in nearly 100 countries, it said that evidence of war crimes in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, are part of a pattern that “has been repeated countless times.”
In particular, the HRW report refers to the bombing of a theatre in Mariupol, despite signs warning that children were sheltering there, as well as strikes on other non-military targets.
“Inflicting civilian suffering, such as the repeated strikes on the energy infrastructure that Ukrainians depend on for electricity, water, and heat, seems to be a central part of the Kremlin’s strategy,” reads the report.
And although the authors appreciate the European countries' response in receiving Ukrainian refugees, they also say that “governments should reflect on where the situation would be if the international community had made a concerted effort to hold Putin to account much earlier – in 2014, at the onset of the war in eastern Ukraine; in 2015, for abuses in Syria; or for the escalating human rights crackdown within Russia over the last decade.”
In 2022, 16,502 people died as a result of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The National Police discovered 21 mass graves in the de-occupied territories, of which 1033 civilian and military bodies were exhumed.