Amnesty said Ukrainian forces threatened civilians, and that it adhered to its report.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accused Amnesty International of siding with terrorists after the organization condemned the Ukrainian military for placing weapons in civilian areas in violation of humanitarian law.
Zelensky said in a video address on Thursday evening that Amnesty International had a report that tried to amnesty the terrorist state and shift responsibility from the aggressor to the victim.
The report in question was published earlier on Thursday, and detailed 22 cases of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from schools and five examples of troops using hospitals as bases. Amnesty said that it was not aware that Ukraine tried to evacuate civilians before occupying these non-military locations.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International spokesman general, said Ukrainian forces were putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas. The Ukrainian military is not exempt from international humanitarian law because of being in a defensive position. The report was slated online by supporters of Zelensky's regime, who accused the international organization of peddling Russian propaganda, while Amnesty accused Russia of breaking international law in the conduct of its military operation. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba pushed back against the report, accusing Amnesty of creating a false reality where everyone is at fault for something. Instead, he argued that the organization should focus only on Russian wrongdoing.
Callamard stuck by the report after he received a lot of criticism from pro-Ukrainian social media posters. To those who attack us on the basis of biases against Ukraine, check our work, she wrote on Twitter. Callamard has also accused social media mobs and trolls of spreading war propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation. In his speech, Zelensky accused the Russian military of striking at memorials to Holocaust victims and a prisoner of war camp in Yelenovka. Zelensky said he was talking about a strike on a Holocaust memorial in March, which actually hit a TV tower nearby. An Israeli journalist stated that the memorial itself was untouched.
Russia accused Ukraine of launching a missile strike on the Yelenovka detention facility, where members of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment were held last week, and has asked the United Nations and Red Cross to investigate the attack. The Donetsk People's Republic officials claimed the facility was targeted to prevent the prisoners from testifying about alleged Ukrainian war crimes.