DISINFO: Russia only targets military and infrastructure facilities in Ukraine
SUMMARY
Terrorist attacks, killings of civilians and incursions into Russia's uncontested territory have been frequent since 2022. Russia does not react symmetrically, choosing to target only military and infrastructure facilities.
RESPONSE
Recurring disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine, blaming the US and the West for the war in Ukraine, aiming to deflect Russia’s responsibility for its aggression against this country and the serious humanitarian tragedy it provoked.
There is ample evidence of the Russian armed forces’ committing war crimes such as bombing civilian objects, torturing Ukrainian soldiers and maltreating civilians. These cases have been registered both in liberated Ukrainian territories and those still under Russian occupation.
Russia and Russian temporarily controlled territories in Donbas region are not in a position of victims since 2022 as proclaimed but the instigators of unrest and war. The EU and its member states strongly condemn Russia's brutal war of aggression against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Russia does not target only military targets in Ukraine. War crimes against civilian individuals and infrastructures have been extensively documented. Since December 2022, the Kremlin even recognized massive missile and drone strikes against civilian infrastructures: “yes, we are doing it”.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office said on September 14 2023 that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had opened a field office in Kyiv as part of efforts to hold Russian forces accountable for potential war crimes committed during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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