Zelenskiy rebukes Amnesty for accusing Ukraine of endangering civilians

Jack Watling, an expert from the Royal United Services Institute, a thinktank in London, said the Amnesty report had “no understanding” of military operations, and “indulges in insinuations without supplying supporting evidence”. The Amnesty report concluded that the Ukrainian forces had other viable options they could have chosen for bases which were further away from residential areas, but did not include examples. “It is not a violation of IHL for Ukrainian military personnel to situate themselves in the terrain they are tasked to defend rather than in some random piece of adjacent woodland where they can be bypassed,” Watling wrote on Twitter. Watling said Ukraine had regularly encouraged civilians to leave conflict zones and that while repurposing civilian buildings was not a crime, forcible displacement was.