Russia Escalates War Crimes Against Civilians, Targeting Hospitals And POWs, Amnesty International Reports

Russia continues to commit war crimes during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Amnesty International states in its 2024 annual report. The organization points to the growing number of civilian casualties, including children and the elderly, caused by the use of banned weapons, targeted destruction of critical infrastructure, and, according to available evidence, deliberate strikes on civilian populations.

“Civilian casualties, including children and older people, increased, as Russian forces used indiscriminate weapons, damaged critical civilian infrastructure and appeared to deliberately target civilians. Executions, torture and other ill-treatment of civilian detainees and prisoners of war took place in the Russian-occupied territories, where the repression of non-Russian identities continued,” the report notes.

Among the documented attacks was the July 8 strike on Kyiv’s Ohmatdyt National Children’s Hospital, a facility providing chemotherapy and reconstructive surgeries for children from across the country. A Russian cruise missile seriously damaged the hospital, killing two people and injuring over 100 others, including children. Amnesty called the attack “an apparent war crime,” carried out as part of a broader, coordinated missile strike that killed at least 43 civilians that same day in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Kryvyi Rih.

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War in Ukraine

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The report also highlights Russia’s continued assaults on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. As of May 2024, 70% of Ukraine’s thermal power generation capacity had either been destroyed or occupied, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

Amnesty further documented rising evidence of extrajudicial executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Despite Russia’s repeated denials, senior Russian political figures, including Security Council deputy chair Dmitry Medvedev and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, have publicly called for the execution of prisoners.

“Hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war were tried in Russia and in areas of Ukraine it occupied, often merely for participating in hostilities. The lack of due process in such trials also amounted to a war crime,” the report concludes.

Earlier, an international investigation has uncovered that the body of Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, killed in Russian captivity, was returned to Ukraine with several internal organs missing, raising suspicions that the mutilation was intended to hide the true cause of her death.

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