At least 9,900 people, both civilians and combatants, have been killed or wounded during Russia’s war on eastern Ukraine so far, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has said in a new report.
The report, issued on March 15, covers the period between Nov. 16 and Feb. 15 and documents human rights violations within the frontline zones in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The thousands of war deaths include up to 2,300 civilians, including 298 passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17, which was downed in July 2014 in Donetsk oblast by a Buk anti-aircraft missile, according to Dutch investigators.
Another 9,000 people have been wounded in practically daily exchanges of fire between the Ukrainian armed forces and Russian-backed fighters.
“Countless families have lost members, had members injured, and lost property and their livelihoods as the parties to the conflict continued to disregard and violate international humanitarian law and human rights law,” the report states.
A recent escalation of the hostilities in late January and early February caused significant damage to vital civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and utilities providing water, heating and electricity supplies, the report says.
Amid indiscriminate exchanges of heavy artillery fire, four of the region’s water filtration stations have been disabled, leaving a total of 1.1 million people on the both sides of the front line without centralized water supplies.
Cuts in vital supplies have in turn caused disruption to centralized heating services in Avdiyivka, Donetsk, Dokuchaevsk, Makiyivka and Yasynuvata in cold winter weather, with many hospitals also having their water supplies cut off.
In many cases, both Ukrainian and Russian-backed militant combat units have been spotted within 200 meters or even closer to the water filtering stations or chlorine reservoirs in Avdiyivka, Dokuchaevsk or Mayorsk – an increasingly risky situation that not only threatens water supplies to the local population, but that could also potentially lead to dangerous chemical leaks.
Despite ongoing diplomatic attempts to ensure the fulfillment of the Minsk peace agreements, new violations of the ceasefire take place on a daily basis at hotspots in both Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the reports says. In many cases, civilians in the Donbas are placed in danger because both sides maintain combat positions in close proximity to villages and towns along the separation line, thus violating international humanitarian law, the report says.
“In particular, military and armed group personnel continued to embed their hardware in civilian neighborhoods, including homes, to carry out indiscriminate shelling and to use explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas,” UN officials reported.
The sharp escalation of hostilities in late February was accompanied by massive shelling against residential areas of Avdiyivka, Donetsk, Makiyivka and Yasynuvata, claiming the lives of seven civilian and wounding 46.
However, in some cases, Ukrainian authorities and armed forces officials have responded effectively to complaints of increased shelling because of the army’s presence, the UN reported.
“For instance, after a serious shelling incident on Aug. 29, 2016 in Kamianka, Ukrainian Armed Forces moved their military positions from the town to nearby fields. Residents told OHCHR during the reporting period that since then, shells no longer hit the village,” the report says.
Residents in the occupied territories have also been continuing to complain about shelling by militants from inside highly populated residential areas of Donetsk, which invites return fire.
However, the report provides no examples of the withdrawal of militant forces from built up areas.
The report does say that both sides continue to damage and destroy civilian infrastructure through the use of powerful wide-area blast weapons, including rocket and missile artillery, mortars, and also by disregarding their commitments to withdraw heavy weapons from the frontline, the report concludes.
Up to 2,629 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in action and 9,453 wounded since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine in April 2014, according to a statement issued by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense spokesman Andriy Lysenko on March 20.
