Ukrainians aren’t surprised by Amnesty’s victim-blaming

Is Amnesty International victim-blaming? The Ukrainian military has been endangering civilians, it said, by establishing military bases and putting weapons systems in residential areas. Agnès Callamard, the organisation's secretary-general, remarked that ‘being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law’.

It was a bizarre statement. Russian forces are attacking villages and large cities with dense populations. The Ukrainian armed forces can’t sit in a field, or put their weapons on a boat and sail away from coastal cities. As well as the morality of shifting the blame on to the aggressor, Amnesty’s statement doesn’t recognise the realities of the war situation.

Take what happened in Mariupol. The city was surrounded, and the Ukrainian military was already inside. The message of Amnesty International – implicitly – is to surrender and let Vladimir Putin win.

Amnesty’s statement was a gift for the Kremlin. The comments became one of the most-read news stories in the Russian media. Of course, they only covered the part of the report that accused Ukraine of violating international humanitarian law. The remarks that this does not justify shelling the civilian population by Russia were completely ignored.

Russian propagandists are getting ready to use this statement at all platforms, including the UN. Any ‘message’ that Ukraine is killing civilians, any lie that it is actually Ukraine who is the monster in this war, will be used both inside of Russia and abroad to gather support for Putin.

For Amnesty International, it is more convenient to call on Ukraine to stop the escalation. The organisation cannot influence Russia, which is the real aggressor. That is why Amnesty tries to put pressure on the side with which it can communicate.

For eight years Ukraine has been swallowing unfair accusations at the price of being open for dialogue. Amnesty’s report paints Ukraine as a nation ripe for blaming, not a country under attack.