Amnesty International’s representative in Ukraine today announced her resignation, alleging that a report by the organization accusing the Ukrainian armed forces of endangering civilians unwittingly served as “Russian propaganda”. “I am resigning from Amnesty International in Ukraine,” Oksana Pokaltchouk said in a statement published in the early hours of Saturday on the social network Facebook.
The report, released on Thursday, warned that Ukrainian forces endanger the civilian population when they establish military bases in residential areas and launch attacks from areas inhabited by civilians.
Ukrainian forces put civilians in danger when they set up bases and operate weapons systems “in areas inhabited by civilians, including schools and hospitals, to repel the Russian invasion that began in February”, the organization said in the document, adding that these tactics violated international law and turn civilian zones into military objectives against which the Russians retaliate.
The human rights organization noted, however, that this action does not justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks, which have killed more than 5,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.
This criticism angered Kiev, with the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, saying he was “indignant” at the “unfair” accusations advanced by Amnesty International, while the President, Volodymyr Zelensky, considered that the organization was “trying to amnesty the terrorist state Russian”.
On Friday, Amnesty reiterated the conclusion, defending the report and its criticisms.
“If you don’t live in a country invaded by occupiers who divide it, you probably don’t understand what it’s like to condemn an army of defenders,” argued the Amnesty Ukraine representative.
Oksana Pokaltchouk said she tried to convince Amnesty International’s administration that the report was biased and did not take into account the views of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
According to him, Amnesty ended up “sending questions to the Ministry of Defence” of Ukraine, but “gave very little time for an answer”.
Therefore, “the organization released a report that appeared to unintentionally support the Russian version. In an effort to protect civilians, this report has become a tool of Russian propaganda,” he lamented.
In a message previously posted on Facebook, Pokalchouk said Amnesty ignored his team’s requests not to publish the report.
“Yesterday [na sexta-feira]I had the naive hope that this text would be replaced by another, but today I realized that this will not happen”, he explained.
The organization’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, assured on Friday that the report’s conclusions were “based on evidence obtained during large-scale investigations subject to the same rigorous standards and verification process as all of Amnesty International’s work”. .
The Association of Ukrainians in Portugal also accused Amnesty International of “not being effective” and of “supporting the continuation of the suffering of the Ukrainian people”.
“We are deeply sorry” to acknowledge that “Amnesty International’s latest and most unfortunate statement ‘Stop aggression and protect civilians in Ukraine’ is helping to prolong the conflict rather than helping to end the war,” a statement said. signed by the association’s president, Pavlo Sadokha, released today.
“Daily, we have been in direct and permanent contact with our compatriots in Ukraine and we have no record of complaints lodged by Ukrainians or Ukrainian institutions with Amnesty International”, he adds, adding that “at this moment, all the Ukrainian people have become the Ukraine’s Armed Forces”.
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