Today marks six months since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The hostilities that followed have been characterized by widespread war crimes, potential crimes against humanity, and immense human suffering. At least 5,587 civilians have been killed and another 7,890 injured, according to the United Nations – likely a significant underestimate. Countless homes, schools, hospitals, and other civilian structures have been damaged or destroyed, many during apparently unlawful indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, the vast majority by Russian forces. Often these attacks have used explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas, including some with widely banned cluster munitions. In areas that they have occupied, Russian forces have carried out deliberate attacks on civilians, including summary executions, enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence, and arbitrary detentions. This violence and abuse has led 6.7 million Ukrainians to flee the country over the past six months, while internally displacing another 6.5 million.
Human Rights Watch researchers have been on the ground in and around Ukraine since February 24 – and since the start of this war eight years ago – documenting some of the worst violations. We’ve interviewed hundreds of victims, victims’ families, and witnesses to abuses. We’ve visited towns and villages formerly occupied by Russian forces to investigate atrocities against civilians during the occupation. We also went to the sites of buildings that were hit by Russian bombing and shelling to establish the facts and determine whether specific strikes violated international humanitarian law, or the laws of war.
This video tells the story of some of the violations that we’ve investigated over the past six months.
In all of our research, what we hear again and again is that the victims of these violations want justice. We hope that the documentation we are doing will help lay the foundation for accountability efforts – and help deter these types of crimes from being committed again, in Ukraine and beyond.
