WASHINGTON (AP) — Two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Russian forces attacked a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk. Dozens of elderly and disabled patients, many of them bedridden, were trapped inside without water or electricity.
The March 11 attack sparked a fire that spread throughout the facility, suffocating people who were unable to move. A small number of patients and staff escaped and ran into the nearby forest, finally receiving help after walking 5 kilometers (3 mi).
In the midst of the cruelty of the war, the attack on the old people’s home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stands out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities laid the blame squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
But a new UN report found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large and perhaps equal share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnianka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions in the nursing home, turning the building into a target.
At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the attack, but the exact number of those killed remains unknown, according to the UN.
The report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights did not conclude that Ukrainian soldiers or Russian troops had committed a war crime. But the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is said to be emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns about the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.
___
This story is part of an ongoing investigation by the Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline,” which includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and an upcoming documentary.
___
The aftermath of the attack on the Stara Krasnyanka home also provides a window into how Russia and Ukraine are moving quickly to set the narrative for how events unfold on the ground — even as those events may still be shrouded in the fog of war. For Ukraine, maintaining the upper hand in the battle for hearts and minds helps ensure a steady flow of billions of dollars in Western military and humanitarian aid.
The story continues
Russia’s frequent indiscriminate shelling of residential buildings, hospitals, schools and theaters was the main cause of the thousands of civilian casualties during the war. Ukraine and its allies, including the United States, blamed Moscow for the deaths and injuries and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
But Ukraine must also abide by international rules on the battlefield. David Crane, a former Defense Department official and veteran of multiple international war crimes investigations, said Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by failing to evacuate residents and staff at the nursing home.
“The basic rule is that civilians cannot be targeted. Period. For some reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians put these people in a situation that was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.
The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline,” drawing on a variety of sources, have independently documented hundreds of attacks in Ukraine that may constitute war crimes. The vast majority appear to have been carried out by Russia. But several, including the destruction of the old people’s home in Stara Krasnyanka, show that Ukrainian fighters are also to blame.
The first media reports about the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home largely echoed statements made by Ukrainian officials more than a week after the fighting ended.
Sergey Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, announced in a March 20 post on his Telegram account that 56 people were killed “cynically and deliberately” by “Russian occupiers” who “fired at close range from a tank.” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, Iryna Venediktova, said in a statement released the same day that 56 elderly people had died due to the “insidious actions” of Russian forces and their allies. Neither statement mentioned whether Ukrainian soldiers had entered the home before the fighting began.
The Luhansk regional administration, which Haiday leads, did not respond to requests for comment. Ukraine’s attorney general’s office told the AP on Friday that its Luhansk division continues to investigate Russia’s “indiscriminate shelling and forced transfer of people” from the nursing home. About 50 patients were killed in the attack, the office said, fewer than it had said in March. The attorney general’s office did not respond directly to the U.N. report, but said it was also investigating whether Ukrainian soldiers were at the home.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years in the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland, Donbas, which includes the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. They declared two independent “people’s” republics, which were recognized by Russia just before the war began. After the invasion, these separatist fighters came under Russian command.
Viktoria Serdyukova, human rights commissioner for the separatist government in Luhansk, said in a March 23 statement that Ukrainian troops were responsible for the deaths at the nursing home. Residents were taken hostage by Ukrainian “fighters” and many were “burned alive” in a fire started by the Ukrainians as they retreated, she said.
The UN report examines violations of international human rights law committed in Ukraine following Russia’s February 24 invasion. The Stara Krasnyanka attack contains only two paragraphs in the 38-page report. Although brief, this short section is the most detailed and independent investigation of the incident that has been made public.
The site in Stara Krasnyanka is based on eyewitness accounts from staff who survived the attack and information provided by relatives of residents, according to a UN official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is still working to fully document the case, the official said. Among the remaining questions are how many people were killed and who they were.
In early March, according to the UN report, “when active hostilities approached the nursing home,” its management repeatedly asked local authorities to evacuate residents. But evacuation was not possible as Ukrainian forces were believed to have mined the surrounding area and blocked roads, the report said. The house is built on a hill and is close to a key highway, making the location strategically important.
On March 7, Ukrainian soldiers entered the nursing home, according to the United Nations. Two days later, they “engaged in an exchange of fire” with Moscow-backed separatists, “although it remains unclear which side opened fire first,” the report said. No employees or residents were injured in this first exchange.
On March 11, 71 residents and 15 staff members remained in the home without access to water and electricity. That morning, separatist forces in Luhansk, which the United Nations called “Russia-linked armed groups,” attacked with heavy weapons, the report said.
“A fire started and spread in the care home as the fighting continued,” according to the UN. An unspecified number of patients and staff fled the home and fled into a nearby forest and were eventually met by separatist fighters who gave them aid, according to the UN
A correspondent for state news channel Russia-1 gained access to the war-ravaged home after the battle and posted a video on his Telegram account in April accusing Ukrainian soldiers of using “helpless old people” as human shields.
Correspondent Nikolay Dolgachev was accompanied into the building by a man identified in the video as a Luhansk separatist soldier with the call sign “Wolf”. Extensive damage to the building, both inside and out, can be seen in the video. A body lies on the floor. The AP confirmed that the location in the video Dolgachev posted was the nursing home by comparing it to other videos and photos of the building.
Dolgachev said Ukrainian troops placed a “machine gun nest” and an anti-tank weapon in the home. In the video, he pauses amid the rubble inside the building to rest his hand on the anti-tank weapon, which he incorrectly calls the Tor. The Tor is a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.
Ian Williams, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reviewed the video and said the weapon was an RK-3 Corsar, a Ukrainian-made man-portable anti-tank guided missile.
While the warring parties blame each other for the Stara Krasnyanka tragedy, the grim reality is that much of the war in Ukraine is being fought in populated areas, increasing the potential for civilian casualties. These deaths and injuries become almost inevitable when civilians come into the line of fire.
“The Russians are the bad guys (in this conflict). That’s pretty clear,” Crane said. “But everyone is accountable to the law and the laws of armed conflict.”
___
Associated Press writer Lynn Berry in Washington and photographer Zoya Shu in Berlin contributed to this report.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE — The Associated Press and Frontline are gathering information from organizations including the Center for Information Resilience, Bellingcat, the International Partnership for Human Rights, the Ukrainian Health Center, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights to inform War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience.
___
Contact the AP investigative team at investigative@ap.org.
Add Comment