The point was that it wasn’t Russians who wrote the book on warfare and wiping out the enemy’s energy grid, in particular. In numerous previous posts, you referred to the strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure as terrorist attacks, while in reality this has been done practically in every war in the past, likely close to, 100 years. Given, of course, at least one side of the conflict was capable of doing so. In other words, this is a very common and desired practice. In case of Ukraine, which is a huge country and had (perhaps poorly or, rather, not well developed but) an established military industrial complex, these strikes are especially warranted and often preferred to the destruction of assembly and repair facilities, for example.
The particular WP article was presented and quoted in order to show that there was expressed intent for the purpose of the strikes to cause human suffering to the civilian population of Serbia in order to induce some political rumbling within the country in hopes for a regime change, which was not likely going to work. Furthermore, the knowledge that this strategy does not deliver the desired results, in regards to the public dissatisfaction with the parties in charge of their state at the time, but instead increases the hostile moods towards the attacking side, is not new and has been around for decades (I will refrain from citing academic evidence for this because this goes beyond the scope of this thread). Yet, in the example of Serbia, it was done and set yet another precedent for this being a sound and normal strategy in major war efforts; moreover, the intent was to cause human misery without delivering a substantial military advantage.
I see these claims of “I fully support investigations of all war crimes” and similar… I don’t want to say not genuine because you and many others likely really believe that they fully support doing so, but definitely one-sided, righteous, and a little too late also comes to mind and I have not seen this amount of support during the previous western campaigns and definitely haven’t seen any international tribunals set up to investigate the “white knights” and certainly no one is rotting in jail for any of the atrocities committed by the said parties.
Furthermore, there is a great (even though malicious) reason, like I mentioned in the other post, for the military circles in the United States to be strongly pushing against the release of “evidence” of war crimes committed by Russia in the past 13 months.
“Russia wanted to integrate Ukraine into the Russian Empire” and the expense of rebuilding the energy infrastructure are not very (or at all) convincing. Long before these strikes began in October, the entire cities were largely destroyed. In particular, cities that were and are planned (by the Russian state) to be an integral part of “the Russian Empire”.
I am not going to comment on the “Swedish volunteer” suggestions, for obvious reasons.
These biased reports do not necessarily depict of the actual situation. That includes the recent report by the HR Council cited above.
Capt. Ironpants did a great job outlining some of the issues and clear bias. They seem to know quite a bit about the organizational structure and requirements for such reports, definitely way more than I do. However, I have read almost every report produced by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine since the start of hostilities in 2014 and can state that I see a clear difference between every one of those and the ones cited above. For instance, the HR council report highlights that
The Commission has documented a small number of violations committed by Ukrainian armed forces, including likely indiscriminate attacks and two incidents that qualify as war crimes.
This is clearly laughable. And I already outlined what the statement about the energy grid attacks looks like.
The reports you sighted mention all these bombings of hospitals, attacks on healthcare workers, ambulances, health care facilities, etc. Note that all this attacks and shelling were done by the Russian military forces. In general, this war is portrayed, since the beginning, so that only one side, the Russian side, is levelling the cities, only Russian rockets fall on civilian infrastructure killing civilians (except for the most obvious ones:
A U.S.-Made Missile Went Astray in Ukraine, Injuring Civilians), violating basic human rights, torture, etc. The Ukrainian authorities provide evidence and stories. Any attempt to counter or suggest otherwise is met with great hostility from the Ukrainian government and outright rejected as Russian propaganda and narrative. The recorded facts about their troops setting up command posts and firing positions in or next to schools, hospitals, residential buildings, other civilian infrastructure (all being war crimes) are all dismissed as untruth and the reporting parties attacked and presented as Russian supporters/agents.
For example, you probably remember this report by Amnesty international:
Ukraine: Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians And the unprecedented apology they had issued after the outrage and backlash from the Ukrainian authorities:
Statement on publication of press release on Ukrainian fighting tactics The head of the Amnesty International office resigned as a part of the outrage:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/07/amnesty-international-ukraine-pokalchuk-resignation/ This is all unprecedented and unheard of.
You clearly have not read any of the couple of dozens reports presented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2014. I’d imagine if you did, I’d be able to find similar posts by you before 2022. For your convenience, here are a few excerpts from one random such a
report that Google fed me first:
The practice of placing military objectives near civilian objects and facilities necessary for the survival of the civilian population continued on both sides of the contact line, increasing the risk of shelling of such objects and facilities. Hospitals and schools were affected by shelling, as well as other types of infrastructure[…]
OHCHR documented cases of summary executions, enforced disappearances, incommunicado detention, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture/ill-treatment and conflict- related sexual violence,5 most of which occurred before but could only be documented during the reporting period […]
OHCHR was nevertheless able to document, on both sides of the contact line, the persisting practice of torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence involving conflict-related detainees, often to extract confessions. OHCHR also documented a new development linked to the arrest and detention of citizens by law enforcement under terrorism charges for conducting business and paying ‘taxes’ in territory controlled by armed groups.
The persistent lack of accountability for human rights violations and abuses contributed to the prevailing sense and state of impunity. For instance, little progress was achieved in bringing to justice those responsible for the killings of protesters at Maidan in 2014 and for the 2 May 2014 violence in Odesa.
Ukrainian authorities continued to fail to effectively investigate human rights violations perpetrated by members of the Ukrainian military or security forces. In cases against members of armed groups, however, prosecutions have begun to address specific human rights violations (such as unlawful detention, torture and ill-treatment) rather than relying on more general charges of terrorism[…]
Kind of amazing that these atrocities have basically stopped instead of increasing on the Ukrainian side, in spite of hundreds (thousands?) of “Russian infiltrators” civilians being executed left and right in the first couple of months of the war and other crimes reported by other organizations as well, but also including the UNHCHR as well.
