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Russia has not won the war so far because, unlike Israel, which is killing civilians in Gaza, is only bombing military targets in Ukraine, pro-Kremlin propaganda claims.
Liosha and Sasha, Russian scouts: "everything will be fine because good triumphs over evil”
NEWS: Two soldiers, two scouts, Mikhail and Kot, or as the comrades call them, Liosha and Sasha, are two friends who became a fighting unit during the war. Scout Kot told the audience of Ukraina.ru about their friendship. He explained why the Russian army did not bomb Ukrainian cities and villages, also mentioning the positive attitude of civilians towards our military.
[…] Everything will be fine because good triumphs over evil. I do not agree with the statement that we are at war now. The special operation is nothing like what we see in the Middle East. Just look at how Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip and how many people it has killed. Their tactics cannot be compared to our fighting methods.
[…] We aim to destroy only industry and military infrastructure. We cannot afford to set fire to villages, to shoot at towns where there are civilians, we cannot bomb without any calculation. We are not allowed to do that. If we had applied the scorched-earth tactic, it would have been over a long time ago. We won't do that. For this reason, it is not a war, but a special operation.
NARRATIVE: Russia does not use brutal tactics as those used by Israel in the Gaza Strip on the territory of Ukraine because it takes into account certain moral principles.
Fact: Russia has committed war crimes whose victims were Ukrainian civilians
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In reality, the very facts on the ground contradict the narrative picked up by the propaganda media. Russia has launched numerous attacks against civilian targets (homes, schools, hospitals, etc.), being designated a terrorist state first by the European Parliament and then by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe . In Kherson alone at least 20 torture chambers were operated directly by the Russian FSB. According to the UN, last year the Russian military killed on average six Ukrainian civilians a day. The reports of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights record a toll of over 10,000 civilians killed in the war, but in reality, the figure could be higher.
Russia is accused of committing war crimes in the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson regions. In the city of Bucha, the Russian army left civilian corpses scattered on the streets in the spring of 2022. This town in the Kyiv region has become a symbol of alleged Russian war crimes that have shocked the world. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a message posted on social media a year after the massacre that Ukraine will "never forgive" what happened there.
In April 2022, Russia bombed the Kramatorsk station in Donbas with ammunition prohibited by the international law, as a result of which more than 50 people who were trying to flee the conflict lost their lives. The brutal siege of Mariupol, largely destroyed and with thousands of civilians killed, shows that Russia has no regard for civilian targets. Also, the air campaign against civilian infrastructure in the winter of 2022–2023 left millions of Ukrainians in the cold and in the dark for long periods; the campaign was resumed, with less success for Moscow, this winter as well.
According to human rights organizations, the UN mission, journalists and independent experts, Russia has attacked civilian targets, resorted to cluster bombs, bombed hospitals and medical care facilities, tried to destroy Ukraine's electricity system, deported children. Russia is also accused of blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam, which killed thousands of civilians. The purpose of blowing up the barrage was to block the Ukrainian offensive in the southern direction and to buy time for the erection of defensive fortifications and the digging of trenches, known as the Surovikin Line.
Apart from the competent Ukrainian bodies, which collaborate with various international experts, the documentation of Russia's war crimes is handled by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory , which draws attention to the need for a legal examination of all Russia's actions directed against Ukrainian civilians.
In March 2023, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. The document states that the Russian president failed to properly exercise control over civilian and military subordinates who committed criminal acts or allowed them to be committed. In this context, any comparison with Israel has no place.
Veridica has debunked a series of false Russian media narratives portraying Moscow's military actions as acts of saving civilians. According to Russian war propaganda, moral principles prevent Moscow from ending the war. A year after the launch of the full-scale invasion, the Russian press was claiming that the "special military operation" had saved Russia from a NATO invasion and Ukrainian Nazism . The false narrative about Moscow holding back when bombing Ukraine , knowing that Ukrainians do not support the Nazi leaders in Kyiv, has often been promoted.
GRAIN OF TRUTH: International organizations and numerous states have criticized Israel for its handling of the campaign in the Gaza Strip, where large-scale destruction has taken place, many civilians have been killed and most of the population has been internally displaced. However, the Jewish state's army is carrying out an anti-terrorist operation in the territory of the Gaza Strip after it was attacked, and Hamas extremists, who do not form a conventional army, are mixed with civilians, which increases the risks to which the latter are exposed. Russia, on the other hand, attacked, without provocation, an independent and sovereign state, in violation of the basic principles of international law.
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