Russia-Ukraine live updates: Global leaders react to Biden’s ‘genocide’ comments; OSCE says Russia broke international law
Russia broke international humanitarian law by deliberately targeting civilians during its invasion of Ukraine, and those who ordered attacks on a maternity hospital and theater-turned-shelter in the besieged city of Mariupol committed war crimes, experts from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe determined in a fact-finding report published Wednesday.
The Vienna-based security body accused Russia of broadly targeting hospitals, schools, residential buildings and water facilities in its military operations, leading to civilian deaths and injuries.
“Taken as a whole, the report documents the catalogue of inhumanity perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine,” said Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, in a speech delivered Wednesday. “This includes evidence of direct targeting of civilians, attacks on medical facilities, rape, executions, looting, and forced deportation of civilians to Russia.”
The report concluded that the airstrike that tore through a maternity hospital in Mariupol was a Russian attack. “Based upon Russian explanations, the attack must have been deliberate,” the report said of the March 9 strike on the Mariupol Maternity House and Children’s Hospital. “No effective warning was given and no time-limit set. This attack therefore constitutes a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law and those responsible for it have committed a war crime.”