The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 11 May.
“With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will update the House on Russia’s attacks on civilians and critical national infrastructure in Ukraine.
We are now on day 442 of the conflict. During this period, Moscow has, according to the United Nations, provoked the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, including almost 8 million refugees and almost 6 million internally forced from their homes.
We must not lose sight of those staggering statistics. Worse still, Russia’s battlefield setbacks have led to it cynically targeting energy infrastructure, putting millions of people at risk of sickness and death in cold, unsanitary conditions. Take the besieged city of Bakhmut, where there are now fewer than 7,000 residents, 1/10th of the original population. For the last nine months they have been hiding in basements, without clean water, electricity or gas, and with minimal connection to the outside world.
From the scale of the Russians’ attacks, it is clear that they have not limited themselves to military targets. Their purpose is simply to terrorise the local population into submission. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn when we look at Russia’s ever-expanding charge sheet of international humanitarian law violations. As of 2 April, there have been 788 attacks on healthcare facilities: hospitals, clinics and medical centres. There have been instances of damage to educational facilities: schools, daycare centres and even nurseries.
Meanwhile, Russia has plundered crops and agricultural equipment on an industrial scale, destroying grain storage and handling facilities. According to estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics, Russia stole or destroyed 4.04 million tonnes of grain and oilseeds, valued at $1.9 billion, in Ukrainian territories during the 2022 season. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s continued intransigence is contributing to the current backlog of grain exports.
Besides that, Russia has bombed industrial facilities, including the Azot chemical plant, risking toxic industrial chemical release and environmental impact. It has attacked Ukraine’s largest refinery at Kremenchuk on at least three occasions. It has bombed airfields, ports, roads and rail networks, preventing refugees from fleeing the danger. It has taken out communications networks, affecting banks, the internet and cellphones, with residents in some areas now forced to barter for food. Kremlin strikes on substations, powerplants and powerlines have also impacted water treatment facilities, leaving cities such as Mariupol without water and reliant on delivery of bottled supplies.
At the same time, Russia has forcibly occupied and undermined the safe operation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. As Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said:
‘Every single one of the IAEA’s crucial seven indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security in an armed conflict has been compromised’.
He recently warned that the situation around the plant was ‘potentially dangerous’.
Sadly, at least 23,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or wounded so far, although the actual figure is likely to be substantially higher. Thousands of citizens have been sent to sinister ‘filtration’ camps before being forcibly relocated to Russia. Some 6,000 children, ranging in ages from four months to 17 years, are now in ‘re-education camps’ across Russia.
Both United Nations and United States investigators have found that Russia has committed war crimes, with reported evidence of executions, torture and sexual violence in civilian areas. In early April President Zelensky said that more than 70,000 Russian war crimes had been recorded since Putin’s invasion. The names of Bucha and Izyum have become synonymous with mass murder. The world will not forget the bombing of the drama theatre in Mariupol, where 1,200 civilians sought shelter under a giant sign reading ‘Children’. No matter how much Russia tries to hide and bulldoze over the scene, we will not forget.
Even in the territories that Russia has illegally annexed, citizens find themselves subjected to the worst excesses of totalitarianism. A Russian passport is increasingly essential to access vital services—a nightmare for those with newborn babies. Civilian infrastructure, such as healthcare facilities, is being seized and repurposed to treat wounded servicemen. Kill lists of civic leaders have been drawn up, citizens executed in cold blood and concerted attempts made to erase Ukrainian culture, history and identity.
We should be clear: the targeting of civilians and infrastructure essential to the civilian population of Ukraine has not happened by accident in the fog of war. Much of it was planned Russian policy. Russia has form, and we have seen its handiwork in Syria. In March, President Putin himself was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
However, we should also be clear that, as numerous credible reports indicate, while Russia’s morally bankrupt approach might have been made in the Kremlin, it is often carried out willingly, not just by rogue units, but by the ordinary rank and file across the Russian armed forces. An even clearer picture of Russia’s barbaric approach emerges when we look at some of the weapons it is using against innocent civilians. I am not referring here to the extensive strikes against Ukraine’s electric power network from cruise and surface-to-surface missiles, the use of short-range ballistic missiles such as the Iskander, which infamously hit the train station in Kramatorsk, killing 60 and wounding more than 110, or even the two 500 kilogram bombs dropped by Russian fighter aircraft on that Mariupol theatre.
The fact is that Russia has used cluster munitions with wholesale disregard for human life and civilians. They have been dropped near a hospital in Vuhledar. A 9M79-series Tochka ballistic missile delivering a 9N123 cluster munition warhead killed four civilians and injured another 10, including six healthcare workers. Russia has used Smerch cluster munition rockets in three neighbourhoods in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, resulting in reports of nine civilian deaths and 37 injuries, according to the United Nations.
Russia also relies on massed fires. Indiscriminate artillery bombardments of built-up areas account for the vast majority of civilian casualties—injured or killed. Moscow also makes extensive use of conventional anti-personnel mines and improvised booby-traps to indiscriminately harm civilians. Dead bodies, the homes and vehicles of Ukrainian civilians and even children’s toys have been rigged up as lethal devices. Russia has laid mines remotely and mechanically, covering significant areas of farmland, with scant evidence that it has either marked minefields or warned civilians about their presence. Those minefields will leave a legacy long after the conflict ends.
Russia has used hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed drones to attack targets in Ukraine. Loitering munitions sent on numerous suicide missions have repeatedly taken their toll on civilians. Last week, those weapons struck a university campus in Odessa and civilians were once more in the crosshairs in Kyiv.