The number of credible and substantiated reports of Russian forces leaving booby-trapped landmines, human and animal bodies, household appliances, dwellings and toys, as they withdrew from occupied areas following the February 2022 full-scale invasion are almost too numerous to count. These are considered as war crimes.
Typical accounts were published in April 2022 by the US Lieber Institute and at a meeting of the OSCE, citing documented evidence of the widespread use of victim-activated explosive devices hidden within everyday objects.
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In July 2023, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Bärbock, said in relation to investigations of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha:
“Mines were even placed in children’s toys. The children returned to their rooms and were torn to pieces because they wanted to take back their dolls. You must imagine that the goal was simply destruction.”
Now Russia is trying to aim similar accusations against Ukraine’s armed forces.
A member of Russia’s Federation Council, Inna Svyatenko, told Russia’s Channel One on May 20, following a meeting of the “Commission to Investigate Criminal Acts Against Minors by the Kyiv Regime,” set up by the Kremlin, that Ukrainian authorities are organizing sabotage attacks aimed against children.
Svyatenko said that the actions of Kyiv’s forces were in direct violation of the Convention on the Protection of Children’s Rights.
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“Kyiv organizes sabotage against children and near the contact line,” she said. “Radicals disguise homemade bombs as children’s toys and plant them near children’s social facilities.”
The Insider news outlet cited an article by Alexandra Arkhipova, written in December, that said the use of toys as bombs is a modern-day myth that sprung up during the Afghan War, when the USSR and the United States accused each other of using such tactics.
US BLU-43 (left) and the Soviet PFM-1(right) anti-personnel landmines
The accusations were prompted by the use in Vietnam and Afghanistan of the lightweight, pressure activated, remotely delivered anti-personnel mines - the US BLU-43 and the Soviet PFM-1 – whose lightweight plastic bodies and glide wings were sometimes mistaken as toys by children.
Svyatenko went on to claim that many children in the Donbas have not had access to medicine and social services for years; their rights to education and the use of their native language have been violated.
She then went on to say: “From 2014 to September 2022, about 1,600 children disappeared without a trace in the Kyiv-controlled territories of Donbas.”
She did not, however, provide any direct or even anecdotal evidence to support her assertion.
The Insider, carrying the story under their AntiFake series of articles said:
“She is not even embarrassed by the fact that in the context of the current war, her assertion looks frankly absurd. The war is being waged exclusively on the territory of Ukraine. There is not the slightest military sense for the Ukrainian military [to carry out such] actions against the civilian population of their country. All that they could achieve in this way would be the growth of anti-Ukrainian sentiments and sympathy for the occupiers.”
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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