UKRAINE: ATTACKS REQUIRE BETTER INVESTIGATION

(Berlin, December 18, 2014) – Ukrainian authorities need to conduct further investigations into allegations that their forces were responsible for indiscriminate attacks in eastern Ukraine. Human Rights Watch met with high-level government officials in Kiev about the issue on December 2 and 3, 2014.
The government’s initial investigations concluded that Ukrainian forces were not responsible for the indiscriminate attacks that Human Rights Watch documented. However, the government investigation into the attacks using unguided rockets was based solely on records kept by the agency responsible for military operations in eastern Ukraine and did not examine any forensic evidence on the ground, including impact sites in areas government forces control. The cluster munitions investigation apparently looked at the wrong weapon and did not consider the specific weapon used in the attack that Human Rights Watch documented.
In October 2014, cluster munitions struck Donetsk city in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian military prosecutor told Human Rights Watch that his office had examined the inventories of several weapons prohibited under the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, to which Ukraine is a party. Because the examination showed that no prohibited weapons had been moved, he concluded that government forces had not used cluster munitions. According to the list that the prosecutor presented, however, the investigation had not checked the inventory of the weapon that Human Rights Watch documented. Weapon remnants and markings on weapon remnants at the impact sites and near the suspected launch site, some of which are pictured below, show that the weapon used was the 9M27K rocket with 9N128K warhead, containing 9N210 fragmentation submunitions, which was not among the weapons checked by the military prosecutor.
For more Human Rights Watch multimedia on the use of unguided rockets (Grads) in Ukraine, see:
http://multimedia.hrw.org/distribute/alohiebsyc
For more Human Rights Watch multimedia on the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine, see:
http://multimedia.hrw.org/distribute/qnkvudyifj