Comment by wrp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrp | Hacker News Reader

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From the report you linked:

During the entire conflict period, from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021, OHCHR recorded a total of 3,106 conflict-related civilian deaths (1,852 men, 1,072 women, 102 boys, 50 girls, and 30 adults whose sex is unknown). Taking into account the 298 deaths on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014, the total death toll of the conflict on civilians has reached at least 3,404. The number of injured civilians is estimated to exceed 7,000.

These monthly reports by the OHCHR give a breakdown of the specific causes and locations of casualties. From an earlier report:

During the last six months, from 1 October 2019 to 31 March 2020, 84.4 per cent of civilian casualties resulting from shelling and SALW fire were recorded in territory controlled by the self-proclaimed ‘republics’ (27: two killed and 25 injured), and 15.6 percent (five: one killed and four injured) in Government-controlled territory. (https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/conflict-related-civili...)

The bulk of civilian casualties since 2014 has been in the rebel regions and inflicted by Ukrainian government forces.

> From the report you linked

Thanks for citing the relevant part. It shows OP is clearly wrong about "14k civilians killed".

> These monthly reports by the OHCHR give a breakdown of the specific causes and locations of casualties. From an earlier report:

> The bulk of civilian casualties since 2014 has been in the rebel regions and inflicted by Ukrainian government forces.

Again, this is another misrepresentation of facts. You are quoting a single monthly report with 3 civilians killed (in total), and are attempting to mislead by 1) extrapolating it to the entire conflict since 2014 and 2) asserting the "bulk" of casualties to be inflicted by Ukraine (The UN report makes no such assertion whatsoever).

In 2014, frontlines were highly fluid - going that far back, the term "rebel regions" is essentially meaningless since the borders of these entities did at one point reach Slovyansk (a city that remains under Ukrainian control to this day).

> You are quoting a single monthly report..and are attempting to mislead by 1) extrapolating it to the entire conflict since 2014 and 2) asserting the "bulk" of casualties to be inflicted by Ukraine...

Instead of a representative month, let's look at annual statistics. This table is from the OHCHR document you linked (page 2). Even over a four year period, the numbers are about the same. In my opinion, 81.4% definitely counts as the "bulk" of something.

  Civilian casualties caused by active hostilities[1]
  in 2018-2021, per territory
  
           Rebel      Government  No Man's  Total
           Territory  Territory   Land
  2018     128        27          7         162
  2019     85         18          2         105
  2020     61         9           0         70
  2021     36         8           0         44
  Total    310        62          9         381
  Percent  81.4       16.3        2.3       100.0
  
  [1] shelling, SALW fire, and UAV strikes

There is a question of how representative these numbers are for the entire conflict, since the nature of the fighting changed after the Minsk agreements. From the same document (page 3), we see a drastic decline in deaths.

  Civilian deaths by year
  2014 -- 2084
  2015 -- 954
  2016 -- 112
  2017 -- 117
  2018 -- 55
  2019 -- 27
  2020 -- 26
  2021 -- 25

The decline after 2015 is due to the kinetic phase of the conflict ending around that time. Low-intensity mutual shelling was carried out afterwards for the whole duration of the conflict. The entire post-2015 period only accounts for 10.6% of all civilian deaths. The active phase of the Russian-backed insurrection was undeniably the most lethal & most destructive.

The imbalance in casualties after the frontlines were frozen is an interesting observation. The post-2015 lines of contact ran roughly along the edges of the capital cities of the self-proclaimed rebel republics, as both entities failed to secure more viable & defensible borders. On the other hand, there were no comparable government-held settlements anywhere near the line of contact. In this situation, any kind of fighting would more adversely effect the side with the disadvantageous LoCs.

According to your numbers, 310 civilians died in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine from 2018-2021. Obviously 310 too many, but civilian losses are unfortunately an ugly part of warfare, because war takes place where people live. And of course there are higher numbers of casualties in occupied territories, because that is what they are fighting about.

But to put that 310 number into perspective...

458 civilians were exhumed from mass-graves in Bucha in Ukraine. Many summarily executed (gunshots to the back of the head), with hands tied behind their backs, clear signs of torture etc etc.

That was just ONE village under Russian occupation. Just ONE. The same or similar happened many, many other places, most of them still in Russian-occupied territories, where the mass-graves have not yet been exhumed.

When one day Mariupol is liberated and the truth comes out about what there, it will make Bucha look like a school-yard argument.

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