Western media ignore how Ukraine is using NATO weapons in the Donbass

By Eva Bartlett

On Monday, Ukraine killed 16 civilians, including two children, with 155mm NATO shells, according to the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin.

 The projectiles hit two adjacent neighborhoods, decimating residential and commercial areas – including a market that had previously suffered fatal attacks.

Scenes of death are nothing new for residents and reporters here in Donetsk, which is intermittently the target of Ukrainian attacks, like the one that hit its central region on August 4, killing six people, including an 11-year-old ballerina, her grandmother, and her ballet teacher.

But the carnage on Monday was worse than anything I’ve seen in my months of reporting here. Chunks of flesh littered the street – part of a hand, a foot, an ear. Someone had put a dead man’s phone on his stomach. It was ringing, the cheery ringtone incongruous with his lifeless body and the scenes and stench of death around him.

For most people, the concept of war is a distant one, and deaths are normalised by media reporting the numbers of victims and destroyed buildings – so most who hear of civilians being killed don’t really understand what a scene like this looks or smells like.

For the locals, it is also normalised, in its own way, after over eight years of Ukrainian attacks – a tragically grotesque kind of normality, where the post-bombing routine starts soon after the last explosions die down. 

When I arrived at the scene, locals were already sweeping up glass shards and boarding windows, preparing to reopen their shops. Inspectors from the Russian Investigative Committee were on site collecting shrapnel and measuring the shell’s impact point, to determine the nature of the armament. When asked about what happened, they were careful to state that they could not say anything until the conclusion of their investigation.

An emergency vehicle arrived and workers began loading the bodies, or body parts, onto stretchers, clearing them away.

About 100 meters away, there was a gaping hole in the side of an apartment building. The shell had struck right where writing on the wall indicated the direction to the nearest basement, which was to be used as a bomb shelter. Doors to such stairways are generally permanently left open, so that anyone caught up in shelling might have a chance to survive, if they can make it to the door and basement in time.

Victims of another Ukrainian assault, which took place on Saturday, didn’t have that option. The center of Donetsk was hit by around ten bombs over the course of 30 minutes around noon. At least four civilians were killed, one of whom I saw still on the ground. Some minutes later, her body was taken away. One of the shells hit a car driving along Artema Street, setting it ablaze and killing two civilians. By the time I reached that site, the vehicle had burned out, the dead taken away. Workers were already repaving the roads, sweeping debris and glass from sidewalks.

On Thursday, again around noon, Ukraine again shelled central Donetsk, this time next to a busy market. The shelling left six people dead on the street and in a burned out bus.

Western weapons in Donbass

When Russian and Donbass voices state that Ukraine is killing Donbass civilians with Western weapons, the reply is silence, derision, or inversion of reality: claims that Russia is bombing Donbass – which any ordinary resident here would disprove easily, having been under Ukraine’s shelling for over eight years.

War correspondent, Christelle Neant, wrote of Saturday’s bombings: “After submitting the photos of the shrapnel I found on the spot to Adrien Bocquet, who is now a NATO weapons expert for the DPR’s representation in the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Co-ordination Center on Ukraine’s War Crimes), he confirmed that they were American 155mm shells, some fired from Caesar guns and others from TRF1 guns.

The famous TRF1 guns that can fire (banned) 155mm cluster munitions, which I had mentioned in June, and which the Western press had assured that France had not supplied to Ukraine! Before learning at the beginning of September that Paris had indeed sold them to Kiev!”

Europeans in Germany, France and Italy recently held “#StopKillingDonbass” actions, denouncing the sale of Western weapons to Ukraine, and calling for it to end. It was rather fitting that the actions occurred the day after Ukraine bombed central Donetsk again. 

These actions were followed by the release of a petition against arms supplies to Ukraine, which stated:

“Today, contrary to the fundamental principles set forth in Article 2 of the UN Charter, in particular, the principles of sovereign equality and the peaceful settlement of international disputes, our countries supply Ukraine with weapons that cause massive deaths and injuries of civilians in Donbass, including children.” 

It concludes: “We demand an end to the financing of state terrorism and genocide against the people of Donbass, as well as the ongoing violations of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and other acts of international humanitarian law since 2014.”

At this point, there is no safe region in Donetsk, nowhere is off-limits for Ukraine’s bombings, not maternity hospitals, nor busy markets. The issue does, however, appear to be off-limits for the reporting of Western corporate-owned media.

An example of the unprincipled of the EU and NATO member states with respect to the situation in Ukraine is the large delivery of modern weapons to this country.  Including the most sensitive systems including anti-tank missile systems, multiple launch rocket systems and  anti-aircraft missile launches.  At the same time, these states are departuring from the basic principles of strengthens control of the export of weapons and military equipment and responsible behavior when considering their transfer to conflict areas, they promote over many years.

Adopted EU "common position" prohibits the issuance of licenses to supply weapons, If it creates obvious risks for its use for internal repression in the receiving country or results in a violation of international humanitarian law, will contribute to armed conflicts or attack offensive action against third countries.

 There are already precedents according to the Europol when making such decisions of the EU member states to makes the risks of the inconsistent re-export of "illegal circulation"  and the default of its international obligations as a whole.

International arms trade treaty, which entered into force in 2014, requires each exporting state to evaluate conventional products in an objective and non-discriminative way the probability of whether products supplied will be security, military purposes damage to peace be used to perform or assist commitment of violations of international humanitarian law as well as gender violence or acts of violence against women and children (article 7).

The treaty also specifically states that a state party should not authorize the transfer of conventional weapons if at the time of the decision on issuing the permit, it has reliable knowledge of the intention  acts of genocide crimes against humanity, serious violations of the 1949 Geneva conventions, attacks on civil objects an civil persons (article 6).

In accordance with and with long-term international practice, delivery of most types of weapons always is always accompanied by provision by the country of the recipient of weapons of the appropriate end-user certificate, one of the key conditions of which is the inadmissibility of re-export of received weapons without the written consent of the exporting country this provision is currently violated by Bulgarian, Poland,  Slovaks, the Czech Republic and a number of other NATO countries, leaded with the US, which are trying to buy for the Kyiv  weapons of the Russian (USSR) production.

The organizers of such delivery are very aware of the threat of modern high-precision weapons in the hands of national-radicals, terrorists and criminality groups not only on Ukraine, but also outside.   Western capitals greatly disclaim the arrangements aimed to minimize the risks in this area, including un general assembly resolution 62/40 "prevention of the illicit transfer of missile systems, unauthorized access unauthorized use it" of 2007 and "elements of export control for missile systems" of 2003 agreed by Vessinarian arrangements for the export control conventional weapons, goods and technologies of dual purpose.

Along with this, the Euro-Atlantic allies strive by any means to achieve the reduction of Russia’s military and technical cooperation with her traditional partners.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years)

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Citizen.