Shelling hospitals is a war crime without any statute of limitations — human rights defender spoke how russia is destroying Ukraine’s medical infrastructure

Valery Novikov, the head of the board of the Luhansk regional human rights center «Alternative», spoke about how Russia is destroying Ukraine’s medical infrastructure, disregarding the norms of international and humanitarian law.

Valery Novikov: We directly investigated health care facilities that are on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Health. We are talking about those institutions that provide medical services.

According to the information of the Ministry of Health as of July 6, the following were affected:

• 817 health care institutions;
• 122 institutions were destroyed without the possibility of further restoration;
• More than 200 emergency medical vehicles were damaged or captured;
• 481 pharmacies were damaged and 43 were destroyed;
• 14 medical workers died and 48 were injured;
• We have the following figures by region.

 

We have the following information by oblast:

Information on the Russian military shelling of health care facilities across Ukraine from the period of the 24^th of February to the 31^st of May 2022:

Table 1- Official statistics on the number of health care facilities shelled across various regions of Ukraine

Donetsk Oblast – 8

Zhytomyr Oblast – 3

Zaporizhya Oblast – 5

Kyiv and the Kyiv Oblast – 7

Luhansk Oblast – 14

Mykolaiv Oblast – 5

Sumy Oblast – 2

Kharkiv Oblast – 13

Kherson Oblast – 2

Chernihiv Oblast – 6

• The most recently updated figures show that the numbers have increased and continue increasing.

«Russia is specifically shelling medical facilities».

Valery Novikov: In 2016, we started documenting international crimes, which also include the shelling of critical infrastructure facilities and medical institutions. International criminal law protects these areas. They cannot be fired upon. If they are shelled, it becomes an international crime. There is no statute of limitations for such crimes. This means that even after 20-30 years, these criminal cases will not be closed. That is why we conducted the following investigations, for the purpose of recording and bringing the perpetrators to justice in the future.

While conducting this investigation, we saw that in fact, Russia is specifically targeting Ukraine’s healthcare system. This is done so that Ukraine cannot provide timely medical aid not only to wounded military personnel, but also to civilians.

All of this is a strong blow to the entire health care system. It will take us a long time to get out of this situation. We need financial support to restore infrastructure and equipment.

We must do everything possible to:

• collect all the information
• investigate at the national level
• punish the guilty

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