Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ The Italian journalist Cristiano Tinazzi @tincazzi, who's been reporting from Ukraine, has posted a long and informative eyewitness testimony of her experiences in Ukraine in response to @amnesty's controversial report on Ukrainian military tactics. English translation below.

2/ From @tincazzi:
In June I was in #Mykolaiv, in the south of the country. Every day the Russians bombarded the neighbourhood where I was with artillery, missiles and cluster bombs (one exploded 300 metres from me).

3/ Then I moved 5 km away from the Russians and lived for about ten days in a village on the #Dnipro river. Same situation. Constant Russian shelling of the village. The Ukrainian artillery was not in the village. It was far away.

4/ In those days Amnesty contacted me on Facebook to ask me about the situation. I gave them my Ukrainian phone number. Nothing. I contacted the person again, he read and didn't even reply. Then that report comes out. Totally decontextualised from the ongoing conflict.

5/ I read it in good faith and say to myself, well sure, I also slept in a former school where there was a battalion. But there were no armoured vehicles or artillery pieces. A place to sleep, take turns from the front and feed hundreds of soldiers.

6/ One day we evacuated. The commander had received an intelligence report about a potential Russian bombing of the facility and evacuated the building for fear that civilians might be involved in the vicinity, as well as his soldiers.

7/ Then I wonder, and I will see this several times with my own eyes: in the disputed villages on the front line, in the grey zone, as is often the case, where a large part of the population has left, where the fuck do the soldiers sleep?

8/ In a barracks that doesn't exist and which would 100% be bombed immediately? On the ground in the fields? How do they feed them? It's obvious that if you move from village to village or town to town you use suitable facilities, be they private homes or public buildings.

9/ But contrary to what Amnesty says in that report I didn't see any shooting and I didn't see artillery being used on populated areas even where the inhabitants didn't want to leave.

10/ And I would have kicked their asses and taken them away if men had died bringing them food and aid because of them, but despite this, the Ukrainians were risking their lives to bring aid with volunteers and not bombing the area.

11/ In the villages and countryside there is not much: the school and the cultural centre, shops. And sometimes the 'commune' building. Full stop. There is not a fucking thing other than businesses and houses. And the Russians often know everything, who is where and how.

12/ I could tell dozens and dozens of these stories I experienced first-hand in almost four months of frontline and thousands of kilometres travelled across the country.

13/ Then I reread the Amnesty report again in good faith and I wonder where those people live who have drafted with 4 testimonies [and] with absurd statements a conflict involving 40 million people.

14/ Because the cities have become fortifications and house-to-house combat theatres, the cities have also become fortresses because the citizens, the military and civilian volunteers, the soldiers of their country they are defending have turned them into such.

15/ Because they are resisters, not aggressors, because there is a military invasion and there is often no clear separation between civilians and military.

16/ Volunteer centres collect aid for fighters and civilians. So? Are they a target? No, they are not and this in no way justifies bombing entire towns and villages indiscriminately as the Russians do.

17/ And this below is the result of Amnesty's report, a report without context which has seen the Ukrainian section of the NGO parade itself and created disagreements in the Italian section, and which has shown unethical and strongly ideologised behaviour in the past. /end

Should be 'his' – sorry! Where's the edit button already, @Twitter? 😤

(Original thread below.)

https://twitter.com/tincazzi/status/1555618244400189442?t=5_KjQDpfEstS9H6QiNLYIA&s=19