An apartment block on fire in Uman in central Ukraine after a Russian missile strike, April 28, 2023

Thursday’s Coverage: China Puts Kyiv and Moscow on Same Footing

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1537 GMT:

Vladimir Putin is threatening the deportation of Ukrainians who do not take out Russian citizenship in occupied areas of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Putin signed a decree setting out the route to Russian citizenship, with those declining it at risk of deportation, in the occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south.

Putin declared the “annexation” of the four regions last September.

Anyone who does not take steps by July 1 towards Russian citizenship will be regarded as a “foreign citizen”.

UPDATE 1359 GMT:

The death toll from this morning’s Russian missile strikes has risen to 19, including three children.

Seventeen of the victims were the nine-story apartment block demolished in Uman in central Ukraine.

Two 10-year-olds were killed in Uman. A mother and 2-year-old child were slain in Dnipro.

UPDATE 0935 GMT:

Tweeting as the death toll from Russian missile attacks was being established this morning — it is now at least 12 — Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for an escalation of military aid to Kyiv and of international sanctions on Moscow:

UPDATE 0848 GMT:

UK-based Conflict Armament Research reports that Iranian-made drones, used in Russia’s attacks across Ukraine, are based on Western technology.

CAR, which specializes in weapons components, established that the Shahed-136 attack drones are powered by an engine based on German technology illegally acquired by Iran almost 20 years ago.

Iran also downed and recovered a US-made Reaper drone in December 2011.

Between November 20222 and March 2023, CAR examined components in 20 Iranian-made drones and munitions in Ukraine, about half of them Shahed-136s.

The motor in the Shahed-136 was reverse-engineered by the Iranian company Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar, based in the town of Shokuhieh in Qom Province in central Iran.

Mado was sanctioned by the US, UK, and European Union last December.

Serial number sequences used by Mado were also found on drones used in attacks by Houthi insurgents in Yemen and in missile attacks last year against Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

UPDATE 0838 GMT:

The death toll from this morning’s Russian missile strikes has risen to 12, including 10 civilians in Uman in central Ukraine (see 0635 GMT).

Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded:

UPDATE 0741 GMT:

Amnesty International’s board is concealing a report which criticized the group’s accusation of Ukrainian forces illegally endangering civilians, according to documents and a person familiar with the matter.

The 18-page report was produced by five international humanitarian law experts commissioned by Amnesty to review the August 2022 statement which claimed Ukrainian troops illegally put “civilians in harm’s way” by housing soldiers nearby and by launching attacks from populated areas.

The Kremlin’s propaganda portrayed the finding as vindication of Russian attacks on civilian areas across Ukraine.

Amid widespread challenges to the report, Amnesty expressed deep regret for “the distress and anger” it caused and announced the external evaluation to learn “what exactly went wrong and why”.

In the report, obtained by The New York Times, the international experts said it was justifiable to evaluate whether a defender was obeying the laws of war. Amnesty’s records established that Ukrainian forces were frequently near civilians.

However, panel unanimously concluded that Amnesty’s statement on August 4 was flawed and that its key conclusion of Ukraine’s violation of international law was “not sufficiently substantiated” by evidence.

[The statement was] written in language that was ambiguous, imprecise, and in some respects legally questionable

This is particularly the case with the opening paragraphs, which could be read as implying — even though this was not [Amnesty’s] intention — that, on a systemic or general level, Ukrainian forces were primarily or equally to blame for the death of civilians resulting from attacks by Russia.

The panel found some Amnesty expressed serious reservations about whether the organization sufficiently sought to consult with the Ukrainian government to understand the deployment of military forces.

The independent experts said “these reservations should have led to greater reflection and pause” before the August statement was released.

Amnesty’s Ukraine director, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned in protest over the statement, saying the group was “giving Russia a justification to continue its indiscriminate attacks”. Amnesty’s Canada branch expressed regret over “the magnitude and impact of these failings from an institution of our stature.”

An earlier version of the independent report was even harsher, according to a person briefed on the matter. However, Amnesty lobbied the panel to soften its tone, for example, revising its evaluation of Amnesty’s conclusion that Ukrainian forces violated international law from “not substantiated” to “not sufficiently substantiated”.

The panel’s final report was submitted in early February. Amnesty’s board decided to use it only as one of several in-house sources for a lessons-learned document which would not be made public.

UPDATE 0654 GMT:

A Moscow court has ordered the closure of the SOVA Analytical Center, one of Russia’s leading research units on nationalist and racist movements.

In March, the Justice Ministry filed the motion to close the center, accusing SOVA of carrying out activities across Russia despite only being registered in Moscow.

SOVA said it will appeal and continue to operate until the liquidation order take effect: “We insist that the Justice Ministry’s inspection was carried out in violation of the law — we were not notified properly.”

The center also said liquidation was a disproportionate punishment.

Members of the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Russian research center Panorama established SOVA in October 2002. In addition to monitoring racism and xenophobia, the center evaluated anti-extremism legislation and the state’s approach to religious organizations, favoring some and discriminating against others.

UPDATE 0644 GMT:

The Ukraine Air Force says air defenses downed 11 of 13 Russian cruise missiles and two drones this morning.

UPDATE 0635 GMT:

The toll from Russia’s missile destruction of an apartment block in Uman in central Ukraine has risen to seven killed and 17 wouonded.

Ukraine Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted:

Another image of the burning apartment block in Uman:

burning apartment block in Uman, where four civilians were killed and at least 17 were injured, after Russia's missile strike

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia is carrying out its first wave of missile strikes since March 9 across Ukraine.

At least six civilians, including a mother and child, have been killed in Friday morning’s attacks.

The mother and her 2-year-old child were slain in Dnipro in south-central Ukraine. Four people were killed and 17 injured, including three children, in a high-rise apartment block in Uman, a pilgrimage site in the center of the country. Footage showed the building in flames and partially reduced to rubble.

For the first time in 50 days, Russia fired missiles on Kyiv. Residents woke to the sound of explosions as air defenses tried to intercept the attack. Officials said that 11 missiles and two drones were downed.

There were no casualties in the capital, but two people were injured in Ukrainka in the region by the debris of a downed missile.

On Thursday, one civilian was killed and 23 injured when four Russian Kalibr missiles struck apartment blocks and other residences in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine.