International human rights bodies confirm Russia’s White Book reports on Ukrainian abuse

International organizations have confirmed the reports contained in the Russian White Book listing the human rights violations by Kiev troops in Eastern Ukraine, says the Russian Foreign Ministry’s top human rights official.

“For the first time Human Rights Watch clearly recognized that the Ukrainian military are using multiple-launch missile systems and banned weapons against civilians in Donbass. This confirms the data contained in the White Book released by the Russian Foreign Ministry,” Foreign Ministry’s plenipotentiary for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, Konstantin Dolgov told a news conference in Moscow. “Rights activists must put pressure on the West and on Kiev authorities to prevent further crimes,” the official added.

The conference was to mark the publication of the third edition of the White Book. The updated edition contains documented proof of new crimes and abuses, in particular those connected with the strategy of “social and economic strangling” of the eastern republics by the Kiev regime.

Earlier this week the Human Rights Watch group said Kiev had failed to investigate its army’s use of prohibited cluster bombs against civilians and recommended the International Criminal Court be invited to investigate.

Dolgov said the White Book was a project that would meet strong opposition “from the Kiev authorities and from the Western countries where the double standard policy has become some sort of domestic brand.”

The main objective of the White Book is to provide the international community with facts and draw additional attention to human rights violations to such bodies as the UN, OSCE and the Council of Europe. The most important thing is to start an independent and unbiased probe into all the crimes committed against civilians in Ukraine, the Russian diplomat said.

The book has been amended with reports on the shelling of Donetsk residential districts, on the deaths of children, on mass civilian graves, on Kiev’s troops deliberately targeting the civilian infrastructure and on the contradictions surrounding the downing of the Malaysian airliner.

It also gives updated casualty figures, with 4,000 confirmed killed, and 9,000 wounded since the beginning of the conflict. Many of the victims are women and children, elderly people and disabled persons, the Russian report reads.

The original White Book published in May and updated in July was compiled on the basis of reports from Russian, Ukrainian and international mass media as well as interviews by Russian NGOs of victims. It describes the abuse of law, use of torture, inhuman treatment and other human rights violations in Ukraine from the end of November 2013 to the end of March 2014. According to the authors, the aim of the document is “to focus on facts which the international community and key international human rights bodies have not shown proper and impartial attention to.”

After the first publication a group of Russian rights activists initiated a petition aimed at bringing the current Kiev authorities to account for creating the conditions that led to the mass murder of civilians and other violations.