People receive food from AFAT – Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency on November 28, 2022 in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
Jeff J Mitchell | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Russian occupying forces in Ukraine have employed starvation tactics on civilians by targeting food lines, agricultural harvests and water infrastructure, in response to a team of international lawyers helping Kyiv investigate alleged war crimes.
The investigators focused their efforts on town of Chernihiv, which was under siege for slightly over two months before Russian troops were expelled from the northern Ukrainian city.
Catriona Murdoch, a lawyer and expert in starvation-related crimes, described Chernihiv because the “tip of the iceberg in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s calculated plan to terrorize, subjugate and kill Ukrainian people.”
The brand new report, which took six months to assemble and was released Thursday, details routine Russian strikes in concentrated areas where civilians gathered to receive humanitarian aid and food supplies.
“I believe our conclusion at this point is that we imagine that this will surely constitute a violation of international humanitarian law,” Murdoch, partner and head of starvation portfolio at international human rights law firm, Global Rights Compliance, told CNBC.
“The more information now we have gathered and analyzed, the more we will say with confidence,” added Murdoch, who leads a Mobile Justice Team, a bunch of international lawyers and investigators supporting the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general in starvation crimes.
Mobile Justice Teams are one component of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, which is funded by the U.S. State Department, European Union and the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
The Kremlin has previously denied that its forces commit war crimes or deliberately goal civilians and related critical infrastructure. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.
Read more: At the least 20 torture centers in Kherson were directly financed by the Kremlin, international lawyers say in a recent report
The report details one such incident on the morning of March 16, 2022, outside a supermarket, which resulted within the deaths of at the very least 20 civilians.
In accordance with the report, about 90 people were waiting in line near the Soyuz food market when an explosive with a large impact range was detonated. Soyuz, in response to the lawyers, was generally known as a spot to gather bread deliveries if the shop was closed.
The lawyers identified heavy artillery weapon systems that might have been utilized in the Soyuz attack and located evidence that Russian drones were operating in the world and will have provided imagery to direct Russian fire.
Subsequent attacks occurred at nearby hospitals “substantially impacting power supplies and thus creating difficult circumstances to treat those injured or dying,” in response to the report.
The lawyers and investigators also found that infrastructure related to Chernihiv’s water supply was targeted by aerial bombing.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the investigators found that Russian forces prioritized stealing harvests and destroying agricultural machinery.
Murdoch, who recently returned from Chernihiv, added that she was confident that the perpetrators may be identified.