Report the loss of civilian population, the destruction of housing and infrastructure as a result of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine
CO “Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group” (KHPG), a Ukrainian non-state non-profit human rights organization, presents this report, which contains various information about deceased and wounded civilians and the destructions of houses and infrastructure as a result of hostilities during armed conflict in the east of Ukraine in 2014–2018.
Section 2 “Introduction” contains short information about KHPG, expresses gratitude to the international charitable institutions which supported our efforts and partner organizations that participated in the collection of information.
Section 3 “Methodology” describes the kinds of the sources of information, methodology of monitoring visits to HS on the territory controlled by the government, interviewing of the victims of hostilities, methodology of collecting, verifying and summarizing the information concerning the losses of civilian population and attacks on civilian objects on the territory controlled by the government, methodology of collecting, verifying and summarizing of the similar information on the uncontrolled territory, as well as the DB of KHPG as an instrument of analysis of the collected data. The DB of KHPG contains more than 28 600 episodes with coded personal data concerning around 6.6 thousand civilian victims of the armed conflict and around 20.3 thousand of damaged and ruined residential buildings and infrastructure objects with identification of their addresses.
Section 4 analyzes the responses to the information requests sent to local authorities and self-government bodies, which evidence that there is no unified accounting for civilians who suffered because of armed conflict, and that various authorities operate completely different data, accordingly, there are no state mechanisms of compensation of damages.
Section 5 considers the events of the armed conflict in the geographic dimension—concerning the human settlements in which the residents suffered the most from hostilities. Annex 1 examines the events of the armed conflict in time dimension.
Section 6 and annexes 2, 3, 4 contain the information about deaths and injuries of civilian residents of HS near CL. Annexes 2 and 3 examine the events, that caused deaths and injuries of the civilians, accordingly, in seven districts—Stanitsa Luhanska, Popasna, Novoaydar, Maryinka, Volnovakha, Bakhmut, Yasinuvata, as well as the towns of Avdiivka and Mariupol, and contain the extracts from the interviews with the witnesses of events. Annex 4 is dedicated to deaths and injuries of the civilians in the same areas as a result of explosions of mines, tripwires and other explosive devices. The civilian victims of air raids and the people killed and injured on RB and during the crossing of CL are presented separately.
Section 7 shows the scale of losses of civilian population in time and geographic dimensions. According to the results of the monitoring of KHPG the losses are estimated approximately as 3500 deceased and 7000 wounded civilians.
Section 8 examines the placement of military units and conducting the hostilities from the territory of HS as one of the causes of significant losses of civilian population.
Section 9 contains various information concerning the destruction and damage to the residential buildings and the objects of infrastructure on the controlled and uncontrolled territory. Some examples of the destructions on the non-government controlled territory are given in Annex 5. Annexes 6 and 7 provide examples of seizure of educational and medical facilities and attacks on them. Annex 8 provides examples of destructions of bridges.
The monitoring of KHPG shows that around 40 thousand residential buildings and 10 thousand of objects of infrastructure were affected, including more than 26.2 thousand residential buildings and 7.4 thousand infrastructure objects in Donetsk region.
The results of the report are summarized as conclusions and recommendations to authorities.