Ukraine’s Prosecutor has initiated an investigation after evidence emerged that the Russians had used a 13-year-old girl and her parents as human shields as they carried out an attack in the besieged Donetsk oblast city of Pokrovsk. This is the second time in less than two months that the Russian invaders are believed to have used children as human shields, with the little girl in late September 2025 having almost certainly first witnessed her parents being gunned down.
On 18 November, Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] made public an intercepted message, believed to have been from mid-afternoon on 10 November. On this, the commander of a Russian unit appears to be telling his subordinates to advance, with the 13-year-old girl and a couple, presumably her parents, in front of them as they try to ‘clear out’ buildings. Although the Russians do not use the term ‘human shield’, their aim is clearly to use the civilians in this way, which is as the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office stresses, a violation of international humanitarian law. According to initial investigation, the Russian unit in question was the First motor rifle battalion of the 506th Motor Rifle Regiment which was attacking the south-eastern outskirts of Pokrovsk. The criminal proceedings are under Article 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code (war crimes).
As reported, on 24 September 2025, Ukraine’s Third Army Corps posted video footage and an intercepted message from the commander (call-name ‘Bali’) to the Russian fighters carrying out an attack near the village of Shandryholove in Donetsk oblast. ‘Bali’ can be heard telling his subordinates to be ready to act quickly and to kill everybody. «Collect your things, check your machine guns, prepare the grenades. I’ll explain the plan of action. You’ll have to kill people, to kill everybody without exception. Everybody. Without exception. Well, not counting children. All of those there have nothing to do with us.” You can then hear Russian voices shouting to “eliminate all” [the Russian is worse: “всех в расход”], to storm the buildings and get inside quickly. The Russians seized a young girl, seemingly after killing her parents, and used her as cover.
The first reports of civilians being used as human shields date back to 2014. In Kramatorsk (Donetsk oblast), for example, women were seen in a video telling armed Russian or Russian-controlled militants to get out of their street and stop using women and children as human shields. Although the video is no longer available, it was widely reported at the time, with the brave women themselves forced to flee as a result.
In 2019, Ukrainian human rights groups and the Crimean Prosecutor passed information to the International Criminal Court about Russia’s use of the civilian population as human shields during its invasion and annexation of Crimea (details here).
The situation became much worse following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with the Russian invaders constantly reported to have used either civilians or Ukrainian prisoners of war as human shields.
For 27 days in March 2022, the Russian invaders used 369 residents of the Chernihiv oblast village of Yahidne, including many children, as human shields, with ten residents dying. The civilians were imprisoned in horrifically overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in the school basement, with the Russians using the upper floors as their command point while occupying the village.
During Russia’s forced withdrawal from Kherson in the right bank of the Dnipro to still occupied territory on the left bank, the Russians forcibly took civilians with them. Oleksandr Pavlichenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, was blunt in calling this a war crime, with the civilians clearly intended as human shields to protect the Russian invaders as they withdrew.
In its first report, published in October 2022, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine documented a huge number of crimes committed during the first months of the full-scale invasion, including the use of civilians as human shields and the shooting of civilians who were attempting to flee. The Commission “found that in several cases, Russian armed forces appear to have deliberately positioned their troops or equipment in residential areas or near civilians to reduce the likelihood of attacks. Russian armed forces also forced civilians to remain inside or in proximity of their positions, exposing them to significant risk. “
In late June 2023, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was reported as having added Russia’s armed forces to a global list of offenders over crimes in Ukraine against children, and civilian targets. At the time, Russia was accused of killing 136 children and maiming 518 in 2022 alone, of carrying out 480 attacks on schools and hospitals, and of having used 91 children as human shields.
The number of victims, including among children, has risen massively since then. In 2025, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine condemned the scale of attacks on civilians, including through drone attacks both in Kherson oblast, and across around 300 kilometres along the right bank of the Dnipro, as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
