Monday, March 07, 2022

WAR CRIME TARGETING CIVILIANS
Photo and video shows Russian mortar strike that killed a Ukrainian family trying to escape the invasion
PUTIN'S ETHNIC CLEANSING

Sophia Ankel
Mon., March 7, 2022,

Screenshot of a video showing Russian shelling hitting fleeing civilians in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 6, 2022.Andriy Dubchak/Donbas Frontliner

Ukrainians who were trying to flee a town near Kyiv on Sunday were hit by a Russian mortar strike.

The shelling killed eight civilians, including a family who was found dead on the street, the NYT reported.

Journalists who were there captured the moment and its aftermath.

Photo and video show a Russian mortar strike that killed a young Ukrainian family trying to escape the violence on Sunday.

The attack took place in Irpin, a town northwest of the capital Kyiv.

The family was among a group of Ukrainians who were trying to flee Irpin after Russian forces advanced there, The New York Times reported.

The fleeing civilians, who were split up in groups, were running through the streets and attempting to cross a destroyed bridge to Kyiv when the shelling started, The Times reported.

Andriy Dubchak, a freelance journalist with the outlet Donbas Frontliner, filmed the moment the mortar struck the street that the civilians were on. (Warning: Readers may find the footage linked in this paragraph graphic.)

The video showed a man in the foreground speaking as a stream of civilians walked on a sidewalk in the background. Moments later, the mortar strikes the middle of the street, causing a fire, and the camera briefly goes dark before a cloud of dust appears.

As the dust settled, journalists can be heard reacting and Ukrainian troops can be seen hurrying to a group of people lying on the ground.

The Times later reported that they were a woman, her teenage son, her daughter, and their family friend. The report said the daughter appeared to be eight years old.

The Times also featured a photo of Ukrainian troops rushing to help the family on its Monday front page.



Lynsey Addario, a photojournalist who was on the scene working with The Times, said: "Soldiers rushed to help, but the woman and children were dead. A man traveling with them still had a pulse but was unconscious and severely wounded. He later died."

"Their luggage, a blue roller suitcase, and some backpacks was scattered about, along with a green carrying case for a small dog that was barking," she added.

A total of eight civilians, which included the family, died in the attack, The Guardian reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack in a Sunday night video message, saying: "They were just trying to get out of town. To escape. The whole family. How many such families have died in Ukraine? We will not forgive. We will not forget."

"We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war," he said.

Around 2,000 civilians evacuated from Irpin after Russian forces started pushing through the town over the weekend, police said Monday, The Guardian reported.

The towns of Irpin, Hostomel, and Bucha, which surround Kyiv, were all being targeted by Russians, The Times reported.

Monday marks the 12th day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said the would not target any civilians.

However, the United Nations has recorded more than 1,000 Ukrainian civilians who have been killed between the period of 4 a.m. on February 24 to midnight on March 4, Sky News reported.

Insider's live blog of Russia's invasion is covering developments as they happen.

A photo of Ukrainian civilians killed in a Russian mortar strike highlights the toll of war


The Boston Globe

Amanda Kaufman - 
FOTO © LYNSEY ADDARIO

A photo of a fleeing young family dead on a street outside Kyiv as a result of a Russian mortar strike has become a symbol of the plight of refugees and the toll the war has wreaked on Ukrainian civilians trying to reach safety.

Lynsey Addario, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, captured the photo for The New York Times on Sunday as a mother, her two children, and a family friend tried to reach an evacuation route into Kyiv, the Times reported.

In order to get to the route, civilians huddled under a destroyed bridge over the Irpin River before small groups decided to make a run for it to get to Kyiv, crossing about 100 yards of exposed street. According to a video of the blast shared by the Times, civilians were walking along the sidewalk of the street when a shell hit the center of the road, sending a cloud of smoke into the air and killing the family that was nearby. The Times reported that the children included a teenage boy and a girl who appeared to be about 8 years old.

The man who was traveling with the young family had a pulse when soldiers ran over to check on him, the Times reported, but he later died. A green case found near the family contained a dog, the Times reported, and barking could be heard in the video. The photo shows the soldiers huddled around the man as the young family is lying on the ground in their winter coats with backpacks on their bodies. A blue suitcase leans tilted on a curb next to where the mother is laying.

Addario, who has covered multiple wars and humanitarian crises, said in an interview with Times Radio, a radio station from the UK’s The Times and The Sunday Times, that on Sunday she was heading toward an evacuation route for civilians, a site she “didn’t really believe” that Russian troops would target.

“For me, this was outrageous,” Addario said. “I literally watched them zero in on civilians, a passageway that was known to be used for civilians so I think the importance of journalists on the ground here is more pronounced than ever for me, because we have [Russian President Vladimir] Putin saying he is not targeting civilians and I was there, and I witnessed it. We need these accounts public, we need people to see what’s happening, we need to show that the propaganda he’s saying is just not true.”

Addario said after she arrived to the route, she was standing behind a cement wall for cover while assessing the situation. Mortar sounds started coming in about 200 meters away from where she was, Addario said, but she assumed Russians were targeting an area nearby where the Ukrainian military was stationed. A security advisor suggested that they leave, but their car was near where the soldiers were positioned, so Addario said she didn’t want to run toward that area. The shells began coming in closer and closer to the civilians, Addario said, and the blast shown in the video landed 20 meters from where she was.

“We were very, very lucky,” Addario said. “We were in a sort of cement box so we hit the ground immediately.”


A video of the blast was captured by a freelance videographer traveling with the Times team. Warning: The video below contains graphic images.

The graphic image illustrated the devastation the war has created, and the photo ricocheted across the Internet and in international newspapers, allowing people who are not experiencing the conflict directly to viscerally understand its toll. Addario’s photo of the family was featured on the top third of the Times’ front page on Monday.



Such photos from journalists capturing the hardship of people fleeing armed conflict or humanitarian crises have become worldwide symbols of those plights, such as the photo of the body of a Syrian boy that was washed ashore in Turkey after his family tried to flee the war in 2015 and “The Napalm Girl,” the photo that captured the horror of children fleeing from a Napalm bombing during the Vietnam War in 1972.

On Instagram, Addario said her photo of the Ukrainian family captures “the brutal toll of war.”

“I’ve witnessed many horrors in the past twenty years of covering war, but the intentional targeting of children and women is pure evil,” she wrote.



The deaths come amid talks between Ukraine and Russia about the implementation of limited ceasefires and the establishment of “humanitarian corridors” to allow civilians in Ukraine to flee. Russian President Vladimir Putin denied in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron that Russian forces are targeting civilians, according to French officials, the Times reported. The United States and Ukraine have accused Putin of deliberately targeting them.

On Monday, Russia announced a new push for safe corridors for civilians in Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv, and Sumy, but some evacuation routes led to Russia and Belarus, a Russian-allied country, drawing criticism from Ukraine. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said after the talks that “there were some small positive shifts regarding logistics of humanitarian corridors.”

Material from Globe wire services was used in this report.

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