A Day in Luhansk: War's Crimes, Horrors & Uncertainties
© 2014 Tanya Lokshina / Human Rights Watch
The ugliness of war makes getting at the truth no easy matter. In the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the pro-Ukraine media is blaming all abuses on anti-Kiev insurgents and pro-Russia media is demonizing Ukrainian government forces. The intense information war, with the media and social networks spewing all sorts of horrific myths and falsehoods, has buried rather than clarified the truth in a calculated attempt to prove that this side is righteous and that side is evil.
So, if you want to find out what really happened, you need to be there, speak in detail to witnesses, carefully document casualties and destruction, examine shell entry points and fragments. When we read news reports about alleged civilian casualties from the July 2 aerial strikes in the Luhansk region of southeastern Ukraine, about 15 kilometers away from the Russian border, we hit the road straight away.
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