Human rights groups criticized some Ukrainian war actions. Experts say they should be taken seriously

More than five months after Russia's invasion began, Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office claims to be investigating more than 26,000 alleged Russian war crimes. But it's unclear to what extent Ukraine is probing any actions of its own armed forces that may have violated international laws or put civilians in harm's way. 

There is plenty of evidence linking Russian forces to atrocities and apparent war crimes in Ukraine, including mass killings, indiscriminate attacks, using rape as weapon of war, and the alleged forced deportations of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from their country. 

Though the scale of Russia's brutality in Ukraine is great, recent reports from Amnesty International, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Human Rights Watch — have also raised concerns about the conduct of Ukrainian forces. This includes the mistreatment of prisoners of war, extrajudicial punishment, and the use of residential areas for military operations, putting civilians directly in the line of fire. 

On Thursday, Amnesty International's Secretary General Agnès Callamard said there is "a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk" and "being in a defensive position" is not an exemption from following the rules of war.

Amnesty's report caused the organization's country director in Ukraine, Oksana Pokalchuk, to resign on Friday. 

She said Amnesty unwittingly "created material that sounded like support for Russian narratives of the invasion. In an effort to protect civilians, this study became a tool of Russian propaganda."

Despite controversies around recent reporting, human rights experts say it's important for Ukraine to pursue any violations of international law from its forces for the sake of accountability — and to prevent Kyiv from giving Moscow fodder to justify its bloody invasion.

"Even in the most asymmetrical wars, there's never one fully clean side," said Mark Kersten, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley in B.C. and a senior consultant at the Wayamo Foundation, a German non-profit organization promoting justice for international crimes. 

Though Kersten said Ukraine is undeniably the victim of Russian aggression, he told CBC it should take any "credible allegations" against its military and other armed factions seriously, if it wants to maintain its "moral upper ground with respect to international law." 

Both Russia and Ukraine are signatories to treaties that enshrine human rights in armed conflict and govern the rules of war. Among them are the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which establish standards for the humane treatment of civilians and prisoners of war.

Russian forces have been widely accused of violating international laws that oblige them to minimize civilian deaths. But regardless of whether their adversaries are following the rules of war, Ukrainian forces are also legally bound to limit harm to civilians, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior crisis and conflict researcher Belkis Wille.

In a report released in July, Human Rights Watch sounded the alarm about multiple incidents in which Ukrainian and Russian forces endangered civilians by establishing military operations in residential areas or public facilities such as schools or health centres without taking appropriate steps to protect civilians or move them to safety. 

One incident involving Ukrainian forces probed by HRW took place in the village of Yakovlivka. The report, which Wille authored, detailed how fighters arrived shortly after Russia invaded the country and set up in a schoolhouse. Days later, an attack on the area killed four civilians and wounded 10 others. 

OHCHR also warned about military operations set up in civilian facilities, and the potential use of human shields. Its report, released in June, placed blame on both Russia and Ukraine for an attack on a nursing home in the Luhansk region, in the first weeks of the conflict. Dozens of "vulnerable civilians" are believed to have been killed after Ukrainian forces set up inside the strategically located facility. Staff and residents were not moved to safety before Russian-affiliated forces attacked, OHCHR reported.