I am not a lawyer, and doubly so when it comes to international law. But what Ukraine was doing in these operations might, might constitute a war crime, since this is transporting materiel and launching an attack from trucks that are driven by enemy civilians. That’s pretty close to a human shield. I am not sure if trickery, as opposed to coercion, makes a difference when it comes to these things, and also, for them to be human shields someone has to figure out there’s a target there in the first place.
I’m not saying this to demean the operation, it was brilliant. But international law is complicated, so I’m sure there’s some war crimes to be found when you dig deep enough.
So TL;DR, no, this is legitimate deception, as long as it’s not coming from anything that pretends to be humanitarian aid or other protected status
The only potentially war-crime part is making Russian civilians unwitting accomplices and potential targets.
That’s no war-crime. That is Kremlin against their own people (murder is not war crime…)
I am not a lawyer, and doubly so when it comes to international law. But what Ukraine was doing in these operations might, might constitute a war crime, since this is transporting materiel and launching an attack from trucks that are driven by enemy civilians. That’s pretty close to a human shield. I am not sure if trickery, as opposed to coercion, makes a difference when it comes to these things, and also, for them to be human shields someone has to figure out there’s a target there in the first place.
When Russia is, y’know, just straight up using human shields: https://lieber.westpoint.edu/weaponizing-civilians-human-shields-ukraine/
I’m not saying this to demean the operation, it was brilliant. But international law is complicated, so I’m sure there’s some war crimes to be found when you dig deep enough.
Слава Україні!