Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Global Rights Compliance’s (GRC) Starvation Mobile Justice Team (SMJT) has been documenting Russian forces’ use of starvation tactics, attacks on critical infrastructure, and the weaponisation of food and other objects indispensable to the survival of Ukraine’s civilian population.
The SMJT, along with its open-source intelligence (OSINT) partners, has conducted dedicated investigations into specific incidents and patterns of attacks which strongly suggest the use by Russian and affiliated forces of starvation-related tactics against Ukrainian civilians during the conduct of hostilities. With Russia reverting to, and indeed escalating, the use of these tactics for a third winter in a row, through routine and ongoing attacks against critical infrastructure that continue to severely impact civilians’ daily lives, affecting access to heat, electricity, water supply and sanitation, food storage, support to Ukrainian investigative and prosecutorial authorities remains all the more critical.
At the conclusion of this two-year investigation, the SMJT is proud to release the high-level findings of its investigations into the siege of Mariupol, an attack on a bread queue in the city of Chernihiv, the attack on the Kakhovka Dam, the theft and seizure of Ukrainian grain in Russian-occupied territories of Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, and the concomitant kinetic attacks against grain and port-related infrastructure in Ukraine. The StoryMap illustrates each chapter through the display of visual content, video, satellite imagery, and other digital data as the basis of its findings.
The SMJT’s findings concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that there exists a broader, ongoing, and deliberate pattern of attacks against civilian objects, critical infrastructure, and other indispensable objects, with the aim of deliberately starving, terrorising and/or collectively punishing Ukrainian civilians. These attacks undermine the very fabric and foundations of Ukrainian communities. This StoryMap reiterates GRC’s continued call for accountability for the use of starvation as a method of warfare, and commitment to dedicating its expertise to achieve justice for Ukrainian civilians.
Explore the StoryMap via the link.
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As a first-of-its-kind initiative, GRC, as a leading member of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA), created the Mobile Justice Teams to support the Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG) and Regional Prosecuting Offices (RPOs) on the ground to investigate and prosecute conflict-related crimes in line with international best practices and standards.
In response to the prevalence of attacks on critical civilian infrastructure and other essential commodities, GRC created a Starvation MJT (SMJT), with the generous support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The SMJT is composed of international and Ukrainian lawyers and investigators with starvation expertise, working together with two leading OSINT providers, Intelligence Management Services Limited (IMSL) and the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), to conduct advanced and innovative fusion investigations and provide technical assistance to the OPG, RPOs and other international accountability mechanisms.
