The head of Amnesty International's Ukraine office has resigned, accusing the rights watchdog of parroting Kremlin propaganda in a report that criticized Kyiv's military response to Russia's unprovoked invasion.
Amnesty sparked outrage in Ukraine with the publication of a report on August 4 that accused Kyiv's forces of endangering civilians by basing themselves in residential buildings, schools, and hospitals.
"If you don't live in a country invaded by occupiers who are tearing it to pieces, you probably don't understand what it's like to condemn an army of defenders," Oksana Pokalchuk said on Facebook, announcing her resignation late on August 5.
"And there are no words in any language that can convey this to someone who has not experienced this pain."
Pokalchuk said she had tried to warn Amnesty's senior leadership that the report was one-sided and failed to properly take into account the Ukrainian position, but she was ignored.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard responded to Pokalchuk's resignation, saying: "Oksana has been a valued member of Amnesty staff and has led the Amnesty International Ukraine office for seven years with many significant human rights successes.
"We are sorry to hear that she is leaving the organization, but we respect her decision and wish her well," Callamard said.
Amnesty says it contacted defense officials in Kyiv with its findings on July 29, but had not received a response by the time of publication -- but Pokalchuk argued that this wasn't nearly enough notice.
"As a result, the organization unintentionally put out a statement that sounded like support for Russian narratives. Striving to protect civilians, this research instead became a tool of Russian propaganda."
Amnesty listed incidents in which Ukrainian forces appeared to have exposed civilians to danger in 19 towns and villages in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolayiv regions.
"We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas," Amnesty chief Callamard said.
"Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law."
Ukraine's government pushed back hard against the report, which the Kremlin and Russian media have already quoted extensively.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba branding the allegations "unfair" and Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov called the report a "perversion."
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the rights group had tried to "amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim."
"If someone makes a report in which the victim and the aggressor are supposedly equal in some way, if some data about the victim is analyzed, and the aggressor's actions at the same time is ignored, then this cannot be tolerated," he said.
Callamard tweeted later on August 4, saying that Ukrainian and Russian "social media mobs and trolls" were attacking Amnesty International.
"This is called war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation. This won't dent our impartiality and won't change the facts," she said.