If you can’t see it due to a paywall use this website. Here are some quotes if you don’t have time
“Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs. Virtually every neighborhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.”
“But to the extent that Ukraine brings the battlefield to the civilian neighborhoods, it increases the danger to civilians.” -William Schabas an international law professor at Middlesex University of London
“If they don’t do that, that is a violation of the laws of war,” he added. “Because what they are doing is they are putting civilians at risk. Because all that military equipment are legitimate targets.”
Moreover, [Alexei Arestovich, adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] argued that international humanitarian laws or the laws of war don’t apply in this conflict because “the main task of Putin’s military campaign is the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.” He said Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied Ukraine’s existence as an independent nation.
“Ukraine cannot use civilian neighborhoods as ‘human shields,’” said Schabas,
the laws of war were, genuinely, drafted to keep war fair and reduce the human suffering that’s inherent to conflicts… they always apply regardless of the justifications for the violence, there is never a time when a war crime is excused in the eyes of the law. (other than, you know, NATO war crimes). You’d think an adviser of the president would be aware of that, or at least not directly admit to the war crimes being supported/ordered by the legal government of Ukraine.
-Alexei Arestovich