Source: Forbes

There are rules when it comes to war. Russia just isn’t following them.

Video and photographs from the besieged port city of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine have seared images into the global consciousness of pregnant women evacuating a bombed hospital – one woman being carried through the rubble on a stretcher, her pelvis bloodied; another woman walking down the stairs of the destroyed building in polka dot pajamas with cuts and bruises on her face.

Attacks on healthcare facilities, medical transport and patients are recognized as violations of international humanitarian law that has been codified in treaties and reaffirmed in U.N. resolutions that Russia itself has signed. The U.N. has so far recorded 847 civilian deaths and 1,399 injuries since the war began on February 24, though the actual numbers are expected to be significantly higher. The World Health Organization has confirmed 46 attacks on hospitals and medical transport units, while the Ukrainian Ministry of Health puts the number above 60. These attacks, among other actions, led President Joe Biden to call Russia’s president Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” last week, while the Russian government has falsely claimed the maternity hospital was taken over by military radicals.