Nicolas Cinquini

In the night of July 30-31, 2022, the Ukrainian forces display a highly crooked illustration of war crime and terrorism. They scatter PFM-1 Lepestok (petal) anti-personnel land mines across residential neighborhoods of downtown Donetsk, capital of the eponymous Russian-speaking separatist People’s Republic

220 mm rockets are their carriers. The authorities urge the citizens to stay at home, while engineers and even tanks are clearing the streets

The Lepestok was produced from the 70s to the 90s, the Soviet army used it in Afghanistan. The 40 g of liquid explosive are not enough to kill, the goal is to maim

According to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, in 1997, such anti-personnel mines are forbidden within the countries which have ratified it. In theory, Ukraine is one.

As far as I remember, the Lepestok is new in this context, but Ukraine is ordinarily carrying out the deliberate shelling in Donbass of civilian areas, where no troops are stationed, no military value facilities are set. That’s exactly terrorism.

Terrorism is a modus operandi, the word is overused today, contains no information about the ideology behind. Terrorism is violent action to terror civilians, in order to achieve a common political goal. Carl von Clausewitz would have probably written that terrorism is war against civilians.

When Jihadists attacked in Paris on November 13, 2015, they were terrorists. When they defended Raqqa against Syrian Marxist Kurds, their action was military. Funny how the Turkish authorities are regarding the Kurdish fighters, in Turkey or Syria, as terrorists. When Jihadists blow up in the Sahel a French armored car, their action is also military. Funny how States, in anti-terror posture, are often attacking civilians.

A bad habit is to declare terrorist a whole organization. Its drift is to declare terrorist every non State military formation, whatever their modus operandi. One despicable aspect of this issue is that in order to tighten the support from their Western curators, the Ukrainians have denounced as terrorists in 2014 the Russian-speaking separatist population in Donbass, which is a coarse lie. Unlike the Ukrainians, the republicans do not attack civilians.