“Echoing his leader, Major General Igor Konashenkov, chief spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defence, stated in a news conference on February 28 that “the armed forces of the Russian Federation strike only at military targets”. Discussing the capital, Kyiv, he added that “the leadership of Ukraine and the authorities of the city, having announced a curfew, are persuading the residents of the capital to stay in their homes”. This, he concluded, “once again proves that the Kyiv regime uses the residents of the city as a ‘human shield’ for the nationalists who have deployed artillery units and military equipment in residential areas of the capital”.”

"Then on March 3, Moscow accused Ukrainian authorities of holding a group of 6,000 Indian students and other foreign nationals as “human shields”. Indian authorities themselves denied the claim. A couple of days later, Putin declared that “the neo-Nazis” were obstructing the creation of humanitarian corridors requested by the Ukrainian government to evacuate civilians trapped in the line of fire, claiming “the militants” were keeping the potential evacuees as human shields."