Russia’s war in Ukraine has been knocking on your door, too

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Two years on, we know that if Russia succeeds, we will find ourselves in a world that will be dangerous for everyone without exception, Oleksandra Matviichuk writes.

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I don’t know what historians in the future will call this historical period. But we happen to live in rather challenging times. 

The world order, based on the Charter of the UN and international law, is collapsing before our eyes. 

The international peace and security system established after World War II provided unjustified indulgences for certain countries. It did not cope well with global challenges before, but now it is stalling and reproducing ritualistic movements. 

The work of the UN Security Council is paralyzed. We have entered a highly volatile period in history, and now fires will occur more and more frequently in different parts of the world because the world’s wiring is faulty and sparks are everywhere.

A conflict of what makes us human

Samuel Huntington predicted that new global conflicts would arise between different civilizations. 

I live in Kyiv, and my native city, like thousands of other Ukrainian cities, is being shelled not only by Russian missiles but also by Iranian drones. 

China is helping Russia circumvent sanctions and import technologies critical to warfare. North Korea sent Russia more than a million artillery shells. Syria votes at the UN General Assembly in support of Russia. 

We are dealing with the formation of an entire authoritarian bloc. As much as Russia, Iran, China, Syria, and North Korea are “different civilizations”, according to Huntington’s views, they pose a crucial common feature. 

All these regimes that have taken power in their countries have the same idea of what a human being is. That is why this is not a conflict of civilizations. This is a conflict of what makes us human.

Authoritarian leaders consider people as objects of control and deny them rights and freedoms. 

Democracies consider people, their rights and freedoms to be of the highest value. There is no way to negotiate this. 

The existence of the free world always threatens dictatorships with the loss of power. That’s because human beings inherently have a desire for freedom.

Therefore, when we talk about Russia’s war against Ukraine, we are not talking about a war between two states. This is a war between two systems — authoritarianism and democracy. 

If Russia succeeds, we’ll live in a world dangerous for everyone

Russia wants to convince the entire world that freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law are fake values because they do not protect anyone in times of war. 

Russia wants to convince that a state with a powerful military potential and nuclear weapons can break the world order, dictate its rules to the international community and even forcibly change internationally recognized borders.

If Russia succeeds, it will encourage authoritarian leaders in various parts of the world to do the same. The international system of peace and security does not protect people any more. 

Democratic governments will be forced to invest money not in education, health care, culture or business development, not in solving global problems such as climate change or social inequality, but in weapons. 

We will witness an increase in the number of nuclear states, the emergence of robotic armies and new weapons of mass destruction. 

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If Russia succeeds and this scenario comes true, we will find ourselves in a world that will be dangerous for everyone without exception.

It’s not post-truth, it’s post-knowledge

Public intellectuals say that we live in an era of post-truth. As for me, we live in an era of post-knowledge. 

People with access to Google, who can get the formula for aspirin in a second, forget that this does not make them chemists. People around the world are demanding quick and simple solutions. 

Perhaps in more peaceful times, we could afford it. You can treat a runny nose with squats, and at least it will not harm the body. However, if we are already dealing with cancer, the price of such simple solutions and actual therapy delays will be high.

The problem is not only that the space for freedom in authoritarian countries has narrowed to the size of a prison cell. The problem is that even in developed democracies, forces calling into question the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are gaining strength.

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There are reasons for this. The coming generations replaced those ones that survived World War II. They have inherited democracy from their parents. 

They began to take rights and freedoms for granted. They have become consumers of values. They perceive freedom as choosing between cheeses in the supermarket. 

In essence, they are ready to exchange freedom for economic benefits, promises of security or personal comfort.

Yet, the truth is that freedom is very fragile. Human rights are not attained once and forever. We make our own choices every day.

The war has come home a long time ago

In such times of turbulence, responsibility-driven leadership is required. Global challenges cannot be resolved individually or on your own. 

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The efforts of those who worked to build a shared European project were aimed at overcoming the history of wars. But stable growth and peace in the region are impossible while a part of Europe is bleeding. 

People only begin to understand that the war is going on when the bombs are falling on their heads, but the war has dimensions other than the military one: it is an economic war, an information war, a war of values. 

Whether we are brave enough to admit it or not, this war has long since crossed the borders of the European Union.

Because we live in a very interconnected world. And only the advancement of freedom makes this world safer.

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

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Videos of stripped detainees in Gaza: A practice condemned under international law?

Since December 7, images of Palestinians arrested and stripped naked in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have provoked widespread concern. Israeli authorities say they undressed the detainees as a security measure, but that photos of them in their underwear “serve nobody”. The images have sparked debate on the legality of the IDF’s arrest procedures. Human Rights Watch told FRANCE 24 that sharing humiliating images of prisoners can amount to a war crime.

Dozens, even hundreds of Palestinians detained in the street, kneeling and undressed, sometimes blindfolded: since early December, numerous videos and photos have documented these scenes of arrests by the IDF in the Gaza Strip.

The first images of these arrests began circulating on pro-Israeli Telegram accounts on December 7. Dozens of Palestinians, including several civilians and a journalist, were arrested.

Read moreGaza: What do we know about these images of Palestinians arrested by the IDF?

One video and one photo showed several dozen people arrested in their underwear, surrounded by Israeli soldiers. Other footage broadcast on December 7 showed groups of detainees who were stripped to their underwear being moved around in lorries, or kneeling and surrounded by soldiers in a sandy area.

Images showing the IDF arresting and then moving dozens of Gazans in the town of Beit Lahia on December 7. © Twitter / Observers

Since then, new images of other groups of Palestinian detainees have been posted online, including one of dozens of men in their underwear standing on the pavement, shared on December 9.

On the evening of December 12, television channel N12 shared a photo of several hundred detainees surrounded by mounds of sand, without further details about its context.

Images of Palestinian detainees in Gaza, broadcast on December 9 and 12, respectively.
Images of Palestinian detainees in Gaza, broadcast on December 9 and 12, respectively. © Twitter / N12 / Observers

While the origin of these images is unknown, there are indications that IDF soldiers filmed them. Most of the footage, in which only soldiers and detainees can be seen, was taken alongside Israeli soldiers or even in army vehicles. In addition, in one of the videos posted on December 7, the khaki green sleeve of the Israeli army uniform worn by the person filming is visible.

However, the Israeli army did not post these images directly on its official channels. On December 10, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, declared that the images “served nobody” and hoped that people would stop circulating them.

Detainees stripped for security reasons, according to the army

The IDF explained that these people were detained in this manner for security reasons.

“It is often necessary for terror suspects to hand over their clothes such that their clothes can be searched and to ensure that they are not concealing explosive vests or other weaponry,” the army told AFP.

A war crime if Israel publishes the images?

Intentionally posting images of the degrading treatment of human beings can be considered a breach of international law, as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International explained to the FRANCE 24 Observers team.

“Filming detainees can sometimes be justified in certain situations,” explains Ahmed Benchemsi, communications and advocacy director for the Middle East region at Human Rights Watch. “But it is the fact of posting these images that is a war crime, because it demonstrates the intention to humiliate and publicise the degrading treatment of human beings.” 

In a report that qualified Hamas’s videos of Israeli hostages as possible war crimes, Human Rights Watch cites Article 3 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on civilians, “which applies to all parties to the armed conflict in Israel and Palestine, provides that everyone in the custody of a warring party ‘shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.'”

“Both holding hostages and committing ‘outrages upon personal dignity’ of detainees are serious violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war,” the NGO stressed.

The same point was made by Amnesty International’s head of conflict programmes, Tchérina Jerolon, who added that Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention relating to prisoners of war “explicitly sets out the obligation to protect prisoners of war ‘against all acts of violence or intimidation, insults and public curiosity”.

“The notion of public curiosity implies that any information material that could identify detainees, such as photos or videos, is tantamount to subjecting them to public curiosity. The transmission, publication or posting of such material must therefore be avoided in order to comply with this convention.”

An unofficial Telegram channel run by the Israeli army, according to Haaretz

Although the Israeli army did not post any of these images on its official accounts on X or on other platforms, the photos and videos began to appear on Telegram in the early afternoon of December 7 on several pro-Israeli accounts that regularly relay images of Israeli army operations.

These images were shared a few hours later by a Telegram channel called “72 Virgins – Uncensored”. Israeli media outlet Haaretz revealed on December 12 that this channel serves as an unofficial Israeli army channel.

Quoting a senior army official, the newspaper said that the channel is run by the Israeli army’s psychological operations department. However, the Israeli army denied these claims.

Detainees ‘treated in accordance with international law’?

The IDF told several media outlets that the detainees were “treated in accordance with international law”.

While several of the Palestinians arrested have since been released, others were still being held at the time of publication of this article on December 14, according to eyewitnesses. Like Diaa Al Kahlout, a journalist with the Arabic version of The New Arab, who was arrested on December 7. Reporters Without Borders demanded information about his detention in a message on X on December 11.

Since the end of the temporary ceasefire on December 1, the Israeli army has claimed to have arrested “around 140 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in the Gaza Strip”, without specifying to what extent these people were arrested as part of the operations of the last few days.

According to Haaretz on December 10, the army estimated that 10% to 15% of those recently arrested were “linked to Hamas”.

While many unknowns surround the fate of these detainees, Ahmed Benchemsi of Human Rights Watch stresses that they are all entitled to a certain number of legal protections: “The law of war states that people must be informed promptly of the reasons for their arrest. Furthermore, if a person remains under arrest and is not charged within 48 hours, he or she must be released.”

He also points out that each detainee must also have the opportunity to challenge their detention. “If any of these rights are not respected, this may be considered illegal and a violation of the Rome Statute [of the International Criminal Court].”



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Sudanese shocked by video of man’s murder sent to his WhatsApp contacts

The friends and family of a missing man in Khartoum discovered he had been murdered when the murderers sent a gruesome video of his body to all of his WhatsApp contacts. The man’s family believe that the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces was behind the killing – as the man had supposedly been caught filming them looting a home. The video is proof of just one more human rights abuse since a new war began in the country in April. 

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Warning: Some of the content in this article may be disturbing to some readers.

The men killed Shihab Shakkab. Then, they used Shakkab’s phone to send a video of his murder to all of his contacts. 

The video, which lasts slightly longer than a minute, shows Shakkab, lifeless but with his eyes frozen open. He’s on the marble floor of a home, wearing a bloody t-shirt. A chain around his torso ties him to a red post. 

You can hear the voice of the man filming Shakkab’s body, though you don’t see him. 

He addresses the victim’s brother, Osama Shakkab.

“Here’s your brother, look at the state he’s in. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. As he did to our brothers, we are doing the same thing to him. I will send you the photos he took along with this photo. Look closely at these photos and you’ll see that he is reaping what he sowed,” the man says.

He touches the face of the victim, putting his fingers in his eyes and poking his cheeks. 

“You see, there? He’s dead, his eyes are extinguished. He’s dead, dead, dead.”

You can also hear the voice of another man, also offscreen, who whispers words to the man filming, which he then repeats. 

These are screengrabs of a video published as a story on WhatsApp and sent to the victim’s contacts using his telephone. © Observers

On July 30, Shakkab’s friends, family and neighbours in the central Al Ardha neighbourhood posted calls on Twitter and Facebook for anyone with information about Shakkab’s murder or the whereabouts of his body to reach out to them. 

Once news of the video reached Shakkab’s neighbors, many of them also spoke out about the horrific “mutilation of his body”. Many blame the Sudanese paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the victim had allegedly encountered the day before his death.

The RSF are a paramilitary group that originally reported to the country’s military intelligence department. Many members are former Arab militiamen who participated in the conflict in Darfur. Used as supplementary forces to the army of the former dictator Omar Al Bashir, deposed in 2019, they allied with the Sudanese Army to overthrow the civilian government in the 2021 coup d’état.

However, the leader of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo has since turned against the military regime. 

‘The video remained online for 24 hours as a story on Shihab’s WhatsApp’  

Mosaab Aljak is a shopkeeper who lives in Omdurman and was good friends with Shakkab. He spoke to our team.

On July 28, Shihab Sakkak came across a group of the Rapid Support Forces who were pillaging homes in the Al Ardha neighbourhood, in the centre of Omdurman. He started filming them with his telephone to document their crimes. However, a neighbour started filming Shihab filming the RSF and that video got back to the RSF who control the neighbourhood.

The next evening, RSF fighters stormed into his home where Shihab was with a friend. The fighters demanded that he turn over his telephone. They came across the videos that he had filmed of them the night before. They let his friend go, but they shot Shihab in the leg and took him away to an unknown location.

About ten hours later, they published the video of his body on his WhatsApp account. Someone narrating the video said “because he filmed us, apparently stealing something, we are making an example out of him for others.” The video stayed up for 24 hours.


Mosab Aljak, a good friend of the deceased, posted this call for information on Facebook on July 31.

‘My friend’s assassins wanted to get a ransom’

We weren’t sure if Shihab was still alive or was dead. But without any news from him or the men who took him, we concluded that he was dead. 

On July 30, I was contacted by someone anonymous who claimed that they had found Shihab, but they wanted money in exchange for information. They said that our friend was in detention but alive.  

But I didn’t believe him – it was clear that my friend’s assassins wanted to get a ransom on top of killing him. So, we didn’t respond. 

I worked with neighbours and his family to try and find out more about what happened to him, both by word of mouth and social media. We were hoping, at least, to find his body in order to bury him. And we did finally find his body on August 2 near some water to the east of the city. 

Because the area is far from Al Arda and rain has made travel very difficult, we had to bury Shihab there, not far from the waterway. He was only 46 and was the father to two children. May he rest in peace. 

Rapid Support Forces blamed by family and Sudanese army

Shakkab’s friends and family blame the Rapid Support Forces. The Sudanese Army as well as the Association of Professional Pharmacists – a Sudanese union that fights for rights and the democratic process – both condemned Shakkab’s murder and also blamed the RSF.

In a Twitter statement addressed to Pramila Patten, the special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo said that his force “reaffirms its unwavering commitment to international humanitarian law, its respect for the fundamental principles of human rights, and its rejection of any abuses or assaults against civilians during the ongoing war,” while also promising “the RSF’s full cooperation with the UN in investigating any allegations of human rights violations.” The post didn’t mention the accusations about Shakkab’s death specifically.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team wasn’t able to establish proof that the RSF had killed Shakkab from the video alone. We put these allegations to the RSF on social media on August 3, but they did not respond. If they do respond, we will update this article to include it. 

Since armed fighting between the Sudanese Army and the RSF broke out in April 2023, at least 1,135 civilians have been killed, according to the Ministry of Health, which added that this number is likely “the tip of the iceberg.” Other international NGOs like ACLED say that there have been over 3,900 deaths.

Activists and human rights groups report that at least 580 civilians have been killed in Khartoum alone since the start of the conflict



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Russia’s aggression against Ukraine leaves no room for negotiations

By Peter Dickinson, Publisher, Business Ukraine, Editor, UkraineAlert, Atlantic Council

Instead of attempts to bargain with Putin, it should now be obvious that the only way to secure a lasting peace is via Ukrainian victory and the decisive defeat of Russian imperialism, Peter Dickinson writes.

For almost a year and a half, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked and horrified the watching world more than any other event in modern European history. 

Nevertheless, there are still many international voices arguing for some kind of compromise with the Kremlin. 

On both the American right and the European left, and from China to Brazil, prominent figures continue to call for an immediate ceasefire, even though any negotiated settlement would almost certainly leave large swathes of Ukraine under Russian control.

Supporters of a land-for-peace deal typically claim to be realists motivated by a desire to end the carnage in Ukraine as quickly as possible. 

While some are no doubt entirely sincere in their intentions, all of these so-called realists are united by a fundamental failure to recognise the true nature of the Putin regime and the genocidal character of the Russian invasion.

Brazen designs and imperial ambitions

The war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in February 2022 is no mere border dispute that can be resolved via territorial concessions; it is an old-fashioned war of imperial conquest that seeks to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and eradicate all traces of Ukrainian national identity. 

Asking Ukrainians to reach a compromise with this eliminationist agenda is both grotesque and absurd. Nevertheless, that is exactly what we are currently witnessing.

It is perhaps hardly surprising that so many people still misunderstand Putin’s true intentions in Ukraine. 

The Russian dictator has worked hard to muddy the waters, offering up a series of excuses to justify the war and distract attention away from his own imperial ambitions.

Putin’s most effective deception has been the claim that Russia is simply reacting to decades of NATO expansion. 

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, numerous politicians and commentators around the world have echoed Putin’s complaints about the post-1991 growth of NATO, arguing that this process posed an intolerable threat to Russian national security that made war inevitable. 

However, Russia’s own apparent indifference to Finland’s recent NATO accession has made a mockery of such assertions.

NATO is not the reason

The Finns, who share a 1,300km border with Russia, declared their intention to join NATO in May 2022 and joined the alliance eleven months later. 

During that period, Russia took no steps to protest or increase its military presence close to Finland. 

On the contrary, Putin downplayed the significance of Finnish NATO membership, while the Russian army actually withdrew the bulk of its troops from the border region.

Russia has since adopted the same unconcerned stance on imminent Swedish NATO membership, despite the fact that this will transform the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

Evidently, Putin does not regard NATO as a security threat to the Russian Federation. 

Russian dislike of NATO enlargement is real enough, but it has nothing to do with legitimate national security concerns. 

Instead, Putin objects to NATO because it prevents him from bullying Russia’s neighbours.

The continued absurdity of claims of Ukrainian ‘Nazis’

While Russia’s NATO arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny, Putin’s other excuses are even more far-fetched. 

Most notoriously, he has positioned his invasion of Ukraine as a crusade to “de-Nazify” the country. 

A brief look at Ukraine’s political landscape should be enough to expose the absurdity of this claim. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and first rose to national prominence as a Russian-speaking comedian, but this did not prevent him from winning the Ukrainian presidency by a landslide. 

While Zelenskyy enjoys record approval ratings, Ukraine’s far-right politicians remain firmly on the fringes of the country’s democracy. 

Following years of embarrassing election failures, Ukraine’s nationalist parties united in 2019 under a single electoral banner but still ended up with just 2% of the vote. 

While the Kremlin rants about imaginary Ukrainian fascists, there are few European countries where far-right politicians enjoy less support than Ukraine.

Putin’s talk of NATO and Nazis is designed to disguise the far darker motives driving his invasion. 

In common with millions of his compatriots, Putin rejects the entire notion of Ukrainian statehood and sees Ukrainian independence as a symbol of the historical injustice that befell Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

When he bemoans the break-up of the USSR and “the demise of historical Russia,” it is primarily Ukraine he has in mind. 

Subjugating Ukraine has become the cornerstone of what he regards as his sacred mission to revive the Russian Empire.

The Ukraine obsession is nothing new for Russia and Putin

Putin’s implacable opposition to Ukrainian independence also reflects his alarm over post-Soviet Ukraine’s embrace of democracy, which he sees as an existential threat to his own authoritarian regime. 

It is no coincidence that Putin’s Ukraine obsession first became apparent in the aftermath of the pro-democracy 2004 Orange Revolution, which overturned a rigged Ukrainian presidential vote. 

He is terrified that as democratic political traditions take root in Ukraine, this will spark demands for similar change inside Russia itself. 

These fears are rooted in Putin’s personal experience as a young KGB officer in Cold War-era East Germany, where he witnessed the unravelling of Soviet power as pro-democracy movements swept the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s. 

Putin remains haunted by the prospect of a democratic Ukraine serving as the catalyst for a new chapter in the ongoing breakup of the Russian Empire and appears ready to pay almost any price to prevent that from happening.

Unhinged essays and naked landgrabs

This preoccupation with Ukraine has intensified over the years and has come to dominate Putin’s entire reign. 

He is infamous for insisting Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), and published an unhinged 5000-word essay in July 2021 that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. 

Putin went even further in the summer of 2022, directly comparing the ongoing invasion of Ukraine to the imperial conquests of 18th-century Russian Tzar Peter the Great.

Months later, he oversaw a lavish Kremlin ceremony officially annexing four partially-occupied regions of Ukraine, representing around 20% of the country. This naked land grab was part of the battle for a “greater historical Russia,” he explained.

Putin did not invent this anti-Ukrainian doctrine. On the contrary, it has been a central feature of Russia’s imperial identity for centuries. 

Nevertheless, his Ukraine fixation is acute even by Russian standards and has distorted the country’s national discourse to the extent that genocidal rhetoric targeting Ukrainians is now a routine feature of Russia’s heavily censored mainstream media. 

Unsurprisingly, this has poisoned attitudes towards Ukraine among ordinary Russians and has helped to fuel strong public support for the invasion, which has remained consistently above 70% according to Russia’s only internationally respected independent pollster, the Levada Center. 

While there are legitimate concerns over the validity of opinion polls in dictatorships, there is no denying the almost complete absence of an anti-war movement in today’s Russia. In a very real sense, this is Russia’s war, not just Putin’s war.

From absurdities to atrocities — and eventually, genocide

The war crimes being committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine are the logical consequence of the anti-Ukrainian hysteria that has long been normalized inside Russia itself. 

After all, as Voltaire famously warned, those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. 

Nor are these crimes the work of isolated individuals or rogue units. On the contrary, in every single liberated region of the country, Ukrainian officials have uncovered strikingly similar evidence of summary executions, torture, sexual violence, mass deportations, child abductions, forced russification, and the systematic suppression of Ukrainian national identity. 

This descent into barbarism is a direct result of the genocidal intentions on display in Moscow.

All of this is perfectly well known in Ukraine, which explains why there is virtually no appetite for any compromise with the Kremlin. 

One recent survey found that 84% of Ukrainians oppose any territorial concessions to Moscow and insist on the complete liberation of the country from Russian occupation, even if that means prolonging the war. 

Ukrainians recognise that unless Russia is forced to withdraw completely from their country, Putin will use any ceasefire agreement to rearm and regroup before renewing his invasion. 

To some outside observers, this steely determination to defeat Russia may seem uncompromising or even unhelpful. From a Ukrainian perspective, it is simply the only way to secure national survival.

A peace agreement would endanger others, too

Nor are Ukrainians the only potential victims of a negotiated settlement. Rewarding Russia’s invasion with territorial concessions would have disastrous consequences for international security. 

It would embolden the Kremlin and invite further Russian aggression, with the likes of Moldova, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic states all potential targets.

Other authoritarian rulers would also learn the lessons of Putin’s success and embark on their own expansionist adventures. 

The whole world would enter a new era of international instability marked by a rising tide of militarism and geopolitical intimidation.

As the massive-scale war on European soil approaches the one-and-a-half-year mark, it is worth underlining that nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians themselves. 

After all, they are the ones who are being terrorized and slaughtered on a daily basis; they are the ones forced to spend their nights in filthy trenches and makeshift bomb shelters. 

And yet they are honest enough to acknowledge that a premature peace would be no peace at all. On the contrary, it would virtually guarantee more war.

Don’t bargain with Putin

Anyone calling for an immediate ceasefire must reckon with this grim reality. 

Russia is not a reasonable international actor seeking to address legitimate security concerns; it is an openly imperialistic power that categorically rejects the current international order and has made clear its intention to wipe Ukraine off the map entirely.

In such circumstances, supporters of a compromise settlement risk enabling genocide in the heart of Europe and robbing the wider world of the security that has fueled decades of rising living standards. 

Any attempt to bargain with Putin would set a disastrous precedent for the future of international relations. 

Instead, it should now be obvious that the only way to secure a lasting peace is via Ukrainian victory and the decisive defeat of Russian imperialism.

Peter Dickinson is the publisher of Business Ukraine magazine and UkraineAlert editor at the Atlantic Council.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Video of two naked women being harassed draws attention to tribal conflict in India’s Manipur

A video showing two naked women being assaulted by a mob of men in Manipur, in northeastern India, has shocked the nation and brought renewed attention to a deadly tribal conflict. It has also prompted Prime Minister Modi to make a statement on the violence that is tearing Manipur apart. According to our Observer, the video is a stark reminder of how women’s bodies have been used as a “site of conflict” since martial law was imposed on the state in the 1970s.

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The 26-second video, which emerged on social media July 19, shows the two women, members of the state’s minority Kuki community, being assaulted by men of the majority Meitei ethnicity. The distraught women are pushed around and groped by their attackers, and then escorted towards an empty field. According to a police complaint, one of the women, a 21-year-old, was “brutally gang-raped in broad daylight”, while the other one managed to escape.

We have decided not to include the viral video in this article due to its shocking nature.

The Meitei make up 53% of the population in Manipur, a multi-ethnic state on India’s border with China and Myanmar that has 34 different tribal communities. Under martial law since the 1970s because of frequent ethnic violence, the state is currently governed by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The incident happened on May 4, the day after deadly ethnic riots broke out between the Meitei who are mostly Hindus, and the predominantly Christian Kuki. The violence was sparked by a controversy over affirmative action: the Kukis, who already have “scheduled tribe” status guaranteeing them quotas for government jobs and university places, were protesting against a proposal to extend the same status to the majority Meiteis. 

At least 140 people have since been killed and more than 60,000 people have been forced from their homes. Meanwhile, police armouries have been looted, hundreds of Kuki churches attacked, and more than a dozen Meitei temples ruined, and villages destroyed. 

After months of silence, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally spoke out about the violence in Manipur on July 20. He responsed to the video by saying: “My heart is filled with grief and anger. The incident in Manipur is shameful for any civil society.”

On the same day, police opened a gang-rape case, arrested four men, and said they would be making more arrests soon.

‘Women’s bodies in Manipur have been used as a site of war since the 1970s’

Our Observer, Binalakshmi Nepram, who founded the Northeast India Women Initiative for Peace, has criticised authorities for taking so long to act, despite a police complaint having been lodged just days after the incident. She told us the video serves as a stark reminder of how women’s bodies in the northeastern state are being weaponised in the conflict.

It’s not the first time Manipuri women have been sexually abused, it has happened countless times and not a single person has been punished until now. Men have complete impunity in our state. 

The gruesome rape in the video that was published this week took place in May, but it’s taken a full 78 days for any action to be taken, for any arrests to be made, and for our prime minister to speak up. This, of course, does not inspire confidence in the authorities.

Women’s bodies in Manipur have been used as a site of war since the 1970s, when the counterinsurgency began. We have a martial law which provides complete immunity to armed forces personnel who are operating in the state of Manipur. As a result, there have been various charges of armed security force personnel committed sexual violence and rape on the bodies of manipuri women. 

For example, in 2004, a woman called Thangjam Manorama was brutally gang-raped by Indian paramilitary forces. She was shot seven times in the vagina to destroy evidence of rape. The failure to assign culpability in the rape and murder case led to widespread protests in Manipur. Five days after the killing, around 30 middle-aged women protested in the streets naked. That incident, just like the recent video, shocked the country and the prime minister of India was forced to acknowledge the violence.


The iconic nude protest by women on July 15, 2004 against the Indian Army after Thangjam Manorama was brutally gang-raped by Indian paramilitary forces.

I grew up in a state in which it has become normalised for men with guns to play with our lives. I hope that the bodies of our mothers, sisters and friends that have endured this pain will break through the consciousness of men, who will finally lay down their arms and start negotiating for peace. Because it is women who are paying the price for their violence.

‘The world knows about Ukraine, but the violence in Manipur is taking place behind closed doors’

Nepram also said the violence depicted in the video is emblematic of the near-civil war in the northeastern state, which “no one is talking about”.

The horrific and inhumane video has shaken up India. But brutal sexual assault and the rape of women are not the only crimes that are taking place here.

There have been beheadings, killings and many other atrocities, although videos of these incidents have not been released to the public. These countless crimes against humanity are taking place in the land of yoga, in the world’s largest democracy. 

 


 

Images of violence in Manipur againt people from the Meitei tribal group in a Kuki dominated area

I have seen too much violence and many of my family members have died in this conflict. But no one is talking about it. The world knows about the conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar, but the violence in Manipur is taking place behind closed doors. The Indian government doesn’t allow foreign press or humanitarian aid agencies to come here. 

We are being silenced. The history of Manipur is not in Indian textbooks. I have been threatened many times for speaking about this conflict. Our lives are not secure at all, but some of us have to speak the truth.

‘Violence in Manipur is the result of decades of neglect, discrimination and violent extremism’

Tensions in Manipur boiled over in May when Kukis began protesting against demands from the Meiteis to be given official tribal status. But this does not entirely explain the explosive ethnic violence that has engulfed Manipur, according to Nepram.

Although the demand for inclusion of the Meitei community as a scheduled tribe was the immediate trigger, the eruption of violence in Manipur has been the result of decades of neglect, discrimination and violent extremism in the region. 

The current crisis in Manipur reflects the complex dynamics at the heart of India’s northeastern state. Manipur joined India in 1949, over the objections of many Manipuris. It has experienced secession movements, ethnic rivalries, and serious human rights violations by India security forces and the military ever since then. 

Other elements are coming into play as well and worsening the situation. The Kukis say a war on drugs is being waged by the Meitei-led government to uproot their communities. Meanwhile, illegal migration since the coup in Myanmar in 2021 has also heightened tensions. There has since been more pressure on land use from a growing population and unemployment is pushing youth towards the various militias.

Last week, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on Indian authorities to take action to stop the violence in Manipur and protect religious communities, especially Christians. India’s foreign ministry condemned the resolution, describing it as “interference” in its internal affairs.



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Sudan conflict: Two videos expose rapes allegedly carried out by Rapid Support Forces

Since the conflict in Sudan broke out in April, hundreds of rapes have been reported by civilians and NGOs, with women from ethnic minorities being particularly targeted. In mid-June, two extremely shocking videos emerged of rapes being carried out in North Khartoum. Our Observers condemn the systemic use of sexual violence in Darfur, where ethnic tensions are rife.

WARNING: This article contains accounts of sexual violence that readers may find disturbing.

On June 21, the Observers team was sent two shocking videos that had been circulating on WhatsApp and TikTok since June 15. Both were filmed in Khartoum North, a town outside the capital. They are the first visual evidence of the use of rape during the conflict raging in Sudan since April 15 between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

One of the videos was filmed by an attacker

The first video lasts 1 minute 12 seconds and is filmed by a group of men in a room. It shows two half-naked men staring down at a naked young woman. They take turns raping her as a third films the scene while holding down the victim’s head with his foot. The young woman can be heard crying and screaming. She repeats: “It’s OK, I promise not to struggle, please don’t hurt me!” The three young men, including the man filming the video, are not wearing uniforms or any signs of belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) or the Sudanese army, the two parties to the conflict. 

The video was posted on TikTok from June 15 until it was removed on June 23.

Sudanese people expressed their outrage on Facebook and TikTok. They shared a screenshot of one of the attackers in the video and identified him by first and last name as well as home town. They also said that he was part of the Rapid Support Forces. We have not been able to independently verify this information.

Screenshot of the video filmed by the RSF, one of the rapists can be seen smiling at the camera towards the end of the clip. © Observers

The other video was filmed by a witness

The second video was filmed by a witness in Khartoum North, also known as Khartoum Bahri, at some point before June 16, when CNN published an investigation that included the video.

Opposite the building where the video was filmed, we can identify a fighter in uniform and wearing the “kamdul”  headgear typical of Sudanese Arab tribes and adopted by FSR fighters  moving back and forth over a second person in the courtyard of a house. 

The author of the video commented: “They say there are no rapes (…) This is a rape in broad daylight, we are in the Kafouri neighbourhood, in block 4, near another block. There are two other men standing guard outside.” The camera then shows a man in light beige camouflage  the characteristic colour of the FSR uniform  with a kamdul on his head standing at the gate outside the house.

On the left, a fighter wearing a uniform similar to that of the RSF is shown raping a young woman in the courtyard of a house, while on the right, a second fighter in uniform stands guard outside. Screenshots from a video sent to the Observers team.
On the left, a fighter wearing a uniform similar to that of the RSF is shown raping a young woman in the courtyard of a house, while on the right, a second fighter in uniform stands guard outside. Screenshots from a video sent to the Observers team. © Observers

“One of the victims was taken to hospital by a member of the RSF while she was suffering from vaginal bleeding”

Sulaima Ishaq Khalifa is a trauma psychologist and the director of the Unit for Ending Violence against Women, a public body attached to the Ministry of Social Affairs in Sudan. 

The unit examined the two videos and was able to identify the victims thanks to witnesses and neighbours who recognised the young girls. The two victims work as domestic servants in Khartoum Bahri. The victim in the second video was 15 years old. The age of the victim in the first video is not yet known.

Although they’re painful to watch, both videos contain tangible evidence of sexual violence perpetrated in Khartoum Bahri. The young girls are from shanty towns and they were employed as domestic help in private homes. When the RSF took control of certain districts in Khartoum, the girls shopped and cleaned for them. 

In one case, the victim was dropped off at hospital by a member of the RSF while suffering from vaginal bleeding, which confirms that the rape was committed by these forces. 

In addition to the victims’ testimonies, we rely on eyewitness accounts  in particular from families and neighbours  to document these crimes: where it happened, when and who is responsible. Rape is used as a weapon of war; it is a war crime.

Sulaima Ishaq told us that she was unable to determine the two victim’s current health condition, as those areas of North Khartoum are under the control of the RSF, making it more difficult for social services to gain access to them.

 

She highlights a nuance concerning rapes in war zones which may otherwise seem less easy to prove:

Although some victims have sex with RSF fighters in exchange for money or food, one can never speak of consent in a context of war, especially as most rape victims are minors, aged between 12 and 17, and therefore cannot give consent de facto.

According to the UN, at least 53 women and girls were subjected to sexual violence between April 15 and 19, when the conflict in Sudan began. However, according to several of our Sudanese Observers in the capital Khartoum and in Darfur, this figure is much lower than the reality on the ground. 

As of June 29, the Unit for Ending Violence against Women and Children recorded 88 cases of rape since the start of the conflict: 42 in the capital Khartoum, 21 in El Geneina, in the state of West Darfur, and 25 in Nyala, in the state of South Darfur. However, according to the unit, these recorded cases only represent 2% of rapes that take place across the country because of the taboo on speaking of the subject within the victims’ communities.


Cette Soudanaise relaie un appel à l’aide d’un témoin d’un viol collectif à Khartoum Bahri le 27 avril. Le témoin -anonyme- dit que sept combattants FSR ont fait irruption dans l’immeuble de sa tante, ont tenté d’agresser sa cousine arabe avant de violer trois filles éthiopiennes que cette dernière hébergeait.

“In one district of Nyala alone, I recorded 12 cases of rape”

Nahla Khazraji is an activist with Mostaqbal, a feminist organisation based in Nyala that documents cases of sexual violence against women and girls in West and South Darfur. She says that she has documented more than one hundred rapes since the start of the conflict, but that rape survivors have difficulty speaking out.

I have personally spoken to about a hundred victims on the phone, but officially, only 24 women have agreed to report the rapes to the Women and Children Protection Unit. In one district of Nyala alone, I recorded 12 cases of rape.

Most of them contact us anonymously just to get emergency treatment or screening, but they don’t want to make it public. So we collect testimonies and obtain treatment from the Protection Unit, then deliver it to the victims.

As well as being raped, they suffer from social pressure and the shame of being raped. It’s very difficult to get survivors to confide in us, so we prefer to talk to them privately so that we can provide them with a minimum of medical care.

“RSF break into their homes and rape them in front of their families”

Only a third of the hospitals in Sudan are still operational, with fighting in urban areas limiting the movement of civilians. The Mostaqbal association told us that unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases have gone untreated because the rapes were not reported in time. For emergency contraception to be effective, it must be administered no more than 3 to 5 days after sexual intercourse: 

We believe that around 90% of rape victims in Darfur are internally displaced persons. Many of them are daily workers, either in private homes or in cafés and restaurants. They are in extremely precarious living situations, which automatically makes them more exposed to sexual exploitation, forced prostitution and rape. In many cases, for example, women are forced to have sex with FSR fighters in exchange for money or food. 

Other victims have been raped in their homes. RSF soldiers have burst into their homes and raped them in front of their families. Imagine a woman’s psychological state after that! 

The reports we have received in Darfur indicate that most of the rapists are Janjaweed who are not in uniform. Sudanese army soldiers are also responsible for some of the sexual violence committed, but to a much lesser degree, according to the testimonies we have collected.

Rape in times of conflict constitutes a war crime

Our two Observers and several other Sudanese women are doing their utmost to record and document sexual violence during the ongoing conflict. A 2008 UN resolution defined several important measures to protect women, noting that rape and other forms of sexual violence could constitute a war crime, a crime against humanity, or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.

Rape is a war tactic that has historically been used in times of conflict. During the Rwandan genocide, up to 500,000 cases of rape were recorded, whole more than 60,000 cases were reported during the civil war in Sierra Leone. 

In Sudan, the use of rape as a weapon of war dates back to at least the 2003 conflict in Darfur, during which at least 250 non-Arab women were raped, according to Amnesty International.

 

The victim is raped in an effort to dehumanise and defeat the enemy”

Gwenaëlle Lenoir, a freelance journalist who specialises in East Africa, covered the pro-democracy social movements in Sudan between 2019 and 2021 in Khartoum. At the time, she witnessed sexual violence perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces, but also by the Sudanese police against female demonstrators.

Members of the RSF have a history of perpetuating sexual violence. They often target Eritrean or Ethiopian refugee women because they don’t have a strong community behind them that will support or defend them. The RSF ranks are mainly made up of ethnic Arabs, so in their eyes, victims from ethnic groups other than their own can be dehumanised. This is the why rape is used as a weapon of war: the victim is raped in an effort to dehumanise and defeat the enemy. 

Rape is identified as a weapon of war because it is also systemic: although it is not an order validated by the hierarchy, soldiers or combatants have a “carte blanche” to commit acts of violence. In situations of war and chaos, women are more vulnerable, and if they happen to also be refugees, they are very vulnerable.

What happens after the war?

Rape used as a weapon of war is a matter treated by the International Criminal Court. Sudanese NGOs say that it is therefore necessary to be able to present all evidence possible in addition to testimonies. 

Feminist organisations including Sudanese Women Rights Action (SUWRA) have drawn up a list of elements that can support their cases: medical reports, police reports, bloody clothing and semen samples. At the same time, this organisation has called out the near-total lack of hospital and security services able to help and protect victims of rape. 



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Bosnian torture site survivors angered by museum praising perpetrators

Survivors of one of the harshest concentration camps of the Bosnian War are furious that a museum will be built in its place.

Their anger is compounded by the fact that the museum will not commemorate their suffering, but rather honour the army that held them against their will, including torturing and killing detainees.

“Imagine if the German armed forces had their own museum in a former concentration camp? It’s disgusting,” Edin Batlak, the head of the association of former inmates, told Euronews.

During the siege of Mostar in 1993-1994, the Croatian Defence Council or HVO established the Heliodrom Camp. A former military aviation compound was turned into a prison facility and used by the HVO to detain locals who they deemed to be against their cause, but also as a means of spreading fear among the local population.

For the duration of the camp’s existence, about 10,000 people were detained there, mostly men, but also women and children. At least 54 people were killed or died of maltreatment.

“More than 90% of the people held there were civilians who were basically pulled out of their houses and apartments, in their pyjamas and barefoot in some cases, gathered at the stadium in the western part of Mostar and then taken to the Heliodrom,” Batlak explained.

During the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since World War II, most of the fighting resulted from ethnic tensions between the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, the country’s three main ethnic groups.

It was especially hard on Mostar, one of the most culturally and architecturally diverse cities in pre-war Bosnia, which faced gruelling shelling during the conflict and lost many of its inhabitants.

Batlak told Euronews that he and other survivors were able to visit their former place of detention for the first time this year “and lay flowers in the memory of those who perished there.”

Why build a museum there?

In order, ostensibly, to prevent the country’s ethnic groups from once again being pitted against each other, the post-war political system in Bosnia is set up in a complex maze of ethnic checks and balances which ensure that all sides are happy at all times – or at least not at each other’s throats.

The internationally mediated peace in the country has resulted in many protections for all three sides, even when they want to stick to their own version of history. This is why the three wartime belligerents now get to choose a location, anywhere in the country, where they can open a museum dedicated to their respective armies.

However, not all three sides committed war crimes equally. The Bosniak victims in Mostar, often reduced to their nominal Muslim faith, by far outnumbered the other groups in terms of casualties.

In addition, the Bosnian Croat army in Mostar had the financial and tactical support of neighbouring Croatia, which openly supported the people they considered their brethren in the country.

“They want to glorify their war crimes and present them as a positive thing. They want to be rewarded for denying and minimising war crimes,” Batlak exclaimed.

A political legacy shrouded in war crimes

While Bosnia tried to maintain its post-war order, those who committed crimes during the fighting were prosecuted at the Hague according to the highest international legal standards. In fact, Bosnia’s experience will likely serve as a useful guide for prosecuting war crimes committed during Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The case of Prlić et al prosecuted war crimes committed in southwestern Bosnia, including those at the Heliodrom Camp – although the case is more famous because one of the defendants, Slobodan Praljak, sneaked cyanide into the courtroom and ingested it during his sentencing in 2017.

The ICTY confirmed that the HVO participated in the unlawful detainment, torture and killing of prisoners of war, in Mostar and elsewhere – as alleged by Batlak and other survivors.

Today in Mostar, the political descendants of the Croatian forces are now grouped around the Croatian Democratic Union party, or HDZ, which is the strongest influence on local politics.

In fact, the current leader of the party, Dragan Čović, has been implicated in the abuse of the Heliodrom Camp detainees.

“The very fact that Čović participated in forced labour and basically brought the camp detainees to work at his company says a lot about what the party gets away with,” explains Amer Bahtijar, a journalist at the independent Tačno news outlet from Mostar.

The HDZ leader has not been charged with the crimes committed at the Heliodrom. Many believe that, if he were charged, he would depict himself as a Bosnian version of Oscar Schindler – the German industrialist who saved Jewish lives by employing them in his company.

Čović has successfully managed to present the forced labour of the detainees as something that was not illegal at the time, despite the fact that forcing those stripped of their freedoms to participate in labour is against the Geneva Conventions.

He claimed in interviews that “nobody worked for money at the time” and denies wrongdoing.

Yet several regional outlets have covered the testimonies of other survivors and even published documents in which Čović asks for Heliodrom detainees to be sent to work for his company.

For his role as a perceived peacemaker, Čović has been at the helm of Bosnian politics for decades, and is viewed as a reliable interlocutor for the international mediators involved in the country.

“This man is someone who the EU sees as a partner, instead of prosecuting and charging him with these crimes,” Bahtijar told Euronews.

Bahtijar is part of a group of independent and progressive voices in Mostar who insist that local Croats should resist being co-opted by HDZ in Bosnia and try to pave their own path, especially one that is not riddled with war-crime denialism.

“HDZ does not have a true opposition in terms of a Croat party that would oppose their domination. There aren’t enough media outlets that criticise them in the Mostar area either, and those who have vocally opposed their policies have literally been beaten up,” said Bahtijar.

“So they propagate an intense media censorship,” he concluded.

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US Waives Sanctions To Speed Earthquake Aid To Syria

The death toll from the huge earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria Monday continues to go higher and higher, with nearly 23,000 people estimated to have died as of today — expect that to keep going higher — and a rapidly closing window for the chances of digging more survivors from the rubble.

The situation is especially dire in northern Syria, where the response to the natural disaster has been complicated by the fact that the earthquake hit right in the heart of territory still held by rebels in the civil war against the government of dictator Bashar al-Assad. Most aid bound for the affected region has to go through Syrian government channels, although starting Thursday, the first UN aid trucks have begun reaching the area through the single open border crossing with Turkey.

Here’s a sobering Al Jazeera video explainer on why it’s so hard to get aid to the earthquake victims in Northern Syria:


youtu.be

The video explains that, for the most part, the international sanctions against Syria have been aimed at Syrian military and government leaders, as well as government agencies that have played a role in violating human rights.

But just to make sure that as much aid as possible gets where it’s needed, the US Treasury Department yesterday issued a six-month waiver on “all transactions related to earthquake relief that would be otherwise prohibited” under the sanctions. In a press release, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said,

As international allies and humanitarian partners mobilize to help those affected, I want to make very clear that U.S. sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people. While U.S. sanctions programs already contain robust exemptions for humanitarian efforts, today Treasury is issuing a blanket General License to authorize earthquake relief efforts so that those providing assistance can focus on what’s needed most: saving lives and rebuilding.

The announcement added that US sanctions, by design, already don’t apply to humanitarian assistance, but that the new waiver “expands upon these broad humanitarian authorizations already in effect,” for nongovernmental organizations, the UN, and US government aid programs. The US has made clear it will not give aid directly to the Syrian government, only to international aid groups working in the region.

Also too, Al Jazeera reports that

The US Agency for International Development on Thursday announced Washington had pledged $85m in urgent humanitarian aid on top of the 160 people and 12 dogs it had sent to Turkey to help with rescue efforts.

Since humanitarian aid is already exempt from sanctions, Karam Shaar, a Syrian economist with the Middle East Institute, told Al Jazeera that the new waiver will have “a limited positive impact.”

“This makes it easier still to send humanitarian funding to Syria,” Shaar told Al Jazeera. “Now you don’t have to prove to OFAC that your transaction is exempt from sanctions. You do the transaction, and then if you’re asked to, you need to prove it.”

Simply put, this means that donors and organisations don’t need to spend resources and time proving an exemption from sanctions before sending aid.

Shaar said it’s not yet clear whether private banks will be sufficiently reassured by the waiver that they’ll feel comfortable making money transfers; many avoid Syria altogether out of fear of getting into sanctions trouble. The waiver therefore may or may not result in some institutions allowing transfers, including remittances from Syrians living abroad.

As Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Politics at the University of Oklahoma, explained to Al Jazeera, Assad has made his own use of the sanctions regime to punish the rebels in the north, using the sanctions as an excuse to keep resources from getting to areas the rebels control.

Sadly, that’s unlikely to change even following the earthquake, because why would a guy who’s used poison gas and indiscriminate bombing on civilians (with Russian help) start caring about them now?

Despite demands by Assad’s government, the UN has started getting some aid to northern Syria, using the only humanitarian corridor between Syria and Turkey at the Bab al-Hawa crossing. CNN reports that the first convoy of six trucks carried only “shelter items” and other non-food supplies.

“The UN cross-border aid operation has been reinstated today. We are relieved that we are able to reach the people in northwest Syria in this pressing time. We hope that this operation continues as this is a humanitarian lifeline and the only scalable channel,” Sanjana Quazi, head of OCHA Türkiye [the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] said.

The delivery on Thursday ends a three-day period during which no aid arrived at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey to rebel-held areas of northern Syria – just 300 bodies, according to the administration that controls the only access point between the two countries.

“How are roads okay for cars carrying bodies, but not for aid?” Mazen Alloush, Bab al-Hawa’s frustrated spokesperson had asked CNN.

The bodies were of Syrian refugees who died in Turkey and were being repatriated for burial. (No, probably aid groups don’t want to risk sending food aid through in body bags, because life isn’t usually a movie.)

Even before the earthquake, northern Syria was in terrible shape, with as many as 15.3 million people needing assistance there, according to UN Resident Coordinator for Syria El-Mostafa Benlamlih.

In Aleppo alone 100,000 people are believed to be homeless, with 30,000 of that number currently sheltered in schools and mosques.

“Those are the lucky ones,” he said.

The remaining 70,000 “have snow, they have cold and they are living in a terrible situation,” he added.

The weather is also making survival even more difficult in both countries, with much colder temperatures than normal in the region, as CNN notes. Aleppo normally has chilly 36 degree Fahrenheit lows in February, but this weekend’s low temperatures are forecast to be between 27 and 28 degrees F.

Now that UN aid has started arriving, there’s hope that NGOs will be able to get aid to northern Syria; most of the big groups are already helping in Turkey. If you can spare the money, you might consider giving to the International Rescue Committee, to Doctors Without Borders, or to Mercy Corps, all of which have special appeals for the Turkey/Syria crisis.

[CNN / Al Jazeera]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. For this post, we’re going to direct you to the humanitarian aid NGOs listed above. But sure, if you also want to keep us funded too, we’d appreciate that.



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Ukraine war: Investigators probe 58,000 possible Russian war crimes

Ten months into Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, overwhelming evidence shows the Kremlin’s troops have waged total war, with disregard for international laws governing the treatment of civilians and conduct on the battlefield.

Ukraine is investigating more than 58,000 potential Russian war crimes — killings, kidnappings, indiscriminate bombings and sexual assaults. Reporting by The Associated Press and US television channel PBS, recorded in a public database, has independently verified more than 600 incidents that appear to violate the laws of war. Some of those attacks were massacres that killed dozens or hundreds of civilians and as a totality it could account for thousands of individual war crimes.

As Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, told the AP, “Ukraine is a crime scene.”

That extensive documentation has run smack into a hard reality, however. While authorities have amassed a staggering amount of evidence — the conflict is among the most documented in human history — they are unlikely to arrest most of those who pulled the trigger or gave the beatings anytime soon, let alone the commanders who gave the orders and political leaders who sanctioned the attacks.

The reasons are manifold, experts say. Ukrainian authorities face serious challenges in gathering air-tight evidence in a war zone. And the vast majority of alleged war criminals have evaded capture and are safely behind Russian lines.

Even in successful prosecutions, the limits of justice so far are glaring. Take the case of Vadim Shishimarin, a baby-faced 21-year-old tank commander who was the first Russian tried on war crimes charges. He surrendered in March and pleaded guilty in a Kyiv courtroom in May to shooting a 62-year-old Ukrainian civilian in the head.

The desire for some combination of justice and vengeance was palpable in that courtroom. “Do you consider yourself a murderer?” a woman shouted at the Russian as he stood bent forward with his head resting against the glass of the cage he was locked in.

“What about the man in the coffin?” came another, sharper voice. A third demanded the defense lawyer explain how he could fight for the Russian’s freedom.

The young soldier was first sentenced to life in prison, which was reduced to 15 years on appeal. Critics said the initial penalty was unduly harsh, given that he confessed to the crime, said he was following orders and expressed remorse.

Ukrainian prosecutors, however, have not yet been able to charge Shishimarin’s commanders or those who oversaw him. Since March, Ukraine has named more than 600 Russians, many of them high-ranking political and military officials, as suspects, including Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu. But, so far, the most powerful have not fallen into Ukrainian custody.

“It would be terrible to find a scenario in which, in the end, you convict a few people of war crimes and crimes against humanity who are low-grade or mid-grade military types or paramilitary types, but the top table gets off scot-free,” said Philippe Sands, a prominent British human rights lawyer.

Throughout the war Russian leaders have denied accusations of brutality.

Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said no civilians were tortured and killed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha despite the meticulous documentation of the atrocities by AP, other journalists, and war crimes investigators there.

“Not a single local person has suffered from any violent action,” he said, calling the photos and video of bodies in the streets “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians.

Such statements have been easily rebutted by Ukrainian and international authorities, human rights groups and journalists who have meticulously documented Russian barbarity since the Kremlin ordered the unprovoked invasion in February.

Part of that effort, the AP and PBS Frontline database called War Crimes Watch Ukraine, offers a contemporaneous catalog of the horrors of war. It is not a comprehensive accounting. AP and Frontline only included incidents that could be verified by photos, videos or firsthand witness accounts. There are hundreds of reported incidents of potential war crimes for which there was not enough publicly available evidence to independently confirm what happened.

Still, the resulting database details 10 months of attacks that appear to violate the laws of war, including 93 attacks on schools, 36 where children were killed, and more than 200 direct attacks on civilians, including torture, the kidnapping and killing of civilians, and the desecration of dead bodies. Among Russia’s targets: churches, cultural centers, hospitals, food facilities and electrical infrastructure. The database catalogs how Russia utilized cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons in residential neighborhoods and to attack buildings housing civilians.

An AP investigation revealed that Russia’s bombing of a theatre in Mariupol, which was being used as a civilian shelter, likely killed more than 600 people. Another showed that in the first 30 days after the invasion, Russian forces struck and damaged 34 medical facilities, suggesting a pattern and intent.

“That’s a crime against the laws of war,’ said Stephen Rapp, a former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes. “Once somebody’s injured, they’re entitled to medical care. You can’t attack a hospital. That’s the oldest rule we have in international law.”

Experts say Russia under President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly ignored the rules established by the Geneva Conventions, a series of treaties that dictate how warring countries should treat each other’s citizens, and the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court and defined specific war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“These abuses are not the acts of rogue units; rather, they are part of a deeply disturbing pattern of abuse consistent with what we have seen from Russia’s prior military engagements — in Chechnya, Syria, and Georgia,” said Beth Van Schaack, the US Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice, speaking earlier this month at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Short of a regime-toppling revolution in Moscow, however, it is unlikely Putin and other high-ranking Russians end up in court, whether in Ukraine or the Hague, experts say.

And even as a chorus of global leaders have joined Ukrainians in calling for legal action against the architects of this war, there is disagreement about the best way to do it.

The International Criminal Court has been investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. But it cannot prosecute the most basic offense, the crime of aggression — the unjust use of military force against another nation — because the Russian Federation, like the United States, never gave it authority to do so.

Efforts to plug that loophole by creating a special international tribunal for the crime of aggression in Ukraine have been gaining momentum. Last month, the European Union threw its support behind the idea.

Some human rights advocates say a special tribunal would be the smartest way to proceed. Sands, the British human rights lawyer, said prosecuting Russia before such a tribunal would be a “slam dunk.”

“You’d need to prove that that war is manifestly in violation of international law,” he added. “That’s pretty straightforward because Mr Putin has set out the reasons for that war, and it’s blindingly obvious that they don’t meet the requirements of international law.”

But Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has opposed the creation of a special tribunal, calling it a “vanity project.”

”We are an international court,” Khan told AP and Frontline in July. “We’ve been accepted, of course, by the Security Councilors as legitimate. They’ve used this court in terms of referrals. And I think we should focus on using this court effectively.”

Whatever happens on the international stage, the vast majority of cases will be heard within Ukraine itself.

The daunting task of turning Ukraine’s beleaguered prosecutorial service into a bureaucracy capable of building sophisticated war crimes cases falls on Yurii Bielousov.

When he was offered the job of leading the war crimes department in the prosecutor general’s office, Bielousov knew it would be tough. Just how tough became clear after Russians pulled out of Bucha last spring, leaving behind a crime scene strewn with the decomposing bodies of more than 450 men, women and children.

Bucha was the first complex case picked up by Bielousov’s prosecutors, and it quickly became one of the most important. No one in Ukraine had ever dealt with something of that scale before.

“The system was not in collapse, but the system was shocked,” Bielousov said. “OK, OK, let’s go everyone, and just try to do our best.”

Ukraine has five different investigative agencies, each assigned legal responsibility for different kinds of crimes. The crimes in Bucha cut across all those categories, tangling the bureaucracy. That has only made building tough cases even harder.

Despite the setbacks and hurdles, Bielousov says his prosecutors remain focused on gathering evidence that will stand up in domestic and international courts. He says he is also focused on another goal — compiling an incontrovertible record of Russia’s savagery that the world cannot ignore.

Yulia Truba wants the same thing. Her husband was one of the first men Russian soldiers tortured and killed in Bucha. She said she wants to establish a single, shared truth about what happened to her husband

“Russia won’t recognise this as a crime,” Truba said. “I just want as many people as possible to recognize it was a real murder and he was tortured. For me, this would be justice.”



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