Month: September 2022

Russia’s foreign minister has dismissed Ukrainian and Western condemnation of what they say are sham referenda in four regions of Ukraine.

“The hysteria which we have seen is very telling,” Sergey Lavrov told a news conference at the United Nations on Saturday, after he addressed the General Assembly’s annual meeting.

Voting began Friday and will run through Tuesday in the provinces of Luhansk, Kherson and the partially Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. Polls also opened in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those areas could vote.

In Ukraine, some local officials said voters were being intimidated and threatened.

Kyiv and Western nations warn that the referenda are aimed at annexing the occupied areas and denounce them as a violation of international law.

“As was said by President Putin, we will unconditionally respect the results of these democratic processes,” Lavrov said.

Ukraine says it will never accept Russian control of any of its territory and has requested that the U.N. Security Council meet Tuesday to discuss the escalation.

The referenda were quickly organized after Ukraine recaptured large swaths of the northeastern part of the country in a counteroffensive earlier this month.

By annexing the four areas into Russia, Western officials fear Moscow could portray Ukrainian military operations to retake them as an attack on Russia itself, potentially even using that to justify a nuclear response.

Calls for peace

At the United Nations, Russia’s strategic partners urged an end to the conflict, which has exacerbated global food, fuel and financial crises.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Beijing does not want to see the crisis “spilling over” and called for talks.

“The fundamental solution is to address the legitimate security concerns of all parties and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture,” he said.

India’s foreign minister said his country respects the U.N. Charter and sees dialogue and diplomacy as the “only way out.”

“It is therefore in our collective interest to work constructively, both within the United Nations and outside, in finding an early resolution to this conflict,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said.

Asked about engaging with the U.S. or Europeans, Russia’s Lavrov says his government is not opposed to it.

“We aren’t saying no to contacts,” he said, adding that “it is always better to talk than not to talk.” But he emphasized that in the present situation, Russia would not take the first step.

Mass crimes

The head of a U.N. commission of inquiry said Friday that war crimes including rape, torture and the confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” commission head Erik Mose told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He did not specify who was to blame, but the commission has focused on areas previously occupied by Russian forces, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.

Investigators from the commission, created by the rights council in March, visited 27 places and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses.

In New York, the Russian foreign minister has said mass graves at Bucha were staged and claimed Saturday that Kyiv had denied access to foreign reporters to alleged new graves found in the city of Izium.

But VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze is in Izium, where she reported from a mass graveyard that more than 400 bodies were unearthed, many found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones and gunshot wounds.

Mobilization fallout

Meanwhile, an independent Russian human rights group says more than 1,000 people were detained across the country at demonstrations Saturday for protesting President Vladimir Putin’s order calling up 300,000 military reservists to fight in Ukraine. It is Russia’s first military call-up since World War II.

The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it was aware of detentions in 32 different cities, from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russian law, which also forbids any activity considered to defame the armed forces.

Footage from the some of the protests showed Russian officers carrying men and leading women to police vans.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed information to this report.  
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What had been a lightning push by Ukraine to drive Moscow’s forces from the eastern Kharkiv region slowed to a brutal slog Saturday, stalled by heavy rain and Russian resistance.

In the frontline town of Kupiansk against a background of constant shelling noise a column of dark smoke rose across the Oskil River, which separates the Ukrainian-held west bank from the east, still disputed by Russian forces.

“For now, the rain is making it difficult to use heavy weapons everywhere. We can only use paved roads,” Ukrainian army sergeant Roman Malyna told AFP, as tanks and APCs maneuvered under the downpour.   

“For now, because it’s hard to move forward due to the weather, we are targeting their armored vehicles, ammunition depots and groups of soldiers,” he said.  

On Friday, Kupiansk’s military administrator Andriy Kanashevych told AFP that it might take Ukrainian forces 10 days to fully secure the area.

Most of the shellfire on Saturday was outgoing — Ukrainian artillery targeting Russian positions in the woods beyond the east of the town — but with a Russian drone spotted overhead tension prevailed.  

A few refugees were walking toward Ukrainian territory across the damaged bridge, its handrails still painted in the red, white and blue colors of Kupiansk’s former Russian occupiers.

Two Ukrainian soldiers, well-equipped with U.S.-style assault rifles and body armor, and in good spirits despite fatigue and concern over the Russian drone buzzing above the debris-strewn road, also crossed back.

One of them, using the nom de guerre “Mario,” said it was too soon to say when the east bank would come completely under Ukrainian control but was confident the Russians were in retreat.  

“Only their bodies will be left behind,” he said.

“In general, it’s all good, taking into account the scale of the operation, we’ve had almost no losses,” he told AFP.  

Most of Kupiansk, a key rail hub once used by Russia to supply its forces further south on the Donetsk battlefront, fell to Ukraine in this month’s counterattack against the invader.

But a narrow strip of the Kharkiv region on the east side of the Oskil River remains in Russian hands and prevents Ukraine from pushing on into the Lugansk region, which Moscow holds and is seeking to annex.

“Yes, we have enough weapons and men, but it depends on what happens on the other side,” Sergeant Malyna said, referring to the Russian forces.  

“They are trying to find the weak points in our defensive line. So, they try to attack us from time to time using tanks and marines.

“Our morale is good. We are ready to fight, but we need more heavy weapons and more precision weapons,” he said, repeating a common Ukrainian appeal for more advanced arms from Kyiv’s Western allies.

While the fighting continues, many civilians have fled a town that is without electricity and running water, and where shells whistle overhead.   

Some, however, have nowhere to go and are reliant on food aid deliveries.

Civilians still cluster around portable generators in the doorways of five-story concrete apartment blocks as the rain courses down, charging tablets, flashlights and razors.

Most say they are glad that Ukrainian forces returned to free the town from Russian occupation, but the ongoing fighting has taken a toll.

Retired trapeze artist Lyudmila Belukha, 74, once performed for the Soviet-era Moscow Circus.  

“I traveled across the entire Soviet Union and abroad, too,” she said.

A widow — her late husband was a fellow circus performer — she lives alone in a Kupiansk housing estate.

Her sister has moved to Greece, while she has been without news of her nephew, who lives on the eastern bank of the river, for months.

“I’m at home alone, with my cats. Absolutely alone. My kitchen and balcony windows are broken. I need plastic wrap to fix them because it will be getting cold. I’m freezing,” she said.

She was picking up a food parcel from humanitarian volunteers and said she was not starving, but: “We have no water, no gas, and no electricity. Nothing. There’s no way to even boil water for tea.”
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Almost 2,000 innocent people have been killed by Russian forces in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Ukraine – some just for speaking Ukrainian or having Ukrainian symbols. VOA’s Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze was granted exclusive access to the scene of a mass graveyard in Izium in the Kharkiv region that contains more than 400 bodies.

Most of them apparently died particularly violent deaths, with many victims found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones, and gunshot wounds.

United Nations experts and Ukrainian officials have pointed to new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.

The head of a U.N.-mandated investigation body said Friday war crimes including rape, torture and the confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Erik Mose, who heads the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He did not specify who was to blame, but the commission has focused on areas previously occupied by Russian forces, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.

Investigators from the commission, created by the rights council in March, visited 27 places and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses

A U.S. envoy told the council, “Numerous sources indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcible deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens.”

U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor, U.S. permanent representative to the council, added, “We urge the commissioners to continue to examine the growing evidence of Russia’s filtration operations, forced deportations and disappearances.”

Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians.

Russia was called on to respond to the allegations at the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, but its seat was left empty. There was no immediate official reaction from Moscow.

Mobilization fallout

In the meantime, more than 730 people were detained across Russia at protests Saturday against a mobilization order of 300,000 military reservists, a rights group said, three days after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s first military call-up since World War II for the conflict in Ukraine.

The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it was aware of detentions in 32 different cities, from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russian law, which also forbids any activity considered to defame the armed forces.

Footage from the same protest showed Russian officers carrying men and leading women to police vans.

Russia’s first public mobilization since World War II—to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine—also has triggered a rush for the border by eligible men.

Russian referendums

Western nations and Ukraine have labeled a “sham” the voting on referendums in Russian-held regions of Ukraine asking residents if they want their regions to be part of Russia. Voting began Friday on Russian referendums aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine. Some local officials said voters were being intimidated and threatened.

In the balloting, scheduled to run from Friday to Tuesday in the provinces of Luhansk, Kherson and the partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, voters are being asked if they want their areas to become part of Russia.

Polls also opened in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those areas could vote.

The West and Ukraine said the voting is illegal under international law.

“Any elections or referenda on the territory of Ukraine can only be announced and conducted by legitimate authorities in compliance with national legislation and international standards,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a statement. “Therefore, the planned ‘referenda’ will be illegal.”

Ukrainian officials said people were banned from leaving some occupied areas until the vote was over, armed groups were going to homes to force people to cast ballots, and employees were told they could be fired if they did not participate.

Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s Luhansk governor, said in the town of Starobilsk, the population was banned from leaving and people were being forced out of their homes to vote.

“Today, the best thing for the people of Kherson would be not to open their doors,” said Yuriy Sobolevsky, the displaced first deputy council chairman of Kherson region.

The results of the referendums, expected soon after the voting, are almost certain to support joining Russia.

“We are returning home,” said the Russian-backed leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin. “Donbas is Russia.”

“All of us have been waiting for a referendum on joining Russia for eight long years,” said Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-backed leader of Luhansk. “We have already become part of Russia. There remains only a small matter – to win [the war].”

Ukraine says it will never accept Russian control of any of its territory.

The referendums were quickly organized after Ukraine earlier this month recaptured large swaths of the northeast in a counteroffensive.

By incorporating the four areas, Moscow could portray attacks to retake them as an attack on Russia itself – potentially even using that to justify a nuclear response.

In a televised address this week, Putin said the West is trying to weaken and destroy Russia and that his country will “use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The United Nations reports the human rights situation in Belarus has seriously deteriorated as the government seeks to maintain control over its people, stripping them of their civil and political rights.

The report, submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council, finds the climate of repression continues throughout Belarus two years after Alexander Lukashenko was reelected for a sixth term as president in a vote considered rigged by the country’s opposition. The anger over the election’s outcome that sparked large-scale protests at that time has not subsided.   

Since her office’s last update in March, Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif said there has been a massive crackdown on civil society in Belarus. She said the media, political opponents, trade unions and other perceived dissidents have been prevented from exercising their democratic and human rights.

She said more than 1,300 political prisoners currently are behind bars.  She noted that authorities continue imprisoning and torturing people for exercising their human rights, including their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

“No genuine and impartial investigations into allegations of torture and cases of deaths are being conducted,” Al-Nashif said. “On the contrary, we continue to receive credible reports of authorities harassing and intimidating those seeking justice in relation to such allegations, including relatives of victims, further undermining the rule of law and the judicial system.”  

Al-Nashif expressed particular concern about amendments to Belarus’ Criminal Code.  She said they extend the death penalty to people attempting to carry out so-called acts of terrorism and murders of government officials or public figures. She noted that dozens of political activists already have been charged with such crimes.

“Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee to neighboring countries,” she said. “The crackdown’s human rights impacts, particularly on women, children, and persons with disabilities, are of specific concern. There are also reports of seizures of assets, and unlawful evictions of relatives of those who left the country.”  

In response, Belarus Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Larysa Belskaya, said the report was far removed from reality, and deliberately distorts the situation in her country.

She accused the document’s authors of applying double standards. Instead of vilifying the elections in her country, she said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should investigate the presidential elections that took place in the United States and issue similar reports.
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Ukrainian officials announced on Friday that they had exhumed more than 400 bodies at a mass burial site near Izium, Kharkiv region, from which Russian troops recently retreated after a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Many of those buried there, they said, apparently died a violent death — bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones and gunshot wounds; some men had their genitalia severed. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze visited the site.
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The Church of England said the daughter of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu could not be an officiant at her godfather’s funeral in England because she is married to a woman.

The Rev. Mpho Tutu van Furth told The New York Times that she was “stunned” by the church’s “lack of compassion.”

However, Tutu was able, in the end, to fulfil her godfather’s wish. She was able to officiate his funeral, as the service was moved from a church and was instead held in her godfather’s garden in Shropshire.

Martin Kenyon, Tutu’s 92-year-old godfather, died last week. His funeral was held Thursday.

Kenyon and Desmond Tutu became friends when they were both students at Kings College. The archbishop was Kenyon’s daughter’s godfather.
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Western nations and Ukraine say voting is a sham that began Friday on Russian referendums aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine. Some local officials said voters were being intimidated and threatened.

In the balloting, scheduled to run from Friday to Tuesday in the provinces of Luhansk, Kherson and the partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, voters are being asked if they want their areas to become part of Russia.

Polls also opened in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those areas could vote.

The West and Ukraine said the voting is illegal under international law.

“Any elections or referenda on the territory of Ukraine can only be announced and conducted by legitimate authorities in compliance with national legislation and international standards,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe a said in a statement. “Therefore, the planned ‘referenda’ will be illegal.”

Ukrainian officials said people were banned from leaving some occupied areas until the vote was over, armed groups were going to homes to force people to cast ballots, and employees were told they could be fired if they did not participate.

Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s Luhansk governor, said in the town of Starobilsk, the population was banned from leaving and people were being forced out of their homes to vote.

“Today, the best thing for the people of Kherson would be not to open their doors,” said Yuriy Sobolevsky, the displaced first deputy council chairman of Kherson region.

The results of the referendums, expected soon after the voting, are almost certain to support joining Russia.  

“We are returning home,” said the Russian-backed leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin. “Donbas is Russia.”

“All of us have been waiting for a referendum on joining Russia for eight long years,” said Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-backed leader of Luhansk. “We have already become part of Russia. There remains only a small matter – to win [the war].”

Ukraine says it will never accept Russian control of any of its territory.

The referendums were quickly organized after Ukraine earlier this month recaptured large swaths of the northeast in a counteroffensive.

By incorporating the four areas, Moscow could portray attacks to retake them as an attack on Russia itself – potentially even using that to justify a nuclear response.

In a televised address this week, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said the West is trying to weaken and destroy Russia and that his country will “use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”

With Putin’s announcement that he intends to call up 300,000 more troops for his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Kremlin appears to be trying to regain the upper hand in the grinding conflict.

Russia’s mobilization campaign is not likely to generate effective soldiers and is creating a public backlash, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War.

“Russian authorities are forcibly recruiting Russian citizens to fight in Ukraine on flimsy pretexts, violating the Kremlin’s promise to recruit only those with military experience,” the institute reported. “Russian authorities are also demonstrably mobilizing personnel [such as protesters] who will enter the war in Ukraine with abysmal morale,” it said.

Meanwhile, United Nations experts and Ukrainian officials have pointed to new evidence of war crimes in Ukraine. 

The head of a U.N.-mandated investigation body said Friday war crimes including rape, torture and confinement of children have been committed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Erik Mose, who heads the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He did not specify who was to blame but the commission has focused on areas previously occupied by Russian forces, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.

Investigators from the commission, created by the rights council in March, visited 27 places and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses.

They found evidence of a large number of executions, including bodies with tied hands, slit throats and gunshot wounds to the head, Mose said.

He also noted investigators had identified victims of sexual violence who were between the ages of four and 82. While some Russian soldiers had used sexual violence as a strategy, the commission “has not established any general pattern to that effect,” Mose added.

A U.S. envoy told the council, “Numerous sources indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcible deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens.” 

U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor, U.S. permanent representative to the council added, “We urge the commissioners to continue to examine the growing evidence of Russia’s filtration operations, forced deportations and disappearances.”

Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians.

Russia was called on to respond to the allegations at the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting but its seat was left empty. There was no immediate official reaction from Moscow.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Thousands of Russians are trying to flee the country to escape conscription into the military. President Vladimir Putin announced the move in a televised address Wednesday, as Russian armed forces have been suffering significant losses in the invasion of Ukraine in recent weeks. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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