Month: November 2022

A senior U.S. diplomat this week accused the Russian forces invading Ukraine of “systemic” war crimes, saying that abuses are taking place at a scale that suggests leaders in the highest levels of the Kremlin know about and support them.

Russia claimed the allegation was not supported with evidence and that reports of Ukrainian atrocities were being ignored.

In a briefing at the State Department on Monday, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack said evidence of Russian war crimes collected by nongovernmental organizations, the media and dedicated war crimes investigators is extensive.

Van Schaack signaled strong U.S. support for the various efforts currently underway to document war crimes and to eventually present formal charges at the International Criminal Court or other suitable venues.

“The aggression against Ukraine is a manifest violation of the U.N. Charter, and we have mounting evidence that this aggression has been accompanied by systemic war crimes committed in every region where Russia’s forces have been deployed,” Van Schaack said. “This includes deliberate, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks against the civilian population and elements of the civilian infrastructure. We’re seeing custodial abuses of civilians and POWs and also efforts to cover up these crimes.”

‘All the way up the chain of command’

She said the evidence suggests that “these atrocities are not the acts of rogue units or individuals. Rather, they are part of a deeply disturbing pattern of reports of abuse across all areas where we’re seeing Russia’s forces engage.”

Pointing specifically to “filtration” camps, through which an untold number of Ukrainian civilians, including many children, have been processed and deported to Russia, she said that the scale of the operation suggests the Kremlin’s direct support.

“Prosecutors will follow the evidence where it leads, but when we’re seeing such systemic acts, including the creation of a vast filtration network, it’s very hard to imagine how these crimes could be committed without responsibility going all the way up the chain of command,” she said.

Implicating Putin

Monday’s remarks from Van Schaack were not the first time a senior U.S. official has accused Russia of war crimes, but experts said that her comments seemed to mark a shift in the administration’s attitude toward future prosecutions.

David J. Scheffer, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, told VOA that Van Schaack’s emphasis on the “systemic” nature of the alleged war crimes was important.

“She is, rather formally, acknowledging that the commission of war crimes by the Russian military is not an isolated string of crimes, but rather, is part of an overall plan and executed on a large scale basis,” Scheffer said.

“That is not stated lightly, because once there is a determination that war crimes are being committed systemically, that involves sophisticated planning, organization and execution, which can only take place, normally, from the leadership level.”

In that case, he added, “the investigation takes on a much broader and significant character, because there you’re going to the top. You’re trying to establish superior responsibility with respect to civilian leaders like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, or command responsibility with respect to military commanders in the Ministry of Defense.”

New tone from US

The United States has not always been broadly supportive of efforts to establish standards for international criminal law, but in this case, the Biden administration has been actively supporting a variety of ongoing inquiries, including direct cooperation with the International Criminal Court.

“It’s a really remarkable shift in the U.S. stance on international criminal law, from multiple previous administrations, to see this level of involvement,” Marti Flacks, director of the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA. “It’s a sign of, in part, just how serious and widespread and systematic the crimes in Ukraine are at this point.”

In past conflicts, including the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, prosecution of war criminals has been a slow-moving process. However, Flacks said, the combination of surveillance technology and a seeming willingness by Russia to flagrantly violate international law may result in a more rapid pace of indictments.

“I would expect that we’ll see some of those charges come out in a matter of months and not a matter of years,” she said. “The question is how long it’s going to take to actually get to a prosecution, which, of course, requires a defendant. And that’s where we may be playing a very long game, in terms of maintaining that evidence and, and having those procedures ready to go when … we’re able to take someone into custody.”

Indictments may be sealed

In the event that cases made against Russian individuals are complicated by the accused person remaining in Russia, Van Schaack said prosecutors have the ability to issue indictments “in absentia” in order to establish evidence and issue arrest warrants.

Flacks, of CSIS, said that she would also expect some indictments to be issued under seal, so as not to alert individuals that there are active arrest warrants naming them.

“It’s actually very practical,” she said. “You don’t want to announce that somebody’s wanted and deter them from traveling to a place where they might actually be arrested.”

Russian accusations

The comments from Van Schaack come at the same time that Russian sources have been making claims that they have evidence of a war crime committed by Ukrainian forces.

A snippet of video being widely shared on Russian social media shows a group of Russian soldiers emerging from a building, appearing to surrender to Ukrainian forces and being instructed to lie on the ground. With several Russian soldiers already on the ground, another person follows them out of the building and appears to fire a weapon toward Ukrainian troops. The video cuts away, but another scene, apparently shot later, appears to show the Russians who had been lying on the ground still in similar positions, but now dead in pools of blood.

Asked to address the video, Van Schaack said that U.S. officials are monitoring the situation closely, and stressed that the laws of war must be observed by both sides in the conflict.

However, she added, “When we’re looking at the sheer scale of criminality exhibited by Russian forces, it’s enormous compared to the allegations that we have seen against Ukrainian forces. And likewise we’re seeing a really vast difference when it comes to the reaction to such allegations. Russia inevitably responds with propaganda, denial, mis- and disinformation, whereas the Ukrainian authorities have generally acknowledged abuses and have denounced them and have pledged to investigate them.”

Russia responds

The Russian embassy in Washington responded to Van Schaack’s statements with a post on Facebook.

“We noted the statements of Ambassador-at-Large on International Criminal Justice Beth [Van Schaack] on the murder of captured Russian military personnel by Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” the statement said. “The official refused to directly condemn the massacre of our unarmed soldiers, despite the confirmation of the authenticity of the relevant video materials by American journalists, who did not hush up the tragedy.”

It continued, “The diplomat cynically referred to the fact that the ‘war crimes’ of the Russian Army are recorded ‘many times more often’ than those by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time the State Department yet again failed to provide any evidence of violent acts allegedly committed by our servicemen.”
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Russian energy giant Gazprom has threatened to reduce natural gas supplies through the last pipeline heading to Europe via Ukraine, saying the amount it’s supplying for Moldova is not ending up in the former Soviet republic.

Gazprom says the gas company of Europe’s poorest country, Moldovagaz, paid for part of its November flows of gas under its contract. It added that nearly 25 million cubic meters have been supplied this month but not paid for.

The Russian state-owned company tweeted that if “the imbalance observed during the transit of gas to the Moldovan consumers across Ukraine continues,” Gazprom “will start reducing its gas supplies” through Ukraine starting Monday.

Both Moldova and Ukraine hit back at Gazprom, with Ukraine saying all supplies that Russia sent through the country were “fully transferred” to Moldova.

“This is not the first time that Russia resorts to using gas as a tool of political pressure. This is a gross manipulation of facts in order to justify the decision to further limit the volume of gas supplies to European countries,” said Olha Belkova of the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine.

It’s the latest escalation after Russia has cut off most natural gas flows to Europe amid the war in Ukraine, which European leaders have called energy blackmail and Gazprom has blamed on maintenance and payment issues. Besides the pipeline through Ukraine, one other pipeline is still bringing Russian gas beneath the Black Sea to Turkey.

Heading into winter, when natural gas is needed to heat homes as well as generate electricity and power factories, any reductions in supplies could mean higher prices, which have been fueling inflation and squeezing households and businesses. Natural gas prices have fallen since August peaks, and European nations have been able to fill their storage capacity for winter, but the crunch could worsen if the weather turns out to be colder than normal.

Moldovan energy crisis

The energy crisis has hit Moldova especially hard, with Russia halving its natural gas supply and Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure triggering massive blackouts in several cities in the former Soviet republic.

Moldova relied heavily on Russian energy before the war, and its Soviet-era energy systems remain interconnected with Ukraine, which is why the missile barrages set off the automatic shutdown of a supply line and caused the lights to go out temporarily.

With energy prices and inflation already high, the threat of a loss of further energy supplies to Moldova could leave consumers scrambling to pay their bills in the country of about 2.6 million.

Simone Tagliapietra, an energy policy expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels, pointed to a recent meeting between Moldovan President Maia Sandu and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen about energy assistance, noting that leaders who visited Kyiv earlier in the war to show their support had their gas cut off subsequently.

“Maybe they are following the same plot,” Tagliapietra said of Russia. “It looks like an act of despair for them. They are running out of energy weapons.”

He said one motive could be to pressure the EU by forcing it to drum up financial support for Moldova.

An international aid conference in Paris co-chaired by France, Germany and Romania raised more than 100 million euros ($102 million) on Monday to support Moldova. Earlier this month, the EU also pledged the country 250 million euros (nearly $256 million) in aid.

Moldova’s office of reintegration policies said in a statement that the energy crisis in the country — including Transnistria, a Russia-backed breakaway region — “was not caused by Chisinau, but by the unjustified decisions of the Russian company Gazprom.”

Moldova’s statement was a response to accusations Tuesday by Transnistria, in which de facto authorities alleged in a letter addressed to the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that Moldova’s pro-Western leaders are responsible for energy shortages in the breakaway state.

“The only solution for overcoming the crisis is the resumption of the supply of natural gas by Gazprom in the quantities provided by the contract in force,” Moldova’s statement read, adding that Transnistria’s accusations were designed “to mislead public opinion and external partners.”

“Possibly preparing the ground for a new challenge, which could endanger the fragile stability which we have managed to maintain until now.”

Moldova became a candidate for EU membership in June, the same day as Ukraine.
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Turkey says it will continue its military operations against U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, after blaming Kurdish separatists for a recent bombing in Istanbul. Ankara says it’s ready to launch a Syrian cross-border operation but faces growing international calls for restraint

International pressure is growing on Ankara as Moscow joins calls for restraint as Turkish forces continue their military operations against the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Tuesday a land operation could be imminent.

“We have been bearing down on terrorists for a few days with our planes, cannons, and guns,” Erdogan said in a speech. “God willing, we will root out all of them as soon as possible, together with our tanks, our soldiers.”

Ankara claims the YPG facilitated this month’s fatal bombing in Istanbul, a charge the group denies. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, speaking Monday, warned there would be no letup in its attacks.

He said Turkey would make them pay for all the crimes they have committed today and before. “They will pay for them,” the defense minister said.

Akar said 184 militants had been neutralized in its ongoing assault. Monday, tensions escalated further, with Ankara claiming three civilians were killed in cross-border rocket attacks from Syrian Kurdish militants. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday said a ground assault into Syria was possible.

Asli Aydintasbas of the Brookings Institution in Washington says such displays are not unexpected, with elections approaching in June.

“It’s not uncommon to see a cross-border operation in election years. But also Turkey has long wanted to do this and I think elections is introducing a timeline that works for the government and also Turkey feels its hand is strong.”

Washington has warned Ankara against any cross-border operation. The United States backs the YPG in its war against the Islamic State group.

However, Defense Minister Akar dismissed Washington’s concerns, calling for an end to U.S. support of the YPG, saying it is affiliated with the PKK, which is fighting the Turkish state for greater minority rights.

Aydin Selcen is a former senior Turkish diplomat, who served in the region and is now a regional analyst for Medyascope, a news portal.

“Time and again, Ankara, Erdogan, and other actors like defense minister Akar made clear Turkey is not happy with the US equipping and training the YPG, which is a direct extension of the PKK in Syria, and Ankara considers that as the main problem.”

But in rare common ground with Washington, Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov Tuesday called on Turkey for restraint.

The Iranian-backed militia in Syria has also warned Ankara against any military operations into Syria.

With Turkish forces already controlling a large swathe of northern Syria from previous operations against Syrian Kurdish militants, analysts say Tehran is concerned with growing Turkish influence in Syria.

But Turkish Analyst Ilhan Uzgel of the Kisa Dalga news portal says Erdogan could see the current tensions as a bargaining opportunity.

“He tries to use this bargaining chip to get something from the West. I mean, it can be the purchase of F-16 fighter jets from the United States. He knows how to make bargains. He knows to what extent (he) can push the issue.”

Turkey’s purchase of F-16 fighter jets remains stalled in the U.S. Congress.

Whatever Turkey’s intentions, analysts predict Ankara is likely to keep tensions and rhetoric high as it seeks to keep enemies and allies guessing on what its real intentions are.
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Istanbul’s historic and popular Istiklal Avenue is still recovering from a bomb attack on November 13. VOA’s Turkish service reports from Istanbul in this story narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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The European Union on Monday warned of “escalation and violence” after emergency talks between Kosovo and Serbia failed to resolve their long-running dispute over car license plates used by the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo.

“After many hours of discussion … the two parties did not agree to a solution today,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement to the media.

“I think that there is an important responsibility on the sides of both leaders for the failure of the talks today and for any escalation and violence that might occur on the ground in the following days.”

Borrell later discussed the matter with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said in a tweet that the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo was “vigilant.”

“Now is the time for responsibility & pragmatic solutions. Escalation must be avoided,” he said.

Kosovo has attempted this year to require its Serb minority to change their old car plates that date before 1999 when Kosovo was still part of Serbia.

This move has been met with strong and sometimes violent resistance by Serbs living in the northern part of the country, but Kosovo has said it will start issuing fines beginning Tuesday.

Borrell said an EU proposal could have avoided increased tensions, but the proposal, which was accepted by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, was not accepted by Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti.

Borrell said he would inform the EU member states of the two countries’ “lack of respect for their international legal obligations” and warned that, given their commitment to joining the bloc, they should act accordingly.

“The Serbian side was completely constructive, and we were accepting the texts that were changed 10 times, but the Albanian side did not want to accept anything, not for a second, they would always add something that was clearly not possible,” Vucic told reporters after the meeting.

Kurti said he was ready to hold further meetings to normalize relations between Belgrade and Pristina, not just to deal with one issue.

“We cannot be irresponsible and not treat the actual issues. … We cannot turn ourselves into state leaders that are dealing only with car plates and are not talking [about] how to normalize their relations,” he told reporters in Brussels.

Speaking in Belgrade after the meeting in Brussels, Vucic said he would meet Kosovo Serbs late on Monday to ask them to remain calm.

“We received the latest intelligence a little while ago, the situation is very difficult and it is on the verge of conflict,” Vucic told reporters. “We will do everything to preserve peace.”

He also said Serbia would stop issuing and renewing its own car number plates for Northern Kosovo.

The dispute over license plates has stoked tensions for almost two years between Serbia and its former breakaway province, which declared independence in 2008 and is home to a Serb minority in the north backed by Belgrade.

Around 50,000 ethnic Serbs who live there refuse to recognize Pristina’s authority and still consider themselves a part of Serbia.

Hundreds of police officers, judges, prosecutors and other state workers from the Serb minority quit their jobs this month after the government in Pristina ruled that local Serbs must finally replace car plates issued by Northern Kosovo Serb municipal authorities loyal to Belgrade, with Kosovo state ones.

Borrell called on Kosovo to immediately suspend the re-registration of vehicles in north Kosovo, and asked Serbia to suspend issuing new number plates, allowing both parties “space and time” to find a resolution.
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Turkey said a Kurdish militia killed two people in mortar attacks from northern Syria on Monday, in an escalation of cross-border retaliation following Turkish air operations over the weekend and a deadly bomb attack in Istanbul a week ago.

Turkey’s armed forces said it was responding, and a senior security official told Reuters that Turkish jets had again started hitting targets in northern Syria.

In the latest in a series of tit-for-tat attacks, several mortar shells hit a border district in Turkey’s Gaziantep province, leaving a child and a teacher among the dead and at least six wounded, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said.

A pregnant woman initially reported as killed was badly wounded and is under treatment in a hospital, Soylu said later.

Local governor Davut Gul said five rockets had hit a school, two houses and a truck near the Karkamis border area. Broadcaster CNN Turk said the attack was launched from Syria’s Kobani area, controlled by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Turkish warplanes had carried out strikes in Syria and Iraq on Sunday, destroying 89 targets linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the YPG, which Ankara says is a wing of the PKK.

In a statement, the Turkish defense ministry said 184 militants were killed in operations on Sunday and Monday. It said the operations had included air strikes and land-fired weapons.

Turkey said its weekend operation was in retaliation for the bomb attack in Istanbul last week that killed six people, and which authorities blamed on Kurdish militants. The PKK and YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have denied involvement in the November 13 bombing on a busy pedestrian avenue.

Washington has allied with the SDF in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, causing a deep and lasting rift with NATO ally Turkey.

An SDF spokesman had said the weekend Turkish strikes destroyed grain silos, a power station and a hospital, killing 11 civilians, an SDF fighter and two guards. It also said it would retaliate.

Ground forces possible

During the weekend violence, eight Turkish security personnel were wounded in YPG rocket attacks from Syria’s Tal Rifat on a police post near a border gate in Kilis province, Ankara said.

On Monday, Turkey struck a Syrian army outpost west of Kobani where a YPG army barrack is located, an SDF source said. The outpost is one of several where the Syrian army was brought in to prevent the Turks from attacking the SDF.

Turkey has backed rebels fighting to topple Syria’s President Bashar Assad and cut diplomatic relations with Damascus early in the 11-year conflict.

Turkey’s armed forces have conducted several large-scale military operations in recent years in northern Iraq and northern Syria against the YPG, PKK and Islamic State.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey’s operations would not be limited to an air campaign and could involve ground forces.

“Our defense ministry and our general staff decide together how much of the land forces should take part. We make our consultations, and then we take our steps accordingly,” he was quoted by Turkish media as saying on a flight from Qatar.

The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
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A British-born woman who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State (IS) is challenging the U.K. government’s decision to take away her citizenship, with her lawyers telling a London court that she was likely “a child victim of trafficking.”

Shamima Begum left London in 2015 aged 15 and traveled with two school friends to Syria, where she married an IS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died as infants.

She was stripped of her British citizenship on national security grounds in 2019, shortly after she was found in a detention camp in Syria.

Begum, now 23, is appealing that decision at a five-day hearing at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a specialist tribunal that hears appeals of decisions to remove citizenship on national security grounds.

Samantha Knights, representing Begum, said on Monday that the decision to remove her citizenship made Begum “effectively an exile for life.”

“This case concerns a British child aged 15 who was persuaded, influenced and affected with her friends by a determined and effective ISIS propaganda machine,” she said, using another acronym for the militant Islamist group.

Begum’s lawyers said in written arguments that the British Home Office (interior ministry) had revoked her citizenship “without seeking to investigate and determine, still less consider, whether she was a child victim of trafficking.”

They also argued there was overwhelming evidence that Begum was “recruited, transported, transferred, harbored and received in Syria for the purposes of sexual exploitation.”

Her lawyers also said that Begum and her friends’ entry into Syria was “facilitated by a Canadian agent working for ISIS.”

But lawyers representing the Home Office said Begum’s case was about national security rather than trafficking. 

James Eadie, representing the British government, said in written arguments that Begum had aligned with IS and stayed in Syria for four years until 2019.

Eadie said Begum left IS territory “only as the caliphate collapsed,” adding: “Even at that stage, the evidence demonstrates that she left only for safety and not because of a genuine disengagement from the group.”

A British intelligence officer known only as Witness E, who gave evidence from behind a screen, said it was “inconceivable” that someone traveling to Syria to join IS in 2015 “would not know what [IS] was doing as a terrorist organization.”

“In some respects, she would have known what she was doing and had agency in doing so,” Witness E said.
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Spain has decided to repatriate several Spanish wives and children of Islamic State fighters from jihadist detention camps in Syria, the government said Monday. 

The return of relatives of captured or killed jihadist fighters from Syria and Iraq has been a thorny issue for European countries since the fall of the Islamic State group’s so-called “caliphate” in 2019. 

Thousands of extremists in Europe decided to join the group as fighters, often taking their wives and children to live in the “caliphate” declared in territory conquered in Iraq and Syria. 

Spain plans to repatriate three women and 13 children before the end of the year, a government source told AFP, confirming a report in top-selling Spanish daily El Pais. 

One of the women is married to an Islamic State fighter and the other two are widows of jihadist fighters.  

Previously, Spain has refused to repatriate such family members of jihadist fighters. 

The women face charges of cooperating with a terrorist organization for allegedly aiding the Islamic State group. If convicted, they face jail terms of up to five years. 

The women have been in the detention camps since 2019. They say they were tricked by their husbands to go to Syria and did not take part in any jihadist activities, according to El Pais. 

Spain has also agreed to repatriate a Moroccan woman who is the widow of a Spanish fighter and the couple’s three children, but they fled from a detention camp near Iraq in 2020 and their whereabouts is unknown. 

France, Germany and the Netherlands are among the other European nations which have repatriated relatives of jihadist fighters this year or announced plans to do so. 

 
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