Russian troops in Novoznesens’ke, Ukraine: a case study of sexual violence in the Ukrain invasion of Ukraine

As the sun sets at the end of a long day, the two-man team arrives in Novovoznesens’ke, a village where they’ve uncovered two more cases of rape, allegedly by Russian soldiers. They return to Kyiv the next day to submit their findings.

Russian troops occupied this area of the country until early October. Burnt-out cars litter the fields. The letter ‘Z’ – a symbol used by Russian forces – marks the walls.

The scars of war are deep here. Russia has used sexual violence as a “weapon of war” – a deliberate “military strategy” – in its conquest of Ukraine, United Nations investigators have said. They have even relayed allegations of Russian soldiers carrying Viagra.

In two weeks of work in the Kherson region, the team from Kyiv has documented six allegations of sexual assault. They said the real number was almost certainly much higher.

“They walked around those rooms,” she says. “One stayed there, and the other one, who raped me, came in here. He came in, walked a little bit around the room and here in this place, he started groping me.”

She says he tore at her clothes after pinning her against the wardrobe. She said that she was crying and begging him to stop. “The only thought I had was to stay alive.”

He warned her not to tell anyone, she recalls. She says she did not tell her husband right away. I told my cousin, and my husband heard it. He told you that you should have told him the truth, but didn’t.

She was widowed more than 30 years ago – she says her husband died in a motorcycle accident – and her son joined the military soon after Russia’s invasion on February 24. She decided to leave, she says, about three months after Russian troops occupied her village.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kherson-sexual-violence-intl/index.html

The Crimes of Occupation in the Ukrainian Village of St. Igor: The Case of a Sergei Ivanovicev

The head of his unit was found by his commander. He told me the most severe punishment was ahead for him, even though he had broken his jaw. Like shooting. The commander asked if I would mind. I said that I wish that all of them were shot.

Although the prosecutor, Kleshchenko, and police officer Oleksandr Svidro are looking specifically for evidence of sexual crimes, everywhere they go they are confronted with the horrors of occupation.

The village was behind Russian lines, but never directly occupied. They say that they have been abandoned for months without help from either Russia or Ukraine.

A man in the crowd tells the investigators that he was held by Russian soldiers and subjected to mock execution. It’s hard to hear, tales of torture like this are common here, but that’s not the subject of their work today.

Ukrainians have learned that they are stronger than was expected of them. Do those who underestimated them learn from their mistakes? Military aid has been enough for Ukraine to survive but not to crush the enemy.

Starting slowly at the end of the summer, and then in large measure at the beginning of October, Ukrainian forces have regained hundreds of square miles of territory that Russia held since the early days of its full-scale invasion.

Are there sexual crimes in her village? An unidentified Ukrainian woman tells her mother about the killing of her son and their father, who is currently in prison

A mother and her daughter take a short drive down one of the roads that have been hit by shelling, and say they haven’t heard of any sexual crimes there.

She came back months later after the Ukrainian military liberated her village. Her roof was reduced to rafters by shelling.

“I don’t know where to put it so that (the ceiling) won’t fall on my head,” she says. It would be better if it fell and killed me, so I wouldn’t suffer. But I want to see my son again.”

Many of the allegations are impossible to prove, and some do not have a suspect. For now, the team files its reports, and its investigators continue their work, hoping to be able to file charges in the future.

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary ad Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, and Alexander Burdonsky, of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin

Editor’s Note: Rosemary Sullivan is a Canadian author. She has published 16 books, most recently “Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary ad Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (2015)” and “The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation (2022).” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

But it would seem that Kim Jong Un might indeed be grooming his daughter to carry on his dynasty. North Korea just released a new postage stamp carrying photos of the dictator and his “beloved daughter” standing together watching the test-firing of the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile.

Ironically, the photo exactly mirrors one taken almost 100 years ago of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin standing on a similar balcony in Moscow reviewing a military parade with a young girl standing beside him.

Is she going to inherit her father’s will, but refuse to accept his killer legacy? Or will she prove a well-trained apprentice and possibly become more dangerous than her father? Given the closed universe of North Korea and the seduction of wealth and power, the latter is more likely.

Alexander Burdonsky, Stalin’s grandson, told me in an interview that life in the soviet army was like liberation after living at home. He took his mom’s name to get away from his roots.

During her childhood, Svetlana was the “beloved daughter.” Stalin called her his little hostess, little fly, little sparrow. She was the only person that could break his rages against his mother by covering his Cossack boots.

In her memoir she said that wherever she went, she would always be the political prisoner of her father’s name.

Burdonsky told me that the children of dictators have either to totally reject their heritage or to follow in their father’s footsteps. He said that the person had been caught in between. She did not defend her father’s murderousness, but she thought he had been turned into a sinkhole for all the evil of his regime.

“He knew what he was doing,” she said of her father in her memoir. He wasn’t insane nor misled. He made his power known by calculation, afraid of losing it more than anything else in the world. But a dictator needs accomplices. She didn’t want to accept that he was the head of the homicidal system.

This makes me think of Putin. We know virtually nothing about Kim Jung Un’s daughter, but we know a little about Putin’s two daughters, Mariya and Katerina. As children of the “first person,” people are careful not to speak about them; to do so would be dangerous.

They attended school under assumed names; their classmates didn’t know who they were and they had guards at home. A journalist asked if the girls hadPutin wrapped around their fingers after learning that Putin loves his children and spoils them. Their mother Lyudmila replied: “Nobody can wrap Papa around their little finger.”

Apparently the daughters of Putin decided which side to support. It is reported that Katerina is head of a new AI institute at Moscow State University and is said to be worth several billion. Mariya leads a state funded genetics program that has received billions from the Kremlin, according to US officials. Supposedly neither have political ambitions, which is reportedly the way Putin wants it.

Kiev’s First Battle: The First Year U.S. Military Intervention in Kiev Since Vladimir Putin’s Decay of Crimea

I was supposed to go to Kyiv on February 24th. My husband broke his shoulder a few days before that and we had to stay in Moscow. At 9:00 a.m. that day he had surgery.

And then Vladimir Putin unleashed his armed forces to take it all away, expanding on the aggression that began with the seizure of Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine in 2014. So, I was very angry. And I was going to do what I could to fight back — the same decision made by so many Ukrainians both at home and abroad.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more since it began a year ago. It has caused unimaginable atrocities, wiped out cities, and led to a food and energy crisis.

Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. I. Childhood of a Russian citizen

February 23, 2022. I went to bed thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our life was getting better. My husband was running his own business. Our daughter had started school and made friends there. We were fortunate to find a special needs nursery for our son after arranging support services. I finally had time to work. I was happy.

We are trying to live in the here and now. We are not okay, we are. Our heart is still in Ukraine, even though we are in a different place.

Thanks to the opportunities for Ukrainians provided by the Czech Republic, my husband got a job. My son needs special needs classes. He has a learning support assistant and attends an adaptation group for Ukrainian children. My daughter is studying remotely in her Ukrainian school.

A journalist and former editor at the independent TV news channel Dozhd, Mikhail Zygar is a man of many talents. He is the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: There’s an upcoming book called Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.”

The invasion began when we woke up that morning. I wrote an open letter denouncing the war, which was co-signed by 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures. There were tens of thousands of Russian citizens who added their signatures after it was published.

We left Russia on the third day. I thought it was a moral obligation. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

We moved to Berlin. My husband went to work as a volunteer at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, where thousands of Ukrainians had been arriving every day. And I started working on a book. It starts like this.

This book is a confession. I am guilty for not reading the signs much earlier. Russia’s war against Ukraine was responsible for me. As are my contemporaries and our forebears. Russian culture is also to blame for making these horrors possible.

I know that there are people inRUSSIA who are affected by imperialism. The idea of a Russia as a great empire was a very dangerous one and we need to heal it.

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst who in summer relocated from Canada to Ukraine. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and once worked for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

This year has been filled with worries and tears. I read the news about people close to me killed by Russians – a teammate, the director of a sports school, or a friend’s parents.

If anything, for me, the son of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, this has been a war of history repeating itself – from the forced deportation of upwards of 2.5 million Ukrainians, including 38,000 children, to the stealing of Ukrainian grain to the wanton destruction of Ukrainians museums, libraries, churches and monuments.

When I hear about the stories my relatives were told never to return after the Russian invasion, I feel the darkness in my father’s eyes. Stories of millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s manmade famine of 1932-33.

What’s changed since Russian missiles first began falling on February 24, 2022? The fear felt by Ukrainians has been replaced with anger as they stand up to barrages of rockets and drones.

Sasha Dovzhyk is a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London and associate lecturer in Ukrainian at the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies, University College London. She divides her time between London and Ukraine where she works as a “fixer“– a translator and producer for foreign journalists.

A year into the full-scale invasion, my passport is a novel in stamps. My life is split between London, where I teach Ukrainian literature, and Ukraine, where I get my lessons in courage.

My former classmates from Zaporizhzhia whom, based on our teenage habits, I expected to perish from addictions a long time ago, have volunteered to fight. My hairdresser fled on foot with her mother, grandmother, and five dogs from Moscow to the forest in Russia when she realized she wouldn’t be a sweet summer child.

Since February 22, we have experienced several eras. Putin received a large amount of approval from the population after a time of stagnant ratings.

And in the fall, public demobilization was replaced by mobilization – Putin demanded that citizens share responsibility for the war with him with their bodies. This caused unprecedented anxiety among the population, but instead of protesting the majority of them preferred adaptation.

By aborting the past, he canceled the future. Those who were disoriented, preferred to support Putin: it is easier to live this way when your superiors decide everything for you, and you take for granted everything you are told by propaganda.

It is impossible for a family to adapt to a catastrophe of this magnitude. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

On the evening of February 23, I washed my dog, took a bath, and lit candles. There’s a one-bedroom apartment for me in the northern part of Kyiv. I loved taking care of it. I loved the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. My life was over that night.

I remember talking to colleagues, trying to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. And calling my parents to organize buying supplies.

The life I knew started falling apart soon after, starting with the small things. It didn’t matter what I drank, how I dressed, or whether I took a shower. Life itself no longer mattered, only the battle did.

Just a few weeks into the full-scale invasion it was already hard to remember the struggles, sorrows and joyful moments of the pre-war era. I don’t recall being upset about my boyfriend, but I could not relate. My life didn’t change on February 24, it was stolen from me on that day.

By March, I wanted to act through sports because of my fear of the war. Athletes could fight against Russian propaganda in the best way. We just had to tell the truth about the war and Ukrainians – how strong, kind and brave we are. How we have come together to defend our country.

I was no longer concerned with my personal ambitions. The goal was only to raise our flag and show that we’re fighting even if we can’t see it.

I couldn’t enjoy my victories on the track. They were only possible because so many people had died defending it. But I got messages from soldiers on the frontline. They were so happy to follow our achievements, and it was my primary motivation to continue my career.

Towards a Vision of a World that can Rise from Maidan Square: Against the Decline of Government and Laws of War

My organization, the Center for Civil Liberties, has been documenting abductions, illegal detentions, rapes, tortures and extra-judicial killings in the occupied territories since 2014. But since February last year, that river of horrors has turned into a flood.

During this revolution, Ukraine made a lot of steps on a democratic path. The government was decentralized to give more power to local communities. It’s difficult to hide misuses of power after parliament adopted an anti-corruption legislation. Changes to our Constitution opened the way to judicial reform. There are a lot of things that still need to be done, but we were on the right track.

My experience of the war up to this point has been primarily of my experience in Kyiv. I’ve seen people respond to attacks on critical infrastructure with courage, creativity and resilience. There are strange things happening at the same time.

Because amid so many disappointments — in the ability of the international order to protect us, in the idea that the laws of war protect civilians — I have found we can still rely on people.

This spirit was what I saw during the protests in Maidan Square. Those protests kept on, despite the police beatings, and then the killings, because we believed in something better. And it came.

And so this love extends further, perhaps, to the vision of a country that can rise from all this — of a future Ukraine where human rights are respected. Where we do not need a Center for Civil Liberties to fight for them. Perhaps even to a vision of the world where this spirit of shared humanity prevails.

CNN/Opinion: Filming Navalny During the Death of the Cold War’ and Witnessing Crime: Towards Resolving his Legal Problems

The CNN film, “Navalny,” was released on April 22, 2022, as a correction. It won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary Feature. And is streaming on HBO Max, which is owned by CNN’s parent company.

Navalny and his legal problems drew a lot of attention to Russia and the world. After his arrest, thousands of people took to the streets in towns and cities across the country.

Rae: Navalny has both an insatiable curiosity and a terrific sense of humor – both of which I’m sure serve him well in prison. We talked about this while driving him to the shoot.

“I’m sure it’s his humor that is keeping his spirit alive,” she told CNN Opinion. He favors dark humor and is finding a lot of great content in prison.

He was poisoned with Novichok in 2020, an attack he and his supporters blamed on the Kremlin. Russia has denied any involvement.

CNN: You spent many months with Navalny in Germany while he was recovering from poisoning – what are your memories of that time and what did it reveal about him?

We had a rigorous schedule, with many sleepless nights. Often I had the privilege of picking him up. I found Navalny to be a very open conversationalist. If he didn’t know something he would not hide it. On one of our drives he set out to pick my brain about life in Hollywood. “Tell me about the #MeToo movement.” Or: tell me about the film production.

Once we started filming, we would ask, “Alexey, can we come film you running? Brushing your teeth? Waking up? He was always willing to work with us even though he sometimes thought our requests were crazy. We ended long days with Doner Kebab.

The security situation that he lived in was very clear from the first meeting. The team was very cautious about who they let in. We needed to earn their trust, even though Christo vouched for us. We said they would quit and give you all the footage if you didn’t like it.

They agreed to start that way, but it came with endless questions and intensive background checks. They wanted to check our bank accounts to make sure we weren’t being paid by the government. Navalny was in hiding.

I think we were accepted by his team for a few reasons. At the time we were just independent filmmakers, we were not yet associated with any major production company. We didn’t have any outside funding. We arrived in the Black Forest with the cost of renting gear on my credit card. We were willing to give our all in order to see this film. We changed his security needs. No one knew where we were or what we were doing. All emails ceased, communication was done through encrypted messaging.

It took a lot of gymnastics to keep the footage safe. We spent long hours in the car, in winter conditions driving to various locations. Often we were met with Covid restrictions. My passwords evolved to a three-step process that included an external security key. We traded stability for the privilege to spend unforgettable time getting to know an extraordinary human being.

When he is all alone in the cell: Why he laughs thrice a day when there is darkness and what he doesn’t know

He is being tortured in prison. They weaponize other inmates by putting an inmate in the infirmary until they become ill (contract an illness from other patients in the infirmary) and then put the sick inmate in Navalny’s cell.

They limited his water intake to three glasses a day when he was ill with an illness from one of the weaponized inmates.

They introduced another inmate into the cell next to him who screams for hours and hours at night. He can’t lie down during the day as his bed is chained up from 5 AM to 9 PM. They don’t provide basic necessities like winter boots for him. The man has lost close to 7 lbs over the last couple months and has been denied medical treatment many times.

CNN: Navalny recently tweeted: “I laugh at least thrice a day, even when I’m all alone in the cell.” How does he keep his sense of humor when there is darkness? What gives him that strength?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/opinions/alexey-navalny-putins-nemesis-odessa-rae-ctrp/index.html

A manifesto for post-war Russia: the words of Alexey Navalnaya, the daughter of a Russian dissident

On another long drive, we discussed his earlier experiences in prison. He told me that one of the things he learned was to appreciate the small things, like brushing your teeth whenever you want, or touching a loved one’s face, or a warm shower.

My partners on the navalny film, Diane Becker, Shane Boris and Melanie Miller, helped make this project possible. They helped me carry the weight of Navalny. They were the team that Daniel and I needed. We were close like a family, highlighting the need to work together.

From my last trip, at the end of December, I have a poignant memory of sitting in my friend’s donut shop, Ponchyk Boy. (They often make themed donuts that address the war in a comical way.) We were unable to make a cup of tea because the electricity was out, the air raid sirens were blaring, much of the city was dark. The generators come on where they can, but people sit in the dark and use a candle. Even when they have no heat the spirit lives strong.

Last week he posted a 15-point plan for post-war Russia. This plan shows how to move forward. A manifesto is what it is. You can find this piece on his social media. It is like a breath of fresh air. The plan gives Navalny’s political views and a more reasonable way forward for Russia and the region. It’s a plan that respects its neighbors and Russian citizens. His existence is a sign of hope.

Dasha Navalnaya, the daughter of jailed Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine and to release her father and political prisoners in the country, in an extensive interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday.

Navalny returned to Moscow after a few months recovering from the poisoning in Germany, where he was immediately arrested for violating the terms of his release from a previous case.

He was initially sentenced to two-and-a-half years, and then later given nine years over separate allegations that he stole from his anti-corruption foundation.

She’s not ready to go anywhere: What she wants to do with her father’s anti-corruption foundation and what she doesn’t want for her family

Dasha said the “main goal” of her father’s work and anti-corruption foundation “is for Russia to become a free state, to have open elections, to have freedom of press, freedom of speech, and just you know, to have the opportunity to become a part of the normal Western democratized community.”

She said that she and her brother made a game of trying to avoid spies on public transportation in Russia while growing up, and that she told the interviewer that she was watched closely by the government.

“We would look around the train and then start chatting with the guy who had the worst camouflage outfit and the black cap and the weird strappy bag on the side, and we would jump out – not out of the train but out of the the subway car,” she said.

But Navalnaya also voiced escalating concern about her father’s prison conditions now, saying that her family has had limited access to Navalny and that his attorneys are able to see him only “through a guarded veil.”

We don’t have a good idea of his health circumstance. and he hasn’t seen his family in over half a year,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in person in over a year Considering that his health is getting worse, it’s concerning.

Concerns have been raised about Navalny’s health for months. Footage during his sentencing last year showed Navalny as a gaunt figure standing beside his lawyers in a room filled with security officials.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/americas/navalny-daughter-dasha-navalnaya-intl/index.html

What Is My First Duty? “What’s Yours?” – Saying “No” to Putin and Bringing Up the Voice of Russia

“So what’s my first duty? He urged others to not be afraid and to get up and speak their minds. Don’t forget to campaign against the war, Putin and United Russia. Hugs to you all.”