The war could see a brutal new phase if Putin gets his way

Velychko and Burnett’s Conversation with the Inside CNN Associated with Refugees in the Aftermath of World War II: A Conversation with Burnett

One night after Urazov arrived, he and his family and their three children stayed in a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that Velychko and his wife had hosted as many as 12 refugees at once.

Velychko, along with his two siblings, who came from Ukraine a long time ago, are now helping people flee the war.

A few months ago, the Inside CNN newsletter team caught up with Burnett shortly after she returned from a reporting trip to Ukraine. An abbreviated version of that conversation can be found below.

I met a couple whose son was killed in the war. The house was full of rockets and bullets. The Russian troops did a lot of excavation in their backyard, but still left behind some items that they stole when they lived there.

Vadim and Olga had lost everything. The day I met them, their goat, who was pregnant before the invasion, gave birth to two kids. Olga held them, inhaling their smell, and murmured that it was like milk, honey and eggs. She stated that they had a new life.

I learned from Vadim and Olga that sometimes, as much as a moment moves you and affects you, you cannot understand it. I was silenced by their ability to take joy in their goats and to find themselves lucky.

EyeWitness to Atrocities: When violence took the soul, but the kids needed to go to school, so that they wouldn’t have to

In the last year, the team from the Media Initiative for Human Rights traveled to visit attack sites, assess damage and interview victims. EyeWitness to Atrocities, a report partner based in the UK, used specialized software to document the war on the ground in a way that could be submitted as legal evidence in national and international criminal cases.

He knew how war took the soul. He is still fighting on the frontlines. While he fights for independence, he also fights for the specific parts of daily life that create a country: “There’s so many reasons why we’re fighting. We can discuss freedom, but the kids need to go to school. That is all. He told them he fights so that they never have to.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/01/world/inside-cnn-newsletter-erin-burnett-ukraine-reporting-cfc/index.html

Travelling the world to report the events of the Arab Spring: The memories of a trip to Egypt with a woman in a prison

One of my great passions in life is travel. It’s one of the reasons I always dreamed of working at CNN. I wanted to travel to tell stories. Maybe that started when my mother had me keep journals on childhood trips. Covid curtailed travel for us all recently, but I have traveled the world for work and that is a great gift.

When I was in Egypt at the start of the Arab Spring, each street was protected by armed locals; there were gunshots in the air. It was unsettled, and yet at the onset there was a triumphant celebration as people reclaimed their country. I will remember the chance of that moment forever.

As a reporter, the children always change you. We visited a Pakistani women’s prison where the women were serving life sentences for small infractions. Their children were taken away when they were 7 years old. In a refugee camp along the border of Mali, where people were seeking refuge from al Qaeda terrorists, I remember Mariam. Her gaze stares out at me from the photo journal I kept of that reporting trip.

I think of the sad and disgusting parade of mass shootings, where people stand outside a casino in Vegas, a school in Connecticut and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. As a reporter, I cannot believe we cover the same story again and again and nothing changes.

I got into journalism because I left jobs that weren’t the right fit. I had thought that I would become a lawyer or become a CIA agent. I considered business school.

But when I stumbled into a job that was a media startup within a bigger company, I ended up having to fill a few roles: running numbers, creating marketing presentations and producing video interviews with CEOs and financial experts.

I realized what I loved the most was asking questions. It was not work! It was clear to me from there that I had a career. I am grateful for my job at CNN every day, even though there were many bumps along the way.

Putin’s War with Ukraine: What the Top brass of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MINURS) ARE PROBLEMING FOR (WAVE) COMMANDER-IN-CHEF (LOVE)

“Mounting evidence of Russia’s actions lays bare the Kremlin’s aims to deny and suppress Ukraine’s identity, history, and culture,” it continued. The impact ofPutin’s war on Ukraine’s children will last a long time. The United States will stand with Ukraine and pursue accountability for Russia’s appalling abuses for as long as it takes.”

There have been unusual public criticism of the top brass running Putin’s war. Within limits, of course: Criticizing the war itself or Russia’s commander-in-chief is off limits, but those responsible for carrying out the President’s orders are fair game.

An ex-Col.-General from the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party said that lying should be stopped first. “We brought this up many times before … But somehow it’s apparently not getting through to individual senior figures.”

Kartapolov complained that the Ministry of Defense was evading the truth about incidents such as Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions neighboring Ukraine.

Near the border with Ukraine is Valuyki. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.

Some criticism has also come from Russian-appointed quislings who have been installed by Moscow to run occupied regions of Ukraine. In a recent four-minute rant on the Telegram messaging app, the Russian-appointed deputy leader of the Kherson region lambasted Russian military commanders for allowing gaps on the battlefield that allowed the Ukrainian military to make advances.

Boris Rozhin, who also blogs about the war effort under the nickname Colonelcassad, said that “incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war continue to be a serious problem.”

But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.

Kadyrov blamed the commander of the Central Military District of the Russian army for the fiasco, saying he moved his headquarters away from his subordinates and failed to provide for his troops.

The Russian information space has deviated from the narratives preferred by the RussianMinistry of Defense that things are under control, according to a recent analysis.

One of the central features of Putinism is a fetish for World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. The Red Army used punishment battalions in order to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht, as well as the tactic of sending soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice, or wavering against German positions as cannon fodder, and these tactics were often praised by those in Russia’s party of war

Kadyrov – who recently announced that he had been promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general – has been one of the most prominent voices arguing for the draconian methods of the past. He said in a Telegram post that if he had his way, the government would have extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

“Yes, if it were my will, I would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, because today we are at war with the whole NATO bloc,” Kadyrov said in a post that also seemed to echo Putin’s not-so-subtle threats that Russia might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons.

The assault killed multiple people and knocked out power to parts of the country. Giles claimed that they were an indication of the threat from Russia. For a long time now, the Russian goal has been to destroy the Ukrainian people rather than hold it.

It was an implicit rebuke against Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who was responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, when the UN awarded the peace prize on a day like today.

At least 10 homes, several apartment blocks and other infrastructure were damaged when almost 40 Russian rockets hit an area on the Dnipro River overnight. He said that another man was killed by shelling on Friday evening.

World affairs pro-asia news story – Michael Bociurkiw at the Kerch Straight bridge: The Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia

Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He was a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He contributes to CNN Opinion. The opinions he expresses in the commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

Even amid irrepressible jubilation here in Ukraine in the aftermath of a massive explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of retaliation by the Kremlin were never far away.

The strikes on central Kyiv and close to government quarter are very significant. On the 229th day of the war Western governments should see it as a red line being crossed.

The area around my office was quiet in between air raid sirens as of midday, with reports of three missiles and five drones being shot down. Typically, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers at this time of the day, with chatter of upcoming weddings and parties.

Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings just a few hours later. At least 17 people were killed and dozens of others were injured.

There were conflicting reports on the scale of the attacks. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an earlier post that Russia had launched more than 120 missiles in the barrage without providing further details. He said the purpose of the attack was to destroy critical infrastructure and kill civilians.

The air raid sirens and the Russian attacks shattered the calm in Ukrainian cities far away from the war in the country.

Businesses have been asked to shift work online and millions of people are going to be spending most of the day in bomb shelters because officials want them to.

Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.

For Putin, the symbolism of the only bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea cannot be overstated. The attack just a day after President Barack Obama’s 70th birthday can be seen as a blow to the aging autocrat’s ability to endure humiliation and shame.

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.

The Blast in Ukraine: Why Russia is Worsening? Why Putin is Shocking and Why the West Needs to be Strong

The blast in Ukranian lit up social media and meme sites lit up like Christmas trees. People shared their joy through text messages.

Sitting still was not an option for Putin. He responded in the only way he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction, with the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB operative.

Putin has been placed on thin ice because of mounting criticism at home and on state-controlled television.

“Therefore, I call for the Red Cross mission with international media representatives to arrive in Ukraine no later than in three days, even if you do not receive confirmation from Russia by this time. We are certain that Russia does not want to know the truth.

What is crucially important now is for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to urge China and India – which presumably still have some leverage over Putin – to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.

The most important thing for the West at the moment is to show resolve and unity against a man who probes for weakness. Even though rhetoric and sanctions have an impact on Putin, they don’t make a difference. They have to continue to give the Ukrainians arms and training, even if that means sending military advisers closer to the battlefield to speed up the integration of new high technology weapons.

The need for defense systems that are high tech is necessary to protect energy infrastructure. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.

The attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure in the Sunday morning epoch of Russian-Israeli war, as predicted by U.S. President John Kirby

For Turkey and the Gulf states to have enough impact, they need to be pressured to come on board in order to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions.

The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.

The targets on Monday reflected Putin’s need to find new targets because he has not been able to impose his will at the battlefield.

The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President could inflict as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops using Western arms.

The attacks on civilians, which killed at least 14 people, also drove new attention to what next steps the US and its allies must take to respond, after already sending billions of dollars of arms and kits to Ukraine in an effective proxy war with Moscow.

The White House did not specify what kinds of air systems Biden offered the Ukrainian President, but they did say they would help defend against Russian air attacks.

John Kirby said that Washington was in touch with the Ukrainian government almost daily and that Washington was looking favorably on their requests. He told Kate that they do the best they can in the next packages.

Kirby was also unable to say whether Putin was definitively shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to pummel civilian morale and inflict devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, though he suggested it was a trend developing in recent days and had already been in the works.

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Kirby doesn’t think the explosion on the bridge may have accelerated some of their planning.

The rain of fire against Ukrainian civilians on Monday was also chilling, given that it occurred following Putin’s latest nuclear threats and days of debate over whether he might use a tactical nuclear weapon. If he does not, it seems unlikely – given his obliviousness to civilian pain – that any such decision would be motivated by a desire to spare innocents from such a horrific weapon. Kirby said that there was no indication that the US needed to alter it’s nuclear posture or that Russia was using nuclear weapons.

But French President Emmanuel Macron underscored Western concerns that Monday’s rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the prelude to another pivot in the conflict.

As we enter the winter he telegraphed where he would go. He will try to force the Ukrainian population to give up their territory by going after this infrastructure, said Vindman on CNN.

Zhovkva said, “Imagine if we had modern equipment, we could increase the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or injured Ukrainians.”

Any prolonged campaign by Putin against civilians would be aimed at breaking Ukrainian morale and possibly unleashing a new flood of refugees into Western Europe that might open divisions among NATO allies that are supporting Ukraine.

The lesson of the war is that Putin has only made the country stronger and unified because he didn’t think there was a right to exist.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper airing on CNN on Monday, Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube said that she was very angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians.

“This is just another terror to cause a scare to other countries, cause a panic among his own people, and look what fireworks we can arrange for him, he is still a bloody tyrant,” she said.

We are confident that our peace will return once we win this war, because we need it as fast as possible, because if Russia defeats us, we will have our peace back here.

On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. There was smoke and carnage in central Constantinople, along with empty store shelves and a long-range prediction for cold temperatures there.

Russia’s flailing war effort had intensified domestic pressure which was a sign that Vladimir V. Putin believed a brutal show of force was needed as much for his audience at home as for the West.

Ukraine is demanding that the International Committee of the Red Cross immediately send a delegation to the Russian prisoner of war camp at Olenivka in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region.

There was video from the scene that was spread widely on Telegram, as well as an official Ukrainian military channel. It shows a pile of rubble that appears to be missing a part of the building.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it was ready for the Red Cross to visit the camp after the attack. Despite numerous requests from the organization, no visit was ever arranged.

Yermak said the conditions under which Ukrainian prisoners are held, and what they face in places of detention in the Russian Federation and in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, “is extremely important.”

The Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine: Observing the Progress of Ukrainian Counter-offensives in Vysokopillya

The war is in a state of uncertainty for the first time. Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said that this was now the third, fourth, or fifth war they had been observing.

With the winter approaching and the war likely to be slow, experts say the next few weeks of the war are important and another surge in intensity looms overUkraine as each side seeks to strike again.

It means that, as winter approaches, the stakes of the war have been raised once more. “There’s no doubt Russia would like to keep it up,” Giles said. The recent successes of the Ukrainians sent a direct message to the Kremlin. “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it,” Giles said.

Ukrainian troops hoist the country’s flag above a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month. Ukrainian officials say they have liberated hundreds of settlements since their counter-offensive began.

Russia said its forces would help to move residents out of Kherson as the offensive continued by the Ukrainians. The announcement came shortly after the head of the Moscow backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest hint that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

These counter-offensives have shifted the momentum of the war and disproved a suggestion, built up in the West and in Russia during the summer, that while Ukraine could stoutly defend territory, it lacked the ability to seize ground.

The author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine” told CNN that the Russians were playing for the whistle and trying to avoid a collapse in their frontline.

“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”

According to the Institute for the Study of War, the goal of the Ukrainian troops is to push Russian forces eastwards, having crossed the Oskil River in late September.

The impact of rising energy prices is felt all over Europe, and Ukraine would be eager to improve on its gains if it won the war in Donbas.

“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”

The cost of living in many European countries has gone up because of the war in Ukraine and public support is at risk if there are no signs of progress on the battlefield.

The power supply to the central regions of Ukrenergo was disrupted on Monday and Tuesday by Russian missile attacks but it has since been restored. Ukrainians need to reduce their energy usage during peak hours because the Prime Minister says there is much work to be done to fix damaged equipment.

Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.

Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, stated in a speech on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground knew that their supplies were running out.

That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”

The US announced a new $1.8 billion aid package to Ukraine, which included the “first-ever transfer to Ukraine of the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System, capable of bringing down cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and aircraft at a significantly higher ceiling than previously provided air defense systems.”

“The barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians don’t have the stocks of precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future,” Puri said.

Some help for Putin may be on the way, however. An announcement by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that Belarus and Russia will “deploy a joint regional group of troops” raised fears of deepened military cooperation between the close allies and that Belarusian troops could formally join Russia in its invasion. Belarus has been complaining of alleged Ukrainian threats to its security in recent days, which observers say could be a prelude to some level of involvement.

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.

By flipping the narrative of the conflict over the past two months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has achieved one of his own key objectives: showing Ukraine’s Western allies that their military aid can help Kyiv win the war.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

The incoming missiles were shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems, which are provided by NATO Allies.

Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States , Bronk said.

The Crime against Ukraine in the Light of the HIMARS Launcher Attack on the Kharkiv Province in Ukraine, and a Resolution of the Ukrainian Military Crises

The attack has led to vocal criticism of the Russian military from pro-Russian military bloggers, who claimed that the troops lacked protection and were reportedly being quartered next to a large cache of ammunition, which is said to have exploded when Ukrainian HIMARS rockets hit the school.

Police officers who have returned to towns and villages to re-establish a Ukrainian administration have been overwhelmed by complaints of theft and property damage, but also accounts of detentions, torture and missing relatives.

The scale of abuse of the population in eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation is most likely greater than that seen in the spring in Bucha and other areas around the capital, Kyiv, given the breadth of the territory and the length of the occupation, police officials said.

Serhii Bolvinov, the police chief of the Kharkiv Province, claimed that police officers have arrested more than 1,000 people across the region. He said the real figure is probably two or three times that.

Torture was routine, according to witnesses. The police chief said that the signs of abuse were obvious in some of the bodies that were recovered. “There are bodies that were tortured to death,” he said. “There are people with tied hands, shot, strangled, people with cut wounds, cut genitals.”

The first Ukrainian official and another source familiar with the requests said the Ukrainians want cluster munitions compatible with both the US-provided HIMARS rocket launchers and the 155 mm howitzers, and have argued that the munitions would allow Ukrainian troops to more effectively attack larger, more dispersed targets like concentrations of Russian soldiers and vehicles.

The Defense Ministry of Ukraine has not responded to a request for special cooperation in the light of new Congressional restrictions on nuclear cluster munitions

Senior Biden administration officials have been fielding this request for months and have not rejected it outright, CNN has learned, a detail that has not been previously reported.

Cluster munitions are imprecise by design, and scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. They also create “nasty, bloody fragmentation” to anyone hit by them because of the dozens of submunitions that detonate at once across a large area, Mark Hiznay, a weapons expert and the associate arms director for Human Rights Watch, previously told CNN.

If the inventories begin to run out, the Biden administration has not taken the option off the table. But sources say the proposal has not yet received significant consideration in large part due to the statutory restrictions that Congress has put on the US’ ability to transfer cluster munitions.

Those restrictions apply to munitions with a greater than one percent unexploded ordnance rate, which raises the prospect that they will pose a risk to civilians. President Joe Biden could override that restriction, but the administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that that is unlikely in the near term.

The Ukrainian deputy defense minister said that the Ukrainian authorities cannot comment on specific weapons before the war ends, but that the country is adhering to international humanitarian law.

The Defense Ministry does not comment on requests for particular weapons systems or goods until a supplier is reached, and waits until there is agreement with the supplier before making a public announcement.

When there is a concentration of Russian troops, the Ukrainian official said that the DPICMs are more effective.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine: A weekly recap and look-ahead at Russias war dec-12 — a brief update from the US

Ukrainian authorities have been stepping up raids on churches accused of links with Moscow, and many are watching to see if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy follows through on his threat of a ban on the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hosts European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store for a working dinner Monday in Paris.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to deliver a video address at the conference in France on Tuesday.

The US basketball player was held in Russia for nearly 10 months before she was freed. Her release came in exchange for the U.S. handing over convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner is in the U.S. and near her husband. Bout is back in Russia and is reported to have joined an ultranationalist party.

New measures targeting Russian oil revenue took effect Dec. 5. They include a price cap and a European Union embargo on most Russian oil imports and a Russian oil price cap.

Russian forces turned the city of Bakhmut into burned ruins, Zelenskyy said. There has been a lot of fighting there as Russia attempts to take over the city.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/12/1141827823/latest-on-ukraine-a-weekly-recap-and-look-ahead-at-russias-war-dec-12

Prime Minister Vladimir Zelensky meets with the US Army in the wake of the December 11 Dec. 11 invasion: State of Ukraine and the fate of the Ukranian war in Kyiv

President Zelenskyy had a phone call with President Biden on Dec. 11, as well as the leaders of France and Turkey, in an apparent stepping up of diplomacy over the 9 1/2-month-long Russian invasion.

You can read recaps from before. You can find more of NPR’s coverage here. You can listen to NPR’s State of Ukraine for updates all day long.

That victim was 66-year-old Luba, when she and her husband were foraging for mushrooms. The blast ripped her calves and feet and carved a gash across her stomach. When paramedics arrived, they had no safe way to quickly reach her without potentially triggering another device. Luba died on the way to the hospital.

The report says the mines consistently fell near known Russian positions, suggesting they were the intended targets. The positions could have been used to deliver the mines, since they were close to the Ukrainian firing range.

Despite the risk, history tells us that Ukrainians will return to these contaminated places before they are safe. “People have an attachment to where they come from,” says Ruth Bottomley, a consultant and researcher with 20 years’ experience working in areas contaminated by mines, particularly Cambodia. “Whenever something traumatic happens, people want to get back to what’s normal, to what they’re used to,” she says—even if there’s still a threat.

Moscow said that the war in Kyiv is set for a long confrontation with Russia following President Zelensky’s visit to Washington.

The foreign ministry in Russia denounced what they said was “monstrous crimes” of the regime in Ukranian that were committed on Wednesday at the White House.

Maria Zakharova said that the West will achieve nothing even if they give the Ukrainian government more military support.

The tasks set within the framework of the special military operation are going to be fulfilled and will take into account the situation on the ground, Zakharova said.

Zelensky gave a historic speech from the US Capitol, expressing gratitude for American aid in fighting Russian aggression and asking for more.

The United States Army’s Phased Array Tracking Radar system, known as the “Patro”, is one of the most capable long-range air defense systems on the market.

Media coverage of the 234th Ukrainian Wartime Trials by U.S. Forces During the 1992-97 Crimes in Bucha

There were not real calls for peace. But during his address to the US Congress on Wednesday, Zelensky did stress that “we need peace,” reiterating the 10-point plan devised by Ukraine.

Peskov told journalists, however, that Wednesday’s meeting showed the US is waging a proxy war of “indirect fighting” against Russia down “to the last Ukrainian.”

This investigation was reported and produced by Yousur Al-Hlou , Masha Froliak , Dmitriy Khavin , Christoph Koettl , Haley Willis , Alexander Cardia , Natalie Reneau and Malachy Browne .

Times reporters spent months in Bucha getting exclusive records from government sources after Russian forces left the area. The killings along this one street were reconstructed by the Times in New York. Phone records and call signs were included in some of the most damning evidence implicating the 234th.

The evidence shows that the killings were part of a deliberate and systematic effort to ruthlessly secure a route to the capital, Kyiv. Soldiers interrogated and executed unarmed men of fighting age, and killed people who unwittingly crossed their paths — whether it was children fleeing with their families, locals hoping to find groceries or people simply trying to get back home on their bicycles.

Historically, journalists and investigators relied on a single photograph or video to expose wartime atrocities. A photo of an starving prisoner in Bosnia was featured in Time magazine in 1992. The execution of captured Tamil Tiger fighters was caught in a video almost 20 years later.

“This kind of digital evidence is a sea change, especially compared to past investigations such as in the former Yugoslavia,” said Matthew Gillett, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who previously worked at international criminal courts. If a case from Ukraine ends up in an international court, it must have a significant video component.

On the day that Russian troops attacked Ukraine: The killings of four women and their daughter in Bucha, Crimea, on March 5. The wake of the Kharkiv rocket attack

The Times identified the people who were killed on Yablunska Street. The cause of death for most of these victims was gunshot wounds.

Residents of Bucha or neighboring towns were all victims. Among the victims killed by Russian paratroopers were 52-year-old Tamila Mishchenko and her 14-year-old daughter, Anna, on March 5. They were among four women fleeing Bucha when Russian soldiers fired on their blue minivan.

After the departure of Russian troops from the Ukranian region, Lieutenant Colonel Gorodinov received a promotion to colonel. The images from Bucha came to light days after the ceremony.

Reporting was contributed by Evan Hill and others. Some of the research and translation by the three authors are: Aleksandra Koroleva.

At least two people were killed in attacks on Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said four rockets had hit the city — likely S300s — and that critical infrastructure was the intended target.

Russia attacked the country’s electrical infrastructure on Thursday and knocked out power in several regions. There were crews fixing services as the New Year’s holiday approaches.

Elsewhere in the capital, Halyna Hladka stocked up on water as soon as the sirens sounded and quickly made breakfast for her family so they would have something to eat. They heard the sounds of blasts after two hours. She told CNN that air defense was the cause of the problem. “Not a single attack will cancel the fact that we will celebrate the new year with the family.”

After the sirens gave the all clear, life in the capital went back to normal, Hryn said: “In the elevator I met my neighbors with their child who were in hurry to get to the cinema for the new Avatar movie on time.” Some people continued with holiday plans in defiance while others took their children to school.

The Kiev-Kuleba strike during the first day of the Ukrainian War: Sergey Lavrov insisted that Moscow would not negotiate with Kyiv

As the war looks set to stretch into another year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow will not negotiate with Kyiv on the basis of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposed 10-point peace formula, which includes Russia’s withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory, a path to nuclear safety, food security, a special tribunal for alleged Russian war crimes, and a final peace treaty with Moscow.

Still, he stressed Russia was open for diplomatic solutions, echoing comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent days that he wanted an end to the war. Kyiv and the West dismissed Putin’s claim of being open to negotiation as a ruse.

Authorities in Odesa, in southern Ukraine, said that emergency power outages had been rolled out amid the missile attacks. The threat of missile attacks forced the introduction of them, according to DTEK.

The two people pulled from the damaged home were a 14-year-old girl and a male, as well as three other people. In the capital, there were homes, an industrialists facility and a playground that were damaged.

“Senseless barbarism.” There could be “no neutrality” in the face of such aggression, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who said that those were the only words that came to mind.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the main reason for the strike was the widespread use of cell phones by Russian soldiers, which gave the Ukrainians access to the coordinates of the soldiers.

The attack was acknowledged by the Russian defense ministry on Monday and they claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died and it was one of the worst episodes of the war.

Those responsible for the killing of Russian servicemen must be found according to Russian senator Grigory Karasin.

“Greetings and congratulations” to the separatists and conscripts who “were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the building of vocational school,” the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”

Daniil Bezsonov, a former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration, said on Telegram that “apparently, the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon.”

“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bezsonov said. There are enough abandoned facilities in the area with sturdy buildings and areas where personnel can be quarters.

On Telegram he claims that the building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores.

Most of the military equipment, which stood close to the building without camouflage, was destroyed. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”

Girkin has long decried Russian generals whom he claims direct the war effort far from the frontline. A Dutch court of mass murder sentenced a minister of defense of the Donetsk People’s Republic to death for his role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.

“A Red Line in the Sand”: Analysis of the Bakhmut attack on Saturday, April 14, 2008 at 1025 Uhr (Prague)

Although several months of war have passed, some conclusions are not made, and the unnecessary loss might not have occurred if precautions were taken for the dispersal and concealment of personnel.

The military said that Russian forces lost 760 people on Saturday and are still attempting assaults on Bakhmut.

Video from the scene of the attack is being spread widely on Telegram, an official Ukrainian military channel. It shows a pile of smoking rubble, in which almost no part of the building appears to be standing.

The author of the book “A Red Line in the Sand” is a CNN contributor and a member of the French Legion of Honor. He was previously a correspondent for CBS News in Europe and Asia. His views are his own in this commentary. CNN has more opinion.

The Makiivka attack: When Russian forces attempt to breathe space after the Christmas holiday truce, or why they don’t cooperate

The cell phones used by the novice troops were in violation of regulations that allow the Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately, according to the Russian account. The attack was executed by Ukraine. But the implications are broader and deeper, especially for how Russia is conducting its war now.

It’s clear that the President called for a truce due to the Orthodox Christmas holiday. The move was rightly dismissed by Ukraine and the US as a cynical attempt to seek breathing space amid a very bad start to the year for Russian forces.

The Russian officials said that four rockets were launched at the school, which is located near a large arms depot. (Another two HIMARS rockets were shot down by Russian air defenses).

The satellite-guided HIMARS — short for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — currently have a range of 80 kilometers. Despite repeated pleas, a long-range 300- kilometer HIMARS hasn’t been authorized. The Biden administration is worried that the longer-range system could lead to an increase in hostilities.

Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow for the Defense Program and co-head of the Gaming Lab at the Center for New American Security in Washington, has told me that Russia’s failure to break up or move large arms depots is largely a function of the reality that their forces cannot communicate adequately.

It is shared by other experts. “Bad communications security seems to be standard practice in the Russian Army,” James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told me in an e-mail exchange.

Compounding the problem, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said after the recent Makiivka strikes that “the Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage from well before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate.”

The troops killed in Makiivka seem to have been recent conscripts, part of a larger picture of Russian soldiers being shipped to the front lines with little training and deeply sub-standard equipment and weapons.

Indeed, a number of the most recent arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons, freed and transferred immediately to the Ukrainian front. The use of cell phones would appeal to prisoners accustomed to years of isolation with little or no contact with the outside world.

Semyon Pegov, who was awarded the coveted Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago and is known as WarGonzo, attacked the Ministry of Defense for suggesting that it was the troops who used cell phones.

He wondered if the Ministry of Defense could not have been sure about where soldiers were lodging because of drones or a local source.

The defense ministry underwent a shakeup a month ago when a deputy defense minister became the butcher of Mariupol. The location of the arms depot is likely to have been considered by Mizintsev.

Still, Putin-favorite Sergei Shoigu remains defense minister — as recently as Saturday, before the Makiivka attack, telling his forces in a celebratory video: “Our victory, like the New Year, is inevitable.”

How long Putin can insulate himself and prevent the blame from turning on himself is the key question in the wake of Makiivka. As the war enters a new year, Ukrainian forces have not shown any intention of decreasing the pressure on Russians in the east or south.

Just this week, the Biden administration announced the US was considering dispatching Bradley armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron also announced he would be sending light tanks, though Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was urging the dispatch of heavier battle tanks. All of which puts German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under increasing pressure to add its powerful Leopard 2 tanks to the mix.

CNN Live Observations of Land Mine Explosions in the Kramatorsk, Russia, Area Protected by Russia in September 2022

There was no indication of any huge casualties in the area that CNN team was in. The team reported that there is absolutely no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk.

A reporter in Kramtorsk said that there were no indications of a significant Russian strike on the two college dormitories.

The Russian government and some pro-Kremlin leaders had a rare public blame game after Moscow appeared to blame its soldiers for their use of cell phones.

But that account was angrily dismissed by an influential military blogger and implicitly contradicted by the leader of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, pointing to discord in the Russian command over Moscow’s response to the attack.

KYIV — A human rights group says it has documented “numerous cases” of Ukrainian forces firing land mines into territory that was controlled at the time by Russia.

Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with several civilian eyewitnesses and Ukrainian emergency workers around the eastern city of Izium shortly after Ukrainian forces liberated the area from Russian control in September 2022. A man who died after being injured by petals mines was one of 11 cases documented by researchers.

Petal mines are often green or brown and blend in with the earth. They can be launched with a gun from a distance. They can explode at any time, and they flutter from the sky. They are also made of the same material as the hollow plastic playground toys that are ubiquitous in North America.

The Human Rights Watch Monitor of Ukrainian War Crimes, and an Investigation into the Military Camps in Crimea and the Eastern Pacific Coast of Ukraine

The report cites Ukrainian medical workers who said they had to amputate limbs from almost as many as 50 people, including five children, as a result of mine injuries. NPR was also unable to reach the Emergency Services working in Izium.

According to Tuesday’s report,Ukraine has destroyed 3.4 million of its antipersonnel mines, but still has 3.3 million stashed in different locations.

“Insofar as they are able to under the circumstances of this brutal war, Ukrainian troops are maintaining their commitment to international law,” Zhdanov says.

Human Rights Watch says its evidence of Ukrainian mining activity in Izium, however, is more unequivocal than past allegations of Ukrainian war crimes. The group is calling on the Ukrainian military to conduct an internal investigation into its adherence to the country’s international obligations.

A new report claims the Russian government has held several thousand Ukrainian children at dozens of camps since the start of the war.

“Let us be clear, Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population,” she said. “A lot of terrible acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation.” Execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution. Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people form Ukraine to Russia — including children.”

The network stretches from one end of Russia to the other, with facilities including Russian occupied Crimea and the eastern Pacific Coast close to Alaska.

According to Raymond, a camp in Chechnya and a camp in Crimea “appear to be specifically involved in training children in the use of firearms and military vehicles,” but the researchers have not seen evidence at this point that the children trained in these military camps are being sent into conflict.

The report found that “many children taken to camps are sent with the consent of their parents for an agreed duration of days or weeks and returned to their parents as originally scheduled,” but noted that “in many cases, the ability of parents to provide meaningful consent may be considered doubtful, as the conditions of war and implicit threat from occupying forces represent conditions of duress.”

“It’s also critically important to understand that these are children who – the lack of contact that they have, or the only intermittent contact that they may have with their parents, is causing very real and potential harm on a very daily basis,” said Caitlin Howarth, also of Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.

The report said it “identified several dozen federal, regional, and local figures directly engaged in operating and politically justifying the program,” and “at least 12 of these individuals are not on U.S. and/or international sanction lists.”

Raymond pointed out that “we are not here today making the genocide conclusion, but we are pointing out that this system is consistent with the prohibition on transferring children from one group to another in both the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.”

In a media note the US State Department said the transfer and deportation of protected people is a war crime and constitutes a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

He said they reserve crimes against humanity for the most egregious crimes. “Today’s determination underlines staggering extent of the human suffering inflicted by Moscow on the Ukrainian civilian population. The deep commitment of the United States to hold members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials accountable for their atrocities against the people of Ukraine is reflected in this determination.

“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence. We’re aware of the legal standards and no doubt these are crimes against humanity.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday issued a supporting statement saying the U.S. will work to hold those responsible to account, while emphasizing the importance of this designation. Blinken is attending the meeting.

The US and China are at odds, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to speak with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, this weekend. The highest level of contact will occur between the U.S. and China.

The relationship between China and the U.S. has been tense since the Feb. 4 shootdown of a Chinese balloon that crossed the U.S.

Beijing, however, insists that the balloon was a civilian craft used for scientific research, and that shooting it down was an overreaction and a violation of international practice.

In Bashtanka, an explosion occurred just over a month after a similar attack destroyed Mariupol maternal hospital. The hospital was claimed to be a military target by Russian officials.

Several patients were undergoing surgery and a number of women were in a labor ward at the time, Bashtanka Hospital director Alla Barsehian told CNN last week.

Health care workers went to work after the patients were safely evacuated. In the rain, with their friends and family around, they began to clean up the litter by hand. One and a half days later – with plastic wrap for windows and no doors – the facility reopened.

“We are the lifeblood of this district,” Barsehian said. Patients asked when the next appointment for their doctor was available when she came back to the destroyed buildings after the attack, and she realized they had no choice but to carry on. “We didn’t have time [to deliberate], we had to quickly restore everything and continue doing our jobs because people needed us.”

“The report is the very first comprehensive effort to map and analyze attacks on Ukrainian health care infrastructure and personnel by Russian forces,” said Iryna Marchuk, an associate professor of international and criminal law at the University of Copenhagen, who was not part of the research.

Nearly 200 medical workers, who at the time of war are protected under international human rights laws, were either killed, injured, kidnapped or arrested, the collaboration between the NGOs revealed.

Researchers documented 707 health care attacks between February and December 2022, including damage to facilities, such as strikes by ground-launched explosives, and other attacks, such as looting, denial of access to health care and disruption of patients’ access to utilities necessary for medical care.

Wille said that the data shows a method of warfare which is incompatible with international humanitarian law and needs to be addressed.

Investigating the UHC report on hospital violence against Ukraine invasion in Mariupol – a warning to the international legal community and to the UN or the UN General Assembly

Nearly one in three Ukrainians lack access to medical services — and that number is greater in the eastern and southern parts of the country — according to a December 2022 survey by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration.

Experts warn that civilians are left with hardly any access to medical care in areas that have seen active combat. The Ukrainian healthcare center think tank has found that many of the elderly in Mariupol are vulnerable, because the majority of the health care facilities in the city have been destroyed. By June last year, at least 320,000 Mariupol citizens have either fled, been forcibly relocated or died, according to Mariupol’s City Council.

In the case of locations that were hard to reach due to combat or occupation, a group of investigators gathered social media reports and examined them against satellite imagery to confirm the events actually took place.

indiscriminate bombing in populated areas, failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and intentionally directing attacks against distinguishable medical units and personnel as war crimes are defined by the convention. The United Nations considers deliberate, strategic targeting of civilian populations a crime against humanity.

The coalition of investigators from the UHC, MIHR, PHR, Insecurity Insight and eyeWitness is urging the international legal community to investigate the evidence it gathered.

The report was bad according to Richard Goldstone who was the former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. “I anticipate that it will assist in bringing some of the criminals responsible for these atrocities to justice,” he said in an emailed statement.

Stephen Rapp told CNN that the Tuesday report will be presented to the tribunal in The Hague this week. Three judges are hearing evidence on war crimes in Ukraine, including Rapp, a former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes. Rapp says the tribunal will decide whether there is sufficient evidence to confirm an indictment and issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We hope that our proceedings will inspire the UN General Assembly to authorize the Secretary General to enter into an agreement with Ukraine to establish a tribunal with legal jurisdiction over aggression in Ukraine,” Rapp told CNN.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/europe/report-hospital-ukraine-attacks-russia-invasion-intl-dg/index.html

Back in Bashtanka, a hospital built by attacks on the Uya’s most defavorable citizens, says a spokeswoman

Back in Bashtanka, the hospital was rebuilt by the end of summer 2022 with the help of donors and volunteers from across the country, Barsehian said. And far from scaring the health workers away, the attacks have only made them more determined.