The truth about the kremlin's war crimes
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The truth about the kremlin's war crimes
Spoiler: 24 March is the International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. The truth about the kremlin’s war is that the little person in the kremlin unleashed a Tsunami of crimes against the Ukrainian people.
The UN Human Rights Council recently released a report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. The first paragraph of the summary reads:
In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 49/1, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine outlines the main findings since the outset of its mandate. The body of evidence collected shows that Russian authorities have committed a wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in many regions of Ukraine and in the Russian Federation. Many of these amount to war crimes and include wilful killings, attacks on civilians, unlawful confinement, torture, rape, and forced transfers and deportations of children.
Putin is now a wanted criminal after his orders of deportations of Ukrainian children.
“Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).”
As I wrote in this post.
The Ukrainian General Prosecution office has confirmed muscovite war crimes in 2022:
16, 502 murdered civilian Ukrainians
21 discovered mass graves
54 discovered torture chambers
5,079 reported cases of torture
855 reported cases of war crimes against children
14,870 air raid sirens across Ukraine
3,126/337 shelled/destroyed education institutions.
1,000,000 (11,000) Ukrainians (Ukrainian children) forced to filtration.
5,000,000/7,900,000 number of internally displaced Ukrainians/Ukrainian refugees.
Ukrainian testimonies.
Numbers are useful because they provide a scale of muscovite war crimes. But to really understand the sufferings of the Ukrainian people, one needs to listen to and read their testimonies. Svidok is an initiative where Ukrainians “…can safely and securely store your experiences of living through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and collect evidence of all the atrocities and war crimes that were committed by the Russians.”
Here is one testimony of the shelling of Mariupol:
Mariupol. March 16. morning Right bank. Then in the first days, so close to me, our district was shelled. What, I don't know. Perhaps it was hail or hurricanes, there were many shells. One hit a neighbor's house, a direct hit. My neighbors and I ran to this house to search and rescue people. There is one box left at home. There is smoke everywhere, you can't see anything. Very quickly the house started to burn. All our houses are very close to each other, there could be a high probability that if the fire is not extinguished, it will spread to the neighboring houses. The Ministry of Emergency Situations will not be called. The decision was made quickly, it extinguishes itself!!!! They started collecting buckets. After a couple of houses, we had a water column, there are always many people from nearby districts, the water is potable. I run to my house for buckets. And the second shelling begins.
Please notice the last sentence: And the second shelling begins. This follows the muscovite modus operandi: 1 shell residential houses. 2 wait for rescuers and shell again. Rescuers are priority targets for the orcs. That’s why many medics and other rescuers don’t wear identifying badges or other signs.
Another project collecting testimonies, is the Reckoning. That is a project for which Ukrainian researchers have collected witness testimonies and published a number of stories in high-profile international media.
Here is a story about how muscovite troops forded everyone in the village of Yahidne to live in a cellar.
Seven days after the invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops entered the village of Yahidne. They forced the residents out of their homes and into the basement of the local school, which they had turned into their headquarters. Until they withdrew on March 30, 2022, the Russians kept almost the entire population of Yahidne—more than 360 people, including children and the elderly—in that basement for nearly a month.
It was so cramped, people had to sleep sitting up. Instead of a toilet, there were buckets. Food had to be foraged. There was no ventilation, so the oldest went crazy and died. The Russians did not allow the dead to be buried immediately, and when they finally did, they fired on the funeral.
Telling the truth is a crime in muscovy
The kremlin can’t prevent us from talking about the truth about their troops’ atrocities against Ukrainians. But at home, the little person in the kremlin has continued to silence critics. While it may still be legal to call a spade for a spade, it is unlawful to call the kremlin’s war against Ukraine for a war. This is one of the reasons why the kremlin raided the homes of staff of the last(?) human rights organisation in Muscovy, Memorial, a few days ago. And Transparency International was forced to close their offices after being declared an “undesirable organisation” by the kremlin. The definition of an undesirable organisation in muscovy, is an organisation which staff tells the truth about the kremlin’s abuse of power and enrichment of itself on behalf of the ordinary muscovites.
As I showed here.
the little psychopath began to destroy muscovy as soon as he was put into office. Murder of critics, journalists, mass arrestations and torture are frequently used by his thugs. The point of this is of course to make people scared to shut up and stop criticizing the kremlin’s abuse of power and enrichment of itself on the behalf of ordinary people in muscovy.
Figure 1. Regime physical violence and Freedom of Expression in muscovy since the little psychopath became “president”
Source: Varieties of Democracy, https://v-dem.net/. Note: The physical violence index measures violations of freedom from political killings and torture by the government. Among the set of civil liberties, these liberal rights are the most relevant for political competition and accountability. The index is based on indicators that reflect violence committed by government agents and that are not directly referring to elections. The freedom of expression index measures the extent to which governments respect press and media freedom, the freedom of ordinary people to discuss political matters at home and in the public sphere, as well as the freedom of academic and cultural expression. Both indices range from 0 to 1. The lower the value, the worse the situation.
The kremlin lies and lies and lies.
Practically every statement from someone in the kremlin is a lie. The most well-known example is old horse face Lavrov’s pathetic lie at the G20 when he claimed that the kremlin’s war against Ukraine was a war against muscovy. Being among the most pathetic persons in the world, old horse face has often accused other governments to lie about muscovy.
The kremlin have carefully studied Goebbels who constantly lied about Nazi Germany’s foes. Goebbels, and Hitler frequently also claimed that other countries lied about them. Let’s have a look at the truth. Varities of Democracy’s Digital Society Project monitors to what extent governments disseminate false information about other countries and to what extent countries are targets of false information. This is gauged by two indicators. A value close to 0 for Origins of lies show that the government extremely often lie about other countries and a value close to 4 for Destinations of lies show that the government is extremely seldom the target of lies from other countries.
In 2022, Muscovy was not only one of the most frequent liars about other countries, but also one of the least targets of lies from other countries. The most frequent liars are found in the bottom right of Figure 2.
Figure 2. Destinations of false information from foreign governments vs origins of false information from foreign governments.
Source: Varieties of Democracy, https://www.v-dem.net/. Note: The indicators Government dissemination of false information abroad and Foreign governments dissemination of false information range from 0 to 4, where 0 for the first indicators shows that the country extremely often disseminates false information about other governments abroad and 4 that the country extremely seldom or never practices that. A 0 for the second indicator shows that the country is extremely often is the target for dissemination of false information from foreign governments and 4 that the country is never or extremely seldom that target for false information from foreign governments.