End the Ukraine fiasco now

A remotely controlled rocket and machine gun platform that can see in the dark…

Ukraine is starting mass production of versatile ground robotic platforms that will be the "next game-changer" in warfare, according to Ukraine's Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. https://t.co/PHewOZi6GJ
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) March 12, 2024

03/15/24 – UN-backed human rights experts decry new evidence of torture of Ukrainian POWs by Russia –

GENEVA (AP) — U.N.-backed human rights experts said Friday they have gathered new evidence of “horrific” torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war by their Russian jailers, saying such practices could amount to war crimes.

The Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said human rights violations have been widespread since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade the country more than two years ago, and that civilian suffering from the war continues to mount.

“New evidence strengthens the commission’s previous findings that torture used by Russian authorities in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation has been widespread and systematic,” the commission said in its latest report, citing “horrific treatment” of POWs at several sites in Russia.

Last July, The Associated Press reported that thousands of Ukrainian civilians were being held in Russian prisons and subjected to systematic torture and slave labor. The AP report also cited a Russian government document from January last year outlining Moscow’s plans to create dozens of new prison colonies and detention centers in occupied Ukraine through 2026.

Commission chair Erik Mose said the torture takes many forms including beating, verbal abuse, electric shocks, and limited access to food and water.

“The whole treatment of the prisoners of war and the picture drawn up emerging from the way they were dealt with, how they were treated over long periods — months — enables us to use the word ‘horrific,’” he told reporters on the sidelines of a Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.

Russian forces regularly showed little regard for possible harm to civilians in their military operations, the report said, adding that incidents of rape and sexual violence against women in the war in Ukraine amounted to torture.

“Our determination is that both rape and sexual violence are war crimes,” commission member Vrinda Grover said. “With the focus this time on prisoners of war, we have also found that there was a sexualized dimension of torture of male prisoners — Ukrainian prisoners of war.”

Relocation of children from the Kherson region in southern Ukraine to Russian-occupied Crimea did not appear to be temporary, they said, and could amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer.

As for the Ukrainian side, the report cited “a few violations” of human rights by Ukrainian authorities against people suspected of collaborating with Russia.

The commission, mandated by the U.N.-backed rights council that is in the midst of a six-week session, said it conducted more than two dozen trips to Ukraine and drew on interviews of more than 1,400 men and women over the last two years.

In one case, a former Ukrainian detainee who was not identified described having his collarbone broken, teeth knocked out and injured foot beaten, among other mistreatment, until “he begged them to kill him,” the report said.

After release, he underwent 36 hospitalizations through January this year, Mose said…

—
 “Unfortunately, we had to make some exceptionally harsh decisions, that I won’t discuss just yet.” 
—
“Systematic torture and slave labor”… Putin and his minions are the effin’ NAZIs in this ugly chapter of future history books.

03/16/24 – Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin’s sham election ‘hit by cyber attack’ as Kyiv targets oil refineries –

Russia has been hit by a cyberattack amid the country’s sham election as Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of seeking to sabotage the polls, the Kremlin claimed.

United Russia said it was facing a widespread denial of service attack – a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use – against its online presence, and it had suspended non-essential services to repel the interruption.

It comes as Ukrainian drones struck two Russian oil refineries belonging to state-owned oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region.

The Syzran refinery was on fire but an attack on the Novokubyshev refinery was thwarted, the governor of Russia’s Samara region, Dmitry Azarov said. Workers at both plants were evacuated with no casualties reported, he added.

Meanwhile, in Russia, at least half a dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported, including a firebombing, as citizens voted in a three-day presidential election that will extend Vladimir Putin’s rule by six more years after he stifled dissent.

The election takes place against the backdrop of a crackdown that has crippled independent media and prominent rights groups and given Putin full control of the political system.

03/16/24 – At gunpoint, Ukrainians in occupied regions vote in Russia’s election –

Since February 25, women with name tags and huge stacks of papers have been knocking on every door in the Russia-occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions or approaching residents outside their apartment buildings or houses.

The documents are lists of voters, and the women and, rarely, men are election officials who usually teach in nearby schools, accept utilities payments or work as government clerks.

They ask residents for their IDs and nudge them to fill in an early ballot form with the names of four candidates in Russia’s presidential election, current and former residents of the occupied areas told Al Jazeera.

One of the candidates is Vladimir Putin, who is all but certain to win his fifth election, and the remaining three presidential hopefuls are figureheads from pro-Kremlin parties whose participation is widely understood by observers as an attempt to create an illusion of choice.

The Ukrainians rarely refuse to fill in the ballot for a very persuasive reason – a masked, gun-toting Russian serviceman towering next to the official and a car filled with more armed men nearby, Al Jazeera has learned.

The “voting” usually takes place near the entrance of an apartment, and the election official along with the armed soldier can see whose name is ticked off on the ballot.

“There’s no secrecy of vote,” a former resident of Mariupol told Al Jazeera, speaking about how her friends and relatives voted on Wednesday.

“People who love Ukraine must submit to the regime and pretend they support everything that’s going on because they’re afraid for their lives.”

She added, however, that there are resistance groups that largely consist of young people who leak information about the numbers and location of Russian soldiers and weaponry to Ukrainian intelligence services.

Some locals hope that their participation in the vote will give them a literal free pass out of the occupied area.

“My father-in-law had a heart attack and died. My mother-in-law’s hair turned grey because of what we had gone through. All we want is to leave and never look back,” Tatyana, who lives in the port of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine, which was occupied in late February 2022, told Al Jazeera.

She and her husband voted early, on Monday, unsurprisingly for Putin because they don’t want to be blacklisted by Russia-appointed authorities.

They plan to cross into southern Russia and take a plane to Kazakhstan, where their relatives agreed to shelter them.

The few Ukrainians who refused to vote or badmouthed the election have been rounded up and taken to “basements”, as informal prisons are known in Russia-occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, according to the Eastern Human Rights Group, a Ukrainian watchdog…