Russia hits a border crossing to Romania in an overnight attack on Odesa region. Ukrainian troops withdraw from Vuhledar to avoid encirclement. Russia systematically tortures Ukraine POWs, a UN report reveals. They endure sexual violence, beatings, and electric shocks.
Russia hits border crossing to Romania in overnight attack on Odesa region
Russian drones attacked the Izmail district in Odesa region overnight on Wednesday, targeting port infrastructure and a border crossing to Romania, head of the Odesa regional military administration, Oleh Kiper said.
Two truck drivers, including a Turkish citizen, were injured, he added. They were taken to hospital and reported to be in fair condition. They are receiving the necessary treatment.
The drone attack sparked a fire and caused the closure of the Orlivka-Isaccea border crossing point where a ferry connects Ukraine’s Odesa region with Romania. The fire was quickly extinguished. The border crossing reopened later in the day.
“The Russians deliberately fired at the border crossing, making it difficult for ordinary people to cross the border. This is terror against civilian population,” Kiper said, adding that law enforcement officers are recording consequences of what appears to be “another Russian war crime.”
Romania issued emergency alerts for people living near the Ukrainian border and deployed two F-16 and two F-18 jets on Wednesday after Russian drones targeted Ukrainian civilian infrastructure close to the border.
Romania’s radar surveillance system did not detect the incursion into the national airspace of the drones involved in the attack against the Ukrainian targets, the country’s defense ministry said.
Ukrainian troops withdraw from Vuhledar to avoid encirclement
The Ukrainian military command ordered troops to withdraw from Vuhledar, in Donetsk region, to avoid encirclement, the Khortytsia operational-strategic group of forces said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Russians had suffered numerous losses as a result of prolonged fighting as they tried to storm the city, but never abandoned attempts to seize it, the message reads.
“In an effort to take control of the city at any cost, [Russia] managed to direct the reserves to carry out flanking attacks, which exhausted the defense of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As a result of the enemy’s actions, the encirclement of the city was threatened,” the statement continues.
“The higher military command authorized a maneuver to withdraw the units from Vuhledar in order to preserve personnel and combat equipment, and take up a position for further operations,” the Khortytsia operational-strategic group of forces said.
Situation updates on Ukraine’s defense efforts posted by the Ukrainian General Staff on October 2 do not include Vuhledar.
DeepState, a Ukrainian OSINT project said on Tuesday that Vuhledar had fallen to the Russian forces.
On Tuesday, head of the Donetsk regional military administration Vadym Filashkin said the fighting in Vuhledar was taking place within the city limits, and 107 people still remained there.
“Russia’s seizure of Vuhledar is unlikely to fundamentally alter the course of offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast, largely because Vuhledar is not a particularly crucial logistics node,” the Institute for the Study of War said on X.
Russia systematically tortures Ukraine POWs, UN report reveals. They endure sexual violence, beatings, electric shocks
Russian authorities subject Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) to torture and ill-treatment throughout all stages of captivity, a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released on Tuesday reveals. The paragraphs below are quoted from the report.
Russian authorities have subjected Ukrainian POWs to widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment including during admission procedures, daily internment routines, and as a result of dire conditions of internment. Detailed and consistent accounts of torture or ill-treatment in Russian Federation custody were provided by 169 out of 174 Ukrainian POWs interviewed by OHCHR since March 2023 when OHCHR published a dedicated report on the treatment of POWs.
Ukrainian POWs described being subjected to a wide range of methods of torture or ill-treatment. Recurrent methods included: severe beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence, suffocation, prolonged stress positions, excessive exercise, sleep deprivation, mock executions, threats of severe violence to the individual or their family and humiliation.
The occupying authorities in Kherson repeatedly subjected a detained man to beatings, suffocation, waterboarding, electric shocks, including to genitals, and threats of castration after his apprehension in September 2022. They also raped the man anally with a metal object and simultaneously administered electric shocks to his anus and genitals.
Many of the documented instances of torture or ill-treatment involved different State entities, suggesting often significant levels of coordination between them.
Facility administrations knew about the torture and ill-treatment and could have prevented it.
Public figures in the Russian Federation have explicitly called for inhumane treatment, and even execution, of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs), often using dehumanizing terms in public discourse and through State-owned media.
In earlier developments, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, a UN commission, found new evidence showing common patterns of torture by Russian authorities against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in occupied Ukrainian territories and in the Russian Federation, the Commission said in its update to the Human Rights Council in September. The Commission has identified additional common elements in the use of torture by Russian authorities, reinforcing its earlier finding that this was systematic. A further common feature is the recurrent use of sexual violence.
A resident of Kherson spoke to Slidstvo.Info, a Ukrainian investigative media outlet, about how the Russians held him captive for more than a year: in a Kherson torture chamber, in the temporarily occupied Crimea, and in a penal colony and detention center in Russia. The Russians chained him up and stretched his body in the shape of a star. The interrogation was accompanied by physical violence, threats and he was repeatedly hit by a stun gun.
A photo that began to circulate online on September 17 showed an alleged Russian execution of a Ukrainian soldier found dead with a sword inscribed with “for Kursk” in his body.
On September 13, Brenda Hollis, Head of Investigations into International Crimes Committed in Ukraine at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), along with her team and members from the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, inspected the torture chambers set up by the Russian military during the occupation of Kharkiv region.
Expanding Russian Influence through Food and Education. Ukraine in Flames #667
The Russians are directing significant resources to spread propaganda among economically disadvantaged countries. A large-scale information campaign in Latin America began with the launch of the Spanish-language branch of the Russia Today channel in 2009, and in Africa after the occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. For the most part, residents of these countries simply do not have access to alternative sources of information about the Russian-Ukrainian war. Watch Ukraine in Flames #667 to find out about how Russia is cementing influence in Africa and Latin America through food aid and different pro-Russian educational activities.
Guests:
- Ivan Fechko, Expert of the Latin American and Caribbean Research Program
- Volodymyr Solovian, Head of the Hybrid Analytical Warfare Group (UCMC)
