Ukraine’s Parliament recognizes Russia committing genocide. The Ukrainian Parliament voted to recognize the actions of Russia and its military in the country as genocide. Rada called on the international community to condemn Russia’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. The resolution no.7276 passed by a vote of 363. Ukraine’s Parliament calls on the UN, European Parliament, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, governments, and eight parliaments worldwide to recognize Russia committing genocide of the Ukrainian people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Ukraine.
The Russian occupying forces aim to eliminate the Ukrainian people. They kill civilians, create preconditions to exterminate Ukrainians, forcibly take Ukrainian children to Russia or temporarily occupied territories.
The Russians commit atrocities in areas they seize. In Bucha, Borodyanka, Hostomel, and Irpin, they killed, abducted, tortured and raped civilians. They deliberately conduct air strikes on civilian objectives under special protection including hospitals, schools, and kindergarten.
Russia deports Ukrainians from areas of control. Russia forcibly took 45 thousand Ukrainians out of the occupied areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and 70 thousand from Mariupol. There’s a pattern of civilian deportations, the Office of the President of Ukraine said. Russia only allows humanitarian corridors leading to “DNR”.
The Russian forces take the deportees to filtration camps. They would send suspicious Ukrainians to basements of Donetsk, Olenivka, and Dokuchayevsk. The rest stay in “DNR”. Some are sent further to Russia.
“Seventy thousand Ukrainians have been forcibly deported from Mariupol,” deputy mayor of Mariupol, Arkadiy Meshkov said.
Russia holds deportees in inhumane conditions. Checks would sometimes take weeks. Ukrainians are interrogated by Russia’s security services. They examine them (even search for tattoos), and check their belongings. Those whom they identify as related to the government, law enforcement or military units, are tortured and sent to detention centers.
Some Ukrainians that were deported to Russia managed to get out of the country, said Natalia Yemchenko of SCM company located near Mariupol. About 500 people returned to Ukraine via Moscow and Riga.
Warship Moskva, flagship of Black Sea fleet struck by missile, badly damaged. As Ukraine hit the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, it caught fire, Ukrainian sources said. The warship has a crew of more than 500. It was armed with 16 cruise missiles.
Russia confirmed “serious damage” to the warship, while the Russian Defense Ministry said that ammunition on board detonated.
Putin was made aware of the fire. His spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov did not say what his reaction was. Following the strike, Moskva turned around and began to sink, Ukraine’s Operational Command South (Pivden) said.
Pentagon spokesperson said Moskva was heavily damaged, but stayed afloat.
Moskva is the most expensive piece of materiel struck by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Its estimated cost is USD 750 million, Forbes said.
“Moskva was the flagship and the most powerful warship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and they can’t send in a replacement because Turkey has closed Bosporus and Dardanelles for any warships not based in the Black Sea,” military analyst Tom Cooper said.
Водночас у Пентагоні заявили, що крейсер Москва внаслідок вибуху значно пошкоджений, але може йти своїм ходом.
The Russian warships previously deployed to the north of the Black Sea close to Moskva, sailed further toward the south, a high-ranking unnamed source in the Pentagon told CNN.
“Destruction of Moskva guided-missile cruiser is symbolic. It humiliates Russia,” Andriy Klymenko of the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies told LIGA.net. “Only the loss of a ballistic missile submarine or the Kutznetsov,” Russia’s lone aircraft carrier, “would inflict a more serious blow to Russian morale and the navy’s reputation with the Russian public,” retired U.S. Navy Capt. Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, told CNN.
Ukraine in Flames #35. Russia reveals its plans for Ukraine
Russian official media are not shy speculating what Russia should do with Ukraine. The main objectives are ‘to justly punish’ Ukraine and to denazify it, they claim.
This means several disturbing things:
– de-Ukrainization – ethnic cleansings of Ukrainians and cultural genocide;
– de-Europeanization – submission of Ukrainian territories to Russia’s ‘Eurasian’ domination and economic exploitation;
– lustration – exclusion and punishment of the pro-Ukrainian elites and active civil society;
– demilitarization – liquidation of the Armed Forces, the government and police.
Russia’s recent actions in the Kyiv region prove that a genocide of the Ukrainian nation was not fringe talk, but a real plan. Russia has already started to introduce ‘denazification’ and demilitarization norms into the constitutions of the new puppet republics proclaimed in the recently overtaken territories. Find out more about Russia’s plans for Ukraine in Ukraine in Flames #35.
Speakers:
Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Olexiy Haran, Prof. of Comparative Politics, University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy; Research Director, Democratic Initiatives Foundation
Tetyana Karas, expert on countering disinformation
David Stulik, senior analyst at European Values Center For Security Policy
Viktor Yagun, Major General of the SBU reserve, deputy head of SBU (March 2014 – June 2015), Director of the Agency for Security Sector Reform
Volodymyr Yermolenko, writer, philosopher, editor in chief of UkraineWorld project
