Ukraine

[Mario]

It’s a shame this thread has gone quiet, and not only because the hell that Ukranians must be going through is as real now as it ever was, but also because I was always learning from more educationally and historically informed contributors to this thread.

For example, how true is the latest rumour that Putin is riddled with cancer, and one Dmitry Kovalev is mooted as his successor?

Mario

[Frances_iom]

...
For example, how true is the latest rumour that Putin is riddled with cancer, ...?

my brother with some personal experience commented some time ago that Putin's face had altered and was demonstrating the effects of high dosage steroids - this coupled with previous disappearances for a couple weeks at a time and his obvious fear of covid strongly supports some ongoing medical problem - cancer is most likely. It may also suggest his attempt to seize this moment for the war.

[french frank]

For example, how true is the latest rumour that Putin is riddled with cancer, and one Dmitry Kovalev is mooted as his successor?

Apparently rumours about his health have been circulating for some years. They may or may not be true.

The word from Putin which worries me is that, with the Russian soldier on trial pleading guilty to a war crime (clearly "forced to confess under duress" - where have we heard this before?), Putin has hinted that the hundreds Azovstal fighters who are now prisoners will also be tried for war crimes, or being Nazis or anything else that can be thrown at them. Not sure how the Ukrainians can be charged with war crimes when Russia is not at war, though.

[Serial_Apologist]

Apparently rumours about his health have been circulating for some years. They may or may not be true.

The word from Putin which worries me is that, with the Russian soldier on trial pleading guilty to a war crime (clearly "forced to confess under duress" - where have we heard this before?), Putin has hinted that the hundreds Azovstal fighters who are now prisoners will also be tried for war crimes, or being Nazis or anything else that can be thrown at them. Not sure how the Ukrainians can be charged with war crimes when Russia is not at war, though.

Really good point

[french frank]

Really good point

Have to immediately take it back, though, unfortunately

"It was these Azov battalion Nazis who had been exterminating civilian population in Donetsk and Luhansk republics, deliberately and with exceptional cruelty, for eight years ... Our country treats those who surrendered or were captured humanely. But with regards to Nazis, our position should be unchanged: these are war criminals and we must do everything so that they stand trial.”

So Ukrainians can be treated as war criminals, but not Russians. A gap in my knowledge: I'm not certain exactly what was going on in Donbas before the Russian invasion.

[Serial_Apologist]

Have to immediately take it back, though, unfortunately

"It was these Azov battalion Nazis who had been exterminating civilian population in Donetsk and Luhansk republics, deliberately and with exceptional cruelty, for eight years ... Our country treats those who surrendered or were captured humanely. But with regards to Nazis, our position should be unchanged: these are war criminals and we must do everything so that they stand trial.”

So Ukrainians can be treated as war criminals, but not Russians. A gap in my knowledge: I'm not certain exactly what was going on in Donbas before the Russian invasion.

Ukraine has greater cause to accuse invading Russian forces of war crimes as it is Russia that launched war in all but their own definitions. One of the arguments being deployed in critical favour of Putin's war is that Azof battalions full of nazi sympathisers and others hostile to the Russian-speaking minority in the Donbas had been waging terror on the latter ever since the 2004 "agreement" - which successive Ukraine governments had welshed on. How much truth there is in these accusations has been the subject of much debate, based in part on the view that NATO's position and long-term strategy has as its aim to weaken Russia's military standing in international power relations, as well as its record of supporting repressive régimes around the world at the behest of the USA. The critics think NATO has less right to court countries neighbouring Russia than Russia has to defend "its own". But why, if there were even an iota of justification in thinking this, would Putin need to invade the entire country - let alone destroy large parts of it? Then there is the business of establishing the bridgehead to block all Ukrainian access to the sea - what's ll that about? For my penny's worth I have stopped posting on certain self-appointing Left websites.

[Constantbee]

I have no specialist knowledge of the law in this area but can’t help wondering where all these Russian war criminals are going to serve their sentences. According to a 2005 report by Amnesty International USA prisons in the Ukraine are pretty grim places where human rights of prisoners are not respected at all. Torture and ill treatment by police is widespread and disease is rife. Given that Ukraine has now filled in a questionnaire applying for EU membership they will be required to make their prisons conform to European standards. Could be a problem, couldn’t it. I have also read that an undisclosed number of prisoners with military experience were released from Ukrainian prisons to defend the country in the 2022 war. Can we expect the next cohort of war criminals to be released in a few years time when it all kicks off again?

Anyway, how are they going to organise trials of in excess of 12,000 Russian soldiers? It can take many years to bring war crimes to trial under currently recognised systems. The best precedent we have in the West is probably the Bosnian War Crime Trials, some of which took about 12-15 years to conclude. The impression I got from the BBC4 documentary of the Ratko Mladic trial I watched last week was that it was a rather more sedate and better supervised affair than what appears to be taking place this week. The forensic evidence, for example had much longer to be examined. They had longer to find and question witnesses. And so on. Also, the sentencing of those convicted in the Bosnian War makes very interesting reading. To threaten the first defendent with life imprisonment for his offence appears to be way in excess of the sentencing that was meted out to most of the Bosnia war criminals. Pour décourager les autres, presumably.

[french frank]

[To Serial-Apologist] I agree. I should make it clear I was only reporting the Russian 'justification' for putting the alleged Nazis on trial. The whole business of Donbas is very muddled. But it is clear that Russia had been arming the separatists from the start, and supplying personnel to fight alongside them. There are very good Wikipedia timelines. It's rich that Russia criticises Nato countries for supplying arms to the Ukrainian government forces when it had itself supplied arms to the Russian separatists to aid them in their attacks on Ukrainian government personnel and buildings in Donbas.

Under international law, Russia had no legal right to annex Crimea, no legal right to provide backing for the separatist rebels and no right to invade any part of Ukraine. What recourse might have been available to Russia to satify its own grievances, I don't know. But it seems very clear that Russia has from the start been following its own agenda. And that it takes every opportunity to step in to create trouble for the west.

Just reading round, I was reminded of the flight MH17 drama where Russia constantly changed its story as evidence emerged contrary to its own claims.

[Bryn]

I have no specialist knowledge of the law in this area but can’t help wondering where all these Russian war criminals are going to serve their sentences. According to a 2005 report by Amnesty International USA prisons in the Ukraine are pretty grim places where human rights of prisoners are not respected at all. Torture and ill treatment by police is widespread and disease is rife. Given that Ukraine has now filled in a questionnaire applying for EU membership they will be required to make their prisons conform to European standards. Could be a problem, couldn’t it. I have also read that an undisclosed number of prisoners with military experience were released from Ukrainian prisons to defend the country in the 2022 war. Can we expect the next cohort of war criminals to be released in a few years time when it all kicks off again?

Anyway, how are they going to organise trials of in excess of 12,000 Russian soldiers? It can take many years to bring war crimes to trial under currently recognised systems. The best precedent we have in the West is probably the Bosnian War Crime Trials, some of which took about 12-15 years to conclude. The impression I got from the BBC4 documentary of the Ratko Mladic trial I watched last week was that it was a rather more sedate and better supervised affair than what appears to be taking place this week. The forensic evidence, for example had much longer to be examined. They had longer to find and question witnesses. And so on. Also, the sentencing of those convicted in the Bosnian War makes very interesting reading. To threaten the first defendent with life imprisonment for his offence appears to be way in excess of the sentencing that was meted out to most of the Bosnia war criminals. Pour décourager les autres, presumably.

Hmm. Just wondering whether a 17-year-old Amnesty International USA report, data for which must have related to pre-Orange Revolution conditions, necessarily relates to the current situation in Ukrainian prisons. They may, of course, still be as bad, but much has changed in Ukraine in the interim.

[french frank]

Hmm. Just wondering whether a 17-year-old Amnesty International USA report, data for which must have related to pre-Orange Revolution conditions, necessarily relates to the current situation in Ukrainian prisons. They may, of course, still be as bad, but much has changed in Ukraine in the interim.

Ukraine doesn't have a clean bill of health by any means, though there have been changes since Putin's chum Yanukovych was booted out in 2013. Poroshenko was then ditched by the electorate in favour of Zelensky for not getting to grips with the country's corruption.

Corruption perceptions for 2021 (Transparency International) has Ukraine at 122th out of 180 for transparency (Russia is 136th). On democracy it ranked as 79th out of 167 (Economist Intelligence Unit 2020). Russia is 124th.

[Frances_iom]

...For my penny's worth I have stopped posting on certain self-appointing Left websites.

"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentence"

[Dave2002]

It’s a shame this thread has gone quiet, and not only because the hell that Ukranians must be going through is as real now as it ever was, but also because I was always learning from more educationally and historically informed contributors to this thread.

Here is a recent and hopefully fairly factual and balanced update: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61524175

Here also is an opinion piece - from the Atlantic - which looks plausible - but it is still "only" an opinion - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...russia/627121/

[richardfinegold]

Have to immediately take it back, though, unfortunately

"It was these Azov battalion Nazis who had been exterminating civilian population in Donetsk and Luhansk republics, deliberately and with exceptional cruelty, for eight years ... Our country treats those who surrendered or were captured humanely. But with regards to Nazis, our position should be unchanged: these are war criminals and we must do everything so that they stand trial.”

So Ukrainians can be treated as war criminals, but not Russians. A gap in my knowledge: I'm not certain exactly what was going on in Donbas before the Russian invasion.

From what I can tell there have been atrocities committed on both sides over the past 8 years. The Russians probably are behind most of it but the likes of the Azov Battalion have blood on their hands as well

[Dave2002]

From what I can tell there have been atrocities committed on both sides over the past 8 years. The Russians probably are behind most of it but the likes of the Azov Battalion have blood on their hands as well

I think that most of us here have no idea. I have no idea what the "Azov Battalion" is - whether it's a "real" organisation, and if so what it stands for etc. All we have is news items so in that sense we're as ignorant as many in Russia itself. I have no idea why so many people have died in the east of Ukraine - before this latest "special military action", but that does seem to be a well established fact. Was this really a "trivial" low level border dispute, or something much more significant? I have travelled through Ukraine, and talked to some of the people who live(d) there. That included one person who had (at the time) somewhere to live in the east in the area now under bombardment or maybe even completely flattened. When I asked why she didn't move, given the state of the troubles at the time she replied that she couldn't afford to - house prices and rents were higher in the western part of Ukraine.

Before this latest flare up began it was estimated that around 14-15000 people had died in battles on the eastern border since 2014, though the number of Ukrainians killed seemed to be relatively low.

I really think that from the outside, looking in, with very little knowledge of the cultures in the region most of us - including myself - have no idea what this is all about. Nevertheless it still looks like a land grab to me, and if there were very real concerns in the past I find it fairly implausible that reasonable methods of resolution could not have been found.

[french frank]

From what I can tell there have been atrocities committed on both sides over the past 8 years. The Russians probably are behind most of it but the likes of the Azov Battalion have blood on their hands as well

I have to repeat (again) that the quote of mine which you quote is the Russian version of why they have invaded Ukraine. Whatever truth is behind it is unlikely to be as clearcut as the Russians' claim.

Fundamentally the battalion members were - and still are - nationalists who formed way back as football hooligans. They reformed to fight the Russian separatists and to fend off the Russian invasion of 2014. There were racists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists among them, but to condemn them entirely in their current form as part of the official Ukrainian National Guard, as "neo-Nazi" is to swallow Russian propaganda which needs that narrative to justify its invasion. Let's not forget that most national armies harbour unsavoury characters who engage in terrorist offences/war crimes.

It remains to be seen whether Putin will be satisfied with his "monumental" victory over Nazism, represented by the fall of Mariupol, or whether he will want to push forward into Donbas before annexing it into Russia.