Comments by "R Johansen" (@rjohansen9486) on "Biden Jolts Ukraine's Zelensky; Approves Emergency Arms Sale To Bolster Israel's War On Gaza" video.
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Feb -14 “coup”: It already started in nov -13.
First there was an attempted coup by the russians. They put pressure on president Yanukovych to not sign an already negotiated political association and free trade deal with EU. When people heard about this scam, they gathered in the streets. Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption and abuse of power, the influence of Russians and oligarchs, police brutality, and human rights violations. Ressive anti-protest laws fuelled further anger.
In January and February 2014 further protests resulted in the government’s resignation. On 21 February, Yanukovych and the parliamentary opposition signed an agreement to bring about an interim unity government, constitutional reforms and early elections. The next day, 22 February, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office by 328 to 0.
Russia then occupied and annexed Crimea, with “little green men” (Russian masked soldiers). More “little green men” together with Russian armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings and proclaimed the independent states of Donetsk and Luhansk, sparking the Donbas war.
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THERE WAS NO GENOCIDE IN DONBAS.
From Iranian press: Vladimir Putin regularly drone on about the alleged “genocide of the Donbas population”. Today, this myth sits at the core of the Kremlin’s propaganda. Putin has used this myth to justify Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. " Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years” Putin said in his address announcing the war.
Both Ukraine and the occupied Donbas territories have suffered casualties because of the HOSTILITIES THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION has been conducting there since 2014. But Russia has insisted for these eight years and tried to convince the world that the actions of Ukraine’s Armed Forces in Donbas “are aimed at destroying the population of Donbas” and are not a struggle for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. And despite the UNTRUTHFULNESS of the argument, Russia’s propaganda machine has nevertheless managed to convince the Russian audience of this, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “an act of retaliation for Donbas”.
As it happens, official United Nations data suggests that the 14,000 casualty figure that Putin has used does not only refer to civilians. During Russia’s 2014-2021 military operations against Ukraine, 14,500 people died in the Donbas war. Of that 14,000, 3,404 were civilians, 4,400 were Ukrainian servicemen and 6,500 were Russian militants. The figure Putin operates with, is the total number of casualties incurred in the Donbas war by both sides.
The Russian Federation both armed the separatists and sent unmarked soldiers. Russia initially denied that there were Russian military forces in Donbas, but on 17 April 2014 Vladimir Putin finally confirmed the presence of the Russian military. Alexander Borodai, Prime Minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, stated that 50,000 RUSSIAN citizens fought in the Donbas up to August 2015.
THESE SOLDIERS are the ones that the Ukranian government fought against, NOT “shelling of innocents in Donbass”, which Russian propaganda will tell you.
Data obtained from the reports of the so-called “Commissioner for Human Rights in the Donetsk People’s Republic” show casualty figures even lower than those of the United Nations. In a 2020 report the total losses of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) since the start of the war in Donbas are estimated to be 4,959. This is the figure that is officially recorded by the DPR “legislature”.
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Russia violates the Minsk agreements on a regular basis.
The Minsk Agreements are a basis for political resolution of the conflict in Donbas. They have been violated by the Russian Federation on a regular basis. Point 10, for example, calls for the withdrawal of all foreign armed formations and military equipment from the two disputed regions, Donetsk and Luhansk: Ukraine says this refers to forces from Russia, but Moscow denies it has any forces there. (Later Putin admitted there were russian forces.)
Signing of the first documents in September 2014 followed direct incursion of the Russian regular troops in Donbas and intense hostilities near the city of Ilovaysk — the place of one of the most shameful crimes, committed by the Russian Army in Donbas.
At least 366 Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 429 were wounded there while leaving the city in the so-called “green corridor” under the guarantees of commanders of Russian troops. In violation of the Minsk Memorandum, Russian troops and Russia-backed illegal armed formations seized 8 pieces of land 1696 km² in area, which had to be on the Ukrainian government-controlled territory according to the line of contact, defined by the Memorandum.
Debaltseve is one of the most telling examples of how Russia violates the Minsk Agreements. Combined Russian-terrorist forces attacked and seized the city and the outskirts on 16–18 February 2015, immediately after the Minsk Package of measures, establishing the comprehensive ceasefire since 15 February, had been signed.
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Russia and Ukraine never signed a peace agreement In 2022.
People are sharing a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin showing South African President Cyril Ramaphosa a document, claiming that Russia signed a peace agreement with Ukraine in the spring of 2022! This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS created by Vladimir Putin himself, and propagated by his supporters to diminish support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
- On 7 April 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Moscow rejected a draft peace deal from Ukraine, saying that it contained “unacceptable” elements that deviated from proposals that both sides’ negotiators had earlier agreed on.
- July 19 : Dmitry Medvedev said that “Russia will achieve all its goals. There will be peace – on our terms”
- On September 14, 2022, Reuters reported that Vladimir Putin rejected a provisional deal, in which Ukraine agreed to stay out of NATO. His own chief envoy on Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak, told him that the deal would remove the need for Russia to pursue a large-scale occupation of Ukraine, and recommended that Putin adopt the peace deal. However, PUTIN DECIDED TO REJECT the provisional peace agreement Kozak hammered out with the Ukrainians, and pressed ahead with his “special military operation”.
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There wasn't any realistic deal in Turkey.
Johnson said this to his own parliament: There is absolutely no sign that Russia wants to reach a deal with Ukraine, and it could not be trusted even if one was on offer, Boris Johnson has told the Commons.
And he was right, Russia had broken all the agreements so far, including Minsk. The former prime minister warned against a "land for peace" deal, and said he doubted Volodymyr Zelensky or any Ukrainian government would agree to any such compromise.
(While in 2014-2017 the implementation of the Minsk Accords could have led to a negotiated reintegration of Donbas into Ukraine under international supervision, the international situation and Russia’s intentions have changed. In fact, by late 2021 Russian authorities had all but integrated the breakaway republics into the Russian political, military and economic space, precluding any meaningful possibility of the region’s peaceful reintegration into Ukraine. Whilst the Ukrainian leadership pursued a ceasefire in Donbas from the summer of 2020, the Kremlin used it as a bargaining chip to put pressure on Zelensky’s government and to create a flimsy pretext for an invasion. Zelensky’s last-ditch attempts to return to the negotiations in late 2021 were rejected by Putin, who tore up the Minsk Accords by recognising the independence of the breakaway regions. Thus, instead of a roadmap to future peace, the Minsk Accords had largely become a military-diplomatic tool in the hands of Russian leadership to legitimise regime change and the dismemberment of Ukraine.)
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Russia’s Lie Machine Fans Flames of Odessa ‘Massacre’:
It is several years since 48 people died during disturbances and a terrible fire in Odessa. The flames were still smoldering when Russia first began presenting the conflagration as a massacre by Ukrainian nationalists. This has continued regardless of several investigations, by the bipartisan 2 May Group; the Council of Europe’s International Advisory Panel and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Each has found that the earlier disturbances began when a large group of pro-Russian activists attacked a peaceful march in support of Ukrainian unity. From then on, weapons were used by both sides and six people were killed. Toward evening, pro-Ukrainian activists headed towards Kulikove Pole Square intending to destroy a tent camp set up by pro-Russian activists. The latter responded with gunfire and Molotov cocktails from the roof and windows of the Trade Union building. All independent reports agree that with Molotov cocktails being thrown both at and from the building, it is impossible to determine the source of the fire which caused the death of 42 pro-Russian activists.
Selective coverage was evident from the outset. All Russian video footage treated Ukrainian “radicals” as the perpetrators of the earlier riots. No mention was made of the shooting and Molotov cocktails from inside the building, nor of the pro-Ukrainian activists who risked their safety to rescue people from the building. Russian footage instead showed a pro-Ukrainian activist firing a pistol at the building, failing to note that the man was returning fire coming from the building’s windows and that his pistol contained blanks.
Two years after the Council of Europe’s report, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that, “Ukrainian nationalists drove defenseless people into the Trade Union building and burned them alive”. This knowingly false story has now been peddled around the world, with generously financed exhibitions and carefully selected “witnesses” taken on tours of European countries.
It is a story that is known to have cost even more lives, with many of the young men who volunteered to fight for the Kremlin-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine citing the alleged “Odessa massacre” as a catalyst.
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Ever since the early years of his reign, Putin has made no secret of his bitterness over the Soviet collapse, which he has always viewed as a Russian defeat.
In 2005, when he famously referred to the disintegration of the USSR as “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” he stressed that it was a tragedy for “the Russian people” and the millions of Russians who suddenly found themselves living beyond Russia’s borders in newly independent countries such as Ukraine.
Putin went even further in 2021, lamenting the fall of the USSR as “the collapse of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union.” In other words, he regards the entire Soviet era as a continuation of the Czarist Russian Empire, and sees the settlement of 1991 as anything but final. Putin’s sense of historical injustice has led to an unhealthy obsession with Ukraine, which he insists is an inherent part of historical Russia that has been subjected to artificial separation. He is fond of claiming that Ukrainians are in fact Russians (“one people”), and took the unusual but revealing step in July 2021 of publishing a lengthy essay arguing against the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood.
This fixation has been further fueled by fears that the emergence of a democratic Ukraine could serve as a catalyst for similar changes inside Russia itself. Putin remains haunted by the pro-democracy uprisings that swept Central Europe in the late 1980s while he was a young KGB officer in East Germany, and views modern Ukraine’s embrace of democracy as a direct threat to his own authoritarian regime. It is no coincidence that in the buildup to last year’s invasion, Putin began referring to Ukraine as an intolerable “anti-Russia.”
Over the past 13 months of full-scale war, Putin’s imperial objectives in Ukraine have become increasingly evident. He has compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great, and has repeatedly spoken of returning historical Russian lands while attempting to annex four partially occupied Ukrainian regions representing almost 20% of the war-torn country. Meanwhile, his army has imposed brutal policies of russification throughout occupied Ukraine, complete with summary executions, forced deportations, the suppression of Ukrainian national symbols, and widespread use of torture against anyone deemed a potential opponent of Russian rule.
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Ian Garner, a historian and analyst of Russian culture: Russia and President Vladimir Putin are preparing the country's youth to "die for the motherland", believes the Canadian historian and author Ian Garner, who has written a book about what he calls "Russia's fascist youth".
- Russia indoctrinates young people with military games, TikTok videos and influencers. Children and young people who have grown up since 2012, when Putin became president again, are much more ideological and isolated from the world than generations before them When we think of young people, we like to think of the hope of the future and of people who want peace and democracy. But those who do not want war in Russia are fleeing or have fled.
They will not die because of ideology, says Garner With Putin as president, everything has become much more ideological, right from childhood. Young people are almost forced to join the state's youth groups, which are becoming more and more militarized. They are constantly told that everything outside Russia is dangerous and will destroy them. It makes me worried - and scared, says Garner. He points out that teachers and schools are receiving new teaching material where violence and ultra-nationalism become part of everyday school life - that young people who want to do something in their spare time must do so under the auspices of the state.
The scope for what you can do as a young person in Russia is narrowing. - That's very smart. Children and young people are getting more and more ideological and military input. Like a Wagner officer telling you that you have an obligation to join the military and make sacrifices so that Russia can be saved from the so-called scary and dangerous world out there, says Garner. It is especially young people under the age of 19-20 that Garner calls the "Z generation", who are influenced by what he refers to as "fascist ideology". Recruitment is done on TikTok and other social media. According to Garner, the youth army - which has members aged six to 18 - is the most radical group.
Now I meet children who are learning the language of hate and war. It makes me sad and scared. The young people are brainwashed into thinking that everyone outside Russia hates them and wants to crush them, he says The Russian state has, according to Garner, created a world where you are either with us, Russia, or against us. There is no room here for homosexuals, oppositionists, pacifists, Ukrainians - or non-Orthodox Christians, according to Garner.
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Human Rights Watch has extensively documented how Russian officials and their proxies used coercive measures to forcibly transfer Ukrainian civilians, including those fleeing hostilities, to Russia or Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
We have also documented the forced transfer of children and the war’s devastating impact on children in residential institutions.
Although the new report, issued under the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism, acknowledges uncertainty regarding exact numbers, its conclusions are certain: Ukrainian children were forcibly deported to Russia or transferred within Russian-controlled territory. This constitutes a war crime.
It also concluded that forcibly deported Ukrainian children had been subjected to “numerous and overlapping violations” of their rights. The report noted that forcibly deported children were placed in an unfamiliar environment far removed from Ukrainian language, culture, customs, and religion.
It also found that many such children were exposed to military training and “to pro-Russian information campaigns often amounting to targeted reeducation.” The report also underscores how changes in Russian law enabled authorities to swiftly give Russian citizenship to Ukrainian children, facilitating their guardianship and adoption by Russian families in Russia, even though many of the children may have living relatives, including in Ukraine.
The report found that Russian authorities didn’t promote the return of Ukrainian children to their home country or the reunification of Ukrainian children separated from their families. In fact, the report says, Russia seems to be creating obstacles for reunification. Russia has no centralized list of transferred children. Additionally, the children are repeatedly moved from place to place, and sometimes referred to by Russian, not Ukrainian, names.
Even if Ukrainian families manage to locate a child, they encounter numerous logistical and financial difficulties in returning that child to Ukraine.
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All opposition in Russia are either killed or in prison on false charges.
Russia arrests priests:
- "Brothers and sisters in Christ are now killing Christians. It is impossible to live with this fact." For this statement, made in a sermon in the church, the Russian priest Ioann Burdin was arrested.
Zona Media reports that Burdin is one of the first to suffer under a new law, which criminalised calls for the end of the war. The Russian priest says that he finds it irreconcilable that Russian Christians are killing Ukrainian Christians. "For me, this is about the same as if I would come to our Church and stab someone who is praying because I did not like what he was saying. We cannot break the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" so easily."
Burdin is a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian village of Karabanovo in the Kostroma region. During one of his sermons, he announced that he would pray for the war's end. According to him, however, that was not the point of his sermon. "It is a deeper call to people to retain humanity in their hearts; so that they do not feel hatred for either Ukrainians, Russians or the Americans."
Burdin's statements, however, led to his arrest. He was summoned to the police station, heard and charged with "discrediting" Russia's war in Ukraine, Dagen reports. The new law made it illegal to question the Russian invasion. Violating this legislation can lead to imprisonment or a fine.
- A Russian priest now faces up to 10 years behind bars for declaring that troops waging war on Ukraine are going to hell.
The charges against Ioann Kurmoyarov, a former priestmonk of the Russian Orthodox Church and doctor of theology, come as the Kremlin seeks to stifle dissent over the war, with numerous high-profile musicians and writers recently charged under a new law against spreading “false information” about the Russian military.
The charges against him stem from a video he posted on social media in March responding to Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s claim that even if the war in Ukraine leads to a nuclear strike, Russians will “go to heaven.”
“I would like to disappoint everyone who believes in this ‘fake,’” Kuromaryov said, adding that those who “unleash aggression” do not wind up in heaven. “Ukraine did not attack Russia,” he said. “You will not be in any heaven, you’ll be in hell.”
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A Russian journalist was sentenced to six years in a penal colony on Wednesday (15 February) for accusing the Russian air force of bombing a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last April where women and children were sheltering. “Patriotism is love for the motherland, and love for one’s motherland should not be expressed by encouraging crime,” Ponоmarenko told the court before her sentencing, according to the RusNews outlet where she worked. “Attacking your neighbour is a crime.” “If it is a war – then call it a war,” she said from a cage in the courtroom. “This is a state crime against the army – it is like spitting on the graves of veterans.”
The Europe and Central Asia coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Gulnoza Said, issued a statement on Ponomarenko’s sentencing. “Russian authorities should be ashamed of the six-year prison sentence given to journalist Maria Ponomarenko, whose sole so-called crime was publishing information about the war in Ukraine that did not conform to the official narrative. “Authorities should not contest Ponomarenko’s appeal, drop all the charges against her, and stop jailing independent voices.” The verdict is the latest in a series of rulings in Russia that ban criticism of the war.
In the early days of the conflict, the Kremlin approved legislation that penalised the spread of “false information” or criticism about the country’s military campaign, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”. Some members of Russia’s political opposition, activists, journalists, and bloggers have previously been convicted and imprisoned under the law.
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- The "Bucha massacre" was the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war by the Russian Armed Forces during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photographic and video evidence of the massacre emerged on 1 April 2022 after Russian forces withdrew from the city.
According to local authorities, 458 bodies have been recovered from the town, including 9 children under the age of 18; among the victims, 419 people were killed with weapons and 39 appeared to have died of natural causes.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented the unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 73 civilians in Bucha. Photos showed corpses of civilians, lined up with their hands bound behind their backs, shot at point-blank range, which ostensibly gave proof that summary executions had taken place.
An inquiry by Radio Free Europe reported the use of a basement beneath a campground as a torture chamber. Many bodies were found mutilated and burnt, and girls as young as fourteen reported being raped by Russian soldiers. Ukraine has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate what happened in Bucha as part of its ongoing investigation of the invasion to determine whether a series of Russian war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed.
Russian authorities have denied responsibility and instead claimed that Ukraine faked footage of the event or staged the killings itself as a false flag operation,] and have claimed that the footage and photographs of dead bodies were "fake news". These assertions by Russian authorities have been debunked as false by various groups and media organizations. Eyewitness accounts from residents of Bucha said that the Russian Armed Forces carried out the killings.
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“HIDING BEHIND WOMEN AND CHILDREN”: CIVILIANS USED BY RUSSIA AS HUMAN SHIELDS DURING OCCUPATION OF CRIMEA
27.02.2019
On 21 February 2019, a new submission was sent to the International Criminal Court regarding the use of civilians during the capture of strategic targets in the Crimean Peninsula by Russian soldiers in 2014. The submission was prepared by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union NGO (UHHRU) and the Regional Center for Human Rights NGO (RCHR) in cooperation with the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
The authors established that Russian Federation’s forces were not only intentionally and deliberately moving civilians closer to the facilities of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, but were also standing behind these people during the blocking and capture of these facilities. Under such circumstances, Ukrainian soldiers were unable to use force to defend against the attacks.
These human shields were made up of 4 categories of civilians, among them Crimeans with pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian views, civilians brought from Russia to take part in the peninsula’s occupation, as well as representatives of the Cossacks and the so-called “Crimean Self-Defense”.
“There were also people among the civilians that did not belong to neither of the above categories. For instance, we established that Serbian Chetniks were involved in the assaults,” says Maksym Tymochko, UHHRU lawyer. “Based on our information, at least 10 military facilities belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine were captured in this manner with the use of at least 1,000 civilians.”
Particularly indicative is the capture of the naval base in the town of Novoozerne, carried out with the use of at least 300 people, men and women as well as adolescents and the elderly.
Among the civilians used as human shields were people with pro-Russian views whose participation was encouraged as well as those who gathered in front of military targets as a result of threats or blackmail. “In such cases, the occupying power is required to prevent the presence of civilians in potentially dangerous places. Furthermore, representatives of the Russian Federation should have refrained from using civilians for protecting their own armed forces”, summarizes Vitaliy.
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