How prudent is it to let a power station in mint condition be sold for scrap while Sri Lanka is in the middle of a power crisis? I am referring to a power plant at Sapugaskanda; it has currently been de-commissioned waiting either to be commissioned again or to be dismantled and sold.
Scrapping seems to be its fate going by the reluctance of the government to get it online again. This power station let go of 50 engineers and personnel last October. Only the power station awaits its fate, gleaming and maintained in impeccable spruce condition. How prudent is it to let go of such a 50 MW power station and scrap it while the people have been left with electricity?
An oft-heard lament is that no power stations have been added to the grid during the last five years! We’re suffering the repercussions of it right now—power cuts lasting more than 13 hours. But the Power Ministry seems to have the luxury of scrapping an existing 50 MW! What sense does it make to scrap an existing operational power plant maintained in prime condition? This is NOT an emergency power genset. I think the government is smudging the line between ‘emergency power’ and standard regular power suppliers. The PUCSL (Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka) has even started to call the three IPPs currently standing decommissioned as ‘emergency power’. They are not emergency power suppliers. They have been a part and parcel of power generation plan of Sri Lanka for the past 22 years. The One at Sapugaskanda is a power station built in 1998 at an exorbitant cost. The people of Sri Lanka has borne the cost of installation and maintenance for 22 years. They should be the rightful owners of this fully paid up power station by now. It is fully capable of generating for another few good years to come. Having recovered the investment and costs, the company is able to offer the CEB unparalleled thermal electricity unit rates of Rs. 20. It also is an IPP operating on cheap heavy fuel oil, which is only a byproduct from the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) refinery. Even if it was to be imported, unlike diesel, it is the cheap ‘leftover stuff’ in the petroleum industry. Yet, this power station is equipped to reduce air pollution to a bare minimum, as emission test results indicate.
In fact, all the three IPPs have been idling for nearly one year. The grid has been deprived of a nearly 200MW power supply and the country has been dependent on hydropower generation at a time when the water levels in reservoirs are extremely low.
There have been three ministers for power in two years. Dallas Alahapperuma saw the long-term generation plan clearly, alongside president’s renewable energy proposals. He proposed viable plans, even against the backdrop of the looming power crisis with screaming consumer demand no match for the frugal supply available with the CEB, for not just for now, but for a few more years to come. He fore saw the current power crisis then, and made plans accordingly. His plans were scuttled by his successors.
In the middle of this chaos somehow the Cabinet approved the commissioning of the three IPPs which have been idling last year. This happened only two weeks ago. The CEB welcomed this decision with a huge sigh of relief as a short-term measure to handle the power crisis in full swing by now. The directors of the company too heeded the appeal of the government/ministry to help the country in its hour of need. They complied. It conceded a one-year contract, to a six-months contract. It further reduced the rates. Everything was ready to get started to supply electricity to a country starved of power, 180 MW altogether in a few days, it seemed. We, the public of Sri Lanka, could have finally breathed a sigh of relief when five-hour power cuts were over. But, alas, the PUCSL intervened and threw a spanner in the works by demanding to cut down of prices further. It seems to think that power could be bought like peanuts. The PUCSL head even wants this particular power station to come online for a few weeks only. The reason? To use up some CPC fuel stocks amounting to about 2800 MT!
Now, the PUCSL head wants a power station commissioned, meaning recruiting a whole team of operational people, priming machinery, etc. for just three weeks! Where does Sri Lanka go after three weeks? Its clear PUCSL head is incapable of understanding the situation.
So unfortunately, at this juncture, this particular IPP Company is saying enough is enough. It has recovered the cost of plant, and is going to dismantle it and dispose of it to make some more money. Who is the loser? The people of Sri Lanka! The company has offered the whole plant for free/one dollar to the CEB at the end of a one year’s contract. Alternatively, it has offered to operate it too, even for three more years and supply power at an unmatched price of Rs. 20 per unit during that period. But the government does not seem to be interested in either of these proposals. Its priorities are different. It is purchasing power from emergency power suppliers at double the price—as much as Rs.45 per unit! That was the price quoted before the recent fuel price hike. Since these emergency power sets are diesel operated, the price of a unit of electricity may have gone up to Rs. 60.
It is high time President Gotabaya Rajapaksa intervened to ensure that the country gains from this power station to be dismantled and sold.
When the lights went out on March 31 many Sri Lankans would hardly have been surprised. Rationing of electricity has grown commonplace in recent years, particularly since March of this year, when a foreign currency shortage produced a fuel crisis and reservoir levels fell owing to dry weather.
The Government has offered a variety of explanations for the blackouts, ranging from dollar shortage to COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the pandemic interrupted economies of many countries. However, evidence shows that Sri Lanka’s power problem is the result of more than a decade of corruption and inept power system management.
Analysts anticipate that a global shift to renewables such as solar and wind will support developing countries to strengthen their economies. Alternative energy has a low environmental impact as well. The Paris Agreement, a binding pact that requires states to make specific pledges to reduce climate change, has been signed by nearly 200 countries, including Sri Lanka. Where is Sri Lanka’s renewable energy during a power crisis like this?
Delays in implementing already planned and approved projects are stifling Sri Lanka’s renewable energy capacity growth, jeopardizing President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s so-called aim of 70% renewable energy by 2030. He said he will urge the state-run Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to draft a long-term generation plan in accordance with the ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour.’ The strategic plan was formulated. But, what really happened to the plan? Why wasn’t it put into action?
The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) compiled an explanation report in the third week of March that detailed everything that went wrong in the country’s renewable energy sector. The Daily Mirror was able to obtain a copy of the report, and as part of our mission to educate the public with their right to accurate information, we have included passages from it below.
The report signed by Janaka Ratnayake, Chairman of the PUCSL was sent to the Assistant Auditor General S. T. B. Ratnayake on March 18 in response to a letter sent by the Auditor General’s Department on March 14. Copies of this report have also been sent to Ministry of Economic Policies and Plan Implementation.
Publicising policy guidelines was required under Section 5 of the Sri Lanka Electricity Act No. 20 of 2009. It has, however, been postponed.Despite the fact that the government declared its renewable energy policy in 2019 (a target of 70% renewable energy), it was publicised only in October, 2021 as the Electricity Act states.
The long term generation plan for 2021 has not been formulated in line with government policy by the CEB. The PUCSL has instructed the CEB to formulate it according to the government policy. The CEB has requested that it be given time until June, 2022 to prepare it.
What is the current status of Long-Term Generation Expansion Plan 2015-2034?
Prepared by the CEB to be implemented within the next 20 years starting from the year 2015
Approved by the PUCSL in 2016
The Secretary to the Ministry of Power and Energy has also instructed the CEB to construct the relevant power plants without any delay.
On June 29. 2017, the CEB board of directors gave their approval as well.
The tender dates for the plants, as well as the period during which the plants shall commence operations, are shown below.
Although 400 MW of renewable energy projects were scheduled to be constructed between 2015 and 2020, only the 100 MW Mannar wind power plant was completed in 2021 and commenced generating electricity.
Construction of the Kerawalapitiya LNG Power Plant commenced a year later to the proposed date.
All other power plant projects haven’t even been tendered on schedule.
What happened to Long-Term Generation Expansion Plan 2018-2037?
The PUCSL gave its approval for the said plan on July 19, 2017.
Given below is the list of powerplants scheduled to be built from 2018 to 2022 according to the plan.
Altogether 1137 MW renewable energy projects and 875 MW thermal power plants have been delayed.
Where did foreign-aid energy projects end up?
1. 500 MW natural gas power plant project – Japan
The Secretary to the Power Ministry and the Secretary to the Economic, Trade and Industry Ministry of Japan signed the MOU on August 18, 2018.
As per Paragraph 43 of Sri Lanka Electricity Act, the Cabinet approval was granted on September 5, 2018.
2. 500 MW natural gas power plant project – India
Sri Lanka and India signed the MOU on April 26, 2017.
Cabinet approval was granted on September 5, 2018.
3. 400 MW natural gas power plant project – China
Cabinet approval was granted on September 5, 2018.
Attorney General gave approval to the MOU draft on October 18,2019 but, the MOU was not signed between the two countries.
Much-delayed power plants
Only the following three powerplants were tendered from the approved thermal powerplants for the period from 2014 to 2022.
2018-2037 Generation Expansion Plan approved by the PUCSL recommended to increase the contribution of renewable energy to 60% by 2030. A goal to complete 1000MW solar power projects by 2020 was identified under Soorya Bala Sangramaya project (Battle for Solar Energy).
However, calling tenders for the following large-scale renewable power plants approved by the CEB in 2017 was delayed for five years. The tender process is yet to commence in 2022.
What’s the big deal about the Southern Province grid?
Emergency power purchases: Plaster for the deep wound
The CEB has made 17 requests to the PUCSL during the period from 2017 to 2022 to purchase emergency power and 16 of them were declined by the Commission.
One of the main reasons for opting for emergency power purchases, on the below mentioned dates, according to the CEB, is that it would provide solutions to issues in the Southern Province grid.
1. May 2, 2016
2. April 1, 2016
3. April 4, 2018
4. April 5, 2018
5. September 28, 2018
6. March 4, 2021
7. March 9. 2022
A 100 MW thermal power plant was approved to be built as a solution to the issues in the Southern Province in 2016.
The Cabinet sub-committee appointed in 2016 highlighted the importance of completing the facility as soon as possible.
This facility was also approved by the CEB director board in 2017.
However, no action has been taken yet to build the low-cost power plants as a long-term solution to the problem in the Southern Province.
Construction delays of transmision network
Constructing the following transmission cables planned to strengthen the power supply network in the Southern Province was delayed for more than five years.
Ambalangoda–Galle 132kV transmission cable included in the 2013 Transmission Development Plan was constructed in 2017 and is yet to be connected to the national system.
Construction of Polpitiya–Hambantota 220kV transmission cable included in the 2013 Transmission Development Plan was supposed to be finished in 2017 as planned. But, it is still not complete.
Construction of Kotmale–Polpitiya 220kV new transmission cable included in the 2013 Transmission Development Plan was supposed to be finished in 2017 as planned. But, it is still not complete.
Construction of Horana–Padukka 220kV transmission cable included in the 2017 Transmission Development Plan was supposed to be finished in 2021 as planned. But, it is still not complete.
Increasing power cost
Thermal power plant costs has been rapidly increasing over time, surpassing the costs of renewable energy power plants. The current cost of each power plant is listed below.
CEB’s production and distribution cost per one electricity unit was Rs. 30 in February 2022. The estimated cost per unit in March 2022 is Rs. 36.10. This cost is likely to increase with the depreciation of the rupee.
What needs to be done?
Attempts to enhance power capacity in accordance with policies and plans have failed for years. This predicament has arisen as a result of the CEB’s current structure’s flaws and issues. The CEB, which was created under the Ceylon Electricity Board Act No 17 of 1969, currently holds a monopoly on 70% of electricity generation, 85% of distribution, and 85% of power transmission.
The CEB’s current structure has already demonstrated its inability to meet the needs of the current and future power industries. Reforms in the power industry are required to meet the government’s objective of 70% renewable energy by 2050. The Ceylon Electricity Board Act No 17 of 1969 should be changed to provide the CEB management team more power.
1. Establishing financially independent business units/ institutes for the licenses issued to the CEB to generate, transmitand distribute.
2. Appointing chief executive officers in charge of these independent business divisions’ aims, including earnings.
3. Establishing necessary business units/institutes for each licensee and transferring power plant procurement and electrical system management responsibilities.
4. Independently managing the financial sources regarding agreements to purchase, transmit and sell power.
5. Prohibiting officers of three upper management levels of the CEB becoming trade union members to prevent trade unions manipulating the CEB management.
6. Establishing separate business units/ institutes to purchase power and to control systems.
The mother (R) of Palestinian Dima al-Wawi, 12, who is believed to be the youngest female detained by Israel, greets her in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, upon her release from Israeli prison on April 24, 2016 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]
Wafa Aludaini-April 6, 2022
The Israeli occupation authorities detained more than 9,000 Palestinian children between 2015 and the end of March 2022, including 1,300 last year alone, an increase of 140 per cent on the figure for 2020. Indeed, since the outbreak of the Aqsa Intifada (Uprising) in September 2000, around 19,000 Palestinian children have been arrested by the Israeli occupation state, including children under 10 years old.
The details are in a report released on Monday by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club to mark the occasion of Palestinian Children’s Day, which falls on 5 April every year. It pointed out that 160 Palestinian children are currently held by Israel in Ofer, Damon and Megiddo Prisons.
Israeli forces targeting Palestinian children – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]
The Prisoners’ Club says that arresting children is a regular tactic of the occupation security forces, usually using British Mandate-era regulations covering what is known as “administrative detention”. This allows the authorities to detain people with neither charge noir trial for an indefinite, renewable period. Such cases involve children from towns and areas near illegal Israeli settlements established on Palestinian land. The largest percentage of detained children come from occupied Jerusalem.
Since 2015, the arrest of children has escalated, especially in occupied Jerusalem. This has coincided with fundamental amendments to Israeli juvenile law, most notably the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility for children from 14 to 12 years old. However, this does not mean that the years prior to 2015 were free of such arrests and unfair sentences given to children. Hundreds were arrested between the 1987 and Al-Aqsa Intifadas.
The Director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Centre for Studies, Dr Ra’fat Hamdouna, has confirmed that the occupation authorities commit dozens of violations against child detainees, including psychological and physical torture, exploiting the child’s fragile physique, threats, abuse and intimidation, sometimes with dogs. The authorities also resort to deception, false promises and cruelty. The children held by Israel are tried in hostile military courts using unjust laws, and face fines, solitary confinement, the use of force, detention in places unfit for children and provocative searches. They often sign “confessions” written in Hebrew, a language which they don’t understand. Trials are far from fair and are well below international standards.
Odai Haddad, aged 12, was summoned by the Israeli police recently for “throwing stones” at some illegal Israeli settlers. Rejecting the charge, his father Alaa said, “This is the fourth time that my child has been summoned by the occupation authority since he was nine years old. Each time they make different accusations.” The authorities, he explained, once charged Odai with playing with a ball that hit one of the ubiquitous Israeli surveillance cameras on every wall. He complained bitterly that his child and the other children in Bab Al-Amoud neighbourhood in occupied Jerusalem have been deprived of their childhood by restrictive Israeli policies. They are scared to play outside or with other children.
Palestinian children in Israeli detention suffer poor health, lack cultural and psychological care — there are no counsellors in the prisons — and are often held alongside Israeli criminals. Their arrests are frequently at night and often involve intimidation and abuse, as well as inhumane means of restraint and transport intended to destroy their spirit. The whole process has a profound psychological, physical and social effect on them.
Ahmad Manasra is an example of the extent of Israeli cruelty and injustice against children. He was a healthy child before his imprisonment at the age of 14 in 2015. He has been subjected to continuous punishment and abuse ever since, including physical, psychological and social torture. The latter sees the denial of family visits, for example, and all kinds of communication with his parents and brothers. Recently, Ahmad has been held in solitary confinement for up to four months, and is now suffering from psychological disorders due to the isolation and extreme prison conditions. According to his mother, he is being held under very harsh conditions. She has called on the international community and human rights organisations to take direct action and help her son to get appropriate medical and psychological support before she loses him for ever.
Despite his deteriorating condition, the apartheid Israeli courts have rejected pleas to shorten his sentence. They have also refused to allow him to be treated in a mental health unit outside the prison. This is indicative of the way that Palestinian children are treated inside Israeli prisons on Palestinian Children’s Day 2022.
Palestinian journalists have been interrogated and imprisoned by Israel for covering protests, funerals, and other political events, pressuring many into self-censorship. A report by +972, Local Call, and The Intercept.
An Israeli soldier watches a Palestinian journalist during a protest against the Trump Plan, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank, February 25, 2020. (Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills)
During the violent escalations in Israel-Palestine in the spring of 2021, Hazem Nasser did what he was called to do: he began filming. At the time, Nasser was working as a journalist for the Palestinian television network Falastin Al-Ghad, where Nasser’s footage captured the rising tensions amidst Jewish nationalist marches, Palestinian demonstrations, and Israeli police brutality in Jerusalem.
On May 10, Nasser set out to film a clash between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli army in the northern occupied West Bank. The day sticks out in Nasser’s memory — not for the clash itself, nor for the military strikes that began later that evening between Hamas and Israel, but for what happened to him afterward.
Nasser was on his way home when he was stopped by Israeli soldiers at the Huwara checkpoint, and taken away for interrogations. Nasser languished in detention for more than a month while the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, repeatedly interrogated him.
“All the questions were about my journalism,” Nasser said. “They put images from my video reports on the table, including a funeral of a dead Palestinian, people gathering for a protest, a square honoring a shaheed [martyr], a march with Hamas flags. The interrogator told me I cannot photograph these things, because they are incitement. I told him that I am a journalist and this is my job — to show images of things that are happening, and that Israeli outlets do the same thing. He yelled at me to stop.”
In mid-June, Nasser, who is 31 and hails from the village of Shweikeh in the occupied West Bank, appeared before a court and was charged with incitement. Instead of focusing on his journalistic work, as the interrogations had, the indictment listed four old Facebook posts that he had written between 2018 to 2020, a period in which he published more than 1,000 posts. The charging document said he had praised the 2001 assassination of an Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, and called a Palestinian militant accused of murdering two Israelis a “hero,” among other allegations.
Palestinian journalist Hazem Nasser. (Courtesy of Nasser)
One possible reason that Nasser’s work didn’t appear in the indictment — despite being a focus of the interrogations — is that, even in the military courts of Israel’s occupation, the criteria for what constitutes incitement does not include journalism, or simply documenting events. Regardless, Nasser believes the purpose of the interrogations and the charges were one and the same: to deter him from documenting Israel’s abuses against Palestinians. Among Palestinian journalists, he is far from alone.
‘They don’t distinguish between a journalist and a participant’
Since the beginning of 2020, Israel has imprisoned at least 26 Palestinian journalists in the West Bank. In most cases, the journalists were placed under administrative detention — a common method used by Israel to hold Palestinians without filing charges — for anywhere between six weeks to 1.5 years. Nine of these journalists were indicted, most often for incitement, and on average spent about eight months in detention.
As of March 2022, there were 10 Palestinian journalists in Israeli prisons on charges relating to publishing materials online — either as private individuals or through their professional work — that were deemed “incitement,” according to Saleh al-Masri, who heads the Journalist Support Committee in Palestine. Three of the imprisoned journalists are in administrative detention; three have been indicted; and four are being held and interrogated as part of investigations. (Seven other journalists are being imprisoned for convicted charges of taking part in violent activities that had nothing to do with journalistic work)
Using interviews, media reports, and legal filings, +972, Local Call, and The Intercept reviewed the cases against many of the journalists who were held by Israeli security forces in relation to their publication of material. In interviews with us, as well as with other media outlets, seven of the journalists said that, during their interrogations, Israeli security agents showed them news videos that they had taken, which were often of confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces, political processions, or funerals. The interrogators told the journalists that the images constituted “incitement” and ordered them to stop documenting the events.
In some cases, the journalists were later indicted on charges unrelated to their professional work; in others, no indictment was filed at all and the journalist was imprisoned without trial and eventually set free. (The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for comment).
Israeli soldiers try to prevent a Palestinian photojournalist from covering clashes that followed a demonstration in solidarity with the Gaza Strip at Beit Furik military checkpoint, Nablus, West Bank, August 8, 2014. (Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills)
“The arrests usually take place while journalists are out in the field,” said Shireen Al-Khatib, the Monitoring and Documentation Associate for the Palestine Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA), which promotes and defends freedom of expression and of media in the occupied territories.
“During the interrogation,” she continued, “the journalist will be told that the reports he posts on Facebook are considered incitement — and although he is only reporting news, the fact that that news is made public is tantamount to incitement. Often, the journalist will be accused of attending a political event as a photographer or a reporter. But [the Israeli authorities] do not distinguish between a journalist who is in the field as part of his work and an active participant.”
Al-Khatib, who has interviewed dozens of Palestinian journalists interrogated by the Shin Bet, said the result of this treatment is that Palestinian journalists live in a constant state of fear, often leading to self-censorship.
‘As if the problem is the camera, not the reality’
Other Palestinian journalists offered on-the-record accounts that corresponded with Nasser’s experience. Sameh Titi, a 27-year-old reporter from the al-Arroub Refugee Camp in the West Bank, covers events in his area for Al Mayadeen, a Lebanon-based Arabic news channel said to be aligned with the militant group Hezbollah. In December 2019, he was taken into custody by Israeli security forces.
Titi said the interrogator pulled up his Facebook profile before showing him images from his own work. “He showed me a report on the closure of the entrance to the al-Arroub camp by the army,” Titi said. “The interrogator told me: ‘You are not allowed to film military positions.’” The interrogator also raised Titi’s presence at events related to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a leftist political group which Israel deems a terrorist organization.
Israeli soldiers confront journalists as Palestinian, Israeli, and international demonstrators march in the West Bank city of Hebron calling to open the Shuhada Street, February 20, 2019. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)
Like Titi and others, Tareq Abu Zeid, a video journalist from Jenin, was arrested in October 2020 and interrogated by the Shin Bet in its Petah Tikva facility. The interrogator, Abu Zeid recalled, told him he was arrested because his footage sows unrest among the Palestinian public.
“The whole investigation had to do with coverage as a journalist — as if the problem is the camera itself, not the reality it documents,” Abu Zeid said in an interview for Al Jazeera. Over three weeks of questioning, interrogators raised allegations of Abu Zeid’s work with Al-Aqsa TV, a station associated with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization. Al-Aqsa TV was banned by Israel in 2019.
Fadi Qawasmeh, a lawyer representing Abu Zeid, argued in court that the charges against his client amounted to selective enforcement, since no legal action had been taken against any other employee at Al-Aqsa TV, and the Israeli military knew for years that Abu Zeid worked at this station, long before it was declared illegal. Abu Zeid had already been in prison for nearly 10 months when, in June 2021, the military prosecution offered him a plea deal for time served and a fine of roughly $2,500. Abu Zeid agreed and was released from prison the following month.
‘The point was to limit my journalism — and it worked’
Titi, the journalist for Al Mayadeen, was eventually charged with three offenses, some of which related to his journalistic work and others which did not.
The indictment against him cited his “presence at an illegal assembly” for attending several funerals of young Palestinians who had been killed. In 2019, Titi had covered the funeral of Omar al-Badawi, an alleged PFLP member who was killed by the Israeli military. (According to an internal army investigation, al-Badawi posed no danger to the soldiers and they did not have to use live fire.)
The indictment said that the funeral was organized by the PFLP and therefore Titi broke the law by being there. The prosecution did not mention that Titi was covering the funeral as a journalist, that Israeli and international journalists regularly cover such funerals, and that he was among hundreds of others there that day.
Dozens of Palestinian and global journalists from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) protest “the Israeli imposed restrictions against Palestinian journalists” in a march at Qalandiya checkpoint, West Bank, November 17, 2018. (Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills)
In addition to his work documenting funerals, the indictment charged that, in 2016, Titi had participated in activities on his college campus at Hebron University organized by a student group affiliated with Hamas.
The indictment also claimed that two Facebook posts by Titi constituted incitement. In one from 2018, Titi shared a photo of Palestinians who had been killed by the army — the indictment described the dead men as “terrorists” — and wrote: “Beware of natural death, do not die except from the bullets.” In a 2017 post, Titi mentioned participating in a literary competition for the Hamas-linked student group. Titi said that the social media postings were not shown to him at all during his interrogations.
In 2020, Titi took a plea; he was imprisoned for six months and fined NIS 5,000, or around $1,500.
“I stopped reporting on people who were killed and or funerals. I am afraid of filming confrontations with the army, and do not document military positions or soldiers,” he added. “The point was always to limit my work as a journalist — and it worked.”
‘Documentation is incitement ‘
Many of the journalists’ ordeals end in plea bargains with Israeli military prosecutors. Nasser, the Falastin Al-Ghad journalist, took one at the conclusion of his trial, after the judge ruled that Nasser’s Facebook posts barely meet the “low threshold” for incitement. Nasser would be handed a three-month prison sentence, expecting to receive credit for time served.
“Nasser chose to confess in order to be released,” explained Mazen Abu Aoun, his attorney. “Judges almost always rule that journalists remain in custody until the end of the proceedings. They jail them for months, then the military prosecution offers them a plea deal: confess to some of the offenses, and the punishment will amount to the number of days you have already served. After that you’ll be released immediately. That way everyone agrees.”
The entrance to Ofer Military Prison, Nov. 10, 2021. (Oren Ziv)
In the end, however, Nasser’s time served did not limit his stint in prison. Though he took the plea, he learned a week before his release date that the Shin Bet had issued an administrative detention order against him that would keep him behind bars.
Nasser languished in detention without a second trial — or even new charges — for another five months. “They didn’t have anything over which to indict me,” he said. “The West Bank was in flames in May, and as a journalist I documented everything in the field. I was arrested to prevent me from documenting. The act of documentation itself — that’s considered incitement in their eyes.”
Since he was released in December 2021, after eight months in prison, Nasser barely posts anything on Facebook. He is worried that more spurious allegations could pull him away from his family again — a possibility he can’t countenance. “I am married and have a child,” Nasser explained. “They arrested me when he was eight months old and released me when he already knew how to speak.”
A Palestinian rescue worker touches a body found in the wreckage of a residential building in Gaza City’s al-Wihda street, which Israel bombed on 16 May 2021, killing more than 40 people in their homes.
Mohammed ZaanounActiveStills
Ali Abunimah – 6 April 2022
Last week, Jenny Ohlsson, Sweden’s international development minister, paid a visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank.
While in Hebron, she posed for a photo-op with Palestinian children, and claimed that they had asked her the “toughest question” she had faced all week.
“Why are not all countries and people treated equally in global affairs when it comes to attention and support?” the children asked, she said in a tweet.
“I replied it’s a fair question and promised to fight that tendency. Always,” Ohlsson said. She added that she would “raise their concern when I can. Voilà!”
“Why are not all countries & people treated equally in global affairs when it comes to attention & support?” Toughest question this week came fr Hebron students. I replied it’s a fair question & promised to fight that tendency. Always. And raise their concern when I can. Voilà! pic.twitter.com/HrkwxRiUbK
The answer to the question isn’t difficult: Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis and others are treated differently by Sweden than, say, Ukrainians, because Sweden, like the rest of Europe, is a vassal of the United States. They do more or less as they are told.
There is also a strong dose of racism in their foreign policies: White lives are just more valuable to them.
Ohlsson’s promise to raise the children’s “concern” is moreover an evasion and an attempt to cover up Sweden’s direct complicity in the Israeli apartheid regime’s occupation, persecution, colonization and killing of Palestinians.
This complicity includes Sweden’s booming purchases of Israeli weapons and recent decision to offer a home to a notorious Israeli arms maker.
While Ohlsson was in Palestine, Israeli occupation forces killed 16-year-old Sanad Abu Atiya during a raid on Jenin.
According to an eyewitness, Sanad was fatally shot as he tried to render aid to Yazid al-Saadi, a 22-year-old who had just been shot in the back of the head by the Israeli attackers.
This latest killing of a Palestinian child elicited no comment, let alone outrage or condemnation, from Ohlsson, or any other European official, as far as this writer could determine.
Israeli forces shot and killed 16-year-old Sanad Mohammad Khalil Abu Atiya in the chest with live ammunition earlier today outside Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank. DCIP field researchers are investigating his killing and will have a full report ready soon. pic.twitter.com/PyTu1dsqqf
Sadly, that tacit approval for Israeli crimes is the norm.
Sweden rewards Gaza massacre
In May, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip for 11 days, killing more than 250 Palestinians, among them almost 70 children.
Multiple generations of more than a dozen families were wiped out in Israeli attacks like the al-Wihda street massacre on 16 May 2021.
That particular Israeli bombardment of residential buildings in Gaza City killed more than 40 Palestinians in their homes, almost half of them children.
This is not a number; these 67 children were killed in Gaza because of Netanyahu's airstrikes. (Image- The New York Times) pic.twitter.com/JxKXoOBbmj
Although the so-called international community – the United States and its Euro-Atlantic clients – continued to support Israel as it targeted civilian infrastructure and killed civilians, there was a global outpouring of solidarity with Palestinians.
School in occupied Gaza will end early due to damage from Israeli airstrikes, with no final exams for most children.
The strikes hit 54 schools, including kindergartens.
The UN says 600,000 students face "significant learning loss, in addition to the psychosocial consequences." pic.twitter.com/zeCdOXurf3
Mohammad, my colleague in Gaza, has documented 1000+ child fatalities during his time with @DCIPalestine. As his kids get older, he finds it harder to reassure them they're safe during Israeli attacks.
Israel, as it habitually does, announced it would refuse to cooperate with an independent war crimes probe ordered by the UN Human Rights Council.
Not satisfied with doing nothing as Israel once again slaughtered defenseless civilians in a besieged, occupied territory, some countries made sure to reward Israel and perhaps incentivize future massacres.
Within months, the UK and the Netherlands both signed accords with Israel to increase military cooperation.
Sweden too, which markets itself as a champion of human rights and peace – it even claims to have a “feminist foreign policy” – got in on the act.
Soon after the latest mass slaughter in Gaza, the Nordic nation was bragging that it was warming up its ties with the apartheid state.
I spoke with @AnnLinde , the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden. This phone conversation, the first in 7 years between the Foreign Ministers of our countries, symbolizes the relaunching of relations at this level. pic.twitter.com/TmHRFm8wNn
But Swedish ministers did not trumpet one particular development.
In June 2021 – not even two months after the Gaza massacre – Sweden allowed Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s biggest arms manufacturers, to open a Swedish branch.
“Sweden is an important market for Elbit Systems and a cornerstone for further expansion in Europe,” Haim Delmar, the chair of Elbit Systems Sweden, stated.
The weapons deals quickly followed. In January, the Swedish navy signed a $27 million contract with Elbit for “combat management systems.”
Last month, the Swedish army signed another $27 million contract with the Israeli company, this time to purchase 120mm tank shells.
“I believe that this selection by Sweden underscores the growing recognition by Western armies of the unique quality of our portfolio of products,” Elbit’s Yehuda Vered said.
Palestinians in Gaza can testify to the horrifically destructive effects of Elbit’s “products” – which are routinely tested on them.
It is notable that Sweden is offering Elbit Systems a new base just as direct action protests in the UK are forcing the Israeli company to shut down facilities there.
Ironically, the Swedish government pension fund has since 2010 barred investments in Elbit Systems because it makes equipment that is used by Israel to “violate international law.”
Booming weapons trade
Although it markets itself as a force for peace, Sweden is the world’s 13th biggest arms exporter, according to the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Indeed, according to SIPRI, countries in North America and Europe accounted for 87 percent of the world’s arms exports in 2017-21.
In that period Israel was the world’s 10th biggest arms exporter. From its new base in Sweden, Elbit will perhaps be able to expand that market share even more. Sweden’s ostensibly left-wing Social Democratic government has been pushing for the harshest possible sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
It has also sent vast quantities of weapons to Ukraine to fight Russia.
Russia “will be held responsible for its brutal and international law-violating aggression against Ukraine,” Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde declared.
Meanwhile, Stockholm is ensuring that Israel is rewarded for its brutal, decades-long and international-law violating aggression in Palestine.
A Ukrainian delegation went to Israel to buy weapons from private Israeli businesses, following the government’s refusal to provide military assistance to Kyiv, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed on Wednesday.
“The delegation recently discussed ways to conduct arms deals outside official state-to-state channels in a meeting with a former senior Israel Defense Forces officer, who now owns a security consultancy firm,” Haaretz reported.
Given Israel's official refusal to provide military assistance to Ukraine, a Ukrainian delegation has been looking into buying weapons from private Israeli businesspeoplehttps://t.co/yRBs2wJZfo
According to the Israeli newspaper, members of the Ukrainian delegation include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s senior aide Serhiy Shefir and Ukrainian parliamentarian Olha Vasylevska-Smahliuk.
The delegation reportedly met last week with Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
Following an initial position of supposed ‘neutrality’, Israel is progressively shifting its attitude towards the Russia-Ukraine conflict, openly condemning Russia for alleged ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine.
On Monday, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz visited a field hospital set up by Israel in Ukraine and blasted Russia over the “war crimes it is committing in Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared on Tuesday that his country will look to Israel for inspiration concerning its future security arrangements, Russia Today reported.
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) April 6, 2022
Horowitz’s remarks follow similar comments by the Israeli Foreign Minister, who also condemned Russia’s actions in a Tweet on Sunday.
“It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of the horrific images from the city of Bucha near Kyiv, from after the Russian army left,” Lapid tweeted, adding that “intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a speech to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday said Russia was guilty of ‘heinous” war crimes, while the Russian ambassador vociferously denied the allegations.
April 6, 2022
The meeting began with an angry statement from the Russian ambassador addressed to the British envoy about her decision to twice reject Russian requests, without holding a procedural vote, for a Security Council meeting to discuss events surrounding the massacre in Bucha. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “immediately called for an independent investigation to guarantee effective accountability.” Below are the texts of statements from the Ukrainian president and the Russian, British and U.S. ambassadors.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia Raises Point of Order
Russian envoy at Security Council on Tuesday. (UN TV)
Mme. President,
Before we adopt the agenda for this meeting, I would like to voice our protest with regard to how the British Presidency treated two our requests for a Security Council meeting to discuss heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha. First on Sunday, 3 April, we requested a regular session to convene at 03.00 pm on Monday. After you rejected this request, we called for an emergency meeting at 12.00 pm on 4 April. You saw it possible to grossly violate the Council’s rules of procedure and ignore our request again, having made an authoritarian unconcerted decision to have this topic discussed today. I elaborated on this outrageous situation in my yesterday’s letter addressed to the Presidency that we also circulated as an official UNSC document.
Let me ask you on what grounds do you believe you can act like this, defying all norms and rules? Aren’t you aware that in case you disagreed with our proposal, you should have called a meeting and put the question whether to hold the meeting that we requested to a procedural vote? Besides, you have the example of our UNSC Presidency, during which we did not reject the convening of any of the six meetings on Ukraine.
We therefore demand a clarification and guarantees that in future you will not contest the right of UNSC members to request Council meetings, as envisaged in Rule 2 of the Council’s rules of procedure. It goes as follows: “The President shall call a meeting of the Security Council at the request of any member of the Security Council”.
Russia Rightofreply:
We do have factual evidence that we requested a meeting 24 hours well in advance. All of this has been put on record, so we are ready to share it. I do hope that what you just said means that henceforth you will not refuse to convene UNSC meetings, requested by member states.
Statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
Dear Mrs. President!
Dear Mr. Secretary General!
Dear members of the Security Council and other participants of the meeting!
Thank you for the opportunity.
I am sure that all the representatives of the U.N. member states will hear me today.
Yesterday I returned from our city of Bucha, recently liberated from the troops of the Russian Federation.
It is difficult to find a war crime that the occupiers have not committed there.
The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our state.
They executed women outside the houses when approaching and simply calling someone alive.
They killed whole families – adults and children. And they tried to burn their bodies.
I am addressing you on behalf of the people who honor the memory of the deceased everyday. Everyday, in the morning.
The memory of the killed civilians.
Who were shot in the back of the head or in the eye after being tortured. Who were shot just on the streets.
Who were thrown into the well, so that they die there in suffering.
Who were killed in apartments, houses, blown up by grenades. Who were crushed by tanks in civilian cars in the middle of the road. For fun.
Whose limbs were cut off, whose throat was cut. Who were raped and killed in front of their own children.
Their tongues were torn out only because they did not hear from them what they wanted to hear.
How is this different from what the ISIS terrorists were doing in the occupied territory?
Except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
It destroys the internal unity of states.
Destroys state borders.
Denies the right of more than a dozen peoples on two continents to self-determination and independent state life. Pursues a consistent policy of destroying ethnic and religious diversity.
Inflames wars and deliberately wages them in such a way as to kill as many ordinary civilians as possible. To destroy as many ordinary peaceful cities as possible. To leave in the country where it sends its troops only ruins and mass graves. You’ve seen it all.
Promotes hatred at the state level and seeks to export it to other countries through its system of propaganda and political corruption.
Provokes a global food crisis that could lead to famine in Africa and Asia, and will certainly end in large-scale political chaos in countries where food price stability is a key factor of domestic security.
So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened.
So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee?
It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively.
Now the world has seen what the Russian military did in Bucha while keeping our city under occupation. But the world has yet to see what they have done in other occupied cities, in other occupied areas of our country.
Geography may be different, but cruelty is the same. Crimes are the same.
And responsibility must be inevitable.
Ukrainian president addresses the Security Council. (UN TV)
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I would like to remind you of the first article of the first chapter of the U.N. Charter. What is the purpose of our organization? To maintain peace. And to force to peace. Now the U.N. Charter is being violated literally from the first article. And if so, what is the point of all other articles?
Today, it is as a result of Russia’s actions on the territory of my state, on the territory of Ukraine, that the most heinous war crimes of all time since the end of World War II are being committed.
Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes.
They are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation in them. They are deliberately shooting at columns of civilians on the roads who are trying to escape from the territory of hostilities.
They are even deliberately blowing up shelters where civilians are hiding from air strikes. They are deliberately creating conditions in the temporarily occupied territories so that as many civilians as possible are killed there.
The massacre in our city of Bucha is just one, unfortunately, of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for 41 days.
And there are many other such places that the world has yet to find out the full truth of: Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Okhtyrka, Borodyanka and dozens of other Ukrainian communities, each of which is like Bucha.
I know, and you know very well, what the representatives of Russia will say in response to the accusations of these crimes. They have said this many times. The most illustrative was after the downing of a Malaysian Boeing over Donbas by Russian forces with Russian weapons. Or during the war in Syria.
They will blame everyone, just to justify themselves. They will say that there are different versions, and which of them is true is allegedly impossible to establish yet. They will even say that the bodies of those killed were allegedly “planted”, and all the videos are staged.
But. Now is the year 2022. There is conclusive evidence. There are satellite images. It is possible to conduct a full, transparent investigation.
That is what we are interested in.
Maximum access of journalists. Maximum cooperation with international institutions. Involvement of the International Criminal Court. Full truth, full responsibility.
I am sure that every state in the U.N. system should be interested in this. For what? In order to punish once and for all those who consider themselves privileged, consider themselves unpunished. Hence, to show all other potential war criminals in the world that they will inevitably be punished as well. If the biggest is punished, everyone will be punished.
Why did Russia come to Ukraine, tell me?
I will answer. Russia’s leadership feels like colonizers – as in ancient times. They need our wealth and our people. Russia has already deported tens of thousands of our citizens to its territory. Then there will be hundreds. It abducted more than two thousand children. Simply abducted thousands of children. And continues to do so. Russia wants to turn Ukrainians into silent slaves.
The Russian militaries are openly looting the cities and villages they have captured. This is looting of the highest scale. They steal everything from food to gold earrings they just rip out with blood.
We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the U.N. Security Council into a right to kill.
Which undermines the whole architecture of global security.
Which allows evil to go unpunished and spread the world. Destroying everything that can work for peace and security.
If this continues, the finale will be that each state will rely only on the power of arms to ensure its security, not on international law, not on international institutions.
Then, the U.N. can simply be dissolved.
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Are you ready for the dissolving of the U.N.? Do you think that the time of international law has passed?
If your answer is no, you need to act now, act immediately.
The power of the U.N. Charter must be restored immediately.
The U.N. system must be reformed immediately so that the right of veto is not a right to kill. So that there is a fair representation of all regions of the world in the Security Council.
The aggressor must be forced to peace immediately. Determination is needed. The chain of mass killings from Syria to Somalia, from Afghanistan to Yemen and Libya should have been stopped a long time ago to be honest.
If tyranny had ever received such a response to the war it had unleashed that it would have ceased to exist and a fair peace would have been guaranteed after it, the world would have changed for sure.
And then, perhaps, we would not have a war, a war in my country. Against our nation, the Ukrainian nation. Against people.
But the world watched and did not want to see the occupation of Crimea, or even before – the war against Georgia, or even earlier – the alienation from Moldova of the entire Transnistrian region. It also didn’t want to see how Russia was preparing the ground for other conflicts and wars near its borders.
How to stop it?
Immediately bring the Russian military and those who gave them orders to justice for war crimes in Ukraine.
Everyone who gave criminal orders and fulfilled them by killing people will face a tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials.
I want to remind Russian diplomats that a man like von Ribbentrop has not avoided punishment after World War II.
And I also want to remind the architects of Russia’s criminal policy that punishment has reached Adolf Eichmann as well.
None of the culprits will escape. No one.
But the main thing is that today is the time to transform the system, the core of which is the United Nations. To do this, we propose to convene a global conference. And we ask to do it already in peaceful Kyiv – in order to decide.
Security Council listens to Zelensky’s address. (UN TV)
How we will reform the world security system.
How we will really guarantee the inviolability of universally recognized borders and the integrity of states.
How we will ensure the rule of international law.
It is now clear that the goals set in San Francisco in 1945 during the creation of a global international security organization have not been achieved. And it is impossible to achieve them without reforms.
Therefore, we must do everything in our power to pass on to the next generations an effective U.N. with the ability to respond preventively to security challenges and thus guarantee peace.
Prevent aggression and force aggressors to peace. Have the determination and ability to punish if the principles of peace are violated.
There can be no more exceptions, privileges. Everyone must be equal. All participants in international relations. Regardless of economic strength, geographical area and individual ambitions.
The power of peace must become dominant. The power of justice and the power of security. As humanity has always dreamed of.
Ukraine is ready to provide a platform for one of the main offices of the updated security system.
Just as the Geneva office specializes in human rights, just as the Nairobi office specializes in the field of environmental protection, the Kyiv U-24 Office can specialize in preventive measures to maintain peace.
I want to remind you of our peaceful mission in Afghanistan. When, at our own expense, we Ukrainians evacuated more than a thousand people from this country. And it was the hottest phase. But people needed help – and Ukraine came. Just like other states.
We evacuated people of different nationalities, different faiths. Afghans, citizens of European countries, USA, Canada. We did not distinguish who needs help, whether these are our people or not. We saved everyone.
If every time there was a need everyone in the world was confident that help would come, the world would be definitely safer.
Therefore, Ukraine has the necessary moral right to propose a reform of the world security system.
We have proven that we help others not only in good times, but also in dark times.
And now we need decisions from the Security Council. For peace in Ukraine. If you do not know how to adopt this decision, you can do two things.
Remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war from blocking decisions about its own aggression, its own war. And then do everything that can establish peace.
Or show how you can reformat and really work for peace.
Or if your current format is unalterable and there is simply no way out, then the only option would be to dissolve yourself altogether.
I am convinced that you can do without the third option.
Ukraine needs peace. We need peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace.
And finally, I’m asking you to watch the video. A short one.
A video of what has come to replace your power because someone alone can abuse his rights.
This is what impunity leads to.
If possible – watch this video. Because there is no opportunity for everyone to come to us and see it. So watch it.
Thank you.
Statement by British Ambassador Barbara Woodward
UK ambassador at the Security Council on Tuesday. (UN TV)
I will now make a statement in my capacity as the Representative of the United Kingdom.
President Zelenskyy, by video, Secretary-General, Colleagues,
The United Nations was created in the wake of a European war of aggression that laid waste to Europe and engulfed the world.
All of us who signed the U.N. Charter committed to ending the scourge of war, to fundamental human rights, the dignity and worth of the human person, the equal rights of nations large and small, to justice, and respect for international law.
Yet now, we are facing another war of aggression in Europe.
We have heard today, again, the devastating impact of Russia’s unilateral and illegal military action in Ukraine. Its impact on surrounding countries and the region, and on the security and prosperity of the wider world, as it seeks to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
thousands killed
millions displaced
cities razed to the ground
hospitals bombed
citizens cut off from food, water and medicine
blockaded sea ports and the rapid increase in wheat prices
pressure on already stretched humanitarian resources
And now, as Russia is forced into retreat from areas around Kyiv, the brutality of the invasion is laid bare. We have all seen the horrific images from the towns of Bucha and Irpin of civilians deliberately killed in areas from which Russian forces have recently withdrawn — and the video we saw earlier underlined that horror.
These acts, and other credible incidents, must be investigated as war crimes, and the UK fully supports the work of the International Criminal Court and the work of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and other national prosecutors.
Colleagues, as we, and so many others, have said so many times, all of this could be stopped if the Russian Federation ended this war now.
I resume my function as President of the Council.
Remarks by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield
Thank you, Madam President. Let me also start by thanking UAE and Ambassador Nussebeh for her successful presidency during the month of March. Madam President, as you begin your Security Council presidency, I want to thank the United Kingdom for your leadership and for organizing this vital discussion on Ukraine, today. I also want to thank the Secretary-General for his remarks and the other briefers. And I’d like to extend a warm welcome to President Zelenskyy. I was so moved by the address he made recently to our Congress, and we are truly honored by his presence here under the circumstances that he and Ukraine face, today.
Madam President, last night, I returned from a trip to Moldova and Romania. I saw with my own eyes the refugee crisis caused by Russia’s unconscionable war. I spoke to refugees who indicated to me their desires to return to their home. And we’ve all seen the images on TV of the bombed-out buildings. But what we have not seen is that behind those destroyed buildings are destroyed lives and destroyed families. I met with women and children who had fled Ukraine, who stuffed their lives into backpacks and left the only home they had ever known. And these were sobering conversations.
One young woman I spoke to came with her six-year-old brother, who has autism and is struggling with cancer. Their single mother helped them escape to save their lives, but Russia’s war has interrupted the care her brother desperately needs.
Another woman I spoke to fled with her eight-year-old from Odesa. The father, who they had left behind, told them there was shelling right next to their apartment that very night – and they very well could have died had they not left.
A third woman I met told me that she used to love to travel – but never expected her next trip would be to flee for her life. When I asked her where she was from, she started to say, and then she stopped with tears in her eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to say it: whether I live in Kyiv, or whether I used to live in Kyiv.” She was realizing, in the moment, just how dramatically her life had changed because of this senseless war.
These are three stories of more than 10 million people – six million internally displaced, four million who have left Ukraine altogether. Four million people who have relied on the big-heartedness of countries like Moldova, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and others across the region and the world to welcome and support all those leaving Ukraine in search of safety. Ukraine’s neighbors are bearing the brunt of Europe’s most significant refugee crisis since World War II. And I want these countries to know that they have a committed partner in the United States.
And that is why the United States announced recently that we are prepared to provide more than $1 billion in new funding toward humanitarian assistance for those affected by Russia’s war in Ukraine and its severe impacts around the world. And it is why we are welcoming up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing Russia’s aggression to the United States. We will continue to assist humanitarian efforts to help the people of Ukraine and all those fleeing Putin’s violence.
But as heart-wrenching as the stories are that I heard in Moldova and Romania, there are some stories we will never get to hear: those of the people we saw in the images out of Bucha. We have all seen the gruesome photos. Lifeless bodies lying in the streets, apparently summarily executed, their hands tied behind their backs. As we work to independently confirm the events depicted in these images, I would remind this Council that based on the currently available information, the United States has assessed that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.
And even before seeing the images from Bucha, President Zelenskyy, along with others in the region, were reporting that children were being abducted – and we heard him that today. Also abducted are mayors, and doctors, religious leaders, journalists, and all who dare defy Russia’s aggression. Some of them, according to credible reports – including by the Mariupol City Council – have been taken to so-called “filtration camps,” where Russian forces are reportedly making tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens relocate to Russia.
Reports indicate that Russian Federal Security agents are confiscating passports and IDs, taking away cellphones, and separating families from one another. I do not need to spell out what these so-called “filtration camps” are reminiscent of. It’s chilling and we cannot look away.
Every day, we see more and more how little Russia respects human rights. And that is why I announced yesterday that the United States, in coordination with Ukraine and many other U.N. Member States, will seek Russia’s suspension from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Given the growing mountain of evidence, Russia should not have a position of authority in a body whose purpose – whose very purpose – is to promote respect for human rights. Not only is this the height of hypocrisy – it is dangerous. Russia is using its membership on the Human Rights Council as a platform for propaganda to suggest Russia has a legitimate concern for human rights. In fact, we will hear some of that propaganda here today, I know, and I will not dignify these lies with a response – only to say that every lie we hear from the Russian representative is more evidence that they do not belong on the Human Rights Council.
A hundred forty U.N. Member States voted to condemn Russia over its unprovoked war and the humanitarian crisis it has unleashed upon the people of Ukraine. Here is my message to all of you: Now is the time to match those words with action and show the world that we can work responsibly. And I share President Zelenskyy’s view that this moment requires responsible world powers and global leaders to show some backbone and stand up to Russia’s dangerous and unprovoked threat against Ukraine and the world.
The Secretary-General said that confronting this threat is the Security Council’s charge. It is. And it is also the responsibility of U.N. leaders and leaders around the world – every single Member State with a voice in the GA. No one can be a shield for Russia’s aggression. Suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council is something we, collectively, have the power to do in the General Assembly. Our votes can make real difference.
Russia’s participation on the Human Rights Council hurts the Council’s credibility. It undermines the entire U.N., and it is just plain wrong. Let us come together to do what is right – and do right by the Ukrainian people. Let us take this step to help them to start to rebuild their lives. And let us match the courage of President Zelenskyy, who we are so honored to have with us today.
President Zelenskyy, I want you to know that we stand with the people of Ukraine as you face down this brutal attack on your sovereignty, on your democracy, and on your freedom.
Thank you.
Statement by Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia
Mme. President,
We would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to the delegation of the UAE for its Presidency in March.
We thank the Secretary-General, Ms.Rosemary DiCarlo and Mr.Martin Griffiths for their briefings. We also listened to President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky.
We would like to thank Martin Griffiths for his visit to Moscow during which, as we can judge, he had very useful meetings and discussions. He knows better than anyone else what efforts Russia is undertaking every single day to organize humanitarian corridors. However, Ukraine consistently avoids fulfilling its commitments even within the arrangements reached with the help of international mediators.
I am not going to overload you with figures since our Defense Ministry publishes daily reports. I will merely say that we have managed to save 123,686 people from Mariupol, who moved east, without any participation from Ukraine. In all, over 602,000 people, including more than 119,000 children have been evacuated to Russia since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). Contrary to the assertions of our Western partners, these people were not coerced to leave or abducted. Numerous video clips, accessible in the social media, show that they made this decision voluntarily.
Mme.President,
I would like to take advantage of the fact that the President of Ukraine is participating virtually in our meeting and address him personally.
Mr. Zelensky,
We will leave to your conscience all unsubstantiated sweeping accusations addressed to the Russian military. Those accusations are not backed by any evidence of eyewitnesses, of which we spoke in detail at yesterday’s press conference.
We all remember well the moment you were elected president of Ukraine in 2019. Many people pinned their hopes on you taking office, because you campaigned with the promise of establishing peace and ending the war in Donbass. The Russian-speaking people, whose rights you pledged to protect, had faith in you. It seemed that a historical injustice when, following the Maidan coup in 2014, Ukraine was put on track to become an evil “Anti-Russia” would finally be history.
However, those hopes were in vain. You began contemptuously calling the residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics “species,” echoing your predecessor in office who issued threats to the effect that the children of Donetsk and Lugansk “would rot in the basements”, and urging them to leave for Russia. And now you are up in arms against your native Russian language, having introduced a “language inquisition” in a country where Russian is the native language to at least 40 percent of the population.
Today, explosions can be heard almost all over Ukraine, not just in eastern Ukraine, where they have been heard for eight years now. And they can be heard precisely because, unfortunately, there is no other way left to bring peace to Donbas after you and your subordinates vehemently refused to comply with the Minsk Agreements and prepared to resolve the problem of Donbas by force back in March. During our special operation, we have found many secret orders that testify to this.
We are being told that there cannot be any Nazis in Ukraine. However, we know for sure that they not only are there but, unfortunately, they are running the show. How can it be otherwise if Ukraine’s national heroes are Nazi accomplices Bandera and Shukevich who bear responsibility not only for the Holocaust, but also for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians among Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews? You prefer to turn a blind eye to the Ukrainian neo-Nazis pretending that they simply do not exist.
Unfortunately, they do exist, and even more regrettably, there are many, with many young people among them. How do we know? They are not concealing it with Nazi tattoos, decorating their clothing with swastikas and other Nazi insignias, and using the Nazi salute to greet each other. They have never tried to conceal themselves on social media. They have thoroughly infiltrated Aidar, the Right Sector and Azov battalions. This would not have been such an issue had they not acted the way Nazis do and perpetrated killings the Nazi way. This was not just about Russian soldiers who were taken prisoner – they would go online to boast about the suffering inflicted on them, but also about their fellow countrymen. Your neo-Nazis and radicals act with unrivalled cruelty when dealing with civilians, use them as human shields and deploy heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems near residential buildings.
We have heard huge amounts of lies about Russian military today. We have hundreds if not thousands of video recordings of people who are ready to testify to cruelty of Ukrainian nationalists. Let me read just some of them. Those are tough stories, but you have to hear them.
Natalia Kudinova: “The city mayor was one of the first to flee, and later the Ukrainian authorities lied to us that Russia did not let people use the humanitarian corridors. The Azov nationalist battalion held women and children in basements and robbed civilians at checkpoints. A grandmother with her grandchildren said that Azov fighters did not let them out of the basement and would shoot to kill anyone taking a step towards the exit. Women and girls were stripped naked at an Azov checkpoint, with fighters taking their gold and money, including the last they had”.
Valentina Borisenkova said that the Ukrainian military chased a woman with her two children out of their single-family home and used it as a firing position to fire mortars. “She left with tears in her eyes… chased from her own house, with two children… by these boys… with blue armbands (Ukraine’s insignia).”
Marina said she was tortured in a Ukraine Security Service basement in Kramatorsk: “They tied me to a sewer pipe. When they learned that I was Russian, they started beating me, electrocuting me, raping, and threatened bringing my underage daughter to do the same with her.”
Olga Shapovalova: “We left Mariupol, Mangush, on March 25. The Ukrainian Armed Forces put their firing positions in between residential buildings and in school courtyards, hiding behind civilians. A Ukrainian tank kept driving around the drama theatre and shooting in all directions, targeting residential buildings. Tanks were parked near school numbers 69, 68 and 5. I saw this with my own eyes.”
Olga Suportkina: “Mariupol’s School No. 15. The Ukrainian Armed Forces took up positions there on February 25 and left on March 7. They fired from there. Our building was hit by gunfire. On March 8 and 9 there was heavy shelling targeting residential housing. When asked why they were doing this, the Ukrainian service personnel replied that they would stay there until they completely eradicate the Russian spirit. They started looting right away, pillaging all the shops. DPR troops helped us get out and took us to Mangush.”
There are many more heartbreaking stories about Russians and Ukrainians tortured to death with swastikas branded on their chests, about people killed by plunderers and criminals who were given arms, about peaceful population and foreigners, whose deaths Ukrainian leadership tries to blame on Russian military – contrary to all facts. I said it already and I say it again now – thinking that Russian military are capable of doing what they are accused of is vile.
On top of that, there are outright criminal theatre shows with peaceful Ukrainians killed by their own radicals in order to, in the best Goebbels traditions, blame the Russian army for their deaths. They were killed in the areas the Russian troops left following the peace talks in Istanbul, which gave hope to so many people. As it turns out now, they should not have left it. I am talking primarily about Bucha.
I am aware that you saw the dead bodies and heard the stories. However, you only saw what they wanted to show you. You can’t fail to see blatant inconsistencies in the version of the events being promoted by the Ukrainian and Western media, including the fact that there were no dead bodies in the town after the Russian troops left, as evidenced by a number of videos.
There are records where Ukrainian radicals shot those who wear white armbands, that is, civilians. A close look at the video demonstrated today would reveal that people lying on the ground wore white armbands, meaning that they were civilians. And the fact that the bodies in the video do not look like they have been lying out there in the street for three or four days (according to the sensational and scientifically absurd information provided by The New York Times, the bodies have been lying there since March 20). Only complete amateurs or our Western partners who do not want to listen to anything and have long called everything that’s black white and vice versa, could fall for this fake show.
Unfortunately, those countries don’t care in the slightest about Ukraine. For them, it is and was just a pawn in their geopolitical ploy against Russia, which they will easily sacrifice. For now, though, they will try to prolong this conflict by supplying weapons and ammunition. To reiterate, and most importantly, how did we come to the cruelty that we see from these nationalists, for example, from the Azov battalion? And you, in an interview with the U.S. media, bashfully defend them, saying that “they are what they are.”
I just want you to give it a thought and really hope that you will find a solution to this situation, because it depends only on you. We didn’t come to you for Ukrainian land. We came to bring a long-awaited peace to a bleeding Donbas. Not a truce, but a genuine lasting peace. To do so, it is necessary to root out the cruelty that I mentioned and remove that Nazi malignant tumour that is devouring Ukraine and would have eventually begun to devour Russia.
We will achieve this goal, hopefully sooner rather than later. There may be no other outcome. We avoid shelling civilian targets in order to save as many civilian lives as possible, and this is why we are not advancing as fast as many expected. We are not acting like the Americans and their allies in Iraq or Syria who wiped out entire cities. They did not care about them, while we do, because those people are our close ones. The radicals, however, have nothing to lose. They can’t care less about civilians. They are ready to take all the people of Ukraine down with them into the grave, as the provocation in Bucha clearly showed.
Mr Zelensky, don’t let the West achieve its goals. Make the right decisions for your country, because the West is prepared to fight in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian. Make this decision now. After all, you are well aware of the actual situation at the front. It may be too late after that.
Thank you.
Russia Right of reply:
Mme. President,
This does not bring us closer to adjourning this meeting, but since the topic under discussion is of utmost importance, I must say a few words about the cause of this meeting. We had no opportunity to say this yesterday, because we were not allowed to convene a separate Council meeting on the issue. Unfortunately, our colleagues did their best to bust the initiative for having a meeting yesterday. It gave us another clear demonstration of what “rules-based order” looks like.
Let me once again turn to the events in Bucha that gave the reason for convening this meeting and also for drawing far-reaching conclusions that many of you already made. All divisions of Russian armed forces fully withdrew from Bucha as a good will gesture back on 30 March – the next day after a round of Russian-Ukrainian talks that had taken place in Turkey. Russian Defense Ministry published a corresponding notification on its official web resources on the same day.
Over the time that the town was controlled by Russian forces, no local resident suffered from any violent action. People moved freely around the town and had access to mobile networks. Besides, Russian military servicemen delivered and distributed 452 tons of humanitarian aid among civilians in towns of the Kiev Region. There is evidence confirming this. City exits were not blocked, residents could freely leave in the northern direction. At the same time, Ukrainian troops were shelling the southern borders of Bucha (including residential quarters) round the clock from large-caliber artillery and multiple rocket launchers.
Once the Russian troops withdrew, the mayor of Bucha Anatoliy Fedoruk in his video-address of 31 March spoke of it as of a heroic liberation of the town by Ukrainian forces. We will leave this slyness to his conscience and focus on him confirming the fact: on 31 March there were no Russian troops in Bucha. What’s more, the mayor never mentioned any locals shot in the streets with their hands tied. Can you believe a mayor could not notice bodies of, as they say, 280 dead people in the streets?
Screenshot of Fedoruk’s Facebook video.
On 1 April member of Bucha’s township council Katerina Ukraintseva in a 2-minute-long video repeatedly warned her fellow-residents that Ukrainian Security Service had entered the town and was cleansing it. She asked everyone to be very cautious. An almost 8-minute-long video clip is accessible on the Internet that informs about an announced cleansing of Bucha by Ukrainian National Police on 2 April.
This video does not show any dead bodies of civilians in the streets. In addition to that, the video features Ukraine’s National Guard interviewing the local residents, none of whom mentions any corpses or mass shootings. One of Ukrainian news portals also published a heads-up about an upcoming cleansing of Bucha from Russia’s accomplices. They deleted the publication afterwards, but web users managed to save it.
So-called evidence of crimes of Russian forces in Bucha popped up only on 3 April – four days into the presence of Ukrainian armed forces there.
Once again, without any proofs and only based on “presumption of guilt”, Russian military are being inculpated for some atrocities. Of course, we could not fail to notice how rapidly footage of Ukrainian journalists was picked up by Western politicians and famous rights advocates who pretend to be impartial and unbiased.
While doing so, they purposefully ignore obvious discrepancies of the narrative promoted by Ukraine and the West. Had those bodies indeed lain in the open for several days, they would have definitely shown certain signs that are well known to forensic experts. Our Western colleagues however seem to be little worried by that. Otherwise The New York Times would not have gone as far as to say that corpses had lain in the streets since 20 March. If this had been the case, can you imagine what they would have turned into?
The footage disseminated by the Ukrainians shows that some bodies had specific insignia on their upper arms – a white stripe. Civilians wore such stripes after the arrival of Russian military.
One of the video clips that Ukrainian radicals uploaded on the web, contains a distinctly audible call to shoot all those who wear no blue stripes. This video of Bucha’s cleansing was uploaded by a leader of one of so-called territorial battalions, among which Ukrainian authorities distributed weapons without requesting any accountability.
Besides, Katerina Ukraintseva whom I already mentioned admitted in an interview to Russian platform “Meduza” that she never saw Russian troops shoot people. Later in that same interview she confirmed that Ukrainian military were to blame for all major violations. Of course, our Ukrainian and Western colleagues easily forsake those details.
President Zelensky, however, already argues that all that clearly staged footage from Bucha allegedly gives Ukrainians a moral right to an “uncivilized response”. One can only guess what that means judging by what Ukrainian radicals did in the east of the country. Evidence of their crimes is abundant and truly shocking. Unfortunately, it seems that Kiev’s experts who specialize in disinformation and staged provocations are not going to stop at that.
Russian Defense Ministry reported that according to verified data, members of 72nd Ukrainian Center for Information and Psychological Operations filmed another staged footage of civilians, allegedly killed by Russian troops in order to have it disseminated via Western media. This was done on 4 April in the town of Moshchun (23 kilometers northwest from Kiev). Ukrainian special services also conducted such operations in Sumy and some other cities.
In conclusion, let me address our Western colleagues. We understand too well what you are doing when you play this Ukrainian card and propel hysterical anti-Russian propaganda campaign by the day. That is why we think further appalling provocations (like the one in Bucha) will take place with further attempts to besmirch Russian soldiers, present them as sadists, murderers and rapists. As I already said, this is a vile thing to think. You do not care that latest technology makes it possible to make any video. Today we saw footage presented by the Ukrainian side. The Internet is already full of refutes of that. According to those disproofs, what we were shown had been filmed in another place at another time, and with other people.
One last point – to my American colleague, who declared a “crusade” to exclude Russia from the Human Rights Council. Let me underscore that this is said by a representative of a country that strongly criticized the HRC only 3 years ago because it had dared to condemn the methods and acts of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. As we know, the United States quitted the HRC. I hope that our colleagues here at the U.N. will not yield to manipulations and play up to Washington in its extremely dangerous ventures.
Mass graves, civilians tortured and shot, an entire town virtually
obliterated as residents took whatever shelter they could.This happened to Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, but it also happened to Trostyanets, a pleasant spa town which was home to 20,000 people until the Russians came.
Entirely bordered by Russia on the east, the Sumy region in north-east Ukraine quickly became a thoroughfare for Putin’s tanks when he ordered his troops to invade.
About 20 miles from the border, the town of Trostyanets was occupied by the Russians on the very first day of the war as they made their move West.
An orchestrated Ukrainian assault successfully drove the Russians out, but not before they had turned the town to rubble and left many dozens of people dead.
Now claims of war crimes against the people of Trostyanets are coming to light.
Warning: This report contains distressing images.
Producer: Simon Stanleigh
Camera: Alastair Thomson
A young woman’s body, and a keychain featuring the EU stars, lay outside a burned home in Irpin, Ukraine | Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke
BY DAVID M. HERSZENHORN-April 6, 2022Putting a stop to war crimes is not in the interest of the United States — at least not if it means going to war with Russia, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Preventing atrocities like the murder of civilians in Ukraine is not in the interests of the EU — at least not if it means higher gas prices or colder homes in winter, according to Austrian Finance Minister Magnus Brunner.
The evidence of brutal killings and torture by Russian forces in Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kyiv, has drawn gasping proclamations of outrage and dismay at the highest levels of government in the world’s most powerful nations — from Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin to President Emmanuel Macron in Paris to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London and across the ocean to President Joe Biden in Washington.
Listen to the story behind the picture | Voice of photojournalist Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke
But as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discovered when he addressed the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, none of these powerful people have any intention of doing anything to intercede directly in hopes of halting Russian soldiers’ crimes of aggression in Ukraine — even though they all acknowledge that what was discovered in Bucha is hardly the worst of what has happened and is still happening in areas that remain under Russia’s control.
“What we predicted has unfortunately happened,” Psaki said at Tuesday’s White House press conference. “And we’ve only seen, potentially, the tip of the iceberg because of where we have had access to. We have not had access to an expanse of the country where they have likely also committed atrocities.”
But under repeated questioning about whether there was anything Biden — perhaps the only leader on Earth who could muster an international coalition to intervene militarily in Ukraine — could or would do to immediately stop Russia’s war crimes, her answer was: “The president’s objective is, and his responsibility is, to make decisions that are in the interest of the United States and the national security of the United States and the American people, and that is not to go to war with Russia.”
Never again is happening again — documented nearly in real time by cell phone cameras, with the graphic images shared within moments around the world and first-person accounts published even with the dirt filling mass graves still freshly turned. But even in Europe, where the EU was built on the ashes of World War II as a self-proclaimed peace project, leaders are unable or unwilling to do anything but clamor for “accountability” — literally demanding prosecution while the armed killers are still on the loose, hunting more victims.
The futility of it all was starkly framed at the U.N. on Tuesday when Zelenskyy gave a speech recounting some of the butchery in Bucha, and even showed diplomats a video so they could see some of the evidence for themselves.
Zelenskyy described how Russian soldiers had tortured his citizens.
“I am addressing you on behalf of the people who honor the memory of the deceased every day,” Zelenskyy said. “The memory of the killed civilians. Who were shot in the back of the head or in the eye after being tortured. Who were shot just on the streets. Who were thrown into the well, so that they die there in suffering. Who were killed in apartments, houses, blown up by grenades. Who were crushed by tanks in civilian cars in the middle of the road. For fun. Whose limbs were cut off, whose throat was cut. Who were raped and killed in front of their own children.”
He said that special targets were made of those people who refused to renounce their allegiance to Ukraine, who refused to tell the Russian invaders, who came to murder, pillage and steal on Ukrainian soil, that they were the ones rightly in charge.
“Their tongues were torn out only because they did not hear from them what they wanted to hear,” Zelenskyy said.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the atrocities in Bucha and other towns on the outskirts of Kyiv “unbearable brutality that Europe has not witnessed in many decades” and warned that Russia was shifting its focus to eastern Ukraine.
The eastern Donbas region, at war already for more than eight years, is now bracing for what the Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk called a “colossal assault.”
Gumenyuk, who has been documenting the awful toll of the war all across her country, is now bracing herself for even more unspeakable horrors.
“After the Bucha massacre, it feels like we have to change the way we treat this war,” Gumenyuk wrote in the Guardian. “Before, we tried to figure out Russia’s military strategy, to be better prepared. But a case of rape in a village near Kharkiv, the mines in a botanic garden in Trostyanets, and shooting men with tied hands in peaceful suburbs of Kyiv — these actions do not make any sense, aside from a desire to punish Ukrainians.”
At the U.N., Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, who finally this week admitted that his country had started a “war” in Ukraine rather than a “special military operation,” flatly denied that Russian forces had committed war crimes. Barely looking up as he read from a prepared statement, Nebenzia told Zelenskyy: “We place on your conscience the ungrounded accusations against the Russian military.”
In a disjointed speech, Nebenzia railed against mythical Ukrainian Nazis, but he did not deny that the Russian soldiers he claimed were wrongly accused had in fact invaded and occupied Ukrainian territory. It was unclear if Nebenzia actually expected anyone to believe his charge of “criminally staged events” in which Ukrainian citizens “were killed by their own radicals” rather than by the Russian troops that invaded and occupied Bucha for weeks.
For the diplomats seated around the wooden, horseshoe-shaped conference table — and especially for the leaders of Western powers that created the international security architecture that has failed to protect Ukraine — Zelenskyy had a series of uncomfortable questions.
“How is this different from what the Daesh terrorists were doing in the occupied territory,” the Ukrainian president asked — “except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.”
Zelenskyy accused Russia of wreaking havoc around the globe, violating state borders, inflaming wars, killing civilians, promoting corruption and spreading disinformation.
“So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee?” Zelenskyy asked. “There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, as if nothing happened. So where is the peace that the United Nations was created to guarantee?”
If the Ukrainian president had any hope that his words would stir the U.S. or its EU allies to take action, the Biden administration quickly extinguished it — given the president’s continuing fear that entering an armed conflict with Russia would risk a nuclear war.
At the White House, Psaki acknowledged Zelenskyy’s “frustration, which we share, that Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.” But, she quickly added: “We don’t see that changing.”
As for the atrocities in Bucha, Psaki said the U.S. would be supplying additional military aid to help the Ukrainians continue defending their country on their own, with details to come later.
After the Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., Sergiy Kyslytsya, said that the West needed to face the reality of its powerlessness. “The current security architecture as it stands is not capable to guarantee and provide security,” Kyslytsya told reporters. “That is a matter of fact and you cannot deny it.”
I am appalled and saddened by the photographs of corpses in the streets of the Ukrainian town called Bucha. I am equally appalled and saddened by the reports of Ukrainian soldiers killing every person in Buka who was not wearing a blue-colored patch signifying their Ukrainian citizenship. These photos remind us once again how brutal and horrible war actually is. In both instances, I am skeptical of the absolute truth of both claims. After all, mainstream media is not known for its truthfulness in wars. In fact, the media has all too often lied in order to get populations to support war. I am further appalled by those on the Left who support a wider war. Of course, most of these folks live hundreds if not thousands of miles from the actual killing and dying.
Let’s get something clear. The government in Kyiv is not a progressive government, much less a revolutionary one. Those liberals, leftists and anarchists who act as if it is are at best confused. At worst, they are supporting the relentless expansion of the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. In other words, the United States. Is Russia’s invasion wrong on multiple levels? Of course it is. Was Washington’s multi-pronged pressure over the past couple decades to get Kyiv to join its side wrong on multiple levels? Of course it was.
Yes, Russia is the primary culprit in the current situation. It should go back to its pre-invasion borders and accept that the good old days with the Tsar before the October revolution are never coming back, no matter what Alexander Dugin or Vladimir Putin believe.
The war in Ukraine is not a revolutionary struggle for national liberation. While certainly a defensive and understandable operation at this point, let’s be honest: this situation involves two different capitalist governments sacrificing human beings. Can it be said that Ukraine has a history of oppression at the hands of the Russians? Yes. Likewise, can it be said that many if not most of those who have historically carried the Ukrainian colors high and demanded their countrymen kill and die for those colors were reactionaries whose primary interest was gaining power and ethnically cleansing the nation? Yes. As always, this doesn’t mean that the regular folks who fought for their town, family and even nation were as racist as those who led them, but then again, many probably were. Ask someone whose Jewish ancestors escaped Ukraine during World War Two about who the oppressors were and who the liberators were..
I know people and the countries they live in change. More than a century after slavery was made illegal in the United States the descendants of slaves (and those who look like them) are almost but not quite equal in most places. Still, the legacy of slavery and the myths of white supremacy define much more of the political and social reality in that nation than they ever should have. Since I have never lived in Ukraine, I have no idea if its people have done better that the US in terms of moving beyond its ugly past. I hope so. The fact that a Jewish man is the current head of state might indicate this is taking place. Nonetheless, the incorporation of fascist paramilitaries into the regular armed forces of Ukraine indicates that the political and cultural presence of the World War Two Nazi collaborator government (Reichskommissariat Ukraine) exists in a very real fashion in modern day Ukraine. Like the United States, racism, antisemitism and fascism are a reality with a power well beyond the actual numbers of people promulgating those views. As Donald Trump and his followers proved to the people of the United States, that power can change a nation forever—and not for the better. My point is simple: those who dismiss the presence of Nazis and ultra-nationalists in the Ukrainian military and political system are in denial. Likewise, those who deny Moscow’s coziness with various fascist manifestations in Russia and around the world are only fooling themselves.
In the years just before the First World War it was clear to the international Left that capitalism was nearing a breaking point. The colonialist powers were heading towards a cataclysm. Little did anyone know just how much of a cataclysm it would be. European monarchists and their regimes prepared for war while working men and women protested and lobbied against it. Popular agitators and organizers like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht wrote and spoke about the dangers of militarism and reminded their fellows that militarism “arms the people against the people itself; it is insolent enough to force the workers … to become oppressors, enemies and murderers of their own class comrades and friends, of their parents, brothers, sisters and children, murderers of their own past and future.” (Liebknecht Militarism & Anti-Militarism, 1907) With this understanding, socialists organized across national boundaries against war—in Europe and in European colonies overseas. Luxemburg wrote “The fatherland of the proletariat, the defence of which must take precedence over all else, is the socialist International.”(Either/Or, 1916)
In a history that should be familiar, the events of 1914 ripped the international solidarity against war to shreds. Within weeks of the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Bosnian revolutionaries, the world powers were choosing sides in what would become the bloodiest war in human history up to that time. Socialists in national legislatures forgot their internationalism and voted in favor of building up national armies and sending men off to kill and die in battles the like of which humanity had never seen. Those leftists like Luxemburg and Liebknecht who maintained their antiwar stance were ignored and shunned by former allies and persecuted by the State. Militarism became the order of the day and death was its watchword. Before the war ended, the Russian people had overthrown the Tsar and a revolutionary regime was in its place. One of its first orders of business was to end Russian involvement in the war. This move would help precipitate the war’s end. Mutinies took place in other armies and a revolution in Germany almost succeeded; it was destroyed with the help of some of the same socialists who had voted to go to war for the German Fatherland and the Kaiser.
In 1999 many on the Left supported NATO’s attack on Serbia as a humanitarian action. Those of us who didn’t engaged in numerous debates with those who were. In recent weeks, I have argued with leftists who insist that the war in Ukraine is a fight for national self-determination. This particular take ignores the essential nature of the post-Maidan government in Kyiv as one willing to let its people die for an invite to the table of western capital and militarism. Those Ukrainians who support self-determination that serves the working people as much as it does the oligarchs are virtually silenced. Nationalism without an anti-imperialist context is a dead end; it’s not enough to be against only Russian imperialism in this instance. The nationalism expounded and celebrated by modern rulers is a means to keep and expand their power and the power of the class they represent. In times of peace, this often means incessant indoctrination leading to the general population believing their interests are the same as those who rule them. In addition, this nationalism usually means an expanding war budget that takes precedence over the needs of the people. Those on the Left who put Ukrainian nationalism as defined by the rulers in Kyiv and Washington above all else are fetishizing nationalism at the expense of an approach that calls for and defends internationalism. This scenario describes much of today’s world. It also forebodes an ugly future.
It is that future we must resist. Now that the never-ending third world war has once again reached into Europe, many who place themselves in the political left are choosing sides: Kyiv or Moscow. Like their predecessors over a century ago, these leftists are giving their agency to rulers who have little to no genuine allegiance to the people dying in their war—Russian or Ukrainian. Furthermore, the governments that have aligned themselves with the government in Kyiv seem overly willing to watch the Ukrainian people suffer and die for the cause of capitalist entities whose only allegiance is to capital. The ever-increasing and ever more lethal arms shipments from NATO member countries make it clear that neither Washington, London or Berlin are as interested in peace as they are in making war on Moscow. Militarism is once again the order of the day in Europe ans its watchword—as ever—remain death.
Those on the left who think they have found a good guy they can support in Kyiv are ignoring the facts. The same can be said for those who support Moscow. Choosing sides in a war between capitalist nations and cartels is a defeat for the people around the world. Our enemy is militarism and the capitalist economy which profits from it. When all is said and done in Ukraine—and if the current war doesn’t go beyond its current boundaries—the people of Ukraine will have won very little compared to what they lost. The families of Russian troops will find themselves in similar straits. Most of us in the rest of the world will not be in better shape financially or otherwise. The men and women who run this war, those who cheer it on in the media, and those who profit from it are the enemies of the majority of the world’s population. As leftists and actual anarchists, the only side we should be choosing is the side that opposes all capitalist wars. That is the side we won’t be hearing about on CNN, NPR or any other media outlet that serves the progeny of militarism and nationalism—war. The same can be said about Russian media, I suppose. Given the censorship of that media in much of the west, I can’t verify that.
My father always told me once I began reading the newspaper in 1963 that if you believe everything you read, you are acting a fool. This is even more so the case during times of war. Likewise, tossing about of the word genocide diminishes what genocide truly is. Unfortunately–especially for the people caught in the middle–this is war. It is true barbarity. And, when all is said and done, the powerful in both nations will still be in power and the people will be left to pick up their shattered lives. Have war crimes been committed? Yes–and as a person who pays attention to every war, not just those in Europe–I’m certain both sides have committed such crimes…If this turns into a wider war, then soldiers of other nations will end up committing war crimes, too. WAR IS THE CRIME. The worst war criminals are those who plan wars, profit from wars, convince their citizens to go to war, and reject diplomacy that would prevent war.
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![The mother (R) of Palestinian Dima al-Wawi, 12, who is believed to be the youngest female detained by Israel, greets her in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, upon her release from Israeli prison on April 24, 2016 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-523750460-scaled-e1649253989450.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
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SRI LANKA 