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TOPIC: war crimes

Geopolitics

Middle East, Realpolitik: Inside Assad's Return To The World Stage

The Arab League has readmitted Syria, ending the regime's ten-year isolation. This is a defeat for the West — and an admission by the Arab states that there is no way around Assad.

-Analysis-

BERLIN — He has killed civilians with poison gas and barrel bombs, bombed cities to rubble, imprisoned and tortured his countrymen and triggered the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was among the world's most ostracized and isolated politicians — but now he is returning to the world stage.

The 22-member Arab League voted by a majority on Sunday to readmit Syria to its fold. As a result, Assad can now participate in regional summits again, 12 years after the Syrian civil war began. The next summit is scheduled for May 19 in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The Arab family first disowned him when he shot down peaceful demonstrations against his corrupt regime. Like the West, most League member states called for Assad's resignation and supported groups fighting his forces.

Recently, however, some Arab states have sought to reconnect with him. Why are they rehabilitating the mass murderer now?

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Inside Moscow's Vile Scheme To Kidnap And "Russify" Ukrainian Children

In Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, an estimated 19,000 children have been abducted and put in so-called "filtration camps," Soviet-era-like facilities where they are being "re-educated" in brutal conditions. Exclusive testimony from several victims who managed to escape.

KYIV — "If the whole world could hear me, I would say that we need to win this war as soon as possible so that all children can see their families again..."

Those words come from 12-year-old Sashko from the southeast Ukrainian city of Mariupol, who was separated from his mother by Russians during the so-called "filtration" procedure in the Donetsk region.

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Sashko is one of the thousands of children taken to the Russian Federation from the occupied regions of Ukraine under the guise of evacuation and ensuing rehabilitation ,to teach them to "love Russia."

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of facilitating the forced deportation of children from the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, violating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to the Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, at least 19,000 minors have been taken to Russia and annexed Crimea since the beginning of the full-scale war. Only 364 have been returned.

Ukrainska Pravda talked to dozens of children who have managed to get back to Ukraine, testimonies that can now help able to identify the places of their detention, methods of abduction, and the names and positions of Russians who facilitated the crime.

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"Only I Survived" — A Year Ago Her Family Was Exterminated By A Russian Missile

When the invasion began on Feb. 24, 2022, Iryna Zhyvolup hunkered down with three generations of her family in Izyum, Ukraine. A few weeks later, she lost her loved ones in a missile attack.

Iryna survived, but barely. Severely wounded in her city of Izyum, in eastern Ukraine, she spent eight days in a roofless house at -10°C until her neighbors found her. Then she spent 25 days in the basement of the local hospital under Russian occupation, beginning to be nursed back to health. But this story, as told to Livy Bereg reporters, has no happy ending.

On Feb. 24, 2022, at five in the morning, my son called me from Kharkiv and said they were being bombed. I jumped up and started screaming, saying, "Get down to the basement quickly, and then get to Izyum."

The next day, he took the last train down from Kharkiv. Then a colleague called and said their house had been destroyed. Friends called from the neighboring district, where their village had been bombed.

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The flow of wounded began. On Feb. 25, the Russians started shelling Izyum. I offered to leave, but like many others, my mother and husband did not want to.

Russian forces destroyed schools, churches and buildings that had survived both world wars.

We moved to my mother's house. At that time, the bombing was constant, one plane after another. It seemed to grow quieter for a day. On the evening of March 6, our dog barked, and I realized there was a Russian air raid.

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Russia Boasts Of Capturing A Ukrainian Orphan Who'd Tried To Return Home

Last spring, after Moscow's troops occupied Mariupol, minors with no parents were forced from the southern city to go to Russia. One 17-year-old recently tried to escape, and return home to be with his sister. He didn't make it — and Russia proudly shared the story.

A 17-year-old Ukrainian who'd been forcibly taken from occupied Mariupol to Russia at the start of its full-scale invasion was trying to return home, but was captured by Russian security forces at the border with Belarus and will be sent back to Russia.

Maria Lvova-Belova, the so-called ombudsman for Children's Rights in Russia, held a press conference on Tuesday to share the news that Russian security forces had detained Bogdan Ermokhin and returned him to a "foster family" in Russia.

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Lvova-Belova said that Ermokhin had been emotionally manipulated and threatened by Ukrainian “agents” into returning back to Ukraine, where he has a sister. The agents supposedly organized transport and financial support for Ermokhin. “He was deceptively lured out,” she said, “at the last moment, we managed to stop him.”

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Important Stories

A Russian Soldier Confessed To Killing A Ukrainian Civilian — So Moscow Convicted Him Of Spreading Fake News

After Russian soldiers committed multiple war crimes last year during the attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, some confessed to their crimes. But now they are being tried in Russia for spreading misinformation about the military.

Following multiple reports of war crimes in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine, Russian soldier Daniil Frolkin was interviewed last August by Vazhnye Istorii. In the conversation with the reporter for the independent Russian media, Frolkin confessed to the murder of an unarmed civilian who Ukrainian authorities believe was a 47-year-old named Ruslan Yaremchuk.

Now this public act of truth-telling has led to Frolkin standing trial in Russia and being convicted for spreading misinformation about the Russian military.

He was found guilty and sentenced to probation, though the Russian prosecutor had asked for six years of prison. After the court proceeding Wednesday, Frolkin quickly left and refused to talk to journalists.

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This Happened

This Happened - February 12: Milosevic On Trial

On this day, 21 years ago, the trial of Slobodan Milošević began in the Hague, Netherlands.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Victoria Roshchyna

“Everything Was Blown Away” — In Dnipro, Voices Of The Survivors

A Ukrainian reporter on the scene of one of the worst attacks on civilians since Russia's invasion began.

DNIPRO — I met Oleg in one of the hospitals in Dnipro. His body was covered with wounds and scratches.

Oleg was with his wife in their apartment in a high-rise building in this central Ukrainian city on what seemed like an ordinary weekend. Then a Russian missile hit — and they miraculously survived, among the 75 wounded. As of Monday morning, 40 of their neighbors are confirmed dead, and at least 35 still missing.

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Oleg tries to piece together the moment of the strike:

"There was a long explosion. Everything was blown away," he recalls. It is still difficult for him to speak and keep his eyes open for any extended time, because of burns and wounds from the glass.

"We could not leave the apartment by ourselves because the door collapsed. Rescuers got us through the window of the 4th floor. I am glad that I am alive and that my wife is fine. I thank our rescuers, medics, and the Armed Forces. I hope everything will be fine," Oleg says on Sunday, still apparently under shock.

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In The News
Anna Akage, Shaun Lavelle and Emma Albright

Massive New 600 Billion Euro Estimate Of War Damage, EU Says Russia Will Pay

The European Union is committed to setting up a special court with the backing of the UN to investigate and prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and force Russia and its oligarchs to pay the growing pricetag for the destruction of the country.

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised in a video statement that “Russia’s horrific crimes will not go unpunished.” She said that it was estimated so far that 20,000 Ukrainian civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military officers had been killed so far.

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In The News
Anna Akage, Bertrand Hauger and Emma Albright

War In Ukraine, Day 279: New Kherson Horrors More Than Two Weeks After Russian Withdrawal

While retreating from Kherson, Russian troops forcibly removed more than 2,500 Ukrainians from prison colonies and pre-trial detention centers in the southern region. Those removed included prisoners as well as a large number of civilians who had been held in prisons during the occupation, according to the Ukrainian human rights organization Alliance of Ukrainian Unity.

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The NGO said it has evidence that these Ukrainians were first transferred to Crimea and then distributed to different prisons in Russia. During the transfer of the prisoners, Russian soldiers also reportedly stole valuables and food and mined the building of colony #61.

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In The News
Cameron Manley, Shaun Lavelle, and Emma Albright

Macron Calls Putin’s Airstrikes On Civilian Infrastructure A War Crime

The French President leads a growing chorus of outrage against Russia, including the strongest condemnation to date from Pope Francis.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday led a rising chorus of outrage after unprecedented Russian air attacks on civilian infrastructure targets, which left up to 75% of Kyiv residents without power and water, and killed 10 people across Ukraine.

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“Strikes against civilian infrastructures are war crimes and cannot go unpunished,” Macron said.

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Ideas
Dominique Moïsi

Why Ukraine-Russia Peace Talks Are Now More Impossible Than Ever

The reconquest of Kherson seemed like a turning point in the Ukraine war. But while Kyiv and the West can see it as an encouraging sign for the long-term fate of the war, it makes negotiations a veritable non-starter now. A cold, hard analysis from French geopolitical expert Dominique Moïsi.

-Analysis-

The liberation of Kherson two weeks ago brought Ukrainian forces closer to Crimea and pushed the Russian army further from Odessa. It was a strategic and symbolic turning point. The images that emerged evoke the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Although it is a show of strength from Ukraine and a sign of Russian weakness, it does not mean that the time has come for negotiations to begin.

Far from it, in fact.

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Up until the Ukrainian army retook Kherson, it was still possible to imagine that Russia and Ukraine might reach a compromise on territory, redrawing the borders as they were on Feb. 23, 2022. That is no longer the case today. For Kyiv, there is no longer any question of going back to February 2022, but rather to January 2014: before Moscow seized Crimea by force.

In nine months of war — with nearly 100,000 victims on both sides — millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, towns and cities have been systematically targeted and infrastructure has been destroyed.

Russia has committed multiple war crimes, perhaps even crimes against humanity. Unable to compete on the ground with the Ukrainian forces — who outnumber the Russians, are better equipped (thanks to Western aid) and above all are more motivated — Moscow has had no other choice than to try and bring the Ukrainian people to their knees through hunger and cold, while hoping to sow division among Kyiv’s allies.

So far, this strategy has had the opposite of the desired effect. Now that Ukraine has retaken Kherson, and after the G20 summit in Bali, Russia is more isolated than ever on the global stage.

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In The News
Anna Akage, Bertrand Hauger and Emma Albright

Iran-Israel Proxy War? Israeli Military May Send High-Tech Missiles To Kyiv

Sending Ukraine advanced weaponry would be a response from Israel to reports that Tehran is sending ballistic missiles to Moscow.

Israeli state media corporation Kan 11, citing the head of the National Security Council of Israel, Eyal Hulat, reported that Israel might transfer high-tech missiles to Ukraine if Iran supplies ballistic missiles to Russia.

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The Washington Post reported last month that Tehran could supply such missiles to Moscow, as well as Russia beginning to produce Iranian-designed drones on its own territory. Russia’s Chief of the Defense Intelligence Kirill Budanov stated that Moscow could use Iranian short-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine, which would have no effective means of combating Iranian rockets of this type.

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