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Kidnapped by Russian troops on 5 March, Nikita (his name is changed for his safety) was held for nine days. He was beaten with an iron bar, tortured with electricity, and subjected to a mock execution. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has collected and verified his story.
A week after the facts, RSF reveals the shocking account of a 32 years old Ukrainian fixer and interpreter, who was taken prisoner by Russian soldiers on March 5 in central Ukraine. Held captive for 9 days, left in an icy cellar, he was repeatedly tortured. This man (the name was changed for security reasons) was detained alone before being joined by three other prisoners, including a former senior Ukrainian civil servant. Nikita’s account is frightening : machine-gunning of his car, torture with a knife and electricity, repeated beatings with rifle butts and steel bars in the face and body, mock execution, food deprivation for 48 hours…
Safe (for the time being) in a Ukrainian town, Nikita told RSF about his nine days of horror. Although trained as a lawyer and manager, Nikita has worked intermittently as a fixer and interpreter for foreign media since 2013. The media outlets he has worked for include France 2, BFMTV and RFI. Last month, the IT company that employs him began having problems because of the war, so he started working fulltime as a fixer, this time with Radio France. Among the foreign reporters who have employed him, those contacted by RSF are unanimous: he is very professional, serious and competent. And like any Ukrainian, he has been very worried about his family as the indiscriminate Russian bombardments have grown in intensity.
RSF began looking for Nikita after being told by Radio France on 8 March that he was missing and, after his release, finally established contact with him via the Press Freedom Centre that has been opened in Lviv. His account was taken down by senior staffs of RSF’s Advocacy and Assistance Department during several sessions on 17 and 18 March. The various parts of his account were corroborated by interviews with a member of his family, with one of his former fellow prisoners, and with two Radio France journalists. An RSF staff accompanied him during his medical examination, which confirmed the physical mistreatment to which he was subjected, in particular, the bruising and other injuries to his legs where electric shocks were inflicted. RSF was also present during his calls to his family.
RSF plans to pass his account to the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, as a follow-up to the two complaints that it has already filed with the prosecutor on 4 and 16 March.
“Nikita has given us a chilling testimony that confirms the intensity of the war crimes perpetrated by the Russian army against journalists,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Passing his testimony on to the ICC prosecutor is the least we can do for this courageous young fixer.”
Although traumatised by the ordeal he has gone through, Nikita is determined to continue working as a fixer in order to help realise the right to news and information. It is his way of contributing to his country’s freedom because he says he is no good at wielding a gun. One of his fellow detainees is hospitalised with seriously injuries. The fate of the former senior civil servant is unknown. The other prisoner, the one RSF was able to contact, said he got away without too many injuries or other consequences. When RSF asked him why he thought they were released rather than executed, he replied: “I don’t think they had the courage to dig graves.”
Oleg Baturin, a Ukrainian journalist who was released on 20 March after being held for eight days by the Russian army and being treated in a similar manner, said: “They wanted to break me, walk all over me, to show what will happen to every journalist, that you will be killed.”
A week after the facts, RSF reveals the shocking account of a 32 years old Ukrainian fixer and interpreter, who was taken prisoner by Russian soldiers on March 5 in central Ukraine. Held captive for 9 days, left in an icy cellar, he was repeatedly tortured. This man (the name was changed for security reasons) was detained alone before being joined by three other prisoners, including a former senior Ukrainian civil servant. Nikita’s account is frightening : machine-gunning of his car, torture with a knife and electricity, repeated beatings with rifle butts and steel bars in the face and body, mock execution, food deprivation for 48 hours…
NIKITA'S STORY
Safe (for the time being) in a Ukrainian town, Nikita told RSF about his nine days of horror. Although trained as a lawyer and manager, Nikita has worked intermittently as a fixer and interpreter for foreign media since 2013. The media outlets he has worked for include France 2, BFMTV and RFI. Last month, the IT company that employs him began having problems because of the war, so he started working fulltime as a fixer, this time with Radio France. Among the foreign reporters who have employed him, those contacted by RSF are unanimous: he is very professional, serious and competent. And like any Ukrainian, he has been very worried about his family as the indiscriminate Russian bombardments have grown in intensity.
RSF began looking for Nikita after being told by Radio France on 8 March that he was missing and, after his release, finally established contact with him via the Press Freedom Centre that has been opened in Lviv. His account was taken down by senior staffs of RSF’s Advocacy and Assistance Department during several sessions on 17 and 18 March. The various parts of his account were corroborated by interviews with a member of his family, with one of his former fellow prisoners, and with two Radio France journalists. An RSF staff accompanied him during his medical examination, which confirmed the physical mistreatment to which he was subjected, in particular, the bruising and other injuries to his legs where electric shocks were inflicted. RSF was also present during his calls to his family.
RSF plans to pass his account to the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, as a follow-up to the two complaints that it has already filed with the prosecutor on 4 and 16 March.
“Nikita has given us a chilling testimony that confirms the intensity of the war crimes perpetrated by the Russian army against journalists,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Passing his testimony on to the ICC prosecutor is the least we can do for this courageous young fixer.”
Although traumatised by the ordeal he has gone through, Nikita is determined to continue working as a fixer in order to help realise the right to news and information. It is his way of contributing to his country’s freedom because he says he is no good at wielding a gun. One of his fellow detainees is hospitalised with seriously injuries. The fate of the former senior civil servant is unknown. The other prisoner, the one RSF was able to contact, said he got away without too many injuries or other consequences. When RSF asked him why he thought they were released rather than executed, he replied: “I don’t think they had the courage to dig graves.”
Oleg Baturin, a Ukrainian journalist who was released on 20 March after being held for eight days by the Russian army and being treated in a similar manner, said: “They wanted to break me, walk all over me, to show what will happen to every journalist, that you will be killed.”
Washington (CNN)The US and NATO believe that Belarus could "soon" join Russia in its war against Ukraine, US and NATO officials tell CNN, and that the country is already taking steps to do so.
It is increasingly "likely" that Belarus will enter the conflict, a NATO military official said on Monday. "(Russian President Vladimir) Putin needs support. Anything would help," the official explained.
A Belarusian opposition source said that Belarusian combat units are ready to go into Ukraine as soon as in the next few days, with thousands of forces prepared to deploy. In this source's view, this would have less of an impact militarily than it will geopolitically, given the implications of another country joining the war.
A senior NATO intelligence official said separately that the alliance assesses that the Belarusian government "is preparing the environment to justify a Belarusian offensive against Ukraine."
(Reuters)Japan reacted angrily on Tuesday after Russia withdrew from peace treaty talks with Japan and froze joint economic projects related to the disputed Kuril Islands because of sanctions imposed by Tokyo over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russia and Japan have still not formally ended World War II hostilities because of the standoff over islands just off Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories. The islands were seized by the Soviets at the end of World War II.
"Under the current conditions Russia does not intend to continue negotiations with Japan on a peace treaty," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, citing Japan's "openly unfriendly positions and attempts to damage the interests of our country."
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he strongly opposed Russia's decision, terming it "unfair" and "completely unacceptable."
"This entire situation has been created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Russia's response to push this onto Japan-Russia relations is extremely unfair and completely unacceptable," he said, adding that Japan's attitudes towards seeking a peace treaty were unchanged and it had protested the Russian move.
"Japan must resolutely continue to sanction Russia in cooperation with the rest of the world," he added.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said Japan had lodged a protest with Russia's ambassador in Tokyo.
In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Japan last week announced plans to revoke Russia's most-favored nation trade status, expand the scope of asset freezes against Russian elites and ban imports of certain products.
When announcing the measures last week, Kishida said that Japan will also collaborate with international aid agencies to deliver food and medicine to Ukrainians. He added Japan had started accepting evacuees from Ukraine and called on the public's support.
The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.
We had been documenting the siege of the Ukrainian city by Russian troops for more than two weeks and were the only international journalists left in the city. We were reporting inside the hospital when gunmen began stalking the corridors. Surgeons gave us white scrubs to wear as camouflage.
Suddenly at dawn, a dozen soldiers burst in: "Where are the journalists, for f--k's sake?"
I looked at their armbands, blue for Ukraine, and tried to calculate the odds that they were Russians in disguise. I stepped forward to identify myself. "We're here to get you out," they said.
The walls of the surgery shook from artillery and machine-gun fire outside, and it seemed safer to stay inside. But the Ukrainian soldiers were under orders to take us with them.
We ran into the street, abandoning the doctors who had sheltered us, the pregnant women who had been shelled and the people who slept in the hallways because they had nowhere else to go. I felt terrible leaving them all behind.
Nine minutes, maybe 10, an eternity through roads and bombed-out apartment buildings. As shells crashed nearby, we dropped to the ground. Time was measured from one shell to the next, our bodies tense and breath held. Shockwave after shockwave jolted my chest, and my hands went cold.
We reached an entryway, and armoured cars whisked us to a darkened basement. Only then did we learn from a policeman we knew why the Ukrainians had risked the lives of soldiers to extract us from the hospital.
"If they catch you, they will get you on camera and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie," he said. "All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain."
The officer, who had once begged us to show the world his dying city, now pleaded with us to go. He nudged us toward the thousands of battered cars preparing to leave Mariupol.
It was March 15. We had no idea if we would make it out alive.
As a teenager growing up in Ukraine in the city of Kharkiv, just 20 miles (32 kilometres) from the Russian border, I learned how to handle a gun as part of the school curriculum. It seemed pointless. Ukraine, I reasoned, was surrounded by friends.
I have since covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, trying to show the world the devastation first-hand. But when the Americans and then the Europeans evacuated their embassy staffs from the city of Kyiv this winter, and when I pored over maps of the Russian troop buildup just across from my hometown, my only thought was, "My poor country."
In the first few days of the war, the Russians bombed the enormous Freedom Square in Kharkiv, where I had hung out until my 20s.
I knew Russian forces would see the eastern port city of Mariupol as a strategic prize because of its location on the Sea of Azov. So on the evening of Feb. 23, I headed there with my longtime colleague Evgeniy Maloletka, a Ukrainian photographer for The Associated Press, in his white Volkswagen van.
On the way, we started worrying about spare tires, and found online a man nearby willing to sell to us in the middle of the night. We explained to him and to a cashier at the all-night grocery store that we were preparing for war. They looked at us like we were crazy.
We pulled into Mariupol at 3:30 a.m. The war started an hour later.
About a quarter of Mariupol's 430,000 residents left in those first days, while they still could. But few people believed a war was coming, and by the time most realized their mistake, it was too late.
One bomb at a time, the Russians cut electricity, water, food supplies and finally, crucially, the cellphone, radio and television towers. The few other journalists in the city got out before the last connections were gone and a full blockade settled in.
The absence of information in a blockade accomplishes two goals.
Chaos is the first. People don't know what's going on, and they panic. At first I couldn't understand why Mariupol fell apart so quickly. Now I know it was because of the lack of communication.
Impunity is the second goal. With no information coming out of a city, no pictures of demolished buildings and dying children, the Russian forces could do whatever they wanted. If not for us, there would be nothing.
That's why we took such risks to be able to send the world what we saw, and that's what made Russia angry enough to hunt us down.
I have never, ever felt that breaking the silence was so important.
The deaths came fast. On Feb. 27, we watched as a doctor tried to save a little girl hit by shrapnel. She died.
A second child died, then a third. Ambulances stopped picking up the wounded because people couldn't call them without a signal, and they couldn't navigate the bombed-out streets.
The doctors pleaded with us to film families bringing in their own dead and wounded, and let us use their dwindling generator power for our cameras. No one knows what's going on in our city, they said.
Shelling hit the hospital and the houses around. It shattered the windows of our van, blew a hole into its side and punctured a tire. Sometimes we would run out to film a burning house and then run back amid the explosions.
There was still one place in the city to get a steady connection, outside a looted grocery store on Budivel'nykiv Avenue. Once a day, we drove there and crouched beneath the stairs to upload photos and video to the world. The stairs wouldn't have done much to protect us, but it felt safer than being out in the open.
The signal vanished by March 3. We tried to send our video from the 7th-floor windows of the hospital. It was from there that we saw the last shreds of the solid middle-class city of Mariupol come apart.
The Port City superstore was being looted, and we headed that way through artillery and machine gunfire. Dozens of people ran and pushed shopping carts loaded with electronics, food, clothes.
A shell exploded on the roof of the store, throwing me to the ground outside. I tensed, awaiting a second hit, and cursed myself a hundred times because my camera wasn't on to record it.
And there it was, another shell hitting the apartment building next to me with a terrible whoosh. I shrank behind a corner for cover.
A teenager passed by rolling an office chair loaded with electronics, boxes tumbling off the sides. "My friends were there and the shell hit 10 metres from us," he told me. "I have no idea what happened to them."
We raced back to the hospital. Within 20 minutes, the injured came in, some of them scooped into shopping carts.
For several days, the only link we had to the outside world was through a satellite phone. And the only spot where that phone worked was out in the open, right next to a shell crater. I would sit down, make myself small and try to catch the connection.
Everybody was asking, please tell us when the war will be over. I had no answer.
Every single day, there would be a rumour that the Ukrainian army was going to come to break through the siege. But no one came.
By this time I had witnessed deaths at the hospital, corpses in the streets, dozens of bodies shoved into a mass grave. I had seen so much death that I was filming almost without taking it in.
On March 9, twin airstrikes shredded the plastic taped over our van's windows. I saw the fireball just a heartbeat before pain pierced my inner ear, my skin, my face.
We watched smoke rise from a maternity hospital. When we arrived, emergency workers were still pulling bloodied pregnant women from the ruins.
Our batteries were almost out of juice, and we had no connection to send the images. Curfew was minutes away. A police officer overheard us talking about how to get news of the hospital bombing out.
"This will change the course of the war," he said. He took us to a power source and an internet connection.
We had recorded so many dead people and dead children, an endless line. I didn't understand why he thought still more deaths could change anything.
I was wrong.
In the dark, we sent the images by lining up three mobile phones with the video file split into three parts to speed the process up. It took hours, well beyond curfew. The shelling continued, but the officers assigned to escort us through the city waited patiently.
Then our link to the world outside Mariupol was again severed.
We went back to an empty hotel basement with an aquarium now filled with dead goldfish. In our isolation, we knew nothing about a growing Russian disinformation campaign to discredit our work.
The Russian Embassy in London put out two tweets calling the AP photos fake and claiming a pregnant woman was an actress. The Russian ambassador held up copies of the photos at a UN Security Council meeting and repeated lies about the attack on the maternity hospital.
In the meantime, in Mariupol, we were inundated with people asking us for the latest news from the war. So many people came to me and said, please film me so my family outside the city will know I'm alive.
By this time, no Ukrainian radio or TV signal was working in Mariupol. The only radio you could catch broadcast twisted Russian lies — that Ukrainians were holding Mariupol hostage, shooting at buildings, developing chemical weapons. The propaganda was so strong that some people we talked to believed it despite the evidence of their own eyes.
The message was constantly repeated, in Soviet style: Mariupol is surrounded. Surrender your weapons.
On March 11, in a brief call without details, our editor asked if we could find the women who survived the maternity hospital airstrike to prove their existence. I realized the footage must have been powerful enough to provoke a response from the Russian government.
We found them at a hospital on the front line, some with babies and others in labour. We also learned that one woman had lost her baby and then her own life.
We went up to the seventh floor to send the video from the tenuous internet link. From there, I watched as tank after tank rolled up alongside the hospital compound, each marked with the letter Z that had become the Russian emblem for the war.
We were surrounded: Dozens of doctors, hundreds of patients, and us.
The Ukrainian soldiers who had been protecting the hospital had vanished. And the path to our van, with our food, water and equipment, was covered by a Russian sniper who had already struck a medic venturing outside.
Hours passed in darkness, as we listened to the explosions outside. That's when the soldiers came to get us, shouting in Ukrainian.
It didn't feel like a rescue. It felt like we were just being moved from one danger to another. By this time, nowhere in Mariupol was safe, and there was no relief. You could die at any moment.
I felt amazingly grateful to the soldiers, but also numb. And ashamed that I was leaving.
We crammed into a Hyundai with a family of three and pulled into a five-kilometre-long traffic jam out of the city. Around 30,000 people made it out of Mariupol that day — so many that Russian soldiers had no time to look closely into cars with windows covered with flapping bits of plastic.
People were nervous. They were fighting, screaming at each other. Every minute there was an airplane or airstrike. The ground shook.
We crossed 15 Russian checkpoints. At each, the mother sitting in the front of our car would pray furiously, loud enough for us to hear.
As we drove through them — the third, the 10th, the 15th, all manned with soldiers with heavy weapons — my hopes that Mariupol was going to survive were fading. I understood that just to reach the city, the Ukrainian army would have to break through so much ground. And it wasn't going to happen.
At sunset, we came to a bridge destroyed by the Ukrainians to stop the Russian advance. A Red Cross convoy of about 20 cars was stuck there already. We all turned off the road together into fields and back lanes.
The guards at checkpoint No. 15 spoke Russian in the rough accent of the Caucasus. They ordered the whole convoy to cut the headlights to conceal the arms and equipment parked on the roadside. I could barely make out the white Z painted on the vehicles.
As we pulled up to the 16th checkpoint, we heard voices. Ukrainian voices. I felt an overwhelming relief. The mother in the front of the car burst into tears. We were out.
We were the last journalists in Mariupol. Now there are none.
We are still flooded by messages from people wanting to learn the fate of loved ones we photographed and filmed. They write to us desperately and intimately, as though we are not strangers, as though we can help them.
When a Russian airstrike hit a theatre where hundreds of people had taken shelter late last week, I could pinpoint exactly where we should go to learn about survivors, to hear firsthand what it was like to be trapped for endless hours beneath piles of rubble. I know that building and the destroyed homes around it. I know people who are trapped underneath it.
And on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said Russia had bombed an art school with about 400 people in it in Mariupol.
The US and NATO believe that Belarus could "soon" join Russia in its war against Ukraine, US and NATO officials tell CNN, and that the country is already taking steps to do so.
It is increasingly "likely" that Belarus will enter the conflict, a NATO military official said on Monday. "(Russian President Vladimir) Putin needs support. Anything would help," the official explained.
A Belarusian opposition source said that Belarusian combat units are ready to go into Ukraine as soon as in the next few days, with thousands of forces prepared to deploy. In this source's view, this would have less of an impact militarily than it will geopolitically, given the implications of another country joining the war.
A senior NATO intelligence official said separately that the alliance assesses that the Belarusian government "is preparing the environment to justify a Belarusian offensive against Ukraine."
Russia has launched its attack on Ukraine in part from Belarus' territory, and thousands of Russian troops amassed in Belarus ahead of the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine last month, which the two countries had claimed was for training exercises. US and European sanctions in response to the war have targeted both Russian and Belarusian officials, including Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Belarus will have even lower morale than Russian soldiers. They are a puppet state to Russia, but unlike many (most?) Russians, the people don't buy into the propaganda as much.
"The possibility of involving the armed forces of the Republic of Belarus in the war against Ukraine on the side of the Russian Federation exists. But, according to available information, a large number of personnel and some commanders refuse to participate in occupation against our state," the report says.
Also unlike with Russia, we know how capable their military is.. And I think based on that, people won't be surprised this time around by their capabilities (or lack thereof).
Belarus will have even lower morale than Russian soldiers. They are a puppet state to Russia, but unlike many (most?) Russians, the people don't buy into the propaganda as much.
Also unlike with Russia, we know how capable their military is.. And I think based on that, people won't be surprised this time around by their capabilities (or lack thereof).
Perhaps the Belarus military would not be used in a combat role to fight the Ukrainian military?
What if the the Russians found out the secret corridors in which NATO is funnelling weapons like anti aircraft systems into Ukraine? Those corridors could be located in the northwest part of Ukraine. NATO countries like Poland could be the location of the logistics hub for moving American and other NATO countries' weapons by plane.
Putin could ask Belarus to attack the NATO convoys that are sending weapons through the secret corridors.
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Putin continues to move the goalposts as to what constitutes an act of aggression from nato countries. A rat backed into a corner will try and chew it’s way out. How much can he chew through nato before it attacks back? I have no idea, but this will only get worse until Putin ends up dead.
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Originally Posted by boostfever
Westopher is correct.
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Originally Posted by fsy82
seems like you got a dick up your ass well..get that checked
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Originally Posted by punkwax
Well.. I’d hate to be the first to say it, but Westopher is correct.
How much can he chew through nato before it attacks back? I have no idea, but this will only get worse until Putin ends up dead.
I think it has been pretty well established at this point that it's going to take a direct attack on NATO territory for NATO to take any military action.
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I’m aware, but he gets closer to doing that as “retaliation” for nato “attacks.” As Putin has considered any help from nato countries aggression, how long until he launches an attack? Then there will be retaliation. It’s been made pretty clear that nato countries won’t launch the first attack but as he loses control his chances of launching an attack becomes more likely.
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98 technoviolet M3/2/5
Quote:
Originally Posted by boostfever
Westopher is correct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fsy82
seems like you got a dick up your ass well..get that checked
Quote:
Originally Posted by punkwax
Well.. I’d hate to be the first to say it, but Westopher is correct.
I’m aware, but he gets closer to doing that as “retaliation” for nato “attacks.” As Putin has considered any help from nato countries aggression, how long until he launches an attack? Then there will be retaliation. It’s been made pretty clear that nato countries won’t launch the first attack but as he loses control his chances of launching an attack becomes more likely.
I know he's crazy but he still has to realize if he does start it with Nato he's going to get annihilated and quick. I suppose at that point maybe he just DGAF but you would hope he'd have enough sense to realize this.
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Putin just makes up whatever he wants to about NATO when he wants to justify something. If he actually wants to launch nukes I doubt it will matter if NATO has or hasn't done something to trigger it.
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Originally Posted by maksimizer
half those dudes are hotter than ,my GF.
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Originally Posted by RevYouUp
reading this thread is like waiting for goku to charge up a spirit bomb in dragon ball z
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Originally Posted by Good_KarMa
OH thank god. I thought u had sex with my wife. :cry:
I saw a tweet from a someone formerly in Russian military and politics, and he said people are making a mistake attributing the 'crazy' and 'unhinged' persona to Putin. What he's doing looks crazy from the outside, but in his own mind what he's doing makes perfect sense.
So while he's making really bad decisions, they aren't "insane" decisions, like deciding to nuke a NATO country... He's not going to do that. He's going to keep fighting Ukraine until in his mind he has achieved his goals, or he is defeated.
Ukraine on their own won't be able to defeat him though, so really someone has to take him out.
I saw a tweet from a someone formerly in Russian military and politics, and he said people are making a mistake attributing the 'crazy' and 'unhinged' persona to Putin. What he's doing looks crazy from the outside, but in his own mind what he's doing makes perfect sense.
So while he's making really bad decisions, they aren't "insane" decisions, like deciding to nuke a NATO country... He's not going to do that. He's going to keep fighting Ukraine until in his mind he has achieved his goals, or he is defeated.
Ukraine on their own won't be able to defeat him though, so really someone has to take him out.
with the amount of weaponry the WEST is sending, Ukraine has a chance to at least stall the Russians to the point of... F This, we're going home.
BUT - once they figure out the various supply routes and cut it off - then its over.
with the amount of weaponry the WEST is sending, Ukraine has a chance to at least stall the Russians to the point of... F This, we're going home.
BUT - once they figure out the various supply routes and cut it off - then its over.
Oh they can definitely stall them, pretty much indefinitely. But Russia thinks they can keep attacking pretty much indefinitely as well. It is possible that they can be driven all the way back to the borders though - let's hope so. Maybe even kick them out of Crimea as well.
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Poland has been a huge player in the conflict. Sure, they have to, 'cause they're going to be the country bordering on commies, but they have done so much.
Can't thank them enough.............
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