Jun 29 War of Genocide
Day 126 of Russia’s War of Genocide
Programming note
Buonasera Mag is taking a break today from the “Catching Up” section as I’ll be travelling and won’t have easy access to the internet.
I’m directing you to Scott’s page, EA Worldview’s Ukraine Up-date-and will be back on July 1st, if not earlier with “Catching Up”.
This is a war of genocide
Russia has committed war crimes and genocide against the people of Ukraine. There is no ambiguity, no matter how much Russian false narratives and propaganda it puts out into the infosphere.
Since February 24, NGOs, journalists and Ukrainian government officials have been interviewing victims, investigating and gathering evidence whereever Russian forces have occupied Ukrainian territory and where Russian forces’ indiscriminate missile strikes have hit civilian targets.
The intent of Putin and his military forces is to wipe Ukraine, Ukrainians and any trace of them off the face of the earth and Russify all areas under occupation. This means forced deportations of adults and children, which is a war crime, and begin to relocate Russians from outlying areas of the Russian Federation into Russian occupied territory in Ukraine. As this process is on-going, the Russian forces steal grain, steel, and whatever isn’t nailed down.
BBC, Tracking where Russia is taking Ukraine's stolen grain
A few dozen miles from the frontline, Ukrainian farmer Dmytro describes how the business he nurtured over 25 years was lost in four months of Russian occupation.
The BBC tried to contact more than 200 farmers whose land is now in Russian-occupied territory. Dmytro - we are not using his real name to protect him from reprisals - was one of the few willing to meet us.
"They stole our grain. They destroyed our premises, destroyed our equipment."
Free Russia Institute, Forced Russification and Deportation: What Russia is doing in the occupied territories
At the end of May there was an official proclamation that Russia would assume patronage over the “DNR” and “LNR” and would manage rebuilding the infrastructure of ravaged cities. Simultaneously, the Russian government announced the preparation of plans to restore the territories “taken under control” by the Russian army in Donbas, that Moscow will automatically include in the so-called “DNR” and “LNR” (the unrecognized separatist republics created by Russia). On behalf of Vladimir Putin the governors of the Russian regions will assume control over various regions of Donbas.
United Nations News, Cultural destruction in Ukraine by Russian forces will reverberate for years, UN rights expert warns
"Attempts against academic and artistic freedoms, linguistic rights, falsification and distortion of historical facts, denigration of identities and denial of the right to self-determination, result in further degeneration and fueling of open conflict.”
Russian occupiers burn church library in Mariupol
“Following a visit by Moscow’s FSB agents in clerical robes, the entire library of Mariupol’s Petro Mohyla Church was confiscated and burnt in the courtyard,” said Andriushchenko.
Gov. UK, Disinformation and hate speech pave the way for war crimes and genocide: UK statement on Ukraine
From the Holocaust to Rwanda to Bosnia, propaganda, disinformation and hate speech have paved the way for war crimes, atrocities and genocide. Writing recently, Anne Applebaum observed: “…while not every use of genocidal hate speech leads to genocide, all genocides have been preceded by genocidal hate speech.”
Mariupol
The official page of the Ukrainian authorities of Mariupol have posted a message from the city’s mayor Vadym Boychenko, expressing concern for the fate of the elderly in the city under the occupying forces of Russia. It quotes him saying:
“People of respectable age were taken care of in Mariupol. They created conditions for them to meet a decent old age. But the Russian occupiers took it away from them. Instead, they are forced to somehow survive without quality medical care, without medication and care. Most of them are children of World War II, for whom the Russian occupiers repeated what the whole world says “never again.” Staying in the city is dangerous for their health, because they will be the first to suffer from infectious outbreaks.”
Russian missile attacks
Bucha, Irpin, Kyiv, Mariupol, Kremenchuk, Lysychansk, Kharkiv region- Russian forces have targeted civilian areas specifically to terrorise the population and instil fear in the alliance members.
That is not the only reason as Olga Lautman explains, “Russia uses civilized meetings offered by the West as intelligence operations to search for weaknesses. They never hid their intentions over the decades of taking Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Baltics, etc. and rebuilding by force their sick empire while stealing resources.”
Anne Applebaum, Why We Should Read Hannah Arendt Now
In 1950, in the preface she wrote to the first edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, knowing that what had just passed could repeat itself, described the scant half decade that had elapsed since the end of the Second World War as an era of great unease: “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”
Ukrainian activists
As I said above, it’s Ukrainian civil society and officials who are investigating and gathering evidence on the ground.
Later on in July, Olga and I will be releasing an interview we did for Kremlin File with Oleksandra Matviichuk, human rights advocate, head of the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine), and coordinator for many of the investigations being carried out by Ukrainian NGOs and the Ukrainian prosecutor Iryna Venediktova. She also spoke with us about her colleagues, over 100, who are are building cases to be presented at the International Criminal Court and the prosecutors offices in Ukraine.
She also made an appeal: if you would like to continue donating to Ukraine and make sure that the funds get to the people who most need it, please consider funding local Ukrainian activist groups.
Hop over to the page @U24_gov_ua on Twitter or to the official Ukrainian government website to find out which groups have been verified so that you know your contribution is getting where it needs to go.
Time to sign off. Thanks for reading…
Mo & Scott
Thanks for reading…
Mo