The discovery of the bodies of a Russian soldier whose body had been tortured in Izium on September 18, 2022, near Kiev’s border

When he was captured outside of eastern city of Lyman, he didn’t wear an emblem for either Russia or Ukraine, and wasn’t dressed for the occasion. To keep him warm, the Ukrainian soldiers gave him a Russian parka they had lying around in their trench.

Serhiy, who was one of the soldiers who found Aleksandr, told a pair of reporters from The New York Times that he had gone to our positions after coming out of the forest.

Russian battlefield setbacks and unease in Russian society were noted to be changing the Russian information space by a US think tank. Some of the criticism has included comments from men of power such as Kadyrov, and pro-war milbloggers who have often provided a detailed picture of battlefield realities for Russian forces.

There is a rail hub on the northeastern bank of the Siversky Donets river. The Russians captured it in May, but over the weekend Ukraine’s forces retook the city as part of a stunning offensive that is pushing back Russia in the east. Lyman could serve as an important foothold in future Ukrainian advances.

The bodies of more than 500 civilians have been discovered in territory in northeast Ukraine recently retaken from Russian forces, Ukrainian police say.

A view of a newspaper and a gas mask hung on a wall at a room in a police station which an Ukrainian serviceman says was used as a torture chamber by Russian soldiers in the town of Izium in Kharkiv region, Ukraine September 18, 2022.

“In almost all large cities and towns, where military units of the Russian army were based, they set up such places of detention of civilians and prisoners of war and tortured them,” he said, mentioning one in the town of Pisky-Radkivski.

Torture was routine, according to witnesses. The police chief said some of the 534 bodies found across the region were already showing signs of abuse. “There are bodies that were tortured to death,” he said. The people with the cut wounds and Aupairs are the ones with tied hands.

It’s very hard for victims to testify about these facts. There are appeals from women who were raped. We have information about the alleged facts of rapes in torture chambers,” Bolvinov added.

Russia was accused of a litany of war crimes during its unsuccessful campaign to capture Kyiv in the early months of the war. Reports of summary executions of indiscriminate shelling by Russian forces came to light after they retreated from the suburb of Bucha. The bodies were left to rot, with many bearing signs of torture. There were dead people on the streets in nearby Borodianka. Homes were reportedly ransacked.

A report published in July by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found that found that the patterns of violent acts by Russian forces in Ukraine meet the qualification of crimes against humanity.

“The current onslaught of criticism and reporting of operational military details by the Kremlin’s propagandists has come to resemble the milblogger discourse over the past week. The Kremlin narrative had focused on progress and avoided detailed discussions of current military operations. The Kremlin had never openly recognized a major failure in the war prior to its devastating loss in Kharkiv Oblast, which prompted the partial reserve mobilization.”

Against that background, Russia has seen some unusual public criticism of the top brass running Putin’s war. Within limits, of course: Criticizing the war itself or Russia’s commander-in-chief is off limits, but those responsible for carrying out the President’s orders are fair game.

“First of all, we need to stop lying,” said Andrei Kartopolov, a former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. “We brought this up many times before … It seems that it is not getting through to individual senior figures.

The Ministry of Defense was not telling the truth when it came to the cross-border strikes between Russian and Ukrainian regions, according to Kartapolov.

Valuyki is in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.

Despite the dissatisfaction of these villagers, Ukraine’s counteroffensive in this part of the country has buoyed public hopes that victory might actually be possible – or at least that Kyiv might liberate key Russian-held cities, such as Kherson.

“There is no need to somehow cast a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of some, I do not say traitors, but incompetent commanders, who did not bother, and were not accountable, for the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. Sergei Shoigu could have shot himself if he had allowed this situation to happen. The word officer is a new word for many.

Kadyrov has been less reticent about naming Russian commanders who he blames for the retreat of Russia from the Ukrainian city of Lyman.

Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.

“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.

One of the central features of Putinism is a fetish for World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. And those in Russia’s party of war often speak admiringly of the brutal tactics employed by the Red Army to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht, including the use of punishment battalions – sending soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice or wavering against German positions as cannon fodder – and the use of summary execution to halt unauthorized retreats.

Kadyrov – who recently announced that he had been promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general – has been one of the most prominent voices arguing for the draconian methods of the past. He said in a Telegram post that if he had his way he would give the government war powers in Russia.

If I were to make that decision, I would say martial law all over the country and use any weapon because we are at war with the NATO bloc, according to Kadyrov.

With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. A disorderly vacuum has arisen from Moscow’s lost aura, and China as well as the former Soviet satraps are moving to fill it.

On the mountain-flanked steppes of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result in just one remote village has been devastating: homes reduced to rubble, a burned-out school and a gut-wrenching stench emanating from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.

All fell victim last month to the worst violence to hit the area since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russia-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to halt the mayhem.

The playground of Askold and his father, Taras Shevchenko, visited on their first walk with his son, Halyna

Editor’s Note: Nonna Stefanova is a journalist at Channel 5-TV in Kyiv. She is a lecturer of cinema, TV and theatre at the National University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. On CNN, you can read opinions.

On Monday, Russian missiles scorched a children’s playground in Kyiv that my family calls “our playground,” leaving behind a gaping crater. After the rocket’s footprint was seen by the crowd, there were some twisted metal scattered around near the climbing frame and merry-go-round.

A sunny autumn morning. I am a mother in Ukranian, and I rouse my children with the words “Wake up, dear!” We need to get to the bomb shelter quickly. The air raid sirens are going to go off again.

We have been hearing almost all of the previous missile attacks in and of themselves, but Monday’s strikes were the loudest and closest to us.

Our playground is in Shevchenko Park in the center of the city, and is very well known to every Kyivan. Close to my parents’ home, it’s the park where I went for my first walk with my newborn son. We’ve visited almost daily in the years since, continuing to do so to this day.

When Russian tanks stood just 25 kilometers away in late February and March, the Taras Shevchenko park became Askold’s main playground.

Askold would take his sword to the playground, where he would be reprimanded by the guard for securing the park. The lack of playmates made it hard for him to pick the slides, see-saw, or merry-go-round that he wanted.

On certain days, the only person in the park besides our family and the National Guard was the imposing yet welcoming monument of Taras Shevchenko (which had a concrete enclosure around it).

The statue is located some 75 meters from Askold’s playground, gazing approvingly at the striking red-columned entrance to Ukraine’s largest university, which also bears Shevchenko’s name.

Askold, the son of a writer, holds his sword with his grandparents Roman and Halyna in Shevchenko Park. The statue of poet Taras Shevchenko can be seen in the background.

The resistance of Ukrainians and other subjugated peoples against the Russian empire is one of the core themes in Shevchenko’s poems. Did the Russians actually want to destroy his monument in order to send a message? This was a hot topic in Ukrainian social media, as people tried to deal with the shock of missiles hitting the city center.

Would I tell him that the Russians are using old maps? Because it wants to destroy monuments of Ukrainian history and culture? Or it can because it can?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/11/opinions/ukraine-russia-war-playground-parenting-children-stefanova/index.html

Why does Russia do that? Askold’s first question to ask about the Revolution of Dignity, and why the Russians don’t want us to exist

The question my son asked was the first he had asked. The war was a big shock but we weren’t surprised at all.

The Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan, began when Askold was 7 months old. Russia started a war in the eastern part of Ukraine after annexing the island of Black Sea. We always knew that one day war would come to our home in Kyiv – and in 2022 it did.

“Why does Russia do that?” Askold looked at videos and pictures of the crater where his favorite swing used to be.

I told him the truth: because the Russians don’t want us to exist. I felt that I was ready to say these words to my son – after all, we had taken him to visit the sites of mass graves in Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel, where he saw what no 9 year old should see. I knew we had to do it.

It’s because he must understand why he goes to a bomb shelter instead of his classroom; why Russia intends to destroy Ukraine, with its playgrounds, parks and Shevchenko’s poetry. And why the weapons in the hands of the National Guard in the park are not wooden – but utterly real.

Activists on the streets of Kharkiv province, as reported by the police in the neighborhood of the Chop-Chop metro station

At one point in time, Friday afternoons were busy at the Chop-Chop barbershop in central Moscow, until recently only one of the four chairs was occupied.

Many men have been staying off the streets out of fear of being handed a draft notice. As Olya came to work last Friday, she said, she witnessed the authorities at each of the four exits of the metro station, checking documents.

Olya did not want her last name used and said that she does not mind hard days. It’s hard to know what to do. We always had a plan for each other.

The police officers who are returning to towns and villages are being overwhelmed by complaints of theft and property damage, as well as accounts of imprisonment, torture and missing relatives.

Given the length and breadth of the occupation of eastern Ukraine, police officials believe the abuse of the population in the area may be more severe than in the spring.

So far, police officers have logged more than 1,000 cases of people being detained in police stations and temporary holding facilities across the region, said Serhii Bolvinov, the police chief of Kharkiv Province. The real figure is probably two or three times that, he said.

Crime against women in Ukraine: two men from the Kherson region of the capital, Ukraine, who raped me in the early 1990s

Treading muddy streets, past homes damaged by artillery strikes, they look for those left behind. The two men are from the capital, Kyiv.

Russian troops occupied this area until early October. Burnt-out cars litter the fields. Russian forces use a symbol called Z to mark the walls.

In two weeks of work in the Kherson region, the team from Kyiv has documented six allegations of sexual assault. They say that the real number is much higher.

“They walked around those rooms,” she says. One of the two men who raped me stayed there. He came in and walked around the place, and then he started touching me.

She says he put her against the wardrobe and ripped her clothes. She says she was crying, begging him to stop. The only thoughts I had at the time were to live.

She remembers that he warned her not to tell anyone. “I didn’t tell my husband right away,” she says, in tears. “But I told my cousin, and my husband overheard. He said, ‘You should have told me the truth, but you kept silent.’”

She was widowed more than 30 years ago when her husband died in a motorcycle accident, and she had a son join the military after the Russian invasion. She decided to leave after a few months after the Russians occupied her village.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kherson-sexual-violence-intl/index.html

Do Ukrainians See Sexual Violation? The Case of a Molecule that Was Done by the Kremlov Regime

“His commander found the head of his unit. He came to see me and told me, ‘I punished him severely, I broke his jaw, but the most severe punishment is ahead.’ Like shooting. The commander asked me if I wanted to. I wished all of them would be shot.

Although the prosecutor, Kleshchenko, and police officer Oleksandr Svidro are looking specifically for evidence of sexual crimes, everywhere they go they are confronted with the horrors of occupation.

The village was never directly occupied by the Russians. Those gathered round shout that they’ve been abandoned for months, with no help from either Russia or Ukraine.

A man in the crowd is saying that he was held by Russian soldiers as a hostage and subjected to mock execution. It’s hard to hear, tales of torture like this are common here, but that’s not the subject of their work today.

Starting slowly at the end of the summer, and then in large measure at the beginning of October, Ukrainian forces have regained hundreds of square miles of territory that Russia held since the early days of its full-scale invasion.

A mother and daughter drive by a one-road hamlet that was struck by shelling, and say they haven’t heard of any sexual crimes there.

She came back after the Ukrainian military liberated her village. Her roof had been cut in half.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kherson-sexual-violence-intl/index.html

Is There a “Doublet” in the Killing of a Super-Galaxy Lambda?

She does not know where to put it to stop the ceiling falling on her head. “If it would fall and kill me that would be better, so I won’t suffer. But I want to see my son again.”

Of course, many of these allegations will be impossible to prove; many do not even have a suspect. The team is still attempting to be able to file charges in the future, but their reports have been uploaded to the team’s website.