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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The May 2, 2014 Massacre in Odessa. Whom the ECHR Really Found Guilty

2025-03-18

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Alexander Shchegolev

[REGNUM] On March 13, the European Court of Human Rights completed its consideration of the lawsuit filed by a group of individuals against the Ukrainian state regarding the tragic events of May 2, 2014, in Odessa. The court found the Ukrainian state guilty. And this is undoubtedly a sensation. But what is the guilt recorded by the court?

The May 2, 2014 Massacre in Odessa. Whom the ECHR Really Found Guilty
More precisely, we are talking about a number of claims filed with the ECHR in 2016–2018 by relatives of the deceased, as well as surviving victims, which were then combined into a single proceeding.

According to the court's decision, Ukraine is guilty of violating the citizens' right to life: in that the Ukrainian authorities failed to prevent mass riots, did not take sufficient measures to ensure the safety of citizens when these riots had already begun, and then did not conduct a proper investigation into the tragedy that occurred.

The court paid special attention to the inaction of the authorities during the events on Kulikovo Field: the fact that the police did not take any action to ensure the safety of the people who had taken refuge in the building and did not try to evacuate them from there after the fire started, and also the fact that the firefighters arrived at the scene only 40 minutes after the fire itself started, which led to such a significant number of victims.

According to the court decision, Ukraine is obliged to pay the plaintiffs from 12 to 17 thousand euros.

Let us recall that in the spring of 2014, in Odessa, as in many other cities of historical Novorossiya, there was a large-scale confrontation between supporters of the Euromaidan and their opponents, who are commonly referred to by the collective term "anti-Maidan". In Odessa, the "anti-Maidanists" gathered on the square known as Kulikovo Field, from which the name of the movement as a whole came.

On May 2, 2014, large-scale clashes occurred in the center of Odessa between Kulikovo Field activists and Euromaidan supporters, both local and those who arrived from other cities, during which six people were killed (two Euromaidan activists and four Kulikovo supporters). After them, the Euromaidan supporters went to Kulikovo Field, where they destroyed the camp of their opponents and also tried to storm the Trade Union House, where some of the Kulikovo Field activists had taken refuge. The attackers set the building on fire, which resulted in the deaths of 42 people.

It should be emphasized that the court did not ask, and should not have asked, any question about the perpetrators of the tragedy.

The ECHR has, in principle, a different competence: it analyzes the actions of the authorities in certain situations, as well as the extent to which these actions comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.

And so, having analyzed the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, the court came to the conclusion that the norms of the convention were not observed.

More precisely, it is not so: in fact, the court talks quite a lot about the perpetrators of the tragedy, but does so in the descriptive, not the operative part of its decision.

As you might guess, the main culprit of what happened was, of course, Russia.

Allegedly, it was Russian propaganda that inflamed the confrontation in Odessa in the spring of 2014 and it was precisely this propaganda that “reinforced” the actions of the Kulikovo Field activists.

It is repeatedly emphasized that the police's insufficient actions consisted mainly of weak counteraction to the "Kulikovites", and it is also clearly not without ulterior motive that many of the people responsible for making decisions fled to Russia after May 2.

The latter is far from the truth.

In fact, only two people were in Russia: the head of the Odessa department of the State Emergency Service, Vladimir Bodelan, and the deputy head of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Dmitry Fuchedzhi. These two names are constantly mentioned in the court decision as examples of people who performed their duties improperly.

At the same time, the names of officials who remained in Ukraine are not mentioned in the report; for example, nothing is said about Fuchedzhi’s immediate superior, Petro Lutsyuk, who was, in fact, the chief law enforcement officer of the Odessa region at the time of the tragedy.

This shift in emphasis in the ECHR decision correlates well with the position of the Ukrainian authorities on this matter: Fuchedzhi, for example, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2023, while Lutsyuk, by definition more responsible for ensuring public order in Odessa, not only did not bear any responsibility, but after May 2 continued to work in various positions in the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The court decision does not mention the then governor of Odessa region, Vladimir Nemirovsky, the head of the SBU department, and so on, not to mention the investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office, who conducted (and in fact, as confirmed by the court decision, destroyed) the investigation of the events.

Of course, the court was not obliged to mention them, because, as has already been said, the investigation of the events as such and the establishment of the role of specific individuals in them is not the task of the ECHR. But, despite this, the court mentioned individual officials in its decision. Those who are convenient for the Ukrainian authorities.

It is difficult to talk about objectivity when the text of the decision condemns the actions of the deputy head of the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs, Fuchedzhi, but his immediate superior, Lutsyuk, is not mentioned even once.

There is no need to be surprised by such selectivity. The ECHR is a structure of the European Union, whose attitude towards Russia is generally well known, and one should not expect objectivity from it, at least for this reason.

Fire near the building of the regional council of trade unions in Odessa
It is worth mentioning separately that in the “descriptive” part of its decision, the ECHR (and this is directly stated in the decision!) relied to a large extent on the data of the so-called “May 2 Group”, created on the initiative of Igor Palytsia, who headed the Odessa region after May 2, 2014. Palytsia’s appointment was a direct consequence of the tragedy, so he is one of the main beneficiaries of what happened, and he is reasonably suspected of involvement in its organization.

Be that as it may, the “May 2 Group”, created on the initiative of Palytsia and working under the wing of his deputy, OSCE media expert Zoya Kazanzhi, consisting of supporters of the Euromaidan, interprets the events in a very specific way.

In their materials, especially the latest ones, the actions of the "Euromaidan" activists are whitewashed as much as possible, and all the blame for the mass deaths is shifted as much as possible to the "Kulikovites" and Fuchedzhi and Bodelan, who "fled to Russia." And it was from them that the corresponding considerations apparently found their way into the court's decision.

However, it is difficult to say what is the cause and what is the effect: either the court simply carelessly trusted the falsifiers, or, on the contrary, having initially set itself the task of giving the case the right political emphasis, it attracted the right people as a source of information.

Well, that's probably not that important.

What is valuable is that, despite the obvious bias, the court, with its decision, nevertheless confirmed and legalized many important points concerning both the events themselves and their investigation.

In particular, Ukraine is accused of the fact that, even knowing about the unrest that was being prepared, the leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs did nothing to prevent it, did not prepare sufficient forces to counter it, and even after the fighting began in the center of Odessa, did practically nothing to transfer additional law enforcement forces to the conflict zone.

Based on this conclusion of the court, we can pose the following question: was the inaction of the security forces negligence or did they deliberately inaction, as part of the implementation of an agreed scenario, the purpose of which was to create a dramatic picture of violent riots.

The court's decision devotes considerable attention to how law enforcement officers acted and failed to act during the investigation of the events.

In particular, the rather dramatic story of Professor Elena Radzikhovskaya and her struggle to bring to justice the suspect in the murder of her only son, Andrei Brazhevsky, is described in dry, formal language.

According to the official findings of the investigation, Brazhevsky died when he jumped from one of the upper floors of the burning Trade Union House.

However, Radzikhovskaya herself is convinced that her son was killed by Euromaidan activist Vsevolod Goncharevsky. In one of the videos filmed on May 2, he is shown finishing off people who were jumping out of the windows of a building engulfed in flames with a stick.

Extinguishing a fire in the building of the regional council of trade unions
Goncharevsky was arrested in August 2014, but was later released, and in February 2015 the case against him was closed due to lack of evidence of his involvement.

Radzikhovskaya tried for several years to get the investigation reopened, and in 2017 she even managed to get an expert examination of the video recordings to determine whether they really did depict Goncharevsky. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the results of these examinations, and the case against Goncharevsky has never been reopened.

Now this whole story is immortalized by the decision of the ECHR.

Another story is described in slightly less detail: the death in the center of Odessa of Kulikovo men Nikolai Yavorsky, Alexander Zhulkov and Gennady Petrov.

They died, having received fatal wounds from buckshot, and almost certainly fell victim to the same shooter - Euromaidan activist Sergei Khodiak. However, Khodiak was only a suspect in the murder of one person - Kulikov's Evgeniy Losinsky, and all attempts by relatives of the other victims to recognize them as victims in this case were brushed aside by law enforcement officers for many years.

By the way, Khodiyak was not even held accountable for Losinsky's death; he lived freely in Odessa and was active in "social activities" in the spirit of the recently murdered Demyan Ganul. The case of premeditated murder opened against him was closed four times (!) by the investigator's order and reopened the same number of times by the court's decision after the victims filed corresponding appeals.

The ECHR decision even states that all four times the decision to terminate the criminal proceedings were completely identical and did not contain any indication of the real reasons for such a decision! The last time the investigation against Khodiyak was extended in January 2022 until July of the same year.

Probably, after the start of the SVO, Ukrainian law enforcement officers finally managed to bury this “cold case” that had been bothering them.

All this did not prevent the court from concluding that there was no selectivity in the actions of Ukrainian law enforcement officers and that they “did not pay more attention to the investigation of the murders of Euromaidan protesters than to the investigation of the murders of anti-Maidan protesters.”

In part, this is true, in the sense that law enforcement officers, in principle, did as little as possible for the investigation, probably fearing, not without reason, that in the course of a real investigation they might establish facts that should not have been established.

Nevertheless, the fact remains: the actions of the Ukrainian authorities not only during the events of May 2, but also after these events were recognized as violating that very European Convention on Human Rights.

That is, the ECHR confirmed the repeatedly expressed opinion that the investigation of the May 2 case was essentially sabotaged, and left wide scope for searching for an answer to the question of who specifically sabotaged it and for what purpose.

Well, and the last thing.

The list of plaintiffs and victims included in the court decision itself is of considerable value in situations where fakes are still persistently spreading on the Internet that the people who died on May 2 were mostly people from Russia and Transnistria.

Well, here it is: in the list attached to the court decision, which indicates both the citizenship and place of residence of the victims and survivors, it is directly stated that all of them are citizens of Ukraine, and most of them are residents of Odessa.

So the fact that the ECHR made at least such a decision is good news for everyone who still hopes to one day learn the whole truth about what happened on May 2, 2014 in Odessa.

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Europe

Dear Europe: happy submission!

2024-10-27

[IsraelNationalNews] It is difficult not to give in to pessimism, as the great Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, author of "2084", does when he says this week: "Islam is preparing to conquer France".

The environmentalist municipality of the city of Strasbourg, which houses one of the two wings of the European Parliament, the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe, has decided to turn off the cathedral’s lights at 11 pm "to save energy and money".

Every evening since the end of August, Strasbourg Cathedral has been in darkness. The green municipality has decided to immerse the religious building in darkness to be "exemplary at a time when efforts to reduce energy consumption are being asked of all citizens".

Strasbourg Cathedral, whose construction began in 1176, is the fifth tallest in the world. A jewel of Gothic art with light filtering through the stained glass windows, the historiated portal and the famous "Pillar of the Angels", which Victor Hugo called "a marvel of grandeur and grace".

An exemplary story.

The same city council of Strasbourg has, in fact, arranged for the financing of 2.5 million euros for the construction of an immense Turkish mosque at the behest of the Green mayor Jeanne Barseghian.

That means 44 meters high for the minarets, 28 domes, a prayer room for 3,000 faithful and another outdoor space for 2,500 people, "the largest mosque in Europe" had a subsidy of 2.5 million and financial help from Qatar, a country whose royal house is in tears these hours for the killing of the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar.

The mosque financed by the city of Strasbourg is built by a country, Erdogan's Turkey, which makes no secret of wanting to Islamize Europe.

Where does the mentality come from that leads them to cut the cathedral lighting to save 1,728 euros a month, when they vote for a subsidy of 2.5 million euros for the construction of the Islamist Eyyub Sultan mosque in the city? There are no logical or rational explanations: the only answer is submission.

This summer, the city of Metz donated €490,000 for the construction of the new mosque. Three years ago, the first stone was laid for a gigantic building of 5,649 m2, equipped with a museum for immigration and an institute for the Arab world, with a 34-meter minaret that can accommodate 1,500 Muslims.

In Clichy, where Muslims have been praying in the street for years in the face of secularism, the Great Mosque will open: €270,000 in subsidies from the municipality.

In Strasbourg there is not only the Great Mosque designed by the Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi (the same one who built the Great Mosque of Rome) and financed by Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The Great Mosque has already received funds from municipal and regional governments.

Strasbourg today has 22 mosques.

Boualem Sansal said that "France has made agreements with the Islamists: there were 10 mosques once, today there are 3,000".

And currently, more than 410 new mosques are being built. Some are already under construction, others are raising the necessary funds. It is not difficult to understand why there are already more Muslim believers than Catholics.

After October 7, the city of Strasbourg removed the Israeli flag raised in solidarity with the victims of Islamic terrorism after just 36 hours.

Happy submission!

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Georgians Remember Those Killed in the Five-Day War

2024-08-09

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Sixteen years after the Five-Day War, the pain of loss has not subsided, relatives of the deceased journalists Alexander Klimchuk and Gigi Chikhladze said. Social media users have published an image of a bell and the motto: "I always remember" in memory of the events of 2008.

As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, former President Saakashvili is responsible for the start of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, the Georgian Prime Minister said and announced a "public trial" in the case of the "United National Movement" after the parliamentary elections. Russia must withdraw its troops from Georgian territory and stop violating the rights of people living there, the Georgian Foreign Ministry and Ombudsman indicated on the 16th anniversary of the Five-Day War. Mourning events were held in South Ossetia on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the start of the Five-Day War.

The Russian military operation "to force peace", which went down in history as the "Five-Day War", was carried out from August 8 to 12, 2008, on the territory of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. After the Five-Day War, Russia and some other countries recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia has since considered these territories occupied by Russia and has terminated diplomatic relations with Russia, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report on the Five-Day War of 2008.

"I always remember" - this motto, together with the image of a bell, filled Georgian social networks. Yesterday and today, Georgia remembers the August war of 2008, a correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot" reported.

Among those killed in the Five-Day War were photographer Sasha Klimchuk and journalist Giga Chikhladze. On August 8, 2008, they left from the United States to cover the fighting in Tskhinvali. The journalists were fired upon by an Ossetian armed group. Giga and Sasha died on the spot. The information about their deaths was not confirmed for a long time, and only on August 17 did the Russian side deliver the bodies of the dead to Gori. 30-year-old Giga Chikhladze worked for Russian Newsweek, Radio France and wrote articles for a number of foreign publications, 27-year-old Sasha Klimchuk was a photojournalist for ITAR-TASS and one of the founders of the Caucasus Images photo agency. Giga is survived by his wife and two small children, and Alexander has elderly parents.

16 years later, the feeling is the same, and it still hurts as much as it did then. As time goes by, I remember those August days more and more.

Gigi Chikhladze's widow, journalist Nata Mumladze, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that their children constantly remember their father. "The girl is already 20, and the son is 19. They are both students and study in the United States," she said.

Aleksandr Klimchuk's mother, Yulia Klimchuk, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that she was left alone. She was not offered a survivor's pension. "My mother died the day she found out that Sasha had died. My husband also died very soon. I live alone now and I never forget about Sasha for a minute. Sixteen years later, the feelings are the same, and it still hurts as much as it did then. Over time, I remember those August days more and more," she said.

In 2022, the Tbilisi Sakrebulo (City Council) decided to name streets in honor of Klimchuk and Chikhladze.

Teona Pankvelashvili, who lives in Gori, recalled how events unfolded in the region in August 2008. "Since August 5, the sounds of military action have been heard in Gori. On August 7, I clearly saw the fighting because the sky was red from the bombs. On August 8, at 10:20 in the morning, a bomb fell in Gori. At that time, my mother and I were on the street in front of the theater, people were confused, crying, chaos reigned. The city was empty. They called us at night and asked us to leave the city. My father took me and my mother to the Ateni Valley, to the village of Bnavisi. On August 9, at 10:20, a bomber flew over us and bombed the mountains and forests of the Ateni Valley. My friend and I were standing on the balcony in the village of Bnavisi. My friend called Gori. His colleague, ambulance doctor Tamuna, told him that bombs were exploding, and at that time we heard screams and the sound of bombing on the phone. Tamuna was wounded. We went to Tbilisi. My friend's father stayed in Gori and until the end helped the remaining population with humanitarian aid," she said.

On August 12, it was reported that the Russian army was approaching Tbilisi, Teona recalls. "I cried and asked my mother if April 9 had happened in vain. Fortunately, with the help of the governor, President Saakashvili, America and the European Union, Russia retreated, although it occupied additional territories... Today, the war continues again in the form of a creeping occupation," she told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to a report by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, published on the "Caucasian Knot", Russian cluster munition strikes were carried out on targets in the Gori and Kareli districts, as a result of which at least 12 civilians were killed and at least 46 were wounded at the moment of the strikes. All these strikes can be classified as indiscriminate, the document emphasizes. The "Caucasian Knot" published a photo report " Five-day war: pain and tragedy of ordinary families ".

Director of the NGO "Center for Social Solidarity" Tamta Mikeladze believes that the war is not over. "It is one thing when the authorities talk about war and peace, and another when you hear real stories of people who have suffered from war and conflict. We have everything except peace! We live in a state of constant war!" she wrote today on her Facebook page*.

The fighting brought suffering to many residents of both South Ossetia and Georgia, journalists and human rights activists who witnessed those events wrote earlier. Women and children "shuddered in basements for two days while the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, was pounded with Grad rockets, while artillery pounded the city," said Tatyana Lokshina, Human Rights Watch's program director for Russia.

More from kavkaz-uzel.eu
Residents of South Ossetia honored the memory of the victims of the "Five-Day War"

In a number of settlements in South Ossetia, mourning events were held to mark the 16th anniversary of the start of the Five-Day War.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot", in South Ossetia, mourning events are held annually on August 8 in memory of the victims of the "Five-Day War" of 2008. In 2023, a number of mourning events and flower-laying ceremonies were held in Tskhinvali.

On the 16th anniversary of the start of the "Five-Day War" in South Ossetia, a number of mourning events took place. Flowers were laid in Tskhinvali, including at the destroyed barracks of the Russian peacekeeping battalion. The event was attended by the President of the Republic Alan Gagloev . Flowers were also laid at the monuments to the Heroes of Ossetia Oleg Galavanov, Denis Vetchinov, at the "Symbol of Sorrow" monument in the "Museum of Burnt Souls" in the village of Tbet near Tskhinvali, the IA "Res" reported today on its Telegram channel.

Members of the "Mothers of Beslan" organization also took part in the mourning events. They laid flowers at the site of the death of six OMON officers who died during the "Five-Day War." Memorial events were also held at the foreign missions of the South Ossetian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agency noted in another publication.

Let us recall that from August 8 to 12, 2008, a Russian military operation "to force peace" was carried out on the territory of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia; it went down in history as the "Five-Day War". After the "Five-Day War", Russia and some other countries recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since then, Georgia considers Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be territories occupied by Russia and has terminated diplomatic relations with Russia, as stated in the "Caucasian Knot" report on the "Five-Day War" of 2008.

The "Caucasian Knot" also wrote that on January 21, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recognized that the Russian authorities were involved in human rights violations in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but were not responsible for the hostilities in August 2008.

The ECHR decision will not affect the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, noted South Ossetian political scientists previously interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

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Britain

Shamima Begum loses high court UK citizenship appeal

2024-08-09

[Rudaw]

Shamima Begum, the woman who was stripped of her British citizenship after joining the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria as a teenager, lost a bid on Wednesday to take her case to the United Kingdom’s top court.

Begum, who is now 24 years old, left her London home in 2015 to travel to Syria where she married an ISIS fighter. In 2019, she had her UK citizenship revoked on national security grounds after she was found at an ISIS camp in northeast Syria (Rojava), following the territorial collapse of the terror group.

The UK’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Begum’s bid to appeal the revocation of her citizenship. She argued that the decision was unlawful and that officials did not properly consider whether she could have been a victim of trafficking. Supreme Court justices rejected her appeal on the grounds that it did “not raise an arguable point of law.”

Begum’s appeals were rejected twice, first by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in February 2023 and by the UK’s court of appeal in February. Wednesday’s ruling said that she cannot appeal again.

Begum’s lawyers told the BBC that they will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Between 2014 and 2019, thousands of militants from around the world joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured more than 10,000 ISIS militants and their families in the war to defeat the group that ended with a final battle in Baghouz, eastern Syria. The fighters are kept in detention centers while the families, including children, are kept in camps. Begum is living in one of these camps.

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Europe

Spain Allows Russian Frigate Shtandart to Enter Port of Vigo

2024-07-31

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The Russian sailing frigate Shtandart was allowed to enter the Spanish port of Vigo. This was reported by the press service of the Spanish Merchant Marine Administration.

It is specified that the standard is allowed to enter the port to replenish food supplies, as well as to replace some parts of the ship.

“The Main Directorate of the Merchant Fleet <…> has permitted the forced entry of the vessel Shtandart strictly for the time necessary to carry out supply and replacement operations,” Izvestia quotes the directorate’s message.

At the same time, the department noted that after completing the necessary operations, the ship should depart from the port as soon as possible.

Martus, whose words are quoted by RIA Novosti, said that he will appeal the decision on European sanctions in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Despite the current situation, the frigate plans to take part in the maritime festival in Normandy, France, Martus added.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, on July 23, the Russian vessel was not allowed into France. This happened after the EU added a wording about “copies of historical vessels,” which is what the frigate is, to the anti-Russian sanctions.

After that, the ship decided to go to Spain and dock in the port of Vigo, but was refused there too. Earlier, in an interview with the Regnum news agency, Martus said that in 25 years of the frigate's travels and participation in festivals throughout Europe, the sailors had never had any problems, but the sanctions changed everything. He added that many Europeans were outraged by the refusal to allow the ship to dock, and the crew itself intends to go to court. There are 15 people from seven countries on board, including three teenagers.

On July 27, residents of one of the cities on the island of Il-Arousa began to help the Shtandart team replenish food and water supplies. They themselves offered to bring water on local fishing boats.

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Britain

Mark Steyn: What the ‘Conservatives’ Have Wrought

2024-07-08

It’s been a while since we posted something from Mr. Steyn.

[SteynOnline] Well, I hope the French election on Sunday offers a faint glimmer of hope. Across the United Kingdom almost every constituency voted for lefties of various stripes - not just victorious Labour lefties, but also Scots nationalist lefties, Irish republican lefties, eco-lefties, Islamo-lefties and, of course, duplicitous pseudo-conservative lefties: you can get it in any colour as long as it's red. So, if you're one of those Britons concerned about, say, transformative mass migration or the right to freedom of speech, things are going to spend the next few years getting worse before there is any prospect of course correction.

This is squarely on the UK's hideous and repellent "Conservative and Unionist" party, which as a practical matter is neither. Effective politicians don't "move towards the centre"; they move the centre towards them, as Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan did. Instead, the Conservatives squandered fourteen years playing on the left's terms, and the result is a political culture that has never been less conservative, and a land where nothing works, from the creepily fetishised National Health Service to the wanker constabulary.

So Rishi Rich's party was pushed down to its worst ever result - worse than Balfour in 1906, if such comparisons are even relevant in a demographically transformed Britannia. The casualties include so-called "big beasts" (who, as someone remarks in The Prisoner of Windsor, are nowhere near as big as they were) of all stripes: floppo GB News host Jacob Rees-Mogadon, Coronation sword-wielder Penny Mordaunt, and former prime minister Liz Truss. And yet, bad as it was, it was not as bad as it should have been. It was not a Kim Campbell extinction-level event. So a left-wing government will be opposed in Parliament by a mush-left faux-opposition that agrees with it on Net Zero, "online harms", the European Court of Human Rights, the Northern Ireland Protocol and the subversion of Brexit...oh, and doubtless the necessity of the next lockdown.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Ukrainian Perspective: Invasion of Ukraine: June 25, 2024

2024-06-26

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 22:16 The Pentagon reported that the head of the department, Lloyd Austin, had a conversation with the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Andrei Belousov, and discussed the war in Ukraine with him. During the conversation, Austin emphasized the importance of maintaining communications between the US and Russian militaries, said Pentagon Speaker Pat Ryder.

22:08 Russian Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova reported that her representatives discussed with a representative of the Ukrainian Ombudsman possible options for the mutual return of civilians from places of forced detention.

22:04 Ukraine returned another 90 defenders from Russian captivity , the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War reported. Among them are 32 National Guardsmen, 18 border guards, 17 representatives of the Navy, 15 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers and eight terrorist fighters. In particular, it was possible to return 59 defenders of Mariupol, of which 52 were fighters who left Azovstal. Five national guardsmen who guarded the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were also released from captivity.

21:35 The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that with the mediation of the UAE, an exchange of prisoners took place according to the 90-90 formula.

21:01 CNN reports, citing American officials, that the White House is working to lift the ban on the deployment of American military contractors in Ukraine. In particular, they want to make such a decision to help the Ukrainian Armed Forces maintain and repair weapons systems provided by the United States. However, no final decisions have been made “and any discussion on this issue is premature,” one Biden administration official said.

20:53 The Cabinet of Ministers allowed mine clearance operators to book 100% of deminers. We are talking about civilians who have undergone basic training sufficient to search for mines and explosive objects in the fields.

20:40 Radio Liberty showed a satellite image showing the consequences of an attack on an ammunition depot in Olkhovatka, Voronezh region. In the picture you can see at least two sources of fire - this corresponds to local residents’ data about two drones that attacked the warehouse on the night of June 25.

19:27 The Council of the EU approved the draft security agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, said the Foreign Minister of Belgium, which chairs the EU, Aja Lyabib. According to her, the summit of EU leaders, which will take place on June 27 in Brussels, “will give a complete picture of our support for Ukraine in all forms.”

19:23 Another country, South American Guyana, joined the Peace Summit communiqué, Zelensky said. The number of signatories now stands at 83 countries and six organizations.

19:01 The Russians hit the village with at least four KABs. Bobrovka, Olkhovskaya community, Kharkov district - country houses were damaged, four people were injured, said the head of the OVA Oleg Sinegubov.

18:32 On Wednesday, June 26, oblenergos will apply hourly shutdown schedules from 00:00 to 24:00. The volume of restrictions will be greatest from 17:00 to 23:00, Ukrenergo reported.

18:28 The Ukrainian delegation has already held the first intergovernmental conference of Ukraine and the European Union regarding accession, Zelensky said: “Until today, we were a state that received the status of a candidate for accession, but we could not yet be completely sure whether we would realize this status. And with "Today, this is definitely a certainty - Ukraine will certainly be a full member of the European Union."

18:07 Zelensky said that he had a meeting in Kiev with the head of the German Bundesrat, Manuela Schwesig, and told her about the situation on the battlefield and the priority needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In particular, they discussed the supply of additional air defense systems.

In addition, the President met with the Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade of Sweden, Johann Forssell, and representatives of Swedish business. We discussed the prospects for using income from frozen Russian assets for the needs of Ukraine, strengthening the international sanctions regime against the Russian Federation and energy support.

17:32 In the Sumy region, the activity of Russian DRGs has recently decreased, said the speaker of the State Border Service Andrey Demchenko. At the same time, he added that “it has not completely disappeared, and the threat of sabotage activities by the enemy does not disappear anywhere.” According to Demchenko, the enemy now does not have enough forces and means to carry out an invasion in the Sumy direction, but one must be prepared for the fact that the Russian army can expand the zone of active combat operations, as is happening in the Kharkov region, in order to force the Ukrainian Armed Forces to keep their troops there troops.

17:01 US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien believes that for Ukraine to succeed in the war against Russia, it is necessary, first of all, to deprive the Russian Federation of the opportunity to advance in the east and use nearby firing lines, as well as inflict economic damage on Moscow. "Then we come to a point where Russia has to think: Can we continue to fight with the very limited international support that we receive against this much larger coalition of countries?" - O'Brien explained.

16:35 The war in Ukraine could spread to other countries and develop into a nuclear war, said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. “The issue of the possibility of using nuclear weapons may be on the agenda,” he believes.

15:26 The Cabinet of Ministers has authorized the expulsion from universities of male students recognized as fit for military service if they refuse to undergo basic general military training.

14:55 Information appeared on social networks about the alleged escape near Kiev of former convicts who joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and are undergoing training in one of the training centers. The command of the Ground Forces emphasized that this information is not true: “All former prisoners are now undergoing active training and are preparing to carry out combat missions in their units. Former convicts, motivated, patriotically minded, of their own free will joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Soon we will be able see their work on the battlefield."

14:32 The EU, as part of a new package of sanctions against the Russian Federation, approved a ban on access to a number of media outlets, including the Russian RIA Novosti and Izvestia, against which sanctions were previously imposed. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Russia, in response, is limiting access to broadcast resources of a number of EU media outlets.

14:14 The European Court of Human Rights recognized that Russia systematically violated the rights of Ukrainians in Crimea after its occupation. In particular, the ECHR agreed with Ukraine’s evidence that Russia practiced ill-treatment of Ukrainians, illegal detentions, disappearances, forced replacement of Ukrainian passports with Russian ones, mass searches, closure of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar media, banning protests, attacks on the organizers of meetings, etc.

Margarita Sokorenko, Commissioner for ECHR Affairs in the Ministry of Justice, called this decision unique, since the court recognized a number of conclusions and violations under the Convention for the first time in its practice (application of Russian legislation, illegal courts, forced change of citizenship).

14:00 The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The warrants were issued in connection with “probable international crimes” committed between October 10, 2022 and March 9, 2023. We are talking about Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine.

13:53 The EU Council extended temporary protection for Ukrainians who fled to the European Union from Russian aggression until March 4, 2026.

13:27 Denmark has allocated about 20 million euros to accelerate the accession of Ukraine and Moldova to the EU, the country’s Foreign Ministry reported. The funds are allocated until 2030 and should help both countries create the administrative structures and legislation necessary to move closer to EU membership.

12:59 Ukraine received the first batch of artillery shells as part of the Czech initiative, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said: “The first batch of ammunition on our initiative arrived in Ukraine some time ago. We are doing everything necessary.”

12:18 In the Olkhovatsky district of the Voronezh region, where the GUR hit a field ammunition depot, a state of emergency has been introduced, Russian media write. Earlier, Governor Alexander Gusev reported that “explosive objects” detonated there after the drone attack.

12:14 In the morning, the Russians have already carried out six airstrikes in Toretsk, Donetsk region, wounding four people, said the head of the OVA Vadim Filashkin. In addition, one person died in the Golden Niva of the Velikonovoselkovsk community.

11:50 The EU today begins accession negotiations with Ukraine, said the head of the EC, Ursula von der Leyen. “The road ahead will be challenging but full of opportunity,” she added.

The Financial Times writes that although negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union officially start on June 25, the main stage of work on this issue will not begin until 2025. In particular, this is due to the current Hungarian presidency of the EU, which may complicate the path to membership of Ukraine.

11:43 Since May 18, about 2.3 million Ukrainians have already updated their data through the Reserve+ application, of which 1.1 million are eligible for conscription, said Defense Ministry spokesman Dmitry Lazutkin: “It is clear that in the coming days they will not be able to help those military personnel , who protect our country, but in the future this is very important, because we are talking about improving military accounting. The country must know who to count on."

11:06 Orban criticized the negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU, which begin today in Luxembourg, but at the same time assured that Budapest will not block them: “Hungary does not agree with this accession process, but we do not block it and support the start of negotiations ".

10:52 On the night of June 25, scouts hit a field ammunition depot in the Olkhovatsky district of the Voronezh region, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported. On sites with shells with a total area of 3500 sq. m there was a fire with detonation, which is still ongoing.

10:31 Putin said that his “peace proposals” supposedly actually provide for the possibility of ending the war in Ukraine, and many politicians in the West “didn’t even want to delve into their essence.”

09:47 Two key advisers to Trump presented him with a plan to end the war in Ukraine if he wins the presidential election. The plan provides for the provision of military assistance to Kyiv only if peace negotiations with Moscow begin, writes Reuters. At the same time, the Kremlin will be warned that failure to negotiate will lead to increased American support for Ukraine, said one of Trump's national security advisers, Keith Kellogg. During peace negotiations, a ceasefire must be established.

Trump responded positively to the plan, according to second adviser Fred Fleitz. The strategy outlined by Kellogg and Fleitz is the most detailed plan developed by Trump's allies to date. The proposal would mark a dramatic change in US position on the war and would face opposition from European allies and within Trump's Republican Party, Reuters writes.

09:02 In the Donetsk region over the past 24 hours, 49 people were wounded as a result of Russian shelling, said the head of the OBA Vadim Filashkin. Seven people died: five in Pokrovsk, one each in Kurakhovo and Toretsk. Filashkin also said that a forced evacuation would be announced in Toretsk. Now about 5.5 thousand people remain there. There has been no electricity in the city for two days now.

08:14 In the Kherson region over the past 24 hours, as a result of Russian shelling, one person was killed and three were injured, said the head of the OVA, Alexander Prokudin. 20 private houses, critical infrastructure facilities, an administrative building, and wastewater treatment plants were damaged.

07:28 Belgorod and the Belgorod region were subjected to a massive UAV attack at night, there were casualties, said Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that air defense systems allegedly destroyed 29 UAVs over the territory of the Belgorod region and one over the Voronezh region at night.

07:13 The General Staff announced the estimated losses of the Russian Federation as of the morning of June 25:

personnel - about 536,840 (+1180) people,

tanks - 8035 (+4),

armored combat vehicles - 15,431 (+18),

artillery systems - 14,281 (+35),

MLRS - 1108 (+0),

air defense systems - 863 (+0),

aircraft - 359 (+0),

helicopters - 326 (+0),

UAVs of operational-tactical level - 11 413 (+31),

cruise missiles - 2324 (+1),

ships/boats - 28 (+0),

submarines - 1 (+0),

automotive equipment and tank trucks - 19,362 (+58),

special equipment - 2403 (+6).

02:22 The second batch of long-range Patriot anti-aircraft missiles from Spain has already arrived in Ukraine, El Mundo writes, citing government sources. The first batch of aid was delivered at the end of April. At the May 25 Ramstein meeting, Defense Secretary Margarita Robles called the missiles part of an "important shipment" of aid that would arrive in June. In addition, Ukraine received Leopard battle tanks and various types of ammunition.

Link

Europe

Ex-Prosecutor General Skuratov doubts the objectivity of the Katyn investigation

2024-04-30

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The investigation into the Katyn tragedy of 1940, when thousands of Polish officers and soldiers were shot, was hardly objective. This opinion was expressed by the former Prosecutor General of Russia Yuri Skuratov, who held this post until 2000.

“I don’t know what prompted the new investigation after I left. But I have great doubts that this investigation was objective. There was probably some kind of political decision,” Skuratov noted in an interview with the TASS analytical center.

He added that during his tenure as prosecutor general (since October 1995), the “Katyn case” was not investigated. According to him, initially there were statements by the first and only president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who gave the Poles copies of some political documents. Then in 1993 there was a statement by the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.

According to the former Prosecutor General, Polish law enforcement agencies turned to the Russian side with a request to participate in the investigation. Moscow agreed, but on the condition of a parallel investigation into the case of genocide in 1920, when 60 thousand Red Army soldiers who were captured on Polish territory died, and in fact were killed. However, Skuratov pointed out, after that the Polish side took a break and fell silent.

As Regnum reported, in April–May 1940, 4,421 Polish officers deported to the territory of the Soviet Union were shot in the Katyn Forest, 18 km west of Smolensk. Their remains were buried here.

Residents of Smolensk erected a memorial stone at the site of the tragedy. In 2000, Russia’s first international memorial complex-monument to the victims of the totalitarian repression “Katyn” was created there. Next to the burials of Poles in the memorial complex lie the ashes of almost 10 thousand repressed Soviet citizens.

More from Boris Rozhin:
Katyn case. Shot at Russia
Text taken from a news article which appeared in zvezdaweekly.ru, written by Evgeniy Kirichenko.

Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
The Zvezda TV channel raises the issue of falsification of the Katyn case. The truth makes its way.

How a provocation developed in the Abwehr and implemented by Joseph Goebbels became a catalyst for the destruction of the USSR

THE BOMB PLANTED BY GOEBBELS
The Russian FSB published archival documents confirming that the mass execution of Polish officers in the Smolensk region was organized by the Hitlerite Gestapo, and not at all by the Stalinist NKVD, as was claimed in the years "perestroika". Among the declassified materials are certificates from military counterintelligence SMERSH, interrogation reports of Poles who served with the Germans, and testimony from former SS man Arnaud Duret, who participated in the burial of executed Poles.

According to the latter, in September 1941 he was sent to a penal company to dig graves for mass burials in the Katyn Forest. SS units brought the bodies of the dead there and threw them into a ditch 15-20 meters deep. He estimates that they buried up to 20 thousand bodies there. Later, in 1943, when Arno came on vacation, he saw in the newspapers a photograph of a ditch, under which it was written that the Russians had done it.

“I told my mother that it was not the Russians who did it, but the Germans, but my mother didn’t believe me,” Duret recalled. According to him, he did not tell anyone else about this because he signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Another prisoner of war, Eduard Potkansky, admitted during interrogation that the Germans shot many Polish officers in the Katyn Forest for the purpose of provocation against the Soviet regime. In June 1943, the Nazis showed their work battalion the graves, next to which lay personal belongings, money and documents of the killed. However, they were in a form “in which they could not have been preserved in the ground since 1939,” when NKVD officers allegedly carried out executions.

The FSB removed the secrecy label from these and other archival materials on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Katyn, which is celebrated in Poland annually on April 13, although the mass execution of captured Poles, as established by Nikolai Burdenko’s commission, occurred in the fall of 1941. However, for some reason Warsaw chose the same day as the memorial date when, in 1943, Berlin announced the “brutal crime of the Bolsheviks,” who allegedly shot 20 thousand Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. A few days after the newspapers of the anti-Hitler coalition published the stunning news, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his personal diary: “The Katyn affair is becoming a colossal political bomb, which under certain conditions will cause more than one blast wave.”

The words of the main propagandist of Nazi Germany turned out to be prophetic. Half a century after the Nuremberg Tribunal, which condemned the Nazis for the execution of the Poles, a “blast wave” again covered Europe. And the head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, blamed Stalin and the NKVD for the crime. During Wojciech Jaruzelski's visit to Moscow on April 13, 1990, he gave him copies of the “execution lists” with the names of Polish officers allegedly executed in the Katyn Forest. Although in fact these were stage lists of captured Poles sent to NKVD camps.

On the same day, the TASS agency, “expressing deep regret,” admitted Soviet responsibility for Katyn, thereby overthrowing the verdict of the International Military Tribunal. Based on this fact, the Prosecutor General's Office will initiate a criminal case, which will then be closed after the death of the perpetrators. However, Warsaw, at the instigation of Gorbachev, already believed that the execution of the Poles was the work of Stalin’s NKVD. This is where the collapse of the Warsaw Bloc countries, and then the entire socialist system, will begin.

President Boris Yeltsin will go even further - he will hand over to the Polish side not copies, but genuine lists of “package No. 1” as evidence of Russia’s guilt in the Katyn massacre. The head of state will decide to take this step, despite the fact that the Constitutional Court, obedient to him, was never able to establish the authenticity of archival materials. But Yeltsin didn’t care much about this - he needed a tool with which to discredit the CPSU. The “Katyn Affair” was perfectly suited for this purpose.

An aerial view of the exhumation site with rows of bodies of Polish officers lying on the ground near the mass graves (filmed by Nazi cameramen).

It was these supposedly authentic documents that were presented in 2009 to the European Court of Human Rights as the main evidence of Russia’s guilt in the Katyn case. Relatives of the 12 executed Polish officers were counting on huge financial compensation. Poland was also going to file a claim for $100 billion. But the incredible happened: on June 18, 2012, the Strasbourg court decided that our country was not responsible for the execution of Poles in Katyn, and the “documents” presented as evidence of guilt were fake. True, by that time Russia had already rushed to apologize for what it had not done.

So, what is the essence of the “Katyn Affair”? When and by whom was it fabricated? And most importantly - for what?

EVIDENCE THAT CANNOT BE DESTROYED
As you know, in 1939, after the Wehrmacht attacked Poland and the flight of its government to Romania, the USSR sent troops to take protection of the population of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. At the same time, more than 150 thousand Polish soldiers, without offering resistance, surrendered. Of these, 42 thousand returned to the territory occupied by the Germans, and another 42 thousand were liberated in the territory occupied by the Red Army (Red Army). The rest were interned in three camps west of Smolensk. With the beginning of the war, the NKVD tried to organize the evacuation of captured Poles, but only 3 thousand were taken out; the rest expressed a desire to stay in the camps, waiting for the Germans and hoping that they would return them home.

However, in order to secure the rear in the occupied territory, SS units executed all the Poles in the fall of 1941. Most of them were killed in the Goat Mountains, which would later be called Katyn. The execution was carried out without disguise as the “NKVD handwriting”, using German-made pistols. If the Germans had known that they would later need to shift the blame onto the Soviet security officers, they would probably have shot them with Russian revolvers and Mosin three-line guns. But no one set such a task.

In the spring of 1943, after the Battle of Stalingrad, Western states began to realize that the days of the Third Reich were numbered, and began to prepare for the opening of a second front in Europe. The Nazis urgently needed to split the ranks of the anti-Hitler coalition, and then they remembered the mass grave near Smolensk.

This is how the Abwehr came up with a plan for the Katyn provocation, in which not only the “dead”, but also the “living” Poles were supposed to participate. That is, those who had already been shot, and those to whom these remains needed to be demonstrated. The Polish government in exile, warmed by the British in London, was supposed to stir up an international scandal.

In order to give a larger scale to the “crime of the Bolsheviks,” in Berlin they decided to increase the number of victims in the place where representatives of the Polish Red Cross were supposed to arrive. The Germans opened the graves in the Goat Mountains and brought remains there from other burial sites, carefully checking the bodies and confiscating documents with dates after April-May 1940. For greater persuasiveness, papers with the “needed” dates were placed on the corpses, but here the Gestapo made a mistake, since many of the owners of the documents later turned out to be alive: Remigiusz Bezhanek, Franciszek Biernacki and others.

However, the Nazis did not have time to check all the remains - a commission of the Polish Red Cross had already arrived, and the bodies “unprepared” for inspection were transferred to a separate ditch, to which experts were not allowed. However, there was no need to guard him - the International Commission already worked under German control and did not even keep its own list of identified bodies.

But even such an obedient commission could not ignore the shell casings with German markings discovered in the graves. To explain this, the Nazis said that the NKVD shot Poles with German pistols using cartridges supplied to the USSR back in the 1920s. The question arises: why would security officers use ammunition with a long-expired shelf life, which usually does not exceed five years? After all, the cartridges would inevitably misfire. In addition, the Nazis never provided documents confirming the supply of 7.65 mm Walter pistols to Russia.

By the way, half a century later, during our own excavations in 1994-1995. In Kozye Gory, Polish experts discovered 79 steel cartridges with the date “41” stamped on them, which could not possibly have been used in April 1940.

As for other evidence, it later disappeared. From the end of March to the beginning of June 1943, after the exhumation of the remains of 4,243 Polish officers, the names of 2,730 of them were established. The Germans transferred the documents and objects found on the corpses to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Krakow, from where they were taken to Germany, where, according to rumors, they were soon burned during the bombing. It is no longer possible to establish who these documents belonged to. The ends are hidden.

EXECUTION WITH GERMAN HANDWRITING
Moscow resolutely rejected Berlin's accusations, and as soon as the Red Army liberated the Smolensk region, a commission of forensic experts headed by Nikolai Burdenko was sent to Katyn. After exhuming the remains, she carefully examined everything that could be collected from the site of the mass execution. Then, in the clothes of some of the bodies, receipts and receipts were found dating from June - August 1941, which did not fit into Goebbels’ scheme. Based on the data received, the commission was able to expose the Abwehr’s provocation and came to the conclusion that the mass execution in the Katyn Forest was carried out by the Nazis after the occupation of the Smolensk region.

It is noteworthy that local residents, whose testimony was cited by the Germans to accuse the Soviet regime, recanted their testimony when they were questioned by the Burdenko commission. Some of the international experts whom the Germans brought to the burial site also renounced their testimony. In particular, pathologist Marko Markov did not sign the German protocol, because he believed that the remains presented for inspection had lain in the ground not for three years, but clearly less. By the way, Markov left detailed memories of this terrible story, in which he expressed doubt about the German version of events.

It should be emphasized that the materials of the Burdenko commission were presented to the international tribunal in Nuremberg, which held the Hitler regime responsible for this atrocity. However, very few years will pass, former allies will become irreconcilable enemies, and the Cold War period will begin. Western countries will shake off the archival dust from the Katyn Affair, and the Nazi version will once again become the main ideological tool of anti-Soviet propaganda. The task of Russia's enemies was to destroy the Soviet Union, but first they needed to discredit the CPSU. And Goebbels’ plan turned out to be very useful.

ARCHIVAL FAKES?
The propaganda campaign in favor of the version of the USSR's guilt in the Katyn Affair, which unfolded in the early 1990s, was based on archival materials that were later found to be fake. The most important document allegedly confirming the fact of the execution of captured Poles by NKVD officers is considered to be a “note” from the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR Alexander Shelepin dated March 3, 1959, addressed to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Khrushchev. It reported that 21,857 officers, gendarmes “etc. persons of the former bourgeois Poland" were shot based on the decision of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee of March 5, 1940. However, it is worth noting that in 1940 the party had a different name - the VKP(b). It is strange that until now none of the historians have paid attention to this error, which sticks out like an awl from a bag.

How did this archival document come about? It is assumed that having headed the KGB, Shelepin received access to the records of captured Poles and came to the conclusion that it would be advisable to “destroy documents on all persons executed in 1940 as part of the said operation.” Perhaps it was from here that the notorious “execution lists” of Polish officers in Katyn arose, which in 1990 were slipped to Mikhail Gorbachev as a “gesture of goodwill” towards Poland. Subsequently, the son of Lavrenty Beria would write:

“During Jaruzelski’s official visit to Moscow, Gorbachev gave him only copies of the lists of prisoners of war and internees of the NKVD of the USSR found in the Soviet archives, which included the names of Polish citizens who were in the Kozelsky, Ostashkovsky and Starobelsky NKVD camps in 1939 - 1940. None of these documents speak of the participation of the NKVD in the execution of prisoners of war.”

The execution of Poles was discussed in another document from “package No. 1” - a 4-page letter from Beria dated March 5, 1940, addressed to Stalin, where the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR proposed that the cases of Polish citizens held in NKVD camps be “considered in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution."

According to the famous historian Yuri Zhukov, when he turned to the archives of the President of the Russian Federation for this document in the early 1990s, he was provided with a photocopy of Beria’s note on one page. The resolution in the upper left corner, as the historian explained, was covered during copying.

“I believe she rejected the People’s Commissar’s proposal to be shot,” Zhukov told the author. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have hidden her.” They needed to blame everyone and everything for our past. Therefore, all my attempts to obtain the original document were rejected - a state secret.”

Today, a color scan of this note, known as “Beria’s letter No. 794/B dated March 5, 1940,” is circulating on the Internet, with all 4 pages of it printed on typewriters with different fonts. Historians note that this is the first sign of forgery when they try to add or change any phrases in the text.

On the title page there are sweeping signatures of Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov and Mikoyan, who supported Beria’s proposal to shoot captured Poles. Moreover, they were all made with the left hand and a pencil of the same color. This is the same resolution of the members of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which was supposed to be proof of the guilt of the Stalinist regime in the Katyn tragedy. It was this “letter”, along with other archival materials from “package No. 1”, that Boris Yeltsin presented to the Constitutional Court of the RSFSR, where the “CPSU case” initiated by him was considered, but for some reason the accommodating Constitutional Court refused to recognize them as authentic documents.

“YAKOVLEV GROUP”
In 2010, State Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin and research experts Sergei Strygin and Vladislav Shved became aware of how the falsification of the aforementioned “Beria’s letter” was being prepared, which proposed shooting more than 25 thousand Polish prisoners of war. Ilyukhin, at a plenary session of parliament, released information that in the early 1990s, a group of specialists in forging archival documents was allegedly organized, headed by Alexander Yakovlev, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.

“In 1943, Goebbels, trying to destroy the anti-Hitler coalition and quarrel between the USSR and the USA, spread a lie that Stalin and Beria ordered the execution of 10 thousand Polish officers,” said Ilyukhin. - This lie was supported by the Polish government in exile, which was most motivated by a sense of anger at the Soviet Union for the defeat of the Polish army in Western Belarus and Ukraine and the annexation of these territories to the USSR. The well-known Alexander Yakovlev actually advocated for such a compromise of the USSR that the whole world would turn away from our country. After this, the greatest fraud and falsification of archival documents of the CPSU Central Committee took place.”

The “Yakovlev Group” worked in the structure of the security service of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, located in the village of Nagornoye, Moscow Region, until 1996, and then was relocated to another locality - Zarechye. From there, according to Ilyukhin, hundreds, if not thousands of false documents were thrown into the archives, and the same number were falsified by introducing distorted information into them and forging signatures.

One of the members of this group gave Ilyukhin samples of forms, seals, stamps and postmarks of counterfeiters, which the deputy demonstrated by making a video message, but the official media ignored him. Viktor Ilyukhin initiated a parliamentary review of archival documents, but his death from a heart attack prevented him from completing the work begun, as always happens in such cases.

It is noteworthy that in 2004, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of Russia confirmed that the NKVD troika imposed death sentences on 14,542 Polish prisoners of war, but the death of only 1,803 people was reliably established. And where, in this case, did the rest go?

Researchers admit that after the publication of new archival data in the early 1990s, complete clarity on the “Katyn case” did not emerge. Moreover, digital copies of documents from “package No. 1,” which, by order of the president, were previously posted on the website of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, have now become inaccessible. Is this due to the fact that their authenticity raises questions among lawyers?

The forgery of documents has been recognized by the courts.

The results of studies of signs of forgery of the “Katyn” documents from “package No. 1” have been published in many publications and are well known. To date, their falsity has been determined by decisions of at least three Russian courts. In addition to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, which received documents as evidence of the alleged guilt of the CPSU (b) - CPSU in the execution of captured Poles, they were also considered by the Basmanny and Tverskoy district courts of Moscow on October 13, 2009 and September 21, 2010. And everyone, having verified the falsification of archival materials, refused to recognize as true the information that Stalin and members of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks had decided on capital punishment for the Poles.

I would like to hope that the time will come when the impartial court of history will give an objective assessment not only of all the facts of this tragedy, but also of those individuals who tried to speculate on it, fabricating fakes to discredit the Soviet Union. Involuntarily, I recall the sincere confession of the main ideologist of the CPSU A. Yakovlev: “We had to partially lie, be hypocritical, dissemble - there was no other way. We had to break the totalitarian communist party."

But they broke something completely different. As the former Soviet dissident and philosopher Alexander Zinoviev put it, “they aimed for communism, but ended up in Russia.”

(c) Evgeniy Kirichenko

And to the heap. Today, former Prosecutor General of Russia Skuratov spoke on the topic of Katyn.
Former Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Skuratov doubts the objectivity of the investigation in Russia of the “Katyn case,” which led to the admission of guilt by the NKVD in the execution of Polish officers and soldiers in 1940.

“There was probably some kind of political decision. After all, we were still full of desire to please the West, and a lot of different kinds of concessions on our part were thrown into this firebox, so to speak,”

PS. My position on this matter has not changed since the 2000s - the Poles were shot by the Germans in 1941.

Link

Government Corruption

WSJ: The US Department of Justice offered Assange's lawyers the opportunity to mitigate the charges

2024-03-21

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The United States Department of Justice has offered lawyers for journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the opportunity to mitigate charges in exchange for his guilty plea. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal, citing sources.

“The US Department of Justice is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information,” the material says.

It is noted that over the past few months, representatives of the department have held a number of negotiations with Assange’s lawyers, during which the parties discussed the formula for a possible deal.

According to the source, the journalist’s confession can be organized remotely, that is, without extradition from the UK. In addition, the five years spent in prison will be taken into account when sentenced.

As Regnum reported, on February 20 and 21, hearings on Assange’s extradition to the United States were held at the High Court in London; at the moment, no decision has been made. In the United States, the founder of WikiLeaks faces 18 criminal charges, on which he faces a total of up to 175 years in prison. One of the last options to prevent his extradition to the United States may be an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Batumi residents demand an end to the oppression of Muslims in Adigeni

2024-03-11

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Authorities must investigate and stop attacks on Muslims in the Georgian village of Adigeni, protesters near the central mosque of Batumi said.

As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, on March 8, dozens of residents of the village of Adigeni in southern Georgia held a protest to prevent their fellow Muslim villagers from holding Friday prayers. There is no mosque in the village, and Muslims gather for prayer on Fridays in the house of Yusuf Mikeladze, where there is a spiritual center. The former mufti of Georgia demanded that the country's authorities investigate the incident.

Residents of Batumi today held an action of solidarity with Muslims from the village of Adigeni near the central mosque of the city. The protesters said that it is unacceptable to divide people on ethnic and religious grounds, and called on the state to protect freedom of religion, equality and social peace, the Adjara TV channel reported, which was watched by a Caucasian Knot correspondent.

“Unfortunately, the right to conduct prayers freely is being violated. Based on this, the protesters demand that the authorities urgently take measures to prevent this from happening again,” protest participant Mindia Atadze said in a TV report.

“This was a provocation [in Adigeni], and I believe that the relevant departments will investigate this and the situation will be resolved,” another protester Vitaly Nodadze told the channel’s journalists.

Let us recall that in May 2017, the Batumi mayor’s office did not allow the local Muslim community to begin construction of a mosque. The refusal was motivated by the fact that the plot purchased for construction is located in an area of dense residential development. Instead of a mosque, a prayer house was opened on the site. The situation escalated into years of litigation.

Muslims in Georgia are discriminated against in schools, do not receive higher education, and cannot get a job. In addition, they themselves refuse to participate in political and social life, said the authors of a 2018 study.

In 2014, residents of Kobuleti hung a pig’s head on the building in which a Turkish citizen planned to open a madrasah. After this, the Muslim community filed a complaint of discrimination with the Batumi City Court. In July 2015, rallies were held in the city against the activities of a Muslim boarding house. In September 2016, three Georgians were found guilty of discrimination against Muslims. Participants in protests against the operation of a Muslim boarding house received fines.

In 2019, a complaint was filed against Georgia in connection with the harassment of Muslims. The Georgian authorities did not protect the rights of religious minorities and did not help ensure the opening of a boarding house for Muslim students in Kobuleti, according to a complaint sent to the European Court of Human Rights.

The ECHR ruled that the Georgian authorities failed to take adequate action to prevent religious discrimination and violence against the founders of the madrassa in Kobuleti, and awarded compensation to the applicants. However, he refused to recognize the pig's head incident as degrading treatment.

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Europe

Imam who 'called the French flag satanic' deported to North Africa, where the flags are all heavenly

2024-02-27

[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] La Belle France has deported a Tunisian holy man who allegedly called the country's flag satanic.

Mahjoub Mahjoubi, 52, was flown to North Africa just 12 hours after his arrest over sermons said to go against French values.

His deportation last Thursday is seen as a demonstration of tough immigration laws brought in by president Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Mahjoubi had gone viral on social media after apparently referring to La Belle France's three-coloured flag as 'satanic'.

He was arrested and deported despite living in the country since the 1980s and raising five children there.

Unlike them he did not have French citizenship and had his residency permit cancelled.

His deportation last Thursday is seen as a demonstration of tough immigration laws brought in by president Emmanuel Macron

Increasingly, we see people live in this country but who decry and insult long-held British values. Even so, we tolerate their odious presence here.

Yet in La Belle France, a Tunisian holy man is arrested, during a protest, for anti-Semitic rhetoric and abusing the national flag and he is deported 12 hours later, despite having lived in the country for 38 years.

If the French can do it, why can't we?

The imam also referred to 'the Jewish people as the enemy' and called for 'the destruction of Western society', the indictment said.

He also allegedly described the tricolore — without saying he meant the French flag — as of 'no value to Allah'.

Mr Mahjoubi, who runs a construction company, claimed it had been a slip of the tongue, adding: 'I will fight to return to La Belle France, where I have lived for 40 years.'

He said his family, including his youngest child who is in hospital for cancer treatment, depended entirely on him.

'My lawyer is going to take legal action in La Belle France. If the court does not grant me justice, I will appeal, and then I will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights,' he added.

'I did not insult the Jewish community, nor the flag of La Belle France.'

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said that the expulsion was a demonstration that a recently approved immigration law 'makes La Belle France stronger'.

The law toughening migration conditions was seen as part of the government's response to the rise of the far Right in opinion polls.

'Firmness is the rule,' said Mr Darmanin, who slammed what he called a 'radical imam who made unacceptable comments'.

Mr Mahjoubi said his expulsion was an arbitrary decision and Mr Darmanin was using his case to 'create a buzz around the immigration law'.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Supreme Court upheld the sentence of Dagestanis killed in Chechnya

2024-02-21

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Yes, the story is about the innocence of the victims of a shooting in Chechnya

In 2016. Mills of Justice grinding slowly, indeed.

[KavkazUzel] Lawyer Andrei Sabinin, representing the interests of the relatives of eight residents of Dagestan killed in Chechnya in 2016, demanded in a cassation appeal that the verdict in the case of an attempt on the life of security forces be overturned and the case sent to the prosecutor or for a new trial. The Supreme Court of Russia considered that the prosecution provided sufficient evidence of the guilt of the victims and upheld the decision.

As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, on March 10, 2020, the Supreme Court of Chechnya found the murdered eight Dagestanis guilty of encroachment on the lives of law enforcement officers and illegal arms trafficking, but discontinued the criminal case in connection with their death. Lawyer Andrei Sabinin sent an appeal in this case to the Third Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction.

On January 10, 2023, the European Court of Human Rights awarded 27 relatives of those killed 609,000 euros in compensation. On July 5, 2023, it became known that the appeal court refused to reconsider the case for the relatives of the victims. The appeal court did not take into account the decision of the ECHR, which held the authorities responsible for the deaths of eight young Dagestanis in Chechnya, said the relatives of the victims and promised to appeal the verdict to a higher authority.

Residents of Dagestan Gashim Uzdanov, Pakhrudin Makhaev, Islam Magomedov and Shamil Dzhamalutdinov disappeared on September 28, 2016 on the road from Kaspiysk to Makhachkala. On October 4 of the same year, Gusein Guseinov (Gosen Gosenov), Klych Klychev, Shamil Dzhamalutdinov and Kamil Dzhamaludinov disappeared in Khasavyurt. The security forces claimed that these people were preparing a terrorist attack and were killed in a shootout.

According to security forces, the incident occurred on the night of October 9, 2016 in the Gudermes district of Chechnya, when police tried to stop two cars. Fire was opened from them. Eight suspected militants were killed and four policemen were wounded in the shootout, the Chechen Interior Ministry said. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya were presented with state awards. Ramzan Kadyrov previously explained his proposal to reward the police by saying that “they, risking their lives, neutralized especially dangerous bandits.”

The Supreme Court of Russia upheld the verdict of the residents of Dagestan killed in 2016, the criminal case against whom was dropped, follows from the cassation ruling of the Supreme Court of Russia.

In his cassation appeal, lawyer Andrei Sabinin asked to return the case to the prosecutor or for a new trial, since “the involvement of the accused in the commission of the crime has not been proven by the case materials.” He, in particular, pointed out that at the place where the cars with the dead residents of Dagestan were found, 235 cartridges were found, some of them were fired from the machine guns of the victims and witnesses.

A total of 132 cartridges were fired from seven machine guns, the identity of which is unknown, but none of them were fired from the machine guns found in the burned cars. The lawyer in the cassation appeal suggested that the cars of the dead residents of Dagestan were fired at twice.

Seven damages were found on the armored car of the victims - employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the height of which (1440 and 1600 mm) excludes their formation as a result of shooting from the cars of the accused, and the nature of the damage on this car also contradicts the testimony of the victims and witnesses. The fact that an RGD-5 grenade exploded at the scene, as reported by the victims, has not been established. According to expert opinions, no damage or traces of exposure to explosives were found on the victims’ clothes,” the lawyer said.

The court noted that the lawyers' statements contradict the case materials and the experts' conclusions. “The expert explained the fact that no traces of a grenade explosion were found on the cars of the victims by the burnout of the cars, and traces of its impact on the victims’ clothes may not have been preserved due to numerous washes.

In addition, from the testimony of the victims it follows that they had a long time after after the events that took place, the uniform they were confiscated was not the one they were wearing at the scene of the incident,” says the ruling of the Supreme Court of Russia, which was published on its website.

The court explained the presence of cartridges that did not belong to the accused and the security forces as training shootings. “The presence at the scene of the incident of shell casings fired from weapons that did not belong to the witnesses and victims is explained by the fact that previously the site of the clash was used as a training ground for practical training in fire training,” the definition states.

The court upheld the verdict, but did not satisfy the lawyer’s cassation appeal, as follows from the text of the ruling, which was issued on February 13.

Link

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