An illustration by Serhiy Ofitserov, a Ukrainian civilian currently held in Russian captivity. Serhiy began drawing while in prison; here is a view of his prison cell. Courtesy: Hennadiy Ofitserov

By Mykhailo Savva and Oleh Martynenko
KYIV, Jun 16 2026 (IPS)

People often discuss Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine in terms of drones, missiles, shifting front lines, and territorial borders. But this war has another dimension — the human one.

More than 90,000 Ukrainians are considered missing under special circumstances. These are official data. Some of them are currently held captive by Russia — both prisoners of war and civilians. The latter ended up behind bars when Russian forces occupied the territories where they lived.

In March 2026, in an interview with Axios, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump sees no other way to end the war except by handing over the entire Donbas to Russia. But it is important to understand this – it is not just about land but also about the people who live there. And occupation is not peace.

Mykhailo Savva is a Doctor of Political Sciences and an expert at the Center for Civil Liberties.

Oleh Martynenko is a Doctor of Law, a Professor, a criminologist, a veteran of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and also an expert at the Center for Civil Liberties.

‘The Chain of Persecution’

The terrorisation of the civilian population is one of the tactics that Russia is using in its war against Ukraine. Imprisonment has become a punishment for failing to comply with the rules established by the occupying authorities.

At the heart of this system lies what might be called “the chain of persecution.” This pattern is repeated in all occupied regions.

Stage 1: Identification. Local officials, teachers, journalists, volunteers, and ordinary residents who express even the simplest pro-Ukrainian views come under the scrutiny of the occupying authorities. Sometimes, an overheard conversation or a social media post is enough.

Russia has been using this method since 2014: it tested it in occupied Crimea and later expanded it to all occupied territories. For example, in March 2026,  a resident of Alupka was arrested in  Crimea after Russian security forces accused him of “justifying terrorism” based on posts in a messaging app.

The words on this drawing are “Hold on. I’m holding on.” This phrase reflects the emotional state of both those held in captivity and those waiting for their loved ones to return from imprisonment. The illustrator, Serhiy Ofitserov, has been in detention since August 2022. In January 2026, he was sentenced to 17 years on fabricated charges; he turned 50 in May. Courtesy: Hennadiy Ofitserov

Stage 2. Enforced disappearance. Detainees are not officially registered. Their whereabouts are concealed or denied. Relatives are left in the dark. This is done deliberately so that everything that happens next remains beyond their control.

Stage 3. Cruel treatment. Torture is not an exception but a systematic practice. Survivors describe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, and prolonged deprivation of food and water. Sexual violence is used against both men and women.

“They’d take a person out into the hallway, where there were no cameras, where everyone was, let’s say, on their side. No one would object. And there, they’d simply beat the person as much as they saw fit. They used stun guns. And this was with about 10 to 12 people there. If not more. They said, “You’ve had your little taste of life – well, that’s enough – you’ve already experienced what it’s like. You won’t have any more of that,’” recalls Viktoria Andrusha, a teacher whom the occupiers took from her parents’ home on September 25, 2022.

During the search, they found messages on her phone from chatbots about the movement of Russian military equipment. Viktoria was accused of “spying” and taken away: first, she was held in a makeshift detention centre in the boiler room of the neighbouring village of Novy Bykiv, and later in a pre-trial detention centre in the Kursk region of Russia. She was released in October 2023.

Stage 4: The Sham Trial. Detainees are often transported over long distances. Such transfers sever ties with their communities, complicate search efforts, and further deprive people of legal protection.

Next comes the “trial”, which merely mimics legality. Civilians are prosecuted on trumped-up charges — extremism, terrorism, or espionage.

For example, Yana Suvorova, the administrator of the Telegram channel “Melitopol Is Ukraine”, was sentenced to 14 years in a general-regime penal colony after nearly two years of unlawful detention. The verdict was handed down by the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don on October 23, 2025.

Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don, October 23, 2025.

Stage 5: Imprisonment. People are placed in a network of detention facilities where supervision is minimal or nonexistent. Conditions are often inhumane. Contact with families is restricted or completely prohibited. For many, this stage becomes indefinite.

What the world will face if this is not stopped

Each of these stages violates human rights and international norms. But together, they form something more—a system in which crimes against humanity occur sequentially and reinforce one another.

Persecution, unlawful detention, deportation, enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence, and imprisonment are not isolated incidents. They are parts of a single, integrated, and deliberate structure.

The goal of this system is to consolidate control over the occupied territories, create an atmosphere of fear, and force people to submit to imposed rules—legal, administrative, and educational. The message is clear: people are expected to be submissive. In effect, the occupation is turning into a form of criminal governance.

This poses a question to the international community: if such systems are allowed to operate without consequences, what precedent will this set for future conflicts?

Normalising the “chain of persecution” risks cementing these practices as tools of modern warfare. And then this model of control will extend far beyond Ukraine’s borders. Therefore, the issue of accountability concerns more than just Ukraine. The task is complex—but the law is clear.

All that remains is the will to act. If that will is lacking, this practice will become the norm rather than the exception. And the price for this will be paid not only by those currently behind bars, but also by the very integrity of international law.

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Ukrainian Red Cross teams have delivered over 3,300 hot meals to Kyiv residents at support points around the city. Credit: Red Cross

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Feb 24 2026 (IPS)

“We have a saying here in Ukraine now – ‘young people meet at their friends’ funerals rather than at weddings.’ It’s sad, but very true.”

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of her country moves into its fifth year, Iryna Yakova, 29, is looking back at how her life has changed over the past four years.

Speaking from Lviv, the western Ukrainian city where she lives, she tells IPS that her “values and attitude towards life” have changed. “Material things become unimportant when your loved ones or friends are in danger,” she says. She has also developed a keen sense of her national identity and an empathy for the suffering of her fellow Ukrainians.

“During the full-scale invasion, I realised that all of Ukraine is my home. I cry for people who were killed by a missile in Kyiv while they were sleeping at night. Even though I didn’t know them, it hurts me because they are Ukrainians. It also pains me to see children growing up without their parents because their parents are at the front. The war has intensified my sense of empathy and belonging.”

Her mental health has suffered. She says anxiety is ever-present in her life.

But what she returns to often as she answers questions about how her life is today compared to before the war is the loss she, and others, have experienced.

“What I miss most [from my life before the full-scale invasion] are the people who have been killed in the war. I have lost friends, acquaintances, and relatives. Nothing compares to human loss. The hardest thing I have had to deal with during this war is going to the funerals of friends — people you used to go to parties with, travel with, study with,” she says.

The human cost of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been enormous – Ukraine’s government does not officially give figures for military casualties, but it has been estimated they could be up to 600,000 (Russian military casualties are thought to be more than twice that amount).

But the scale of civilian casualties has been huge, too. According to UN bodies, more than 15,000 civilians have been killed and over 41,000 injured in Ukraine since the start of the invasion on February 24, 2022.

Worryingly, as Ukraine marks the fourth anniversary of the start of the war, research suggests there has been a sharp increase in civilian casualties over the last year.

Data from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), released earlier this month, showed civilian casualties in Ukraine increased by 26 percent in 2025 compared with 2024, despite there being a 6 percent drop in the number of injurious explosive weapon incidents recorded nationwide.

In Kyiv, response efforts continue amid attacks on energy infrastructure and severe cold. The Ukrainian Red Cross is supporting warming centres around the clock, providing people with a safe place to warm up, receive assistance, and feel cared for during difficult conditions. Credit: Red Cross

The group said its data showed a worrying shift in the character of the conflict – the average number of civilians killed or injured per incident in Ukraine rose 33 percent over the year, with a total of 2,248 civilians reported killed (an 11 percent rise) and 12,493 injured (a 28 percent rise) by explosive violence.

This suggests that explosive weapons are being used by Russia in Ukraine in ways that generate greater civilian impact, whether through more drone strikes, heavier munitions, specific targeting choices of populated areas, or repeated strikes on urban infrastructure, the group said.

Nearly seven in ten civilian casualties recorded in AOAV data occurred in residential neighbourhoods, up from just over four in ten in 2024.

Niamh Gillen, a researcher at AOAV, told IPS it was impossible to definitively say that Russian forces were deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians, but that “the data speaks for itself.”

“It shows that civilian areas are being attacked, that the attacks are occurring within civilian areas like hospitals, schools, cities, towns. In general, in areas where civilians are heavily concentrated, like cities and towns, villages, anywhere like that, if you’re using an explosive weapon with wide area impacts, then you’re likely to harm more civilians,” she said.

On top of the deaths and destruction Russian attacks have caused, they have also led to massive displacement. It is thought that at least 3.4 million people are internally displaced in the country. This has put massive pressure not just on the displaced themselves, but also on host communities and services.

People’s physical health has deteriorated in such conditions – the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that more than two-thirds of the population have reported a worsening of their health since the start of the invasion.

But the harm caused by these attacks is far from just physical. Mental health professionals in the country, as well as international bodies including the WHO, have warned of a mental health crisis in Ukraine, with possibly up to 10 million people suffering with mental health problems.

IPS spoke to scores of people in cities and towns across Ukraine about how the war had affected their mental health. Many spoke of experiencing anxiety, sometimes permanently to some level, which could be intensified at any moment by the frequent sound of air raid sirens warning of an attack, or for those closer to frontlines, the sounds of explosions and bombings.

“What affects my mental health on a daily basis are the constant nighttime drone and missile attacks. Because of them, it is impossible to relax or get proper rest, as reaching a shelter for safety is essential, even at night,” Mihail*, a teenager who lives in the Kyiv region, told IPS.

The situation for many Ukrainians has acutely worsened this winter. In what has been one of the coldest winters the country has seen for many years, Russian forces have repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, resulting in massive, widespread power outages. Thermal heating facilities have also been destroyed in targeted attacks.

As temperatures have plunged to as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius on some occasions, millions of people have been left freezing in their homes.

Jaime Wah, Deputy Head of Delegation with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Ukraine, said people were suffering desperately in the cold.

“Some nights have been very unbearable. There is no escape from the cold. When you leave your apartment, it’s cold. Sometimes people have been joking that it’s warmer inside a fridge than inside their apartment. I’ve been here for over four years now, and it’s been the worst winter,” she told IPS.

Humanitarian organisations, including the Ukrainian Red Cross, and state emergency services have set up emergency heating points in cities and towns where people can keep warm, recharge devices and get food.

But Wah said while this has become a humanitarian crisis, it is one of just many crises Ukrainians are battling.

“In frontline regions, there are communities that are under evacuation orders, and some communities have essentially had most of their resources cut off. Family ties are quite strained – mental health needs are also immense, not only in the frontline regions but across Ukraine,” she said.

“There are lots of repairs to homes that are needed, not to mention the energy crisis, which is a humanitarian crisis… with no heating and no electricity, just the day-to-day things – just even heating your food becomes a problem. A lot of families are having to spend more time outside their homes, having to spend more money. On top of that, the cost of living has increased. These are some of the real, tangible situations that people in Ukraine are facing now,” she added.

Amid these problems, many Ukrainians admit that they are exhausted after four years of war.

But among the many people IPS spoke to on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the war, there was a widespread, although certainly not universal, determination to not give up.

“I feel a sense of responsibility. I do not have the right to give up, because many people have died so that I could have the chance to live. Of course, there is exhaustion, but, unlike those in the military, a civilian like me has time to rest and reset,” said Iryna.

For many, such resilience is born out of a desire not just for them and their country to survive what they see as Russia’s attempt to destroy them as an independent state and nation, but also a hope that, ultimately, there will be some justice served for what has been done to them.

The Russian military and authorities have repeatedly been accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, breaches of international humanitarian law, as well as genocide, during the invasion of Ukraine.

The sheer volume of alleged crimes – at least 180,000 war crimes have been registered by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General – and the constraints of documenting, investigating and prosecuting during an ongoing conflict mean that bringing those behind them to justice was never expected to be easy. Only over 100 people have been prosecuted in Ukraine so far for crimes during the invasion.

But there are fears that international bodies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for, among others, Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes, could be rendered increasingly toothless in their ability to ever prosecute major figures who ordered such crimes because world leaders, such as US President Donald Trump, are no longer interested in upholding international justice for war crimes.

“I truly hope that the war will end very soon and that all war criminals will be brought to justice. However, what I see happening right now is the opposite: while institutions like the UN are unable to punish Russia, people are starting to forget about its war crimes. Countries are gradually lifting sanctions,” said Mihail.

“For example, Russian athletes are going to be able to take part in the Paralympics this year. As a result, people who committed war crimes just months or years ago can now take part in one of the world’s biggest sporting events. So we need to act – by refusing to normalise aggression, keeping sanctions firm and, most importantly, remembering about war.”

Others, though, are more hopeful.

“There is no doubt among Ukrainians that war criminals can be brought to justice,” Oleh Martynenko, an expert at the Ukrainian NGO Center for Civil Liberties, which documents war crimes, told IPS.

“This is evidenced by the participation of Ukrainians in international missions and courts where war criminals have been convicted. Also, thanks to the European Union, Ukrainians are building their own criminal prosecution systems, which provide for the arrest and imprisonment of Russian war criminals in accordance with UN international standards,” he said.

Regardless of these concerns and the other problems Ukrainians are facing as the full-scale invasion goes into its fifth year, some are looking to the future with a degree of hope.

“I feel a mix of determination, resilience, anger, and hope of victory,” Tetiana, a nurse in the Dnipropetrovsk region, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, told IPS. “Glory to Ukraine!” she added.

*Name changed to protect identity.

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The maternity ward at Kharkiv City Multifunctional Hospital No.25. Credit: UNFPA/Ukraine

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 7 2026 (IPS)

“It was an emergency caesarean section when the life of the pregnant woman was at risk. We did the operation with just flashlights and no water, and against a backdrop of constant explosions,” says Dr Oleksandr Zhelezniakov, Director of the Obstetrics Department at Kharkiv Regional Clinical Hospital, in eastern Ukraine.

He is recalling what he says was “one of the most difficult” medical procedures he has been involved in since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country.

But it was far from the only time he has had to work in extreme conditions while his city is pounded by Russian shelling. In fact, he says, it has become routine for him and his colleagues.

“The current reality is that, given we are in a frontline city, we work like this almost every day, because the alarms never stop and we hear explosions almost every day,” he tells IPS.

“You just do what you have to do to save a life, to save the future. In such moments, you only think about saving a life. We work [in these conditions] because life must always prevail,” he says.

Staff look at the beginnings of construction of a bunkerised facility at Kharkiv City Multifunctional Hospital No. 25. Credit: UNFPA/Ukraine

Zhelezniakov’s hospital has, like many other medical facilities in Ukraine, been repeatedly attacked and damaged since the start of the war. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had documented more than 2,700 attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities since February 24, 2024.

These have included attacks on more than 80 maternal healthcare facilities – with devastating consequences for maternal health, as recently released data has shown.

According to analysis by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released in December, there has been a sharp rise in the risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth in Ukraine as the conflict grinds on.

The agency says repeated strikes on hospitals and the breakdown of essential services are forcing women to give birth in increasingly dangerous conditions, and health workers have warned that a combination of violence, chronic stress, displacement and widespread disruption of maternity care is driving a surge in pregnancy complications and preventable deaths.

Its analysis of national data shows a 37-percent increase in the maternal mortality rate from 2023 to 2024 – the most recent full year of national data available. In 2023, Ukraine recorded 18.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. In 2024, that figure rose to 25.9. The organisation says most of these are preventable deaths, reflecting a health system operating under extreme strain.

It said it had also seen sharp increases in severe pregnancy and childbirth complications. Uterine ruptures — among the most dangerous obstetric emergencies — have risen by 44 per cent. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy have increased by more than 12 per cent, while severe postpartum haemorrhage has risen by nearly 9 per cent – from 2023 to 2024. Delays in accessing care, stress, displacement and disrupted referral pathways are key contributing factors.

Meanwhile, the situation in frontline regions is particularly acute. In Kherson, premature births are almost double the national average, and the region has the highest stillbirth rate in the country, according to UNFPA.

It cites contributing factors including stress, insecurity and difficulties in accessing care, which can lead to preterm labour and premature rupture of membranes.

Another indicator of system strain is the Caesarean section rate. Nationally, the rate now exceeds 28 per cent, already above recommended levels. In frontline regions, the figures are among the highest in Europe: 46 per cent in Kherson and approximately 32 per cent in Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv. These high rates often reflect the need for doctors and women to time deliveries around short windows of relative safety and can additionally show an increased pregnancy complication rate that requires surgical intervention, according to UNFPA officials.

“Attacks [on healthcare, including maternity and neonatal facilities] have had measurable and severe consequences for maternal health. Ukraine is entering another winter under conditions that sharply increase risks for pregnant women, newborns and the health workers who care for them,” Isaac Hurskin, Head of Communications, UNFPA in Ukraine, told IPS.

In early December, a maternity hospital in Kherson, a facility supported by UNFPA, was struck by artillery fire. During the strike, hospital staff moved women in labour and newborns into a bunkered maternity ward—one of many such facilities constructed by the government with help from groups like UNFPA to protect mothers and babies during active hostilities.

While everyone survived the attack and a baby girl was born in the bunker during the shelling, Hurskin said it was “a stark illustration of the conditions under which pregnancy and childbirth are now taking place — conditions no woman or health worker should ever have to face”.

But the devastation wrought by the war in Ukraine is also impacting wider reproductive health.

IPS has spoken to women in Ukraine who have admitted they are avoiding getting pregnant because of concerns about their ability to access maternal healthcare safely but also the conditions in which they may have to raise an infant.

“Women in conflict-affected areas have specific reproductive needs. It is very hard to meet them when a maternity hospital gets bombed on a regular basis, or when energy infrastructure is targeted, limiting the functionality of hospitals and forcing pregnant women to unequipped hospital shelters. A woman considering getting pregnant needs to make a decision based on these factors – whether a hospital is safe, whether she can have access to services, and whether she is able to care for the child afterwards, with no electricity, heating, or water at home,” Uliana Poltavets, International Advocacy and Ukraine Program Coordinator at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), told IPS.

“This is a trend which is being observed,” added Zhelezniakov. “Women fear not only for their lives and the lives of their unborn children during childbirth under shelling but also an uncertain future—a lack of safe housing, work, and normal conditions for raising a child. This is a rational fear in the irrational conditions of war. It is one of the reasons for the sharp decline in the birth rate.”

But he added that conversely, the effects of the war were impacting women’s ability to conceive.

“Chronic stress, high cortisol levels, anxiety, and sleep disorders directly affect hormonal balance and reproductive function. Constant stress also leads to hormonal imbalances (dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis). This causes an increase in cases of secondary infertility, premature ovarian failure, and endometriosis. We are already seeing an increase in the number of pathological menopauses in young women,” he said.

These threats to fertility and maternal health come at a time when Ukraine is facing a demographic crisis.

According to UNFPA, since 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and supported separatist paramilitary movements in eastern Ukraine, the country has lost an estimated 10 million people through displacement, mortality and outward migration. Fertility has fallen to below one child per woman — one of the lowest rates globally.

It says that rising maternal deaths, increasing complications and pervasive uncertainty about the safety of childbirth reinforce one another, with long-term consequences for families, communities and national recovery.

“This is not only a humanitarian emergency. It is a demographic crisis with implications that will extend far beyond the end of hostilities. Protecting maternal health is central to Ukraine’s long-term recovery and future stability,” said Hurskin.

Indeed, examples from other recent conflicts where there has been widescale destruction of healthcare have shown the long-term effects of war on maternal and reproductive healthcare long after they have finished, from problems with rebuilding damaged and destroyed facilities, ongoing displacement, and continued shortages of medical staff just some of the barriers to women being able to access services.

“Look at Syria, for example. The healthcare system is being built back up, there is rebuilding of facilities, things are improving, but it will take decades to get back to where it was before. And maternal healthcare tends to be deprioritised both during and after a conflict – resources tend to go to other areas such as emergency and trauma care. Women in Syria will have problems with accessing maternal healthcare for years and years to come,” an expert on healthcare in war zones working for an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, told IPS.

Zhelezniakov admits that a worsening of the demographic crisis in Ukraine is inevitable.

“The expectation is that it will get worse. The destruction of the maternal health care system only exacerbates existing problems caused by the war: the migration of women and children abroad, loss of life, economic instability, and psychological pressure,” he says.

But he adds that even now measures can be taken to improve maternal healthcare, including strengthening primary care, improving digitalisation (e-health systems), investment in prevention, mental health support programmes, environmental improvement, legislative regulation, and raising awareness of reproductive health to reduce mortality and disability, among others.

Developing international cooperation by creating “medical hubs” in relatively safe regions with the support of international partners, such as UNFPA and WHO, to ensure services, would also help.

“Even during active hostilities, we can and must work to adapt the system,” he says.

He also vows that, no matter what happens, he and other medical staff will not stop their work, recalling the emergency caesarean section performed by flashlight as shells rained down on Kharkiv.

“The birth of a child in such conditions is always a miracle and a powerful motivator to continue working, despite everything,” he says.

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The home of Oksana Serhienko, Merefa village, near Kharkiv, Ukraine. Credit: Akos Stiller

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Aug 6 2025 (IPS)

As Russian forces continue to lay waste to civilian areas of towns and cities across Ukraine, Roma in the country are struggling to access compensation to help them rebuild their damaged homes.

Russia’s relentless bombing has, according to the World Bank, left 13 percent of Ukraine’s housing damaged or destroyed, affecting over 2.5 million households.

Despite this, many Ukrainians, including Roma, have refused to leave their homes in the face of relentless bombing and instead are determined to carry on living in sometimes severely damaged homes to keep their communities alive.

But a new report has shown that many Roma—one of the most vulnerable communities in Ukraine—have been unable to access state property damage compensation: only 4 percent of Roma households surveyed successfully secured compensation for war damage, despite suffering widespread destruction.

This is because requirements for applicants mean the Roma population, whose lives were already precarious long before the war began, are being disproportionately excluded from the scheme, according to the Roma Foundation for Europe (RFE), which was behind the report.

“Many of the issues we identify [in our report] affect non-Roma applicants too—particularly in occupied or frontline areas… [but] what makes the situation more severe for Roma is the combination of these factors with long-standing exclusion and economic precarity,” Neda Korunovska, Vice President for Analytics and Results at RFE, told IPS.

As in many countries in Europe, the Roma community in Ukraine has long faced social exclusion and, many claim, systemic discrimination at societal and institutional levels.

But like the rest of Ukrainian society, they have felt the full effects of Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion over the last three and half years and many have seen their homes damaged or even destroyed.

State compensation for property damage caused by the fighting is available, but experts say there are significant barriers for claimants, some of which are specifically greater for Roma people.

These include requirements such as possession of official property documents and proof of ownership—both sometimes difficult for Roma from communities where informal housing and disputed property rights are not uncommon—as well as a need for a level of digital literacy, which can be a problem for communities where levels of digital exclusion are high, according to RFE.

The group’s analysis, based on cases across four Ukrainian regions, including Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Odessa and Kharkiv, shows that deeply entrenched legal, administrative, and digital hurdles are blocking Roma communities from accessing aid intended for rebuilding homes and lives, the group claims.

Zeljko Jovanovic, RFE president, said that current compensation systems, although designed for order and efficiency, often overlook those with fewer resources but no less damage, and that they lack “…the required flexibility for the complex realities of pre-war informality of homes, displacement, and occupation.”

“Many affected families cannot afford the property registration fees or the costs associated with inheritance procedures. The average damage of 2,816 Euros represents several months of pre-war salary,” he added.

RFE points out that in regions like Odesa, more than half (54 percent) of Roma families lack formal property registration, while in Kryvyi Rih, not a single claim from the surveyed households has been submitted to the state registry due to legal limbo over inheritance, missing paperwork, and lack of resources to navigate the system. Even in Zaporizhzhia, where property records are strongest, low application rates point to deep mistrust in institutions, amplified by experiences of discrimination.

Some Roma contacted for the survey said they had not even bothered to apply for compensation for fear that the government might later come and demand the money back from them.

“This is a reflection of deep institutional mistrust,” said Korunovska. “This mistrust isn’t unfounded—it’s rooted in long-standing patterns of discrimination. In previous research we have undertaken, many Roma respondents have described negative treatment by public officials when seeking housing or services. Surveys consistently show high levels of social distance between Roma and the broader population in Ukraine, which reinforces these feelings of exclusion.”

RFE points out that nationally, around 61% of submitted claims have been approved, but that among Roma, the figure was only 28%—and the vast majority (86%) of people surveyed for its report never submitted claims at all due to systemic barriers.

Liubov Serhienko, 69, has lived in her home in Merefa, near Kharkiv, for the last forty years. But it has suffered severe damage from bombings by Russian forces—during one attack the roof and some ceilings collapsed and one room is now entirely uninhabitable. During a short evacuation from the house, thieves stole her boiler, fridge, and furniture.

Her daughter, Oksana, describes how the family—three generations all living under the same roof, including Oksana and her children—is forced to use blankets to try to retain whatever heat they can in rooms now largely completely exposed to the outside because walls are no longer standing. In winter, snow blows straight into the home, she says.

While neighbors have helped with some repairs, resources are limited and the building remains in disrepair. Relying solely on her pension of 3,000 UAH (around €70) to support the household—the war has taken away all job opportunities for her and members of her family—she says all she wants is the state to help fix the roof and ceiling, as she no longer has the physical strength or finances to do it herself.

In testimony to RFE, which was passed on to IPS, Serhienko said, “What I want most right now is for my family to have a roof over their heads.”

Oksana criticizes the lack of help from the state for them and other Roma in similar situations.

“The government doesn’t care. They’ve done nothing,” she said.

Her mother goes even further, explicitly linking her experience to deliberate discrimination by authorities.

“[Just] Gypsies, they say. As if we’re not people. Maybe they don’t see us as people.”

Andriy Poliakov has stayed in his home in Andriivka in the Kharkiv region since the start of the full-scale invasion, despite the severe damage the dwelling has suffered in Russian attacks.

Windows are broken and there are cracks in the walls, as he has suffered several damages to their house, windows were broken, and there are cracks in the walls, as his house has shifted structurally due to bomb blasts. Poliakov, 45, refuses to leave his home, as he is a sole caregiver for some members of his family, even though he is disabled himself, but he says life is difficult, as they have no gas or other reliable heating source and rely on a makeshift stove he built from stone and bricks.

As with almost all of those surveyed in the RFE report, Poliakov has had no help from the state with any of the damage to his home. One of the reasons so many Roma choose not to even attempt to apply for compensation is the distrust of authorities that is widespread among communities—a distrust Poliakov shares.

“They don’t care. Even though I’m disabled and it’s on paper that I’m disabled… It doesn’t matter to them,” he said.

In the wake of its findings, RFE is calling on the Ukrainian government to integrate urgent reforms into reconstruction planning, including accepting alternative proof of ownership such as utility bills or community testimony, waiving registration fees for war-affected families, and introducing temporary ownership certificates to ensure displaced or undocumented Roma have access to compensation.

RFE says it is hoping to present its findings to government representatives in the coming weeks.

“We hope this data will serve as a constructive basis for reform, especially in light of Ukraine’s broader efforts to align with European values of fairness and accountability,” said Korunovska.

Jovanovic added that “even if full compensation isn’t possible now, temporary support is essential. Roma living in damaged homes are part of Ukraine’s strength and its resistance.”

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The aftermath of a Russian attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv on July 8, 2024. Credit: Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 19 2025 (IPS)

The international community must take action to uphold international humanitarian law, say healthcare and rights advocates, as attacks on healthcare in war zones reached a record high last year.

A new report from the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC) released today (May 19) documented more than 3,600 attacks on doctors and health care workers, hospitals, and clinics in zones of armed conflict in 2024—up 15 percent from 2023 and 62 percent since 2022.

The report’s authors say attacks on healthcare in war zones are not only more numerous but are also more destructive and involve heavier weapons—there was a growing use of explosive weapons in attacks against healthcare, rising from 36 percent of incidents in 2022 to 48 percent in 2023. Perpetrator use of drones against health care facilities drove much of the increase, as their use nearly quadrupled, according to the report.

Meanwhile, more than 900 doctors were killed last year—a rise of 21 percent from 2023—and almost 500 were arrested. More than 100 were kidnapped.

However, the report suggests attacks on healthcare in war zones may be even more widespread, as the collection of data on violence is impeded by insecurity, communications blockages, and the reluctance of some entities to share data on violence.

It also says the rise in attacks has come alongside attempts by perpetrators to limit legal protections for health care and civilians in war.

It highlights how Israel has “sought to dilute legal requirements of precaution and proportionality during conflict” while “campaigns to delegitimize the International Criminal Court (ICC) are underway,” with US president Donald Trump imposing sanctions on ICC staff and their families for having charged Israelis with war crimes, Russia criminalizing cooperation with the ICC or any foreign court seeking to hold Russians to account, and other countries announcing plans to leave the ICC.

The authors say regimes around the world are increasingly flouting international human rights laws, and action must be taken to bring actors behind these attacks to justice or risk a proliferation of military targeting of healthcare.

Christina Wille, Director of Insight Insecurity, an SHCC member, told IPS that the international community has a role to play.

“International humanitarian law, which says that healthcare in conflict must be protected, is not being respected. The international community should come together to ensure that there is accountability for these attacks and the people responsible for them are brought to justice. But if nothing is done and this continues, other states may see the targeting of healthcare as a tactic that they can use in conflict without risk of censure or sanction and will go ahead with it,” Wille said.

While the report documented more countries last year reporting attacks on healthcare, the majority of recorded incidents occurred in a handful of states.

By far the largest number of attacks on health care—more than 1,300—took place in Gaza and the West Bank, but there were also hundreds of attacks in other countries that have seen brutal conflicts, including Ukraine (544), Lebanon (485), Myanmar (308), and Sudan (276), where there has been evidence of systematic targeting of local healthcare facilities and workers by attacking, or both attacking and opposing, forces.

The results of these attacks have been dire, not just in terms of the immediate casualties among healthcare workers and civilians from such strikes but also the knock-on effects on the local civilian population from the destruction of facilities, as in some cases even the most basic of medical services subsequently become unavailable.

The report points out that in Gaza, every hospital has been hit, and many multiple times, with dire impacts on their capacity to address the massive number of traumatic injuries, treatment for chronic and infectious disease, and safe childbirth.

“The health system in Gaza has collapsed. Hospitals and clinics have been completely destroyed, like the of the civilian infrastructure. Today, only 22 out of 36 hospitals are partially functioning, and that can mean only being able to treat a few patients a day. Most of the labs are not running, there is very little material available, the staff is exhausted, and some are still detained,” Simon Tyler, Executive Director of Doctors of the World, the UK chapter of the international human rights organization global Médecins du Monde network, told IPS.

A charity organization working in Gaza, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said that devastating attacks on two hospitals – the European Gaza Hospital (EGH) and Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza—in the last week had worsened the situation.

“The attacks put the EGH out of service and increased the pressure on services at Nasser, as well as destroying parts of the hospital, including the burns unit. EGH was the only hospital in Gaza providing cancer services following the destruction of the Turkish Friendship Hospital in March,” MAP communications manager Max Slaughter told IPS.

Israeli forces have often claimed that hospitals in Gaza were being used as bases for Hamas military operations.

But the UN has said Israeli forces’ attacks on healthcare in Gaza are a war crime.

Doctors in Myanmar who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity for security reasons said the intensified use of drones by government forces fighting rebel groups in the last 18 months “posed grave threats to the provision of humanitarian aid and healthcare services.”

“Deliberate attacks on healthcare facilities, including hospitals, rural health centers, and other related infrastructure, have resulted in severe damage to health facilities, injuries, fatalities, and, in some cases, permanent disabilities among healthcare workers,” one said.

The doctors added that a combination of people being afraid to travel and frequent displacement of healthcare service sites has significantly disrupted access to essential medical care, and drone attacks targeting group activities, such as the provision of humanitarian aid, hinder effective delivery by deterring gatherings of people and creating logistical challenges.

Meanwhile, the risk posed to humanitarian workers by these attacks has reduced the presence of organizations on the ground, diminishing aid availability for affected populations.

In Ukraine, the healthcare system has faced similar widespread destruction.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Health Ministry said that Russian forces had damaged or destroyed more than 2,300 medical infrastructure facilities since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

In some areas near the line, healthcare systems have all but disappeared, with people having to either rely on local aid groups and NGOs for basic care and essential medicines or travel long distances in difficult conditions to facilities that are still functioning.

But it is not hospitals that have come under attack, as Russian troops regularly target ambulances—since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 116 ambulances have been damaged, 274 destroyed, and 80 seized.

But hospitals and clinics in areas far from the fighting have not been spared. In one of the worst attacks on healthcare since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, was hit by a missile on July 8 last year. Two adults were killed and at least 34 people, including nine children, were injured.

Despite initial denials by the Kremlin that its forces had hit the hospital, evidence showed the building had been deliberately struck with a hypersonic missile.

Another problem faced in many conflict zones is how attacks on other infrastructure, such as energy facilities, are impacting healthcare.

Volodymyr Hryshko, Senior Legal Counsel with Ukrainian group Truth Hounds, told IPS more intense Russian targeting of energy infrastructure in 2024 had had a devastating impact on healthcare. In a survey by the group, 92 percent of doctors reported such attacks had experienced power cuts at work, and 66 percent said medical procedures had been affected. The attacks had led to deaths from oxygen deprivation as life support systems failed and staff at some hospitals were forced to work in complete blackouts.

“But the impact is not only immediate risk to patients but also long-term system degradation, staff burnout—reported by over 80 percent—and psychological trauma among both patients and healthcare providers,” he said.

However, despite the death and destruction caused by such attacks, the report shows they are increasing in number.

Wille said the reasons for this are varied and that not all strikes on medical facilities documented may be deliberate.

“Weapons may not be as accurate as believed, and heavy weapons can also have a ‘wide area’ effect—attackers may not have been aiming to hit a hospital, but the impact of the strike still damaged it,” she said.

However, she pointed out that militaries are aware they can gain an advantage in conflict by targeting healthcare systems.

“Health systems are often seen by conflict parties as a system that can help keep the enemy going—treating injuries, helping them recover, and providing a place for them to rest and recuperate.

“Attacks on health systems can also damage morale significantly because health facilities and workers supply the services the population, especially very young and old people, desperately need,” she explained.

But groups working to provide medical and humanitarian help in war zones believe the fact that the regimes behind these attacks are carrying them out with seeming impunity is fueling continued attacks on healthcare in war zones.

“The principle that civilians and aid workers should be protected is being violated time and again. In recent times, we’ve seen clinics bombed, convoys attacked, and our colleagues targeted simply for doing their job in Gaza, the West Bank, and Ukraine. We can no longer rely on or guarantee protection for our staff and services. Civilians, humanitarian workers, health workers, and infrastructure should never be targets. We firmly condemn all attacks on healthcare and call for independent investigation and accountability for the perpetrators,” said Tyler.

“The continued inaction of… some of the most powerful governments in the world in the face of the Israeli authorities’ deadly blockade is indefensible—and could be judged as complicity under international humanitarian law and human rights law. We must hold all responsible for violations accountable to ensure justice for victims, deter further violations, and prevent future escalations,” he added.

MAP’s Slaughter warned that Israel’s “… deliberate blockade of aid and continued attacks on healthcare, all with no real accountability or impunity, are setting a precedent that the international community will permit such atrocities to be committed with no recourse.”

The SHCC report calls for UN states to take action to ensure healthcare is protected in conflicts, including ending impunity by encouraging investigations, data sharing, prosecutions through the International Criminal Court and empowering monitoring bodies.

Wille admitted, though it may be difficult to get a powerful international consensus that would lead to such attacks being stopped, or at least significantly reduced.

“I have little optimism that governments can prevent such attacks in the current climate. When major powers that should uphold the rules-based international order instead question its legitimacy—and even erode the rule of law at home, as in the US—it becomes nearly impossible to build the international consensus needed to enforce those rules,” she said.

“Yet it remains essential to keep calling for these attacks to stop and for perpetrators to be held accountable because even a fractured international order can be repaired, and justice demands persistence,” she added.

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Rescue services help residents in areas of Kyiv hit by Russian attacks, Ukraine, January 2024. Credit: Pavlo Petrov/Collection of war.ukraine.ua

By Catherine Wilson
LONDON, Mar 11 2025 (IPS)

After three years of bloodshed, extraordinary courage and immense sacrifices in resisting Russia’s invasion, the people of Ukraine are in limbo as peace negotiations to end the war, instigated by United States President Donald Trump, remain unpredictable.

Trump announced his intention to broker an end to the Ukraine war in February, but efforts so far have been plagued by disinformation, undiplomatic behavior, and erratic political signals. And Ukraine and its allies have become increasingly concerned that the U.S. administration could defer to Russia’s demands and a weak peace agreement will lead to continuing insecurity.

“The way of diplomatic settlement of the situation chosen by Donald Trump is absolutely amateur and deadly short-sighted,” Andrii Mikheiev, International Lawyer at the International Centre for Ukrainian Victory in Europe, told IPS. “The main priority for Trump is speed, not the long-term outcomes and having declared the peace-through-strength principle, he is deploying strength to the victim, not to the internationally recognized aggressor, because it may lead to faster results.” As such, “Trump undermines all the accomplishments of the Ukrainian army and western efforts provided through military, humanitarian support and sanctions.”

A citizen waves the Ukraine flag soon after the liberation of Kherson from Russian occupation, Ukraine, 13 November 2022. Credit: Serhii Nuzhnenko (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)/Collection of war.ukraine.ua

The way in which peace negotiations are being conducted is also creating “an unfolding crisis of trust, both within the U.S. and toward the U.S. as a reliable partner,” Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Anna Kryvenko told IPS. “One moment we hear promises of unwavering support, and the next we see hesitation, political infighting and an undercurrent of deal-making that suggests Ukraine’s fate is just another bargaining chip in their own internal struggles.”

Ukraine, an Eastern European state of about 38 million people, spans Russia to the east and Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania to the west and south. It became part of the Soviet Union after Soviet troops invaded in 1921 until its declaration of independence in 1991, when the Communist era ended. But Russia, under the expansionist vision of President Vladimir Putin, has never accepted Ukraine’s secession, despite more than 80 percent of Ukrainians supporting EU and NATO membership. In 2014, public frustrations about lack of progress toward these aspirations sparked a popular uprising and ousting of the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Russia responded by seizing the Crimean Peninsula, which was granted to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

Putin perceives the expansion of the EU and NATO toward Russia’s borders as a grave threat and, in 2021, delivered an ultimatum to the latter to cease activities in the region, including Ukraine. After NATO’s refusal, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

A funeral is held for Ukrainian defender Andrii Chyshko in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, May 2024.
Credit: Elena Tita/Collection of war.ukraine.ua

Russian forces are now focused on advancing into the northern and eastern regions of Ukraine, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and have seized about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory. Russia possesses greater military capacity. But Ukraine, under the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelensky, mobilized a massive military and civilian resistance with the assistance of its western allies that has successfully defended the country.

But the sacrifices have been immense. At least 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 12,654 civilians have lost their lives. More than 10 million people have been displaced and 12.7 million need humanitarian assistance, reports the United Nations. Yet while Ukraine is keen for an end to hostilities, “Zelensky and Ukraine want a fair peace, one that would bring security to the embattled country and pay honor to the enormous price that it paid,” claim editors of Kyiv Independent news.

Preliminary meetings were held between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Riyadh on February 18, and between U.S. Special Envoy Keith Kellogg and Ukraine’s President Zelensky in Kyiv on February 20.

A funeral is held for Ukrainian defender Andrii Chyshko in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, May 2024.
Credit: Elena Tita/Collection of war.ukraine.ua

Trump claims he is working “for both Ukraine and Russia,” but many of his public statements have been contradictory. He has labeled Zelensky a dictator without popular support, despite polls showing that his approval rating is 63 percent, and falsely accused him of starting the war. He raised tensions by suggesting that Zelensky would play a negligible part in any peace pact and refused to commit to Ukraine’s security. The support of the U.S. for Russia in the UN General Assembly vote on a resolution on 24 February that condemned Russia’s invasion further cemented European concerns about the fragmenting of the global order. An order based on a post-Second World War alliance of powers upholding democratic values and international law.

European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron, have struck a united front, hosting regional summits in their capitals to accelerate a plan of action to support Ukraine in peace negotiations. “In the face of this dangerous world, remaining a spectator is madness… and the path to peace cannot pass through the abandonment of Ukraine,” Macron announced on March 5. A peace deal which bows to Russian demands would jeopardize Europe’s security and democratic governance. And potentially pave the way for a widening campaign of Russian aggression on the continent.

Ukrainians truly want peace, but not at the cost of giving up Ukraine. The real question for any negotiations is whether Russia is capable of giving up the war. Zelensky also stated this early this month.

“The danger is in allowing the negotiations to become just another episode of elite maneuvering where the same Putin-backed narratives creep in under the guise of ‘compromise.” Kryvenko warned.

Tetiana Zemliakova, co-organizer of the Invisible University for Ukraine at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, told IPS that. “There are two central claims [by Ukraine]: first, there is no other war and second, the aggressor is punished. Based on what we know about Ukrainian society, one would not work without the other,” she said.

Ukraine’s leaders stress that security provisions that protect it from further attack are a key condition for peace and the best instrument is NATO membership, but it’s an option that has been rejected by the U.S. and Russia. Mikheiev stressed that Europe must now escalate its role in defending the continent. Ukraine is very grateful for the military, financial and humanitarian support of the EU and United Kingdom, “but collective Europe must provide real security guarantees for Ukraine, as the eastern border of Europe, by establishing a joint European security system and European army with the involvement of Ukraine… only in this case will the impact be meaningful and send a strong signal to the U.S. and Russia.”

For many Ukrainians, that signal must also be given at the negotiation table. “Anyone designing a peace deal for Ukraine must take into account the risk… If it is so bad, then part of society will find it not just unbearable to tolerate, but bad enough to act. There are enough Ukrainian patriots in the country and allowing Putin to benefit from the peace after all the sacrifices would be absolutely inadmissible,” warned Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, in London on February 21.

A weak agreement that appeases the aggressor and undermines international law would also embolden Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. “Russia’s strategic goal is the political subjugation of Ukraine. Putin will continue until he reaches his goal. Nonetheless, I highly doubt that the next [Russian] government would have the same strategic goal if we removed Putin from the equation,” Zemliakova said.

However, one outcome of Russia’s quest to regain power in Ukraine is that the former Soviet state has been transformed into a united country more resolved in its sovereignty.

“Even after the war ends, there will be irreversible changes in how people see their own history and identity. The war has rewritten narratives about who we are as a country and as individuals…with a stronger sense of unity and purpose,” Kryvenko declared.

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The U.S. efforts to pressure Ukraine to accept significant territorial losses to Russia in exchange for ending the war are expected to increase. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

By Vyacheslav Likhachev
KYIV, Feb 18 2025 (IPS)

U.S. President Donald Trump and his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, have recently expressed confidence and optimism about the prospect of “ending” the war in Ukraine. No details have been made public; however, according to the new administration’s vision, both sides must make concessions to achieve peace. Yet it remains unclear not only what the proposed concessions are but also how exactly the US intends to persuade the parties to compromise.

President Trump has so far limited himself to vague threats to impose tariffs on non-existent Russian imports to the U.S. General Kellogg, for his part, has transparently hinted that Ukraine should abandon its unrealistic desire to liberate its territory occupied by Russia.

It is more likely that the plan is designed to satisfy the ambitions of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, albeit not to the maximalist extent. So, with a Trump administration, he may be closer than ever to getting his way in Ukraine

The U.S. efforts to pressure Ukraine to accept significant territorial losses to Russia in exchange for ending the war are expected to increase. In contrast to the various options discussed at the expert level last year, the new Trump administration has avoided making any commitments to future security guarantees for Ukraine.

Of course, it is still possible that a significant part of the U.S. proposal remains non-public. However, it is more likely that the plan is designed to satisfy the ambitions of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, albeit not to the maximalist extent. So, with a Trump administration, he may be closer than ever to getting his way in Ukraine.

In fact, this proposed deal appears indistinguishable from the Chinese-Brazilian peace plan discussed at various international venues last year. Both approaches would “freeze” the conflict, giving at least implicit recognition of Russia’s occupation of swathes of Ukrainian territory, as well as a permanent foothold from which Russia can launch future aggressions.

It is obvious why China and Russia’s other authoritarian allies would favor this plan. But why has it found support in the White House?

The general logic is as follows: Ukraine is not in a position to liberate all of its territories in the foreseeable future (especially not without very costly and politically fraught U.S. assistance); continuing hostilities only bring further suffering; and military activities, therefore, should stop as soon as possible.

This framework is deeply flawed and far from a fair resolution. However, other options in the current global political configuration are beginning to look simply unrealistic.

If somehow it is possible to add guarantees against further Russian aggression to the “Trump—Kellogg plan,” it will at least look workable. Proponents of this model cite the experience of post-war Germany and North Korea.

Persuading Ukraine to renounce territorial integrity would not be easy, but it is possible. It is hard to imagine what could make the Kremlin stop its troops.

It was only last summer that Vladimir Putin demanded that territories that Russia does not de facto control be handed over to him as a condition for a ceasefire. In its own perverse way, this is logical – like dealing with any common gangster, peace always comes at a cost.

Also, it is more difficult to imagine, however, what security commitments could be strong enough to prevent further Russian aggression and war crimes. More precisely, what guarantees would Western leaders, who are so afraid of escalation and any hint of a direct clash with Russia, agree to accept? But even if we assume that a solution to these dilemmas could be found, we would be required to accept the occupation as irreversible.

Attention should, therefore, be paid to the following aspect, which is usually omitted from the analysis: What is happening in Ukraine’s occupied territories is fundamentally different from the German situation half a century ago.

The Soviet Union did not deny post-war Germany’s right to statehood (no matter how much of a puppet the East German regime was), and Moscow did not deny the German people’s right to exist.

In the case of Ukraine, however, Russia is not simply trying to undermine Ukrainian statehood – it is trying to destroy Ukraine as a nation and as a people. Ukrainians, from the point of view of official Kremlin ideology, are Russians who have forgotten that they are Russian, and Russia must remind them of this fact.

This is playing out in the occupied territories, where Russian forces are implementing a regime of forced passportization, Russification of education, and the systemic persecution of any religious communities except those who were forcibly annexed to the Russian Orthodox Church under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The practice of “Filtration Camps,” through which a significant part of the population of the occupied territories passed, is not without reason so reminiscent of Chinese methods of suppressing, or some would say, destroying the Uyghur minority.

What we are seeing in occupied Ukraine is a general pattern of social re-education on an Orwellian level.

The effectiveness of Russian methods should not be underestimated. Violence, propaganda, and bribery of those ready to imitate loyalty do their job. Ukrainians in the occupied territories are being turned into Russians. Those who think that this can be resolved once peace has been negotiated are either playing dumb or are truly naive.

Governments that are supporting Ukraine should instead focus on military aid as well as on accountability for Russia’s crime of aggression and the atrocities taking place against civilians.

The self-soothing illusion that the China-Brazil plan (or should I say “the Trump-Kellogg” one now?) will bring peace to Ukraine is a destructive one, and those in the West — including the U.S. administration —tempted to support this idea must wake up to the consequences of appeasing Putin.

Should the conflict in Ukraine be “frozen” by such an accord, all it will do is show dictators and autocrats that national sovereignty and the right to self-determination are negotiable. Ultimately, this won’t provide any of us any peace or comfort, but especially not those Ukrainians forced to remain under Russia’s yoke.

Excerpt:

The Government of Romania, a Balkan state to the south of Ukraine, and its humanitarian partners have offered extensive support to Ukrainians fleeing the escalation of the conflict with Russia since 2022. Beneficiaries receive food and humanitarian provisions from the Romania Red Cross. Credit: Filip Scarlat/Romanian Red Cross

By Catherine Wilson
BUCHAREST, Romania , Dec 23 2024 (IPS)

The days are short with bitterly cold rain in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, the largest Balkan country located south of the Ukraine. Over the border, temperatures in Kyiv will plummet to a daily average of zero in December as the Ukraine war grinds on.

Wars are bringing suffering and heightened insecurity to millions around the world, and food is not only a casualty of bombing and devastation but also being used as a weapon against civilians by warring parties.

Conflict is now the greatest driver of major food crises in the world, says the World Food Programme, and the situation is acute in the Ukraine, which continues to defend itself against Russian invasion, and Gaza, still under siege by Israel. And the threat of severe hunger for civilians caught in hostilities will only rise as winter sets in during the coming months.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an escalation of tensions since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, triggered massive human displacement, with many fleeing into neighbouring countries. By 2023, Romania, with a population of 19 million, had witnessed more than 3 million Ukrainians arrive at its border, the vast majority being women and children.

“The bombs fell down near my house. I woke up; my 13-year-old daughter woke up. I got up my son and said, ‘You have five minutes; grab your things, and we are going to the metro station.’ We found a car to pick us up with the children and to the house of my sister, her newborn baby, and two more children of her husband. It was crazy. Everywhere there were queues. You couldn’t get money from the ATM, you couldn’t get fuel—nothing.” Iryna Sobol, a 45-year-old Ukrainian who fled her Kyiv home in 2022 and now resides in Bucharest, recounted to IPS. And, as the conflict spread, food prices rose.

As with other basic needs, food systems face collapse when military attacks destroy agricultural land and crops, forcing farmers to flee and damaging the critical infrastructure for transporting, storing, and selling food. Since 2022, the agricultural industry in the Ukraine has been hit with losses of USD 80 billion. And as people under siege face increasingly scarce food supplies, prices rise for what is available, making basic sustenance an even greater struggle for those who have lost their income.

Since mid-year, Russian forces have made aggressive advances into the east and Donetsk region of Ukraine, where more than 137,000 people have been forced to flee since August.

Ukraine refugees receive food provisions from the Romania Red Cross in Bucharest. Credit: Filip Scarlat/Romanian Red Cross

“The humanitarian situation is further exacerbated now that winter has set in. Russia’s targeted destruction of critical energy infrastructure has led to massive losses in Ukraine’s energy generation capacity, and the attacks continue, disrupting electricity, heating, and water supply and already affecting millions of households,” Elisabeth Haslund, spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the Ukraine, told IPS. Food is also a critical need, with 7.3 million Ukrainians, or 20 percent of the population, facing food insecurity this year, reports the United Nations.

In Bucharest, Andrei Scarlat, Manager of the Romanian Red Cross Humanity Concept Store, said he had witnessed a recent increase of newly arrived Ukrainian refugees registering for humanitarian supplies, such as flour, sugar, rice, canned foods, and hygiene products.

The Romanian Red Cross, which has assisted more than 1.3 million displaced Ukrainians with food, water, shelter, and health, is one of many humanitarian organizations that are partnered with the Romanian government in its acclaimed state response to the Ukraine refugee crisis. Within days of its neighbour coming under attack, the Balkan state coordinated an emergency operation at border crossings with the provision of shelter, food, and medical care to those fleeing. And it offers temporary protection to refugees with access to services such as health, education, housing, and employment.

An Action Against Hunger aid worker measures a baby girl’s arm using a MUAC band to assess nutritional health in Gaza, August 2024. Credit: Action Against Hunger

But, more than 2,000 kilometres to the southeast, conflict in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza has already brought it to the brink of famine. In the tiny 365-square-kilometer territory, sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea to the east and Israel to the west, 2.23 million Palestinians have endured years of suffering under an Israeli blockade. Now the military onslaught by the Israeli Defence Force in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack inside Israeli territory on 7 October last year, which left 1,200 Israelis dead, has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians.

And the destruction of basic infrastructure for habitation, including water, sanitation, health and medical facilities, and food systems, with the elimination of 70 percent of Gaza’s crops, has created unbearable living conditions for the more than 90 percent of Gazans who are displaced. In October, the World Food Programme warned that famine was imminent.

“The Gaza Strip is currently in a human-made famine. We are long past the point of ‘imminent famine.’ The first child was killed by Israeli-imposed famine many months ago and many more since,” Yasmeen El-Hasan of the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Ramallah, Palestine, told IPS. “The use of food and essential resources as weapons of war is a hallmark of Israeli systematic violence against Palestinians… aimed at starving Palestinians into elimination.”

In Northern Gaza, the focus of Israeli air and ground assaults over the past two months, more than 65,000 people are barely surviving in overcrowded tent shelters with no water and sanitation. The dire lack of food is causing severe malnutrition, especially in mothers and children.

And since October, Israeli border authorities have blocked and delayed food and humanitarian deliveries into the territory through the Kerem Shalom crossing. Consequently, in October only 5,000 metric tons of food succeeded in reaching Gaza, or one fifth of what was required, claims the World Food Programme.

“There has been no significant easing of restrictions on the entry of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza… and we were only able to deliver aid to half as many distribution points in North Gaza over the past month,” the spokesperson for Action Against Hunger, a humanitarian organization addressing hunger and malnutrition around the world, told IPS.

El-Hasan added that “the minimal food that is available is not accessible. The food consumer price index has increased 312 percent; aid that does enter is concentrated in small areas, and the Israeli occupation forces often attack Palestinians as they seek aid.”

A child in northern Gaza drinks water provided by Action Against Hunger to support displaced communities, October 2024. Credit: Action Against Hunger

A scene of destruction in northern Gaza shows demolished buildings and scattered debris, with a lone tree standing amidst the ruins, October 2024. Credit: Action Against Hunger

As the winter months unfold, the people of Gaza will face catastrophic conditions, with 90 percent of Gazans likely to experience severe hunger. “Cold and rainy weather is already affecting those in makeshift shelters, which are often constructed from tarpaulins, blankets, and cardboard, offering little protection. Children and the elderly are particularly at risk,” said Action Against Hunger.

On 12 December, the UN General Assembly voted for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. But the survival of Gazans during the coming months will depend on the untrammelled passage of humanitarian aid. “There must be an immediate reopening of all border crossings, a substantial increase in the influx of aid into Gaza, and a guarantee of safe, unobstructed access for humanitarian organizations to deliver aid to all areas,” the spokesperson for Action Against Hunger continued. El-Hasan added that “the international community must also abide by their legal obligations and hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, including the use of starvation as a weapon of war.”

In the Ukraine, the UNHCR and its humanitarian partners are responding to those who continue to flee fighting and need support as weather conditions deteriorate. But, as in Gaza, only an end to the conflict will provide the conditions for reconstructing Ukraine’s agricultural industry and food production, a goal that will take years and an investment of at least USD 56 billion.

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A student participates in an art therapy session at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. In partnership with UNICEF Ukraine and Caritas Ukraine, the school offers vital mental health and psychosocial support, alongside essential learning materials, helping children recover from trauma and promoting social cohesion between host communities and displaced children and families. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
KYIV Kyiv & NAIROBI, Sep 13 2024 (IPS)

In a major escalation of a conflict that started in 2014 and which is the largest in Europe since World War II, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, thousands of Ukrainian civilians—many of them women and children—have lost their lives. Countless others have been displaced from their homes, clinging to what remains of the education system as their communities disintegrate.

On a high-level UN mission to Ukraine this week, Education Cannot Wait (ECW)—the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations—met with children affected by the war and local partners. The mission took stock of the impact of the conflict on approximately 4 million children across Ukraine whose schooling has been severely disrupted.

“We visited a school in Kyiv, where classes continue despite the constant threat of attack. Alarms frequently signal imminent danger. The school has a bomb shelter for 500 children, but there are over 1,000 students enrolled. To ensure everyone has access to the shelter when needed, primary school children attend in the morning, and secondary school children attend in the afternoon,” Yasmine Sherif, ECW’s Executive Director, told IPS.

“We also spoke with psychologists and parents, including single mothers displaced from the east, north, and south of the country. They’ve come to Kyiv, leaving behind the fathers and grandparents of their children. We were able to see how a strong focus on mental health and social services is helping children and families cope with these challenges, with excellent collaboration between teachers, psychologists, parents, and the broader community. The Ministry of Education is working tirelessly to ensure safe   learning environments for all children,” Sherif added.

Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director and children participate in an art therapy session at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. In partnership with UNICEF Ukraine and Caritas Ukraine, the school offers vital mental health and psychosocial support, alongside essential learning materials, helping children recover from trauma and promoting social cohesion between host communities and displaced children and families. Credit: ECW

According to Sherif, children in Ukraine continue their education in core subjects like reading and mathematics, alongside arts education, even under these difficult circumstances. ECW was among the first to invest in education in Ukraine, starting in 2017, with an initial emergency response supporting children along the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

Since then, ECW has provided USD 27 million in funding to support quality, holistic education programmes in Ukraine since 2017. As conflict continues to escalate and education needs multiply, ECW has received much-needed donations from additional donors, including Germany and Japan, to support education in Ukraine.

At last year’s Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference, the Global Business Coalition for Education pledged to mobilize USD 50 million from the business community to support ECW’s four-year strategic plan. In partnership with GBCE, TheirWorld, HP and Microsoft, USD 39 million in partnership and device donation for ECW has already been mobilized, and over 70,000 laptops have been shared with schools, teachers and other people in need, both inside Ukraine and in neighboring countries.

This is a huge investment in expanding educational opportunities for children who are unable to access in-person learning. Delivered by a consortium of partners including Finn Church Aid, the Kyiv School of Economics, Save the Children and UNICEF—in coordination with Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science—ECW’s education programmes have thus far reached more than 360,000 children, about 65 percent of whom are girls.

Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director, mission delegation, school staff, children and their parents during a visit to an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: ECW

Against this backdrop, Munir Mammadzade, UNICEF Representative to Ukraine, emphasized that the “support from Education Cannot Wait is critical for children, their parents and teachers who are doing everything they can to keep classrooms open and to continue in-person learning despite the impact of the war across the country.”

However, more funding is urgently needed. Over 1,300 educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed, and nearly 600,000 children remain unable to access in-person learning since the start of the school year in early September, due to ongoing deadly and destructive fighting, attacks and displacement.

“This atrocious war must stop now! For as long as the children, adolescents and teachers in Ukraine suffer this unfathomable horror, schools must be protected from attacks. As a global community, we must rise to the challenge before us to ensure that every girl and every boy in Ukraine impacted by this brutal war and the refugees have access to the safety, hope and opportunity that only a quality education can provide,” Sherif said.

ECW and its strategic partners are calling for USD 600 million in additional funding from private and public donors to deliver on the global targets outlined in the Fund’s 2023-2026 Strategic Plan. This funding would provide 20 million children in crisis-impacted countries around the globe with safe, inclusive, and quality education, and the hope for a better tomorrow.

A young learner at an ECW-supported school in Kyiv, Ukraine, welcomes Education Cannot Wait’s high-level mission delegation. Credit: ECW

According to Sherif, ECW’s investment in education is an investment in recovery, peace, security, and justice for Ukraine and beyond. It is an investment in the vast potential of future generations. Earlier this year, ECW announced an USD 18 million allocation to roll out a Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Ukraine. The investment aims to raise an additional USD 17 million to reach over 150,000 children across 10 of the country’s most affected areas.

The programme aims to improve learning outcomes in safer, more accessible environments while expanding digital learning options as an alternative. There is also a strong emphasis on mental health, psychosocial support, and targeted assistance for girls and children with disabilities.

The UN high-level mission concluded at the Fourth Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, where ECW called on world leaders to commit to protecting education from attack and to scale up funding to provide life-saving access to safe education, both in-person and through remote learning opportunities, when necessary, as well as catch-up classes for children who have fallen behind.

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A health worker in Gaza continues with an inoculation campaign. The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition has called for international action to end violence against or obstruction of health care in conflicts. Credit: UNWRA/Twitter

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 22 2024 (IPS)

Governments and international agencies must do more to end impunity for violence against healthcare, campaigners have urged, as a new report shows that attacks on healthcare during conflicts reached a new high last year.

The report from the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC), an umbrella organisation of health and human rights groups, documented 2,562 incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care in conflicts across 30 countries—over 500 more than in 2022.

The group pointed out that the 25 percent rise on the previous year came as tens of millions of people in conflict-affected countries were already suffering from war, massive displacement, and staggering deprivation of food and other basic needs.

But beyond the inevitable suffering such violence against healthcare causes, the report’s authors highlighted that one consistent feature of the attacks was the continued impunity for those perpetrating them.

They say that despite repeated commitments, governments have failed to reform their military practices, cease arms transfers to perpetrators, and bring those responsible for crimes to justice.

And they have now called on national leaders and heads of international bodies, including UN agencies, to take strong action to ensure violence against healthcare is ended.

“There has to be a change in how we ensure accountability for violations of international humanitarian law when the protection of health care and health workers is not respected because current mechanisms do not provide adequate protection. We need to ask some hard questions,” Christina Wille, Director of the Insecurity Insight humanitarian association, who helped produce the report, told IPS.

Attacks on healthcare have become a prominent feature of recent conflicts—the SHCC report states that the rise in attacks in 2023 was in part a product of intense and persistent violence against health care in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), Myanmar, Sudan, and Ukraine.

And human rights groups have increasingly drawn attention to the deliberate targeting of healthcare facilities and medical staff by attacking forces.

Hospitals and other medical facilities are designated as protected civilian objects under international humanitarian law and it is illegal to attack them or obstruct their provision of care. Ambulances also have the same status. This designation does not apply if the hospital or facility is used by combatants for purposes deemed harmful to an enemy, but even then, an attacking force must give warning of its attack and allow for an evacuation.

But in many conflicts, forces seem to be increasingly ignoring this.

The SHCC report highlights that right from the start of two new wars in 2023, in Sudan and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, warring parties killed health workers, attacked facilities, and destroyed health care systems. Meanwhile, attacks on health care in Myanmar and Ukraine continued unabated, in each case exceeding 1,000 since the start of the conflicts in 2021 and 2022, respectively, while in many other chronic conflicts, fighting forces continued to kidnap and kill health workers and loot health facilities.

At the same time, the report identified a disturbing new trend of combatants violently entering hospitals or occupying them as sites from which to conduct military operations, leading to injuries to and the deaths of patients and staff.

SHCC Chair Len Rubenstein said that in many conflicts, the conduct of combatants revealed “open contempt for their duty to protect civilians and health care under international humanitarian law (IHL)” and specifically highlighted how Israel, “while purporting to abide by IHL, promoted a view of its obligations that, if accepted, would undermine the fundamental protections that IHL puts in place for civilians and health care in war.”

“The report highlighted a lot of disturbing trends—there seemed to be no restraint on attacking hospitals right from the start of conflicts, we also saw for instance, a rise in hospitals being taken for military use, and it was also very disturbing to see children’s medical facilities being deliberately targeted,” he told IPS.

“These trends highlight the need for leadership [on increasing accountability]. Accountability for attacks on healthcare is not a silver bullet—accountability for murder does not stop all murders, for instance – but no consequences are a guarantee of further violations,” he added.

Christian de Vos, Director of Research and Investigations at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which is a member of the SHCC, suggested a lack of accountability for attacks on healthcare in previous conflicts had emboldened certain forces to do the same in new wars.

“This goes back to the historical evolution of attacks on healthcare and the consequences of impunity. The patterns of attacks on healthcare that Russian forces, together with the Syrian government, perpetrated in the Syria conflict have a lot of links to how Russia has fought its full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” he told IPS.

In its report, the SHCC has made a number of recommendations to help end attacks on healthcare and hold those behind them accountable.

These include UN and national authorities and the International Criminal Court (ICC) taking new measures to end impunity, strengthening prevention of conflicts, improving data collection on attacks at global and national levels, bolstering global, regional, and domestic leadership—especially through the WHO and UN—on protecting healthcare, and supporting and safeguarding health workers.

Some of these plans would also see a key role played by local actors, including NGOs and other groups active in healthcare and human rights.

SHCC admits, though, that some of these are likely to be hard to implement.

“Our recommendations are aspirational and we accept that their implementation could be difficult in the context of the inherent difficulties of conflicts, but there are some areas where we think definite change could be achieved,” said Wille.

She explained that developing capacity for local health programmes to be more security and acceptance conscious could be strengthened.

“There is a need for training for the healthcare sector on how to understand, approach, and manage security and risk in conflict. Such support should be given to those responsible for overseeing plans for healthcare provision in conflicts so that services continue to be provided but with as much safety as possible,” she said.

She added that governments could also make a real difference by pushing to ensure ‘deconfliction’—the process by which a health agency announces to all parties who they are, where they work and what they are doing, and how it can be recognized and which in return receive assurances that they will not be targeted is adhered to by all sides in a conflict.

“Such mechanisms exist, however, at the moment, far too often they are not respected or applied in several conflicts. Governments can insist on the implementation of de-confliction, and this would also be a great help,” she said.

However, if significant change is to be made in ensuring accountability for attacks on healthcare, experts agree that it can only be done with strong political commitment on the issue.

“We have seen over the years that there hasn’t been this commitment and what we need is a strong commitment that will go beyond just words and statements condemning these attacks to real concrete action,” Rubenstein said.

He stressed that the massive, targeted destruction of healthcare seen in some recent conflicts had changed the wider political perception of the effects of such attacks.

“What has changed is the knowledge of the magnitude of these attacks and the enormous suffering they bring, not just directly at the time of the attacks but long after as well. This knowledge can stimulate the kind of leadership we need on this,” he said.

De Vos said that especially the Israel-Hamas war and the prominence of attacks on healthcare in that conflict had “shown clearly the devastation and suffering such attacks cause.”

“This might bring about the change [in will to ensure accountability] that we would like to see,” he said.

But while there may be optimism among experts around the chance for such change, they are less positive about the prospects for any reduction in the volume of attacks on healthcare in the immediate future.

“Unfortunately, the trajectory is not a positive one—there’s no ceasefire in Gaza, the war continues in Ukraine, and conflict is ongoing in the places where we have seen the most of these attacks on healthcare. It’s a pretty grim state,” said De Vos.

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Oksen Lisovyi, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine; Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait; and Yevhen Kudriavets, First Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, address a briefing on funding for Ukrainian education. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2024 (IPS)

Education Cannot Wait and the government of Ukraine launch new multi-year program to support education for children impacted by the conflict in Ukraine.

At the UN Headquarters in New York, Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science, Oksen Lisovyi, and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director Yasmine Sherif announced the launch of a multi-year resilience program that will take effect from March 2024 until February 2026. Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the global fund for emergencies and protracted crises within the UN – is providing a USD 18 million grant to roll out the programme and called on donors to mobilize an additional USD 17 million to fully fund it. The program is building on ECW’s previous investments in Ukraine, which totaled USD 6.5 million and have already reached over 360,000 children and youth with quality education support.

According to Sherif, the new multi-year program was developed “in close coordination” with the Ministry of Education and members of civil society in Ukraine. Teachers and students in areas affected by the conflict in the north, east and south of the country will have access to mental health and psychosocial support. The program will also renovate and strengthen the damaged infrastructure. “We always speak about the humanitarian-development nexus. This is it. Addressing immediate needs while also working with the Government to ensure long-term investment in the education system,” said Sherif.

Lisovyi stated that the program will support the government’s ongoing plans to reform its education system while also addressing the challenges that have emerged due to the conflict.

“We work toward fundamentally changing the education system,” he said. “Strengthen the agencies of students, providing them with more freedom and instruments for self-development.”

“Now we concentrate on our efforts to provide the usual normal education for each kid. Giving access to safe education of high quality despite the war,” said Lisovyi. This will include building shelters in schools, a new prerequisite for schools to work offline. It’s been estimated that during this conflict, children spent up to 5,000 hours in underground shelters.

More than 3500 educational institutions have been damaged since the conflict between Ukraine and Russia began in February 2022. Families and children that have been displaced by the conflict struggle to access a proper, comprehensive education. More than 900,000 children are currently receiving a blended education of in-person classes and online learning. As of September 2023, only half of the functioning schools have the capacity to provide face-to-face learning. The other alternative, online learning, has not been accessible to all students, especially those who have been displaced due to the conflict. Under this program, there will be efforts to expand access to digital education, especially for those children left behind.

In collaboration with the government of Ukraine and national organizations, the multi-year resilience program’s investment will be delivered by Finn Church Aid, an NGO whose work in Ukraine centers on education support through providing temporary learning spaces and psychosocial support, and the Kyiv School of Economics Institute, a think tank that has consulted on recommendations for Ukraine’s post-war economic recovery. It is expected that the program will reach 41,000 girls and boys, as well as indirectly benefit 150,000 children through renovated learning spaces in the eastern and southern states.

The program is also intended to invest considerably in teachers, including the estimated 43,000 teachers that have been displaced by the conflict. The programme will work to ensure safe and accessible physical learning environments, improve learning outcomes by training teachers, expand digital learning initiatives, and provide alternative education opportunities and vocational training. Mental health and psychosocial support will also be provided.

Lisovyi stated that vocational training is one of the biggest priorities in his government’s education reform. The expected outcome of this is that at least 12,000 teachers will be supported with professional development and well-being support.

Investing in education reform will go toward building a stronger, more resilient state, said Lisovyi. “The role of education here is crucial, so our efforts are currently focused on restoring access to education for every child. I am incredibly grateful to Education Cannot Wait and all the partners for their shared vision and support.”

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Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown. Credit: UN

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 1 2023 (IPS)

Civilian infrastructure is under attack in cities across Ukraine, and the need for long-term aid grows. However, the United Nations’ 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for Ukraine is only 30 percent funded, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, told journalists.

The response plan for the year calls for USD 3.9 billion to continue frontline deliveries several times a week, prepare Ukraine for winter, and support long-term recovery and rebuilding in the country. Brown said that funding meant to help at least 11 million Ukrainians has been inadequate due to unexpected demands.

Access to water for drinking and irrigation has become a key issue following the destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam. Top-floor residents have watched their downstairs neighbors evacuate flooded apartments. Several thousand people have been displaced due to water damage. Brown said that while the situation has been managed in the short term, the UN team continues searching for long-term solutions to water contamination.

Brown highlighted that the need for trauma support is growing at a fast pace. While it is too early to assess the long-term psychological effects of the current war, a 2019 study found a high prevalence of PTSD and depression in Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

The Black Sea city of Odesa has been attacked by Russia several times in the past weeks. The city is an important hub for the UN and the humanitarian community because it acts as a staging area for frontline responses, Brown explained. She recently traveled there to check on UN staff.

In Odesa, Brown visited the historical Orthodox cathedral. The Transfiguration Cathedral is in the center of a protected part of the city and within 700 meters of where most UN staff live and work. Brown learned that neighboring civilians had taken shelter in a bunker in the cathedral when an air siren went off, not knowing it would be hit. There was damage throughout the building, with one wing completely destroyed. A team of UNESCO experts has been deployed to further assess the condition of the cathedral. Brown said she was heartened to see community members gather to clean up broken glass.

“What I saw in Odesa last week with my own eyes is being repeated across many big cities in Ukraine,” Brown said.

According to Brown, big cities with a UN presence nearby are regularly targeted. Whole neighborhood blocks have been struck, and entire buildings have come down. Attacks on infrastructure like critical ports have hurt civilian workers, Ukrainian farmers, and vulnerable people in the Global South who rely on grain from the region. Access to resources has been a particular concern since Russia’s termination of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The UN continues to advocate for access to Russian-occupied territories for the purpose of providing aid. Brown said they have been denied due to “security concerns.”

“The humanitarian situation hasn’t changed… the only thing that’s going to relieve that situation is if the war stops,” Brown said.

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Ukraine's Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, holds up a glittery diary with testimony of the impact of the war on children. Credit: Abigail Van Neely/IPS

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2023 (IPS)

The Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, held up a child’s glittery, crimson-red diary as he addressed the Member States at the 88th plenary meeting of the General Assembly on Tuesday.

The regularly scheduled event was set to discuss “the situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.” Many speakers took the opportunity to address the recent termination of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and the humanitarian toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Kuleba centered his remarks on an emotional appeal to protect Ukraine’s 7.9 million children the Russian invasion had “deprived” of their normal lives. He shared a series of diary entries he said were written by Ukrainian children.

One eight-year-old boy in blockaded Mariopole writes bluntly about the deaths of his family members. A 13-year-old girl, who has been living in occupied territories for four months, writes about her fear of leaving the house. “Mom tells us not to go for a walk in places where there are many people because many girls get raped,” Kuleba read.

“There are thousands of children like this who go through the same suffering,” Kuleba said as he held the diary in the air, where it sparkled.

Throughout the ongoing High-Level Political Forum at the United Nations, the war in Ukraine has been repeatedly cited as one reason the world is failing to make progress on the sustainable development goals set for 2030.

“This war is intrinsically linked to our sustainable development agenda and the sustainable development goals,” the President of the General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi, said.

Goal ten addresses the dire support needed for refugees. An update on the sustainable development goals released by the UN last week reports that the number of global refugees has hit a record high of 34.6 million. 41% of these refugees were children.

According to Kuleba, only 383 of Ukraine’s 19,474 illegally transferred children have been reunited with their families. He called for a joint demand that Russia “immediately provide the list of children from Ukraine and grant access to them for international human rights and monitoring missions.” Kuleba also encouraged the development of new international instruments to punish the taking of civilians as hostages.

He concluded with a commitment to ending the war through Ukrainian victory: “This war needs to be won. Unfortunately, on the battlefield, and at a high cost so that the aggressor drops plans…”

Péter Szijjártó, the Hungarian minister of Foreign Affairs, focused on achieving peace through diplomacy rather than battle to mitigate skyrocketing inflation, food scarcity, and energy demands felt by people around the world—additional threats to the sustainable development goals.

Szijjártó suggested that grain from Russia and Ukraine be transported through Central Europe, where countries like Hungary would help prevent food shortages. This would offer an alternative to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed for the transportation of goods across the Black Sea to Turkey until its termination by Russia yesterday.

“We do not only keep the opportunity open for transiting Ukrainian grain through Central Europe, we have invested in huge infrastructural development in Hungary to increase the volume of grain from Ukraine [to reach other ports] where they can be shipped to Africa and Middle East countries where this grain is badly needed,” Szijjártó said.

Dmitry A Polyanskiy for the Russian Federation, meanwhile, described injustices experienced by Russian-speaking civilians in Crimea under Ukrainian governance. He called leadership in Kyiv a “puppet regime” of the West and criticized lies about Russia in “contemporary Western society.”

“Colleagues in developing countries have a clear understanding of what is taking place,” the representative said, referring to what he said was a “colonial tradition of pitting countries against each other.”

Kőrösi expressed disappointment at the Security Council’s failure to adopt any resolutions regarding the war in Ukraine, noting the General Assembly’s passage of six resolutions in support of Ukraine. He condemned ecological warfare, the targeting of civilian infrastructure, and the “consistent and systematic violations of international law.”

“This war constitutes a serious threat that risks jeopardizing the prospects for a sustainable future for humanity and the planet,” Kőrösi said.

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The Black Sea Grain Initiative was halted by Russia. Its impact is likely to be felt on food markets across the globe. Credit: Duncan Moore/UNODC

By Oluwafemi Olaniyan and Abigail Van Neely
ABUJA & UNITED NATIONS, Jul 18 2023 (IPS)

As Russia paused the renewal of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reacted with regret saying the global south would be badly affected.

A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, on Monday, July 18, said the agreement was “suspended.”

“As soon as the Russian part is fulfilled, the Russian side will immediately return to the implementation of that deal,” Peskov said. 

The Russian Federation’s decision to terminate the Black Sea Grain Initiative will “strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” Guterres said in reaction.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary-general, acknowledged that Ukraine and Russia produce an enormous number of products needed on the global food market. The impact of the deal’s termination was immediate, with wheat prices increasing 3 percent when the news broke.

Guterres emphasized that the Black Sea Grain Initiative and Memorandum of Understanding on facilitating exports of Russian food products and fertilizers “have been a lifeline for global food security and a beacon of hope in a troubled world.”

“Ultimately, participation in these agreements is a choice,” Guterres said. “But struggling people everywhere and developing countries don’t have a choice. Hundreds of millions of people face hunger, and consumers are confronting a global cost-of-living crisis. They will pay the price.”

Dujarric said Guterres was disappointed his proposals in a letter to President Putin went “unheeded.”

“The letter that [Gutteres] sent to President Putin was a very clear illustration of his determination to keep this alive for the benefit of people in the global south for the benefit of vulnerable people everywhere, for whom an increase in food prices has a direct impact – and it includes people in rich countries and in poor countries,” Dujarric said.

According to Dujarric, Guterres did not receive a formal response to his letter.

The Joint Coordination Centre that facilitates the implementation of the initiative remains available for discussions in Istanbul. A final vessel is being inspected.

In a diplomatic flurry, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week discussed the initiative with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But according to reports, Russia said it could not continue with the initiative because promises, which include the export of fertilizer and, according to Reuters, connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s agricultural bank to the international payment system SWIFT, which enables payments to be made, had not been fulfilled.

Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of grain. Before the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukrain supplied around 45 million tonnes of grain to the world market annually. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 16 African countries rely strongly on the agricultural produce of Russia and Ukraine. The invasion triggered a shortage of at least 30 million tonnes of food globally, impacting countries like the Horn of Africa, where climate change, conflict, and bad governance have sparked a food security crisis affecting about 50 million people.

Wealthier Countries Main Beneficiary of Exports

However, data on the initiative indicates that China and Spain were the two biggest beneficiaries of the grain, although the World Food Programme (WFP) said the initiative was crucial to its support of humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

A data set of countries that benefitted from the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Credit: UN

Of the 32.9 million tons exported, 43 percent went to developed countries and 57 to developing countries. Exports by World Bank categories show that 44 percent went to high-income countries. Upper-middle-income countries received 37 percent, lower-middle-income countries 17 percent, and low-income countries just 3 percent.

World Food Programme (WFP) Director David Beasley said: “Africa is very fragile right now. Fifty million people (are) knocking on famine’s door.” He warned that if Moscow should shut down or blockade the ports, there would be a catastrophe, notably in Africa, where millions of people are facing famine.

“Food prices, fuel costs, debt inflation, and three years of COVID, the people have no more coping capacity, and if we don’t get in and get costs down, then 2024 could be the worst year we have seen in several hundred years”.

Solutions to Africa’s Foreign Dependence on Food Products

Steve Wiggins, a food expert at ODI, a global think-tank based in the UK, noted that Africa’s dependence on imports was often misunderstood.

“African nations’ dependence on foreign aid is very high; African nations are always depending on importation even as far back as before their independence and even after independence. But many African countries do not rely on imports for their staples, contrary to what many people assert. What Africa tends to import is higher-value food: frozen chicken, canned tuna, packed biscuits, packet noodles, and so on. If you look at imports of the main staples, for most countries, 15% or less, often far less, is imported.”

He said rising imports did not indicate agricultural failure.

“This is a common misunderstanding: the idea that Africa is so far from feeding itself that rising food imports means agricultural failure. No, often rising food imports reflect economic growth and the ability of urban middle classes to afford imported food.”

Chris Gilbert, a commodity market analyst, says, “The invasion of Ukraine pushed wheat prices up by just 5% – a very small share of the increase in wheat prices seen from April 2020 to May 2022. He points out that the Black Sea initiative has been a key reason why the invasion did not push wheat, maize, and sunflower prices higher and why prices fell back after May 2022”.

Steve Wiggins, a food expert based in the UK, noted that “Africa’s vulnerability to price rises varies hugely by place and circumstance. Some countries, such as Egypt and Sudan, are heavily exposed to rising costs of wheat imports. In other parts of Africa, hard-pressed working mothers have taken to sliced bread, noodles, and pasta as near-instant food they can prepare quickly for their children when they return from work.”

Alex Abutu, the Communication Officer for West and Central Africa at the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, said it was time for Africa to put resources into agriculture to lessen the dependence on imports of basic foodstuffs.

He said African governments are yet to fully follow the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security resolutions, which include allocating 10 percent of national budgets to agricultural development – a trend experts say undermines the growth of African agricultural development.

“Africans should go beyond manual labor if they really and truly want to satisfy themselves. Precision agriculture should be encouraged and inculcated … Seed buying should be encouraged; grains are meant to be eaten and not replanted; a good seed will surely germinate because it has undergone purification and has been checked well, unlike a grain that might have got infected, and this will affect the yields from it, a seed will surely bring about 99 percent yield but a grain will not. It reduces yields.”

Additional reporting: Cecilia Russell
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The Destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine has left thousands displaced and disastrous impacts on the environment. Credit: Ukraine Red Cross/Twitter

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jun 23 2023 (IPS)

As well as creating a humanitarian crisis, the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine has wrought enormous environmental damage which may never be undone, ecologists have said.

The collapse of the dam in the Kherson region on June 6 put more than 40,000 people in immediate danger from flooding and left hundreds of thousands without access to drinking water, according to Ukrainian officials.

The reservoir at the dam, which continued to drain days after the dam’s destruction, held 18 cubic kilometres (4.3 cubic miles) of water – a volume roughly equal to the Great Salt Lake in Utah – and was the source of fresh water for large parts of the south of the country.

The disaster – which Kyiv says was the result of Russian sabotage –  flooded scores of villages, towns and cities along the Dnieper River. Entire settlements were destroyed, with houses washed away or almost completely submerged by the floodwaters.

Although those waters have begun to recede in many places now, and the immediate risk from drowning has largely abated, other grave dangers remain, with Ukraine’s health ministry warning of the threat of water and food-borne diseases as dead bodies, chemicals, landfills, and waste from toilets could contaminate floodwaters and wells.

President Volodymyr Zelensky also highlighted a potential danger from anthrax as floodwaters may have disturbed animal burial sites, and Health Ministry officials told IPS that they were especially concerned about the risk of cholera in the weeks to come.

The death toll was at least 52, with Russia giving 35 in its territory and Ukraine saying 17.

And those who have been evacuated are unlikely to be able to return to their homes for some time, if at all, adding tens of thousands of already vulnerable people to the country’s ongoing crisis of internal displacement.

“There are already 5 million people internally displaced in Ukraine. This will put more strain on already stretched services,” Olivia Headon, spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration, which is helping with rescue efforts in affected areas, told IPS.

But while the human toll of the disaster is becoming increasingly apparent, so too is its massive environmental impact.

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrij Melnyk has called the destruction of the dam “the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster”, and many local experts believe the ecological effects will be felt for decades to come.

“Some ecosystems could recover within a dozen years from the flooding itself [but] the drop in groundwater level upstream of the dam is permanent – unless the dam is rebuilt – so [some] ecosystems will never recover,” Natalia Gozak, Wildlife Rescue Field Officer in Ukraine for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told IPS.

The area downstream from the dam – which includes three national parks – is rich in wildlife, some of it very rare.

Local environmental groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of animals have been affected by the dam’s destruction and that tens of thousands have been killed.

They fear a loss of endemic endangered species – areas home to nearly all known locations of the rare ant species Liometopum microcephalum, as well as 70% of the world population of Nordmann’s birch mouse (Sicista loriger), have been flooded.

Meanwhile, ecosystems which were already endangered are now having to deal with either too much or too little water and could disappear.

Ecologists are also worried about a massive loss of bird life while the draining of the reservoir at the dam will also result in major freshwater fish stocks in Ukraine being lost.

The loss of water from the dam reservoir and the major canals it served also spells an end to water supplies for land used to grow crops and other produce which feeds not only Ukrainians but many millions in developing countries too. Forty percent of the World Food Programme’s wheat supplies come from Ukraine.

“In future years, the greatest impact will be seen in southern agricultural areas, which are now left without water supplies. These areas will already have changed next summer depending on what adaptation measures are possible and what action is taken,” said Gozak.

She added that in areas where irrigation channels are no longer being filled from the reservoir, agriculture will stop. “It is possible there will be desertification [of this land],” she said.

The IFAW says this drying of land will subsequently affect local microclimates and cause temperature shifts, while wind erosion will blow sand and soil all over neighbouring areas, impacting both people and nature.

Meanwhile, there are other long-term environmental threats.

Pollution is one as floodwaters have washed an estimated 150 tons of machine oil has been washed as far down as the Black Sea, according to Ukrainian officials. Huge oil slicks have also been seen on the waters in Kherson city’s port and industrial facilities.

And there have been warnings that parts of the river and surrounding lands may now be full of mines.

Some areas of Ukraine have been heavily mined since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, and it is believed the floodwaters dislodged many of them.

While there have been reports of some exploding as they hit debris on their way downstream, many are likely to have remained unexploded and covered in silt and mud or buried under other debris.

International rescue groups say that finding where they are and then demining them would be a very slow process, even without the ongoing war.

“We’re mapping the likelihood of where the mines were and where they might end up. The area around the dam was heavily mined to stop an amphibious assault, and we don’t know precisely how many mines there are. There could be thousands of mines involved, but we hope not tens of thousands,” Andrew Duncan, a weapon contamination coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told IPS.

“If the fighting stopped and we were able to get into the area, it would be a case of all reasonable effort being made to locate the mines. But this is a very slow process. Any affected land will be out of commission for years,” he added.

But that is not all.

About 150 kilometres upstream from Nova Kakhovka is the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant which draws its cooling water from the dam’s reservoir. The reactors at the plant, which had been under the control of Russian forces since early on in the war, had been shut down prior to the disaster, but they still needed water to cool them and prevent a nuclear catastrophe.

While officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have said that alternative sources, including a large pond next to the plant, can provide cooling water for a number of months, the disaster has highlighted the potential for an even greater catastrophe at the site, others say.

Ukrainian nuclear scientist Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard Kennedy School, told international media: “If the Russians would do this with Kakhovka, there’s no guarantee they won’t blow up the reactor units at the Zaporizhzhia plant that are also reportedly mined – three of the six. It wouldn’t cause a Chernobyl, but massive disruption, local contamination and long-term damage to Ukraine.”

Regardless of what may or may not come to pass at the nuclear plant, the effects of the dam’s destruction will be felt by both people and nature for a long time to come.

Olena Kozachenko*, an office worker from the Korabel district in the Kherson region, told IPS: “We’re all going to have to live with the dangers, such as dislodged mines, for a long time after the flooding.”

Gozak added: “The human toll of the disaster is probably greater than the environmental toll [but] it will take years and years for ecosystems and habitats to get back to how they were if it can happen at all.”

*Not her real name.

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Black Sea Grain Initiative has been renewed - for now. Credit: Ihor Oinua/Unsplash

By Alexander Kozul-Wright
GENEVA, Mar 22 2023 (IPS)

Given the complex interplay between geopolitics and financial markets, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent shockwaves across the global economy. Admittedly, the implications both within and between countries have varied. However, there were some common denominators, including higher commodity prices.

Price disruptions were particularly severe for ‘soft’ agricultural commodities. During peacetime, Russia and Ukraine produced a large amount of the world’s grain, supplying 28 percent of globally traded wheat and 75 percent of sunflower products. Before the war, they were also among the world’s top providers of barley and corn.

After the start of hostilities, exports of grain were severely disrupted. For four months, Russian military vessels blocked Ukrainian ports. Supply constraints triggered market volatility and price rises. Wheat, for instance, reached a record high in March 2022. This left millions of people, particularly in developing countries, at the frontline of a food crisis.

Then, in July 2022, two agreements were signed: one was a memorandum of understanding between the UN and Moscow to facilitate global access for Russia’s food and fertilizer exports; the second was the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), signed by Russia and Ukraine, facilitating the safe export of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukrainian ports via the Black Sea.

Brokered by the UN and Turkey, the BSGI opened a protected maritime corridor through Ukraine. The agreement assuaged concerns about global grain supplies and led to price declines. Over 900 ships of grain and other foodstuffs have left Ukraine’s major ports since last summer.

Prior to the conflict, between 5-6 million tons of grain were exported from Ukraine’s seaports every month, according to the International Grains Council. By the end-2022, Ukraine had once again reached its historical exporting capacity (at just under 5 million tons). Production responses elsewhere also helped to increase global supplies.

Still, Ukrainian exports to developing countries remain below pre-war levels. And while unblocking the trade corridor did help to address food insecurity in 2022, export backlogs were significant. Today, grain prices (while they have come down in recent months) remain elevated.

Against this backdrop, negotiations between UN officials and Russian Federation representatives – headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin – kicked off in Geneva last Monday on a possible extension of the BSGI. Subsequent to a four-month renewal last year, the deal was set to expire on March 18^th.

Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the deal’s importance. He stressed that “it contributed to lowering global food costs and offered critical relief to people…, particularly in low-income countries.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, also called for the initiative to be extended.

For their part, Russian officials argued that ‘hidden’ sanctions – targeting fertilizer firms and the country’s main agricultural bank – have undermined commodity exports. By way of background, exemptions were carved out for some Russian food and fertilizer products after Western sanctions first targeted the Kremlin in February 2022.

In Geneva, delegates stressed that over-compliance and market avoidance by private companies had resulted in Russian commodity exports being under-traded. They noted that sanctions on its payments, logistics, and insurance systems created a barrier for Moscow to sell its grains and fertilisers in international markets.

In response, they requested that national jurisdictions enhance exemption clarifications for food and fertilizers products. “I think it’s a fair request,” says Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Hidden sanctions are impeding Russian financial transactions and undermining allegedly exempted exports.”

When the BSGI was last renewed in November, Russia threatened to renege on the deal unless hidden sanctions were addressed. While they eventually agreed to an extension, Moscow has since insisted that its own agricultural exports (notably ammonia) be included in the BSGI as a condition for its renewal.

Under the deal’s latest iteration, Russia’s pre-condition went notably unaddressed. Moscow, in turn, agreed to extend the deal for just two months. Ukraine, meanwhile, issued conflicting statements on the matter. Over the weekend, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov tweeted that the agreement had been extended for four months.

So far, the UN has not specified the length of the renewal, but “this could be the last time an extension is agreed,” according to Ghosh. “Russia is probably going to use this latest agreement as a threat. Rejecting a third extension in the spring may force the international community to listen to their concerns”.

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Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, has been attracting hundreds of thousands of Russians since the war in Ukraine started in February 2022. The city is a favored destination where Russians can still travel visa-free.

By IPS Correspondent
TBILISI, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)

Since the war in Ukraine started in February last year, at least 1.5 million Russian citizens have crossed the Russia-Georgia border, official data states. However, as of today, it needs to be clarified how many of them stayed in the country, but walking the streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the presence of Russian nationals can be seen almost everywhere.

Right after the war started and even more when Russia announced a partial mobilization in September 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens – primarily men – traveled to countries where they could travel visa-free, including Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Turkey, and Georgia. Among those destinations, Georgia is among the most enticing because of its mild climate, wine, food, and nightlife-heavy capital. At the moment, Russian citizens can spend twelve renewable months in Georgia, and many of them are planning to stay in the long term, as the war seems would still last long.

The arrival of thousands of Russians has significantly impacted Georgian society. The country is known for its hospitality, but many Georgians are concerned about the effect such a large influx could have on their country’s social fabric. There have been reports of tension between Russians and locals and concerns about potential cultural clashes. While walking in Tbilisi, the Russian language can be easily heard in most bars, cafes, and restaurants, day and night. In contrast, there is a solid pro-Ukrainian sentiment and a not-so-hidden antagonism toward Russians. Every twenty meters or so, it is possible to spot on the streets of Tbilisi a Ukrainian flag hanging from a balcony, at the entrance of a restaurant or bar, or drawn on a wall.

As the Russians poured into Georgia, many Georgians have come to fear that the emigres somehow could serve as a pretext for Putin to target their country in the future, just as it did happen to Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. For this reason, the recent influx of Russians—mainly men who fear being conscripted into arms—has created a tense social climate in Georgia and an increased distrust towards Russians.

Suspicion towards Russian emigration is also motivated by historical events indicating the two countries as potential enemies. Indeed, Russia currently occupies 20 percent of Georgia; in 2008, a five-day conflict (“South Ossetia conflict”) broke out between the two countries over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia lost control of both areas, and Russia later recognized them as independent states. As a consequence, Tbilisi cut off diplomatic relations with Moscow, after which Switzerland took up the role of mediator country.

Today, stickers reading “Russia currently occupies 20 percent of Georgian territory” are prominently displayed at the entrance to many restaurants, bars, coworking spaces, and local shops. Many Georgians believe that the Russians who have fled their country are not opponents of the Moscow government but do not want to risk their lives at the front in Ukraine. Irakli, a baker from central Tbilisi, told IPS: “If they don’t like Putin, and they don’t share his war, then they should fight and oppose him in Russia, not run away here to Georgia.”

Many Georgians fear that the recent wave of Russians fleeing to their country is less ideological than the first one that occurred right after the beginning of the war in February 2022. There is a widespread belief that, while the first wave mainly included activists, intellectuals, and anti-Putin individuals, the current wave might consist of people who fear being conscripted to fight in Ukraine but do not oppose the Russian government’s policies—including its decision to invade Ukraine.

Because of these concerns, a survey conducted by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers in February-March 2022 revealed that 66 percent of Georgians favor re-introducing a visa regime for Russians. That visa regime was abolished for Russians in 2012, but now many Georgians think it should be revisited. However, the same survey revealed that 49 percent of respondents approved the Georgian national government’s rejection of imposing sanctions on Russia. On the one hand, this data could be interpreted as a tightening of ties with the Kremlin. More simply, it should be read as a policy aimed at not worsening diplomatic relations, as Georgia could fear some retaliation—even military—from Moscow.

Furthermore, Georgia depends on remittances from its citizens working in Russia, and, in the past, its tourism industry has prospered from Russian visitors. Most Georgian politicians agree that the country is pursuing a ‘pragmatic and careful stance toward Russia’ by not imposing sanctions and keeping the current visa-free regime. For example, Eka Sepashvili, a member of parliament who left the governing Georgian Dream party, remains aligned with it on this policy.

Adverse effects aside, Russian migration to Georgia has undoubtedly stimulated the local economy. Many among those migrants are information technology (IT) remote workers, sometimes even hired by Western companies. Therefore, their salaries are way higher than the Georgian average (300-500 US dollars per month), and their living in Georgia guarantees an essential boost to local consumption.

According to the World Bank, the 2022 Georgian economic growth was 10 percent. The surge in money transfers from Russia, the recovery in domestic demand, and the rebound of tourism after the pandemic have been the main reasons for the positive performance. The World Bank further forecasted a 4 percent and 5 percent economic growth for 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Furthermore, a recent Transparency International (TI) report shows 17,000 Russian companies are registered in Georgia. More than half of them were registered after the start of the war in Ukraine. Only in March-September of 2022, up to 9,500 Russian companies were registered, which, according to the report, is ten times more than the entire figure for 2021. According to TI, this trend indicates that many Russian nationals plan to stay in Georgia long term. Not coincidentally, in April-September 2022, remittances from Russia to Georgia amounted to 1,135 million US dollars—a fivefold increase.

Artem, a Russian engineer in his forties, arrived in Tbilisi in October 2022 after Putin announced the partial mobilization. He works remotely, so he can afford to continue living in Georgia as long as his salary allows. He stays in a guest house that is usually intended for tourists. The structure has six single rooms and two with more beds to share. In recent months, 95 percent of the tenants have been Russians who have started living here for medium-to-long periods.

Since it is the low tourist season, the landlord has agreed to rent to Russians. Still, with the arrival of the high season in May, he may return to prefer the more profitable short-term rentals.

“For now, I am staying here, but with the arrival of spring, I will probably have to look for a new place,” Artem told IPS.

Despite having a higher salary than the local average, Artem cannot afford many accommodations since prices have skyrocketed. Talking to him and other current tenants of the guest house – all Russian men – it isn’t easy to find someone who would say he doesn’t like Putin. They say they are against the war and worried about the current situation. Still, they go no further, perhaps for fear of sharing their ideas or probably because their opposition to the Moscow government is, in fact, minimal, as many Georgians believe.

Georgi, a Georgian tour guide, tells us that, according to him, Russian migrants are divided into two large groups: men—especially IT workers—who are mainly afraid of being called up but are not great opponents of Putin and those who oppose him fervently. The latter are activists, journalists, intellectuals, and members of the LGBT community—people who risked their lives in Russia—even before the start of the war in Ukraine.

The distrust towards Russians emerged even more during the first days of March when many Georgians complained that Russian citizens living in Georgia had not taken to the streets with them to protest against the so-called “foreign agents’ law.”

The law, which lawmakers dropped on March 11 after days of mass protests in Tbilisi, would have required individuals, civil society organizations, and media outlets that receive 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as an “agent of foreign influence” with the Georgian Justice Ministry.

The law was largely criticized by civil society groups, opposition politicians, human rights organizations, and even US and EU institutions. They argued the law was an attempt to suppress dissent and restrict freedom of expression in the country, and they compared it to similar legislation in Russia that Moscow has used to crack down on NGOs and independent journalism.

The government of Georgia has been defending the law, saying it was necessary to prevent foreign interference in the country’s political affairs. The term “foreign agent” has highly negative connotations in Georgia and is often associated with espionage and foreign interference. Therefore, supporters of the law argue that foreign governments or organizations may influence “agents” receiving funding from foreign sources and that it is important to ensure that they are transparent about their funding sources. On the other hand, critics of the law argue that by forcing entities and individuals to register as “foreign agents,” the government is trying to delegitimize them in the eyes of the public and stigmatize them as tools of foreign powers.

Alisa, a Russian woman who arrived in Tbilisi in April 2022 and who clearly defines herself as anti-Putin, told IPS that she was contacted on social media by a local resident with whom she had interacted. That person pressed for her to take to the streets to protest against the “foreign agents” law. The Georgian person told Alisa that it was not fair that Russians living in Georgia stand by and watch the protests without joining them and that if they wanted to enjoy the freedoms that are lacking in Russia, then they should actively participate in all aspects of the civic life of an ordinary Georgian citizen, including protesting against that law.

“I didn’t join the protests, not because I disagreed with the demonstrators. Indeed, it was a glorious moment for democracy and the demand for freedom. However, some Georgians should understand that for some Russian citizens, exposing themselves in a protest that is also indirectly against Russia can threaten their lives,” Alisa told IPS.

As Georgia continues to navigate its relationship with Russia and the West, the influx of Russians will undoubtedly play a role in shaping the country’s future. As of today, it is still not clear whether the Georgian government will change its policy toward Russian migrants. The country seems trapped in a dilemma that crosses economic, social, political, and geopolitical aspects. The need to ensure the continuation of economic growth in the short and medium terms suggests keeping the doors open to Russians.

On the other hand, this influx is causing ever-higher prices, which in the long run will probably end up harming the living conditions of the more economically vulnerable locals, facilitating urban gentrification and, potentially, higher social tensions. Finally, from a political and geopolitical perspective, the government in Tbilisi will have to deal with a growing push from the population to get closer to the West and Europe – as seen with the recent protests against the “foreign agents” law – in the face of an inevitable growing link with Russia, precisely given the strong presence of Russians in the country.

As Georgia continues to navigate its relationship with Russia and the West, the influx of Russians will undoubtedly play a role in shaping the country’s future. As of today, it is still not clear whether the Georgian government will change its policy toward Russian migrants. The country seems trapped in a dilemma that crosses economic, social, political, and geopolitical aspects.

The need to ensure the continuation of economic growth in the short and medium terms suggests keeping the doors open to Russians. On the other hand, this influx is causing ever-higher prices, which in the long run will probably end up harming the living conditions of the more economically vulnerable locals, facilitating urban gentrification and, potentially, higher social tensions. Finally, from a political and geopolitical perspective, the government in Tbilisi will have to deal with a growing push from the population to get closer to the West and Europe in the face of an inevitable growing link with Russia, precisely given the strong presence of Russians in the country.

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War damage at a children’s facility in Ivanivka, Kherson. Investigators want changes in the way war crimes are investigated and prosecuted. Credit: Nychka Lishchynska

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Feb 10 2023 (IPS)

As plans are announced to set up an international centre in The Hague to prosecute war crimes committed in Ukraine, groups involved in documenting them say there must be a fundamental change in how the world reacts to war atrocities.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost one year ago, there have been allegations of tens of thousands of war crimes committed by invading forces.

But while there has been unprecedented support internationally for efforts to bring those behind these alleged crimes to justice, the scores of civil society organisations working to document them say this war, more than any other, has underlined the need to overhaul global bodies and individual states’ approach to war crimes.

“The entire world and all its nations [must] realise that there needs to be a rapid global response to atrocities, that all nations have to establish ways of documenting war crimes and bringing them and those who committed them to light,” said Roman Avramenko, CEO of Ukrainian NGO Truth Hounds which is documenting war crimes in Ukraine.

“What we are now seeing is the result of inactivity. We have been talking about war crimes here for eight years, this started long ago. When there is no investigation of crimes, and no accountability for them, this leads to even greater atrocities and violence,” he told IPS.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine there has been a relentless stream of allegations of war crimes committed by Russian troops – earlier this month Ukrainian officials said more than 65,000 Russian war crimes had been registered since the beginning of the invasion.

Among the alleged crimes are rape, mass murder, torture, abduction, forced deportations, as well as indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, among others.

Ukrainian officials say 65,000 war crimes have been registered since the war began nearly a year ago on February 24, 2022. This picture shows some of the damage in the Novopetrivka, Kherson region. Credit: Nychka Lishchynska

Condemnation of these crimes has been widespread, as has the support for their investigation.

In March and April last year, more than 40 states referred Russia to the International Criminal Court (ICC), while a few months later, many of these declared their support for Ukraine in its proceedings against Russia at the International Court of Justice.

“There has been an absolutely unprecedented mobilisation among countries demanding justice for Ukraine,” Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

However, while this support has been welcomed in Ukraine, groups like Truth Hounds and others want to see it turned into effective prosecutions which will act as a deterrent to future aggression from Russia, or any other state.

“Russia was not punished for previous human rights violations and war crimes, and this has driven them to continue an aggressive foreign policy all over the world,” said Roman Nekoliak, International Relations Coordinator at the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Ukrainian NGO Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL).

“The UN and participating states must solve the problem of a ‘responsibility gap’ and provide a chance for justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes. Without this, sustainable peace in our region is impossible. An international tribunal must be set up and [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, [Belarussian president Alexander] Lukashenko, and other war criminals brought to justice,” he told IPS.

International leaders and war crimes experts have highlighted the specific need to prosecute senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression. This crime is often referred to as the “mother of all crimes” because all other war crimes follow from it.

But it is difficult to bring the people behind such a crime to justice – the Rome Statute on which the ICC is established defines the crime as the “planning, preparation, initiation or execution” by a military or political leader of an act of aggression, such as an invasion of another country.

Ukrainian and European prosecutors are working together to investigate war crimes, but they cannot move against senior foreign figures, such as heads of government and state, because of international laws giving them immunity.

Meanwhile, the ICC cannot prosecute Russian leaders because neither Russia nor Ukraine has ratified the Rome Statute, and although a case could be brought if referred by the UN Security Council, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council with a veto over any such resolutions, Russia would simply block such a referral.

Indeed, in 2014, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have referred the situation in Syria – where Russian troops were later alleged to have committed war crimes – to the ICC.

“It would be wrong to say that the West did not react to [Russian war crimes in Syria], but what they are seeing now is that what happened there is happening again in Ukraine, and that it will continue elsewhere if Russian aggression is not stopped now, said Olga Ajvazovska of the Ukrainian civil society network Opora which is documenting war crimes.

“International societies also now understand that we need to develop stable international bodies which will have a way of stopping systematic Russian aggression,” she added.

Various solutions to the problem of bringing senior Russian figures to justice have been mooted.

Ukraine wants a special tribunal similar to courts established for war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia set up, and in early February, Ukrainian prosecutors said they believed they were close to winning US support to establish a special tribunal to prosecute Russia’s crimes of aggression.

Separately, the European Commission announced this month that an international centre for the prosecution of the crime of aggression in Ukraine would be set up in The Hague.

But ICC officials are against the creation of a special tribunal, fearing it could fragment efforts to investigate war crimes in Ukraine, and have urged governments to support their continuing efforts.

In the meantime, the documenting and investigation of war crimes is continuing, and those involved are convinced that their work will help see justice served eventually.

They point out that they are working very closely with local and international prosecutors, as well as the ICC, and that experience gained in documenting war crimes in Ukraine prior to last year’s invasion – Truth Hounds was created just after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the start of the conflict in the country’s Donbas region – and learning from investigations into war crimes in other countries, has proved invaluable in ensuring the effectiveness of their work.

“In the 2008 Georgia war, both sides reported violations of humanitarian law and war crimes. Nevertheless, research into them was conducted with limited support from international partners, and it was only in 2016 that the ICC got involved. Over eight years, significant information can get lost, and this is exactly why war crimes in Ukraine need to be documented constantly, as we, and several other organisations and international partners, are doing,” said Nekoliak.

So far, the ICC has issued only three arrest warrants charging men with war crimes related to the Georgia conflict.

The nature of the war itself is also helping them gather compelling evidence in a way that has perhaps not been possible in any conflict before.

“We are in a digital age and cyberspace is much more developed than 20 years ago. You can see in real-time, every day, the crimes being committed, the bombings, the people dying under the destroyed buildings, you can hear their screams.

“Today, it is much easier to find someone through technology, for instance, satellite pictures or other data can help identify which soldiers were at a certain location at a certain time when a war crime allegedly took place,” said Ajvazovska.

They believe these, along with a continued international focus on the conflict, and a strong desire among Ukrainians themselves to see accountability for the crimes committed against them, will help bring even those at the highest levels of Russian leadership to court at some point.

“The trials [of people involved in] the former Yugoslavia wars, the 2012 war crime conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, Félicien Kabuga last year being put on trial over the 1994 Rwandan genocide, show that no matter how much time has passed the inevitability of punishment remains,” said Nekoliak.

“And Russian war criminals will face the same fate.”

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On March 6, 2022, Izyum Central City Hospital (Kharkiv oblast) was attacked as a part of what appears to have been a large-scale carpet-bombing campaign. Reportedly, the hospital team had also marked the hospital with a big red cross that could be seen from the air. Credit: UHC

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 27 2023 (IPS)

While recent reports highlight the growing list of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, new research has laid bare the massive scale of arguably Russia’s most systematic and deadly campaign of rights violations in the country – the targeting and almost complete destruction of healthcare facilities.

According to a report released by the Ukrainian Healthcare Centre (UHC), 80% of healthcare infrastructure in one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Mariupol, was destroyed as Russian forces occupied the city.

It was left with practically no primary care, general hospitals, children’s hospitals, maternity hospitals, or psychiatric facilities, and large areas of the city were thought to have no medical care available at all.

On March 3, 2022, a Russian aircraft dropped unguided heavy bombs on the residential apartment buildings in the city center of Chernihiv; Chernihiv Regional Cardiac Center (Chernihiv oblast) was affected during the attack. At 12:16 pm, an aircraft dropped at least eight unguided bombs on Viacheslava Chornovola Street, according to verified dashcam footage. The bombing killed 47 civilians (38 men and nine women); another 18 people were injured. According to witnesses, the FAB-500 “dumb” bombs were used. No military targets in the area were confirmed by witnesses and international investigative organizations. Credit: UHC

Reports have been circulating for some time that a humanitarian catastrophe has already unfolded in the occupied city, and with the almost complete lack of healthcare provision, the threat of disease and sickness looms large among those still living there.

UHC says the destruction of Mariupol can only be compared with what happened to Grozny in Chechnya or Aleppo in Syria where Russia did its utmost to destroy each of these cities. And it claims that with its massive, indiscriminate shelling of civilian infrastructure, Russia “did not only violate certain regulations of international humanitarian law —[but] waged the war as if this law did not exist”.

“This destruction of healthcare facilities is a very, very serious war crime. Russia did the same in Syria, but in Ukraine, what it has also done is that it has not distinguished between military and civilian infrastructure – the goal has been to just destroy everything, and in Mariupol, we saw this philosophy at its most concentrated,” Pavlo Kovtoniuk, UHC co-founder and former Deputy Minister of Health of Ukraine, told IPS.

The Russian siege and eventual occupation of Mariupol was one of the earliest and clearest examples of the destruction and brutality which have come to define the war in Ukraine.

Pictures and drone footage of the city at the time showed the consequences of massive, indiscriminate bombardment by Russian forces, and in the months since Mariupol fell, Ukrainian officials have reported on what they claim are the appalling conditions facing those still living – its population has dropped from 425,000 pre-invasion to an estimated around 100,000 today as people have fled or been killed – in the city.

It is difficult to verify any such reports as access to the city and information about life there is strictly controlled by occupying authorities.

The Adonis Medical Center in Makariv was totally destroyed. The facility was situated close to the city center, surrounded by residential buildings, shops, and the City Council of Makariv. The hospital was not far from the bridge over the Zdvyzh River (around 200 m north). The bridge had an essential role in supply and reinforcements connecting Makariv to the E40 highway leading directly to the western part of Kyiv. Source: Kyiv Regional Health Department for UHC

But there were confirmed reports as early as last summer of mass protests in the city over a lack of water, electricity and heat, and sources with some access to locals in Mariupol have told IPS that the reports of severe hardship are largely accurate and that war crimes and human rights abuses are regularly being committed against the population.

Kovtoniuk said even without any direct access to Mariupol, it was certain that the situation there was “dire” for many and would almost certainly be the same in other occupied areas.

“It is difficult to know too much about exactly what is happening in occupied areas, but we can see [the situation there] from the experience in areas which were once occupied and then retaken by Ukraine,” he explained.

Indeed, reports from liberated cities and testimony from people who managed to escape from occupied areas paint a picture not just of widespread war crimes and atrocities such as mass executions, rapes, torture, abductions, forced disappearances, imprisonment, and unlawful confiscation of property, but also of humanitarian catastrophes. People are without money, and jobs, unable to access any services, and are completely reliant on humanitarian aid.

Kovtoniuk highlighted that in Mariupol alone, the destruction has been so great – since the start of the invasion, four out of five general hospitals have been destroyed, but also five out of six maternity facilities, and there is no mental health care available – that there is no way comprehensive medical care can be continuing in the city.

“There may be some facilities still going, but there is no system, which is just as bad if not worse. What we also don’t know is the situation with drugs and their supply. What about people with chronic conditions who need them? Are there drugs for them, and if so, where are they coming from? Are some people simply not taking them anymore? This is course can be fatal for some people with certain conditions,” he said.

“Russian strategies have been to completely destroy healthcare, healthcare staff have been deported, civilians are being denied access to healthcare as facilities are being used solely to treat Russian soldiers, healthcare facilities are looted for equipment,” Kovtoniuk added.

Ukrainian Minister of Health Viktor Liashko said earlier this month that about one thousand Ukrainian medical facilities had been damaged or destroyed, while as of January 23, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has documented 747 attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Its officials have said these attacks are a breach of international humanitarian law and the rules of war.

Other groups, like UHC, are documenting and collecting evidence of alleged car crimes during the invasion and have said the attacks on healthcare are part of a wider, even more, destructive Russian military strategy in Ukraine.

“Attacks on medical facilities are considered particularly condemnable under international law. They have serious negative consequences for the safety and health of Ukrainians. Since Russia is using war crimes as a method of warfare, we can talk [of these attacks as being] deliberate actions to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine and a desire to make it uninhabitable,” Svyatoslav Ruban of the Centre for Civil Liberties human rights organisation in Kyiv told IPS.

Regional Children’s Hospital On March 17, 2022, Russian forces shelled the area in the city center of Chernihiv, where the hospital is located. Cluster munitions were used, launched presumably from the Uragan MLRS. Fourteen civilians were killed and another 21 injured as a result of the attack. Credit: UHC

Other rights groups have also condemned the targeting of healthcare facilities and workers. In its latest global report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) castigated Russian forces for a “litany of violations of international humanitarian law” in Ukraine, and Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at HRW, told IPS: “Attacks on critical infrastructure which are carried out with the seeming intent to instil terror in the population and deliberately deprive people of essential services could be potential war crimes and illegal. These attacks in Ukraine are unlawful.”

“It is obvious that the authors of these attacks are fully aware of the harm they will cause, and the aim is to make living cumulatively untenable. These attacks on infrastructure impact millions of people, having an effect on hospital operation, water supplies, heating etc,” she added.

She also warned that the apparent Russian strategy of deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure was chillingly reminiscent of what its forces had done in Idlib in Syria in 2019-2020 – hospitals, schools and markets were repeatedly targeted during an 11-month Syrian-Russian offensive which ultimately left 1,600 people dead and another 1.4 million displaced.

HRW’s own report on the Idlib offensive documented scores of unlawful attacks in violation of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. Meanwhile, UN investigators claimed Russian forces had been responsible for multiple war crimes.

“It would not surprise me if it turned out that the Russians are doing the same in Ukraine as they did in Idlib,” said Denber.

While Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including medical facilities, continue, the situation will not improve, said Kovtoniuk.

He pointed to Russian forces’ ongoing deliberate destruction of power, heating, and water plants, and potential subsequent health risks – damage to water and sewage systems led to a serious risk of a cholera epidemic in Mariupol last summer – as well as the effects of such attacks on the ability of medical facilities to continue functioning.

He said people outside Ukraine, including leaders in countries already supporting Ukraine, must not allow the current situation to be accepted as a new normal, nor let the conflict drag on.

“We have learnt to survive and adapt, but it is important that this situation is not normalised – that is the Russian aim, to normalise it like what happened in Syria. People have to understand that the pattern of Russian strategy is to not make a distinction between waging war on civilians and on the military. It is also critical to end this war as soon as possible. Its protraction is bad for Ukraine and bad for Europe,” he said.

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Nuclear experts warn that ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons could have devastating death toll and destruction. This photo shows the war damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Nov 10 2022 (IPS)

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict’s potential to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons has been highlighted by political analysts and military experts alike.

Now growingly bellicose rhetoric from Russian president Vladimir Putin, particularly following the illegal annexations of four parts of Ukraine at the end of September, has raised fears he may be seriously considering using them. He has been quoted in September this year as saying that Russia would use “all available means to protect Russia and our people”, but last month said there was no need to consider the use of nuclear weapons. This week Russia ordered troops to withdraw from the Dnieper River’s west bank near the southern city of Kherson.

But while much of the media debate around this prospect has focused on the expected use of a so-called low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapon and what this might mean strategically for either side in the war, anti-nuclear campaigners say any discussion should be reframed to reflect the devastating reality of what the use of even the smallest weapons in modern nuclear arsenals would mean.

They say that even if only one such bomb was dropped, be it in Ukraine or in any other conflict, the consequences would cause a country – if not a continent-wide catastrophe, with horrific immediate and long-term health effects and a subsequent humanitarian disaster on a scale almost certainly not seen before.

Moreover, they say, a single strike would almost certainly be met with a similar response, quickly igniting a full-scale nuclear war that would threaten much of human life on earth.

“There is no conceivable reality in which a nuclear weapon is used, and life goes on as normal. It is very, very likely that there would be escalation and additional nuclear weapons used, but even the use of one nuclear weapon would break a decades-long taboo on the use of the most catastrophic, horrific weapon ever created,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Research, and Policy Coordinator,  at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) told IPS.

“We have already seen the global impacts of the war in Ukraine just using conventional weapons, including worldwide rising inflation, and energy and food shortages. But the use of a nuclear weapon would really have consequences beyond what any of us can imagine,” she added.

Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – the only time nuclear weapons have been used in conflict – a number of states have built up nuclear arsenals, including bombs many times more powerful than those dropped on the two Japanese cities.

But they also include bombs that can be set to have varying explosive yields -which are measured in kilotons – including potentially in just single figures. For comparison, the devices dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of around 15 kilotons.

These lower yield bombs are, unlike strategic nuclear weapons with yields in the hundreds of kilotons that, are specifically meant to cause mass destruction and serve a deterrent purpose, designed for use on a battlefield to counter overwhelming conventional forces.

The strategic thinking behind their use is that they could cause maximum damage to enemy troops in specific areas without the wider massive destruction caused by larger bombs.

This does not mean, though, that tactical nuclear weapons are not devastatingly lethal – an estimated 130,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, while NUKEMAP predicts that even a 5-kiloton bomb detonation on Kyiv would leave more than 90,000 people dead, and injured.

Campaigners against nuclear weapons worry the global public is not being made properly aware of the scale of the loss of life and ecological damage which would be wrought by the use of such a weapon.

“There has been a lot of discussion about using a tactical nuclear bomb in Ukraine. But the use of the word ‘tactical’ is no more than a rebranding exercise to make a nuclear weapon sound like a conventional one,” Dr Ruth Mitchell, Board Chair of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), told IPS.

“A tactical nuclear weapon would be about the same size as the one dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we don’t need to imagine what the effects would be; we have already seen them,” she added.

The death toll itself would be massive, but authorities would also have to deal with radioactive fallout possibly contaminating large areas, while the event itself would trigger massive population dislocation.

And a report by ICAN also shows that even the most advanced healthcare systems would be unable to provide any effective response in such a situation, highlighting the likely destruction of local healthcare facilities and staff and pointing out that the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima destroyed 80% of its hospitals and killed almost all its doctors and nurses.

Healthcare staff in Ukraine have told IPS that preparations are being made at hospitals and healthcare facilities to respond to a nuclear attack, including plans for reprofiling wards and forming special teams of emergency staff to treat those affected both directly in the area of any strike and where needed in other parts of the country.

Meanwhile, authorities in cities have said potential evacuation centres have been set up, and supplies of potassium iodide, which can help block the absorption of harmful radiation by the thyroid gland, have been secured to be distributed if needed.

Some doctors have said they are also counting on international help for Ukraine’s healthcare response if the worst to happen.

But Mitchell said while admirable, such efforts were likely to be of little help.

“It is naïve to think there is a terrible amount that we can do in the event of use of a nuclear weapon against civilian populations, which is the only way any will ever be used. They will be used strategically, i.e., on a populous city. No one’s going to be dropping them in a paddock. It would be a massive disaster,” she said.

Some Ukrainian doctors admit they may not be able to provide much help.

“If the hospital is hit with a bomb then there won’t be much we can do,” Roman Fishchuk, a doctor at the Central City Clinical Hospital in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine told IPS.

Another key issue, Mitchell said, is the fact that any use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict situation, be it in Ukraine or anywhere else, would almost certainly not be left in isolation.

There would likely be a response in kind, followed by a very rapid escalation to nuclear war and multiple missile detonations, with terrifying planet-wide consequences, she said.

A recent report by experts studying the potential effects of a nuclear conflict concluded that while more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia, “even a war between India and Pakistan using less than 3% of the global nuclear arsenal” could result in famine for a third of Earth.

ICAN’s Sanders-Zakre explained that the current situation in Ukraine has only highlighted the need for nuclear weapons to be abolished across the world, and how more attention needs to be paid to experts pointing out their potential for civilisation-threatening destruction.

“What this shows is that we really need to listen to medical professionals, and organisations like IPPNW. They have been warning for decades about the consequences of using nuclear weapons, and we have learned from the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic that it is essential that we listen to professionals and experts and take their expertise seriously, and it’s the same in this case with the use of a nuclear weapon,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, people are preparing for the worst. Some have begun stocking rooms converted into bomb shelters with food and other supplies they believe will help them ride out the aftermath of a nuclear strike. Others have been buying potassium iodide tablets.

But some say they have little faith they would survive any such attack and are just hoping it will never happen.

“The Health Ministry has given out advice on what to do if there is a nuclear attack, and I know some of the basic things to do, but I don’t feel like I’m prepared to deal with something like this if it happens. I just hope we won’t have to deal with this. It would be horror,” 23-year-old Kyiv resident Viktoria Marchenko (NOT REAL NAME) told IPS.

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Ukrainian artist Mykola Zhuravel has used art to communicate the horrors of war since Russian’s occupation of Crimea in 2014.

By Sania Farooqui
New Delhi, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

“I must say that I had a premonition of a war with Russia in 2014 when Russian troops had started to occupy Crimea,” said Mykola Zhuravel, a contemporary painter and sculptor, in an interview with IPS. Zhuravel, with his partner, Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel, have used art to communicate and express the horrors of the war since 2014.

Their work has been presented at the Viennese Biennale, and they have exhibited a multimedia project titled Invasion Redux, which is poignantly used to transform their memories of the 2014 uprising and its aftermath into vivid abstract portrayals – artworks, sculpture, photography and films.

Artists Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel

For many, war and displacement in Ukraine began almost eight years ago, when Russia first started to invade Crimea, warning of a full-scale war and vast troop buildup near the Ukrainian border. They use their art as a mirror of Ukrainian resistance, “the invasion project is my reflection, as an artist on the tragic events associated with Russian aggression, where I showed the true image of the occupier through an artistic lens,” said Zhuravel.

Invasion Redux was first presented in 2016 in New York at the Ukrainian Institute of America, showcasing surreal images of “an invader and an occupier”, their aim to show a mass audience “the truth and warn them of the imminent dangers not only to Ukraine but the entire western world with a nuclear strike,” said Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“Until this terrible war that began in 2022, I lived with my family in Kyiv, we had a studio in the city centre, and as a photographer, I regularly held photo shoots and worked on art projects. But in just one moment, our whole life seems to have turned upside down. The war took away our dream, everything that we built,” Tishchenko-Zhuravel said.

On February 24, 2022, the world watched as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, attacking the country from the north, south and east and surging troops towards the capital Kyiv making it Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. Almost 193 days later, the magnitude of the ongoing conflict has “wrought death on a mass scale, displaced hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians and forced millions to leave the country.”

Zhuravel said the morning of February 24 was a day when he and his family went into a state of shock, something they are yet to recover from. They had little time pack their bags and move to a safer spot.

Artwork by Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“It was a horror. That morning there were cannon shots being hit on Kyiv, sirens echoed through the city, and people were rushing to hide in bomb shelters,” Zhuravel says. “We had less than an hour to pack our lives in one suitcase and leave. We started by heading to the west of Ukraine, and from there on, it has been quite a journey till we found our way to Canada.

“We didn’t know how to react, but the instinct of self-preservation worked, and we then left for the west of Ukraine, crossed the border with Poland and then flew to Canada. All I took was a small suitcase, a camera, years of experience and faith that everything would be fine,” added Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

From the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians have found ways to respond to the war, as reported here by TIME. The opposition included mass protest rallies with blue and yellow flags in the cities where Russian forces had already entered; unarmed civilians blocked roads and lay on the ground in front of Russian tanks, and girls threw Molotov cocktails at Russian military vehicles from car windows. Women hit enemy drones with jars of pickled tomatoes, and civilians united to help Ukrainian soldiers and their fellow citizens affected by the war. The steadfastness of Ukrainians in defence of their country surprised many, and their resistance continued even when they had to leave the country.

In April 2022, the Zhuravels held their first exhibition in Canada to continue telling the Ukraine story. The Canadian National Exhibition Association presented Invasion Redux at the CNE’S Withrow Common Gallery in Canada, through which Zhuravel says he will “continue telling the world truth about the military conflict through his artistic images and means as well as continue to glorify Ukrainian culture in Canada and rest of the world.”

Dasha Smovzh, designer and founder of Virna.

The war also threatened another artist’s life, a fashion designer working with her team in Kherson, a port city in the south of Ukraine. Dasha Smovzh, the founder of Virna, a clothing brand that employed many local Ukrainians and designers, had to flee when Russian troops bombed her city.

“We lost everything, Kherson, which is now almost occupied by the Russian army. We simply had to leave. We just packed our bags, kept our work documents, took cash and ran away as far as we could from the war,” Dasha Smovzh said.

According to this report, until the war in Ukraine began, a generation of Ukrainian brands flourished in recent years as trade with Europe had eased. However, The World Bank has now estimated the Russian invasion to shrink Ukraine’s economy by 45 percent this year.

Like many others, Smovzh had to pause production as many factories were destroyed and shipments were delayed.

Dasha Smovzh with her team at Virna production house.

“All our family, relatives, and employees are still in Kherson. They have no work. They are struggling due to the ongoing bombings and attacks; sometimes, they have to turn off water and electricity. We did move a few of our clothes to storage and are trying to resume selling again now. None of it is easy or done in the usual way.

“My husband and two-year-old son are safe here in Canada, and we are grateful to the country for their support and opportunity. I can only hope that I can bring Ukrainian culture and beauty here in Canada. Kherson is our home, and I hope we can go back someday.

The uncertainty and fear brought by the war have threatened and impacted lives in ways one can imagine – splitting families and stranding many in Ukrainian war zones. At the same time, others escaped to other countries across or across Europe to seek safety. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions of Ukraine, including repeated rapes, unlawful violence and threats against civilians.

The large-scale displacements being seen could have lasting consequences for generations to come. By early August 2022, more than 6.6 million refugees from Ukraine had been recorded across Europe, and 10.3 million people, mostly women and children, had crossed borders from Ukraine to the neighbouring countries in the European Union. More than 5 million children need humanitarian assistance. This requires an immediate and steep rise in humanitarian needs. The United Nations estimates that 12 million people inside Ukraine will need relief and protection. At the same time, more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees may continue needing protection and assistance in neighbouring countries in the coming months.

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Dr Svetlana Alexandrova, Medical Director of the Chernihiv Psychoneurological Hospital, and Yevgen Skydan, Technical Specialist, walk Todd Bernhardt and his team through the basement where patients and staff were sheltered during the Russian invasion. Credit: Jonathan Moore/International Medical Corps

By SeiMi Chu
Stanford, Aug 9 2022 (IPS)

During Todd Bernhardt’s visit to Ukraine’s conflict zones, he encountered untold damage to hospitals, healthcare clinics, and communities. The Senior Director of Global Communications at the International Medical Corps also encountered enormous courage.

On one of his visits, Bernhardt met Dr Svetlana Alexandrova, Medical Director of the Psychoneurological Hospital in Chernihiv, a city about two hours northeast of Kyiv that saw fierce fighting during the early weeks of the invasion.

He said Alexandrova was a defiant and committed leader who was not afraid to confront Russian soldiers and tell them to stop destroying the hospital, which treats critically ill patients. Hospital staff proudly told Bernhardt that as the soldiers were getting ready to retreat, they told the staff members that they had a “tough boss.”

“The patients in this hospital have developmental, mental health, and physical challenges that have led to them being hospitalized. In some cases, they are quite old and frail. And during this time, they had to shelter in the hospital basement—a damp and dark place where you would not want to live,” Bernhardt said. He described how hundreds of patients with 30-40 staff were trapped in the basement during the Russian bombardment.

They had to stay in this basement for 40 days and 40 nights without access to water, heat, and electricity. The staff occasionally went out and managed to forage for food during lulls in the fighting. In fear of being shot, they would cook over open fires during the day while being undercover.

A destroyed residential building in Dnipro. Credit: World Food Programme

International Medical Corps’ involvement with Ukraine goes back to 1999 when it provided medical training to doctors and medical supplies and equipment. Now International Medical Corps operates hubs in seven Ukrainian cities—Chernihiv, Dnipro, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Stryi, and Vinnytsia—that provide relief services and training across the country.

International Medical Corps’ mission is primarily to be a first responder. A big part of its approach is to work within an existing health system, support it, and strengthen it. It also provides medicine or medical equipment, trains doctors, staff, and clinicians, and builds water and sanitation systems.

“We are a first responder. We go in, respond to the disaster, and stay to help strengthen existing systems, to make sure that the community is left stronger than when we first came in,” Bernhardt said, elaborating on International Medical Corps’ mission.

During the Russo-Ukrainian War, International Medical Corps so far has helped 122 hospitals, delivered more than 136,000 water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and non-food items (NFI), provided 53,661 medical services to healthcare facilities, provided 46,592 health consultations, and trained 914 people in psychological first aid.

“We’re trying to provide services to support the most vulnerable populations who suffer during a conflict. That can be children. That can mean the elderly. That can mean the disabled. It especially, unfortunately, means women and girls. We are working as hard as we can to ensure these vulnerable populations get the services they need. And, of course, we’re doing everything we can to ensure that we prevent that kind of violence from occurring in the first place,” Bernhardt said.

Another organization working within the war zones is the World Food Programme (WFP). It focuses on the broken commercial food supply chains providing food, supporting people with cash so people can make their own choices when buying food, and stabilizing and restoring public and private institutions and services.

People gather to receive food from World Food Programme’s food distribution. Credit: World Food Programme

In June, they assisted 2.6 million people in Ukraine through food distributions or cash where markets are functioning. Since March, WFP has transferred over 200 million US dollars in cash and cash vouchers to vulnerable Ukrainians. Fifty-five million US dollars of this was provided in July to close to 800,000 people. Internally displaced people receive 75 US dollars per person for up to three people per family.

WFP has also helped more than 115.5 million people in over 120 countries and territories. They were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in ending hunger.

“At this time, one in three households in Ukraine is food insecure, and the existing systems in Ukraine that feed tens of millions of people are falling apart. Our goal is to see an end to this conflict. Our job as humanitarians is to feed people and save lives. We’re willing to stay there as long as it’s needed to support the population and the most vulnerable people in Ukraine,” stated Kyle Wilkinson, Communications Officer for the WFP.

Kerri Murray, President of ShelterBox, was part of the organization’s first team in Kraków, Poland. ShelterBox provides emergency shelter and essential items to set up households, such as temporary shelters, mattresses, blankets, water purification, tools, solar lanterns, and hygiene supplies.

The Ukraine war has internally displaced nearly 6.5 million people, and ShelterBox focuses on projects to meet the needs of internally displaced people. It also has a project that is helping refugees who fled to Moldova, which has received the most refugees per capita of any European country.

ShelterBox has provided hygiene kits to displaced families – mainly women, children, the elderly, and the disabled. During this displacement crisis, it also provides cash to families fleeing Ukraine into Moldova to buy food, prescription medicines, and basic necessities.

ShelterBox has supported tens of thousands of people in Ukraine and hundreds of families in Moldova.

“Rapidly launching this response in Ukraine was challenging,” Murray said, noting that securing a supply chain and delivering aid into the country was difficult. “But we were absolutely committed to helping these families.”

Artem and Maksim play hockey in Hungary. Credit: Katie Wilkes, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

As the crisis unfolded and intensified, Red Cross supported more than 15 million people in Ukraine and surrounding countries. By teaming with several groups, such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Red Cross helped the wounded with medical care and provided first aid training in Ukraine. Red Cross also had a cash voucher assistance program.

“More than 700 ICRC staff are working in 10 locations across Ukraine to deliver relief items to people displaced from their homes, providing medicines and supplies to health care facilities, restoring water supply for millions of people, and other lifesaving activities,” Susan Malandrino, Communications Lead at American Red Cross. “For its part, the American Red Cross has contributed over 50 million US dollars to Ukraine crisis relief efforts and an additional 7.5 million US dollars to partners on the ground to provide meals and medical supplies within Ukraine.”

Malandrino recalls how a colleague on site met two young brothers from Kyiv, 15-year-old Artem and 10-year-old Maksim. When the war started, Artem and Maksim were at a hockey tournament.

They are currently living in one of the Red Cross shelters.

“While here, they play hockey to take their minds off the stress of missing family left behind in Ukraine. Artem says he talks to his father and grandmother daily and misses walking his dogs, including his favorite small highland terrier,” Malandrino explained.

The Hungarian Red Cross ensures each room has a small refrigerator, private bathroom, clean and fresh sheets, and provides wholesome meals from its restaurant.

“Because of Red Cross support, Artem and Maksim have a comfortable place to live and, for a few moments each day, play hockey and just be kids.”

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Women have been highly impacted by the Ukraine war, and have headed humanitarian efforts in their communities, but are still absent from leadership positions. UN Women and Care called for their meaningful inclusion in planning and decision-making processes. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Naureen Hossain
New York, May 11 2022 (IPS)

A joint UN Women and CARE report on the gender disparities in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis calls for donors and humanitarian partners to take greater care to promote the voices of women and marginalized communities in the humanitarian effort.

The Rapid Gender Analysis by UN Women and CARE, released on May 4, 2022, revealed the challenges and hardships women and minority groups face in Ukraine. UN Women and CARE officers conducted interviews with over 170 participants to determine how the war impacted their needs and concerns.

The war has affected multiple areas of life, from education and healthcare access to their livelihoods. In the last two months, women have emerged to take on more authority in households and the community, including community and civil society organizations.

Women have been at the forefront of humanitarian efforts, the report reveals. However, they have not been included in leadership or the decision-making process.

The risk is that current humanitarian efforts do not fully address the more complex needs of the affected civilians, such as the disabled, people who have already been displaced before the current crisis, and ethnic minorities, such as the Roma.

Among the report’s key findings, women, men, boys, and girls have different needs that must be considered in the humanitarian response.

However, the current frameworks of humanitarian aid need to improve to address their complex needs better.

Women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups face greater pressure with the compounded and intersectional impact of the crisis that can leave them more vulnerable during conflicts or the loss of income.

Even though they are at the forefront of humanitarian efforts in their communities, they are not included in the decision-making process of how humanitarian aid is disseminated to even the most vulnerable groups.

Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said: “It’s critical that the humanitarian response in Ukraine takes into account and addresses the different needs of women and girls, men and boys, including those that are furthest left behind…Women have been playing vital roles in their communities’ humanitarian response. They must also be meaningfully involved in the planning and decision-making processes to make sure that their specific needs are met, especially those related to health, safety, and access to livelihoods.”

Erika Kvapilova, UN Women Representative for Ukraine agreed. She said the organization’s contribution to the humanitarian response highlighted the importance for targeted aid to be “fully informed by women’s and girls’ needs and priorities. For example, the most recent Flash Appeal informed by the findings of the Rapid Gender Analysis in Ukraine provides sex-disaggregated data of the targeted population and underlines the importance of gender and age responsive protection, assistance, and access to humanitarian aid and services. It also calls for increased action to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse.”

However, she was concerned about women’s representation in decision-making.

“In the CSO survey conducted by UN Women in March, women have reported that they are being excluded from important decision-making processes at all levels, whilst at the same time being forced to play a critical role in the humanitarian response.”

Siobhán Foran, CARE Regional Gender in Emergencies Coordinator, Ukraine Response said programmes were being initiated to partner with women’s organizations.

“CARE, for example, initiated a programme called Women Lead in Emergency, to increase and enhance women’s organizations’ participation in humanitarian decision-making with concrete financial, technical and capacity-strengthening support.”

Foran said women activists from Ukrainian civil society and women’s organizations were present and vocal in the sector coordination meetings.

“Now the partnerships with women’s organizations are increasingly in place, it’s really critical we see humanitarian action accommodate Ukrainian women’s existing and organic activism and leadership and adapt programming in line with the advice they give through reports like this CARE/UN Women Rapid Gender Analysis and in the many forums they attend.”

This debate about the role of women in crises was again highlighted in a UN Women Media Compact event. The discussion focused on the findings of the report and media experiences reporting on the war in Ukraine through the lens of gender.

Felicia Dahlquist, Programme Analyst from UN Women’s Ukraine office, and Siobhan Foran, CARE Gender in Emergencies Coordinator took to the podium and agreed that there was a need for gender-responsive and socially inclusive humanitarian efforts. This response could address the needs across different sectors, from providing shelter and non-food items (NFI) and education to lessening the care burden on mothers at home.

Dahlquist and Foran acknowledged that multiple areas need to be addressed all at once in a crisis. This runs the risk of other factors such as gender and diversity competing for attention.

Another recommendation was to increase communications to ensure accountability to the affected populations. This would mean implementing feedback and complaints mechanisms to ensure effective procedures and diverse communications channels to disseminate information on humanitarian aid to various groups.

A key topic of discussion was the role that media could play in reporting the stories of women, men, and minority groups on the humanitarian front.

The speakers said that the media has the ability, and thus a responsibility to address the ongoing issues that women and minorities deal with, to present the nuance and complexity of their experiences within the context of their intersectional experiences.

The media have the potential to reflect the voices of these communities to the general public but also get the attention of donors and humanitarian agencies to increase their efforts to support women-led organizations.

Even as donors and humanitarian agencies are expected to be pragmatic in their program planning and implementation approach, Dahlquist said it is essential to remember the humanity of the people who need this aid.

The media could play a key role in showcasing that human element, especially among those groups that receive less coverage in the news, such as ethnic minorities and the LGBQTIA+ community.

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Transgender refugees from Ukraine have met various challenges including access to hormone medicine since fleeing the war torn country. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 25 2022 (IPS)

Soon after Russia invaded her country, Anastasiia Yeva Domani found herself forced to abandon the regime of vital medicines she was taking.

The transgender activist could no longer get hold of the hormone medicines she needed to regularly take in Ukraine as supply chains were disrupted and the vast majority of pharmacies were closed.

“I, like many others, had to pause hormone treatment for a while. We had no choice,” she told IPS.

Domani spent two weeks off her treatment before she managed to get hold of medicines from Poland.

Now, her home in Kyiv has become the headquarters of a network she and other members of the transgender support organisation that she heads, Cohort, are running that helps find and then distribute hormones to those who need them across Ukraine.

It is not an easy task, though. For transgender people in Ukraine, both among those who have remained in their homes and those who make up part of the estimated 6.5 million internally displaced people in the country, a shortage of hormone medicines remains a major problem.

“There is a big problem getting hormone drugs. Some can be found in some cities in Ukraine, some abroad, and using the internet, and with the help of various LGBT activists and others all over the country, we have managed to get what we can,” she said.

“We have sent some hormones to people in March, but at the end of April, they are going to need more, and we will have to find them somewhere,” she added.

But having to halt hormone therapy is not the only serious problem transgender people are facing because of the conflict.

Activists say many transgender people, especially transgender women, have problems leaving Ukraine.

At the start of the war, all Ukrainian men aged 18-60 were ordered to stay in the country. As refugees began leaving, reports emerged of transgender women being turned back at the border, often because the gender marked on their identification documents did not match their actual gender, but sometimes simply because border guards who gave them physical examinations declared them to be men and told them they could not leave.

LGBT+ organisations which spoke to IPS confirmed they knew of such cases.

“Some transgender people have made it over the border into Poland, but there are many who have not been able to come over,” said Julia Kata of the Polish TransFuzja Foundation, which helps transgender people.

“They have been stopped because of problems with their ID documents where gender markers have not yet been changed, or they do not have the necessary medical confirmation that they have started transition,” she added.

This has led to some taking drastic action to get out of the country, and migration experts have also pointed to other dangers, such as violence and exploitation, which refugees can be exposed to when taking illegal routes out of countries.

“I know some trans women have resorted to leaving the country illegally, but this is not something we would support,” Domani said, adding how dangerous such attempts could be.

However, even when transgender people do make it out of Ukraine, they, and other members of the LGBT+ community, are facing further challenges as they find themselves in countries where LGBT+ communities have in recent years faced increasing prejudice, stigma, and discrimination.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) produces an annual ranking of the laws and policies impacting the human rights of LGBT+ people in individual European countries. In its most recent edition, many states bordering Ukraine scored very poorly.

Wiktoria Magnuszewska, an activist with the Polish Lex Q LGBT+ advocacy organisation, told IPS: “There is a lot of fear among transgender people who come here. This is connected to the general social atmosphere in Poland towards the LGBT+ community.”

Activists in other countries agree. Viktoria Radvanyi of Budapest Pride in Hungary told international media: “They are fleeing from Ukraine where their rights and dignity are not as respected as in other places in free societies. Then they arrive in countries like Hungary, Poland, and Romania where the state doesn’t support LGBTQ equality….”

Some organisations in receiving countries are working to provide help specifically for LGBT+ refugees when they arrive, including finding LGBT+-friendly accommodation, advice, help in dealing with local institutions, psychological support, and helping with access to other healthcare services.

The latter is expected to be of particular importance for transgender people, explained Kata, who said her organisation is co-operating with “trans-inclusive healthcare providers” so that any transgender refugees who need to access Polish healthcare will get appointments with doctors “who view them inclusively”.

She added that one of the main priorities of transgender refugees when they come to Poland, alongside “surviving and finding somewhere to stay”, was how to continue their transition. So far, she said, there had been no reports of any transgender refugees having any problems accessing the hormones they need.

Despite this help, some LGBT+ refugees prefer to move further into Europe rather than stay in countries that do not have a positive attitude toward their community.

“What we are seeing is that some LGBT+ people are leaving because of the situation in society here towards their community,” Justyna Nakielska, an advocacy officer with the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) in Poland.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, Domani says, attitudes to the LGBT+ community seem, for the moment at least, to have changed markedly in recent weeks.

Before the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pledged to fight discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality. There had been advances in legal safeguarding of LGBT+ rights, including a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

But general attitudes in society towards the LGBT+ community were ambivalent at best, and in the ILGA’s latest rankings, Ukraine had an even worse score than most of the other countries on its borders.

But since the outbreak of war the situation has changed, said Domani.

“Since the war started, all Ukrainians think about are the Russian occupiers – they forgot their homophobia, their xenophobia, and all the focus now is on Russia,” she said.

She warned, though, that in areas which Russian forces had managed to fully occupy, there was already great concern over the fate of LGBT+ people, particularly in light of the Kremlin’s stance towards the community in Russia and reports that before the invasion, it had drawn up ‘kill lists’ targeting activists.

“There are no problems with LGBT+ people in Ukraine at the moment – with the exception of those in the Russian-occupied territories. We already know of some trans people who left the Kherson region [in southern Ukraine] on the day the war started because collaborators gave Russian occupiers information about human rights and LGBT+ activists,” Domani warned.

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Egypt once again faces the prospect of a poor tourism season due to the Ukraine crisis. The region accounts for about six million tourists each year. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Hisham Allam
Cairo, Egypt, Apr 6 2022 (IPS)

Tourism to Egypt’s GDP is as vital as the Nile to its people. After Egypt’s tourism sector began to recover following the Russian plane crash in 2015. Then COVID hit, and now the Ukrainian war shot a bullet through its heart.

The protracted Russian conflict with Ukraine threatens several tourist destinations that rely on Russian visitors. Turkey, Uzbekistan, the UAE, Tajikistan, Armenia, Greece, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and Cyprus are among the top 25 countries for outbound Russian tourism by flight capacity, according to Mabrian Technologies, an intelligence platform for the tourism industry.

Egypt’s economy is also heavily reliant on tourism from Russia and Ukraine, with the two countries accounting for roughly one-third of all visitors each year. In 2015, Russia imposed a slew of punitive measures against Egypt in the tourism sector, wreaking havoc on the industry and its workers.

Due to the suspension of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian flights, the decline has become very apparent recently, especially in Sharm El-Sheikh, where occupancy rates are less than 35 percent, compared to 40 to 45 percent in Hurghada, according to industry insiders.

Egypt’s Travel & Tourism sector’s contribution to the nation’s GDP fell from $32 billion (8.8%) in 2019 to $14.4 billion (3.8%) just 12 months later, in 2020.

Egypt member of parliament Hany Alassal stressed that the opening of new tourism markets would help mitigate the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which harms the global and Egyptian tourism sectors.

“Russian tourism amounted to roughly 3.2 million Russian tourists in 2015, and it was anticipated to reach approximately 400,000 Russian tourists per month before the outbreak of war, whilst Ukrainian tourism amounted to roughly 3 million Ukrainian tourists in 2021,” Alassal said.

“The impact of the Ukraine crisis on Egypt’s tourism cannot be overlooked, especially in Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada,” Faten Ibrahim, a tour guide, told IPS.

In comparison to beach tourism, which accounts for about 90% of Egypt’s total revenue from this sector, cultural tourism accounts for less than 5% of total revenue.

“We experienced a difficult period of stagnation with the emergence of COVID-19, specifically from March 2020 to March 2021. Since then, most workers in the tourism sector have worked for half the salary,” Ibrahim says.

“I can measure the impact of the absence of Russian and Ukrainian tourism on museums and historic sites through my daily work, as the number of tourists visiting these sites has nearly halved,” she adds.

Ibrahim, who has worked in the tourism industry for 28 years, points out that the situation significantly improved in October and November of last year, but the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in December resulted in large cancellations of reservations, so the situation worsened dramatically in January.

According to WTTC research, COVID-19 sparks a 55% collapse in the sector’s contribution to Egypt’s GDP. The travel and tourism sector is also a major employer in the country, with a workforce of 1.25 million.

In 2017, the total contribution to the GDP was 374.6 billion EGP. It was forecast to contribute approximately 601 billion EGP to the Egyptian economy by 2028.

Amr El-Kady, the head of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board (ETPB), says that the Egyptian authorities are assisting stranded tourists from Russia and Ukraine, either to stay safe or return to their homes, in collaboration with the private sector.

“We’re going through a difficult time, but we’re handling it impressively,” El-kady tells IPS.

“It is a powerful propaganda campaign for Egypt, emphasizing that it is not only a tourist destination but also a country that looks out for its visitors in difficult times.”

He explains that the (ETPB) is currently working to open new tourism markets, particularly in Germany, England, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Switzerland, following the lifting of travel restrictions to Egypt.

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A family from Ukraine rests on a bench after arriving in Zahony, Hungary, on February 27, 2022. Among the estimated 2,5 million refugees who have fled Ukraine were Roma refugees who say they were discriminated against as they tried to escape the violence. Credit: Laetitita Vancon

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 9 2022 (IPS)

Roma refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine are facing discrimination on both sides of the country’s borders at the end of often harrowing journeys across the country, rights groups have claimed.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has sparked what the UN has described as the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since WWII, and as of March 9, an estimated 2 million people had left the country.

These include Roma who, like other refugees, abandoned their homes and communities as fighting broke out across the country.

But having reached borders of neighbouring states, they have found themselves subject to what some groups helping them have described as “brutal” discrimination.

“Groups working on the ground at borders in Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary have confirmed discrimination to us, and also media reports have backed this up. Roma are facing discrimination both by border guards, and then local people once they get out of Ukraine. It’s very sad and disappointing, but not surprising,” Zeljko Jovanovic, Director of the Roma Initiatives Office at the Open Society Foundation (OSF) told IPS.

Roma refugees faced ‘brutal’ discrimination at both sides of the border of Ukraine as they joined 2 million others to flee the bombing in war-torn Ukraine. These headlines reflect their ordeal. Graphic: IPS

Roma living in Europe are among the most discriminated and disadvantaged groups on the continent. In many countries, including Ukraine where it is thought there are as many as 400,000 Roma, significant numbers live in segregated settlements where living conditions are often poor and extreme poverty widespread.

Health in many such places is also bad with research[1] showing very high burdens of both infectious and non-communicable diseases and significantly shorter lifespans than the general population.

Incidents of discrimination of Roma have been reported at the borders of all countries that are taking in refugees, according to the OSF and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC).

These have included being made to wait much longer in lines, sometimes tens of kilometres long, in freezing weather, than ethnic Ukrainian refugees, before they are processed.

“They are always the last people to be let out of the country,” said Jovanovic.

Media reports have quoted refugees describing discrimination and, in some cases, physical attacks.

One Roma woman who had made her way to Moldova said she and her family had spent four days waiting at the border with no food and water, and having found shelter were then chased out of it by Ukrainian guards.

Groups working with the refugees said Roma who crossed into their countries told them similar stories.

Viktor Teru of the Roma Education Fund in Slovakia said: “Roma refugees tell us that on the Ukrainian side there is ‘brutal’ discrimination.”

But once they finally make it over the border, their problems often do not end there.

Bela Racz, of the 1Hungary organisation, which is helping Roma refugees in Hungary, said he had witnessed discrimination during three days his organisation spent in the eastern Hungarian border town of Zahony at the beginning of March.

“Roma arrived in separate coaches – the Ukrainian border guards organized it this way – and when they did arrive, Roma mothers were checked by Hungarian police many times, but non-Roma mothers were not.

“Local mayors and Hungarians are not providing direct help, such as accommodation, and information, [for Roma] in their towns – that only comes if we ask for it and organise it. Roma did not get proper help, information, or support,” he told IPS.

There have been numerous media reports of similar discrimination at border crossings in other countries, including incidents of Roma being refused transport by volunteers, and being refused accommodation.

Jaroslav Miko, founder of the Cesi Pomahaji (Czechs Help) NGO, who has transported more than 100 Roma refugees from the Slovak-Ukrainian border to the Czech Republic, told IPS he had seen “discrimination of Roma among the volunteers who were picking people up at the border”. He said volunteers were picking up some refugees in vehicles and taking them to other places, but that Roma families were being turned away if they asked for help.

In another incident, the head of a firefighting station in Humenne, in eastern Slovakia, where many Roma refugees have been sent to a holding camp, told a reporter that the refugees had “abused the situation”. “They are not people who are directly threatened by the war. They are people from near the border, they have abused the opportunity for us to cook them hot food here and to receive humanitarian aid,” the firefighter allegedly said, adding that Ukrainian Roma should not be allowed across the border.

Slovakia’s Interior Minister Roman Mikulec and national fire brigade officials have refused to comment on the claims.

But despite these incidents of discrimination, Roma refugees are getting local help – from other Roma.

“Many Hungarian Roma living in nearby villages are providing accommodation for Roma. Due to the presence of groups like ours, and state representatives, the situation with discrimination is getting better,” said Racz.

“There is a good network of Roma activist groups coordinating work to help refugees and also there are Roma mayors in many towns near the borders in Romania and Slovakia who are prepared to take Roma refugees and arrange shelter for them,” added Jovanovic.

However, all those who spoke to IPS said the discrimination against Roma refugees was a reminder of the systemic prejudice the minority faces.

Meanwhile, Jovanovic said he hoped that the problems Roma refugees were facing now would not be forgotten, as they had been in the past.

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The crisis in Ukraine has put Egypt’s wheat supply in jeopardy and could impact millions who rely on subsidised bread. Credit: Abdelfatah Farag/IPS

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Mar 3 2022 (IPS)

Egypt is scrambling to find alternate sources of wheat after the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put supply to the country in jeopardy. This is especially urgent because the price of bread in Egypt has in the past sparked protests in the country.

Russia and Ukraine are key players in the global grain market, with their wheat exports accounting for 23% of international trade in 2021-22, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Egypt, Lebanon, and Libya are among the MENA region’s top wheat importers from Ukraine.

In 2021, Egypt imported 6.1 million tonnes of wheat; 4.2 million came from Russia, worth $1.2 billion, representing 69.4% of total Egyptian wheat imports. Imports from Ukraine amounted to 651,400 tonnes, worth $649.4 million, accounting for 10.7% of total imports.

Over the last 50 years, the price of bread has been a politically controversial topic in Egypt, triggering various protests. A subsidised flat loaf costs 0.05 Egyptian pounds, less than one US cent.

Naguib Sawiris, the Egyptian tycoon, appealed to Egypt’s Minister of Supply on February 22 to acquire and store large quantities of wheat.

“We must purchase and stockpile wheat as quickly as possible before the Ukraine-Russia war breaks out, “Sawiris Tweeted.

Mohamed Elhady, who runs a family-owned bakery at Menoufia Governorate, 80 km north Cairo, is deeply concerned about the business he has been running for 20 years.

“The government-subsidised bread diminishes the bakery’s profit margin since we are required to sell a loaf of bread at the government-set price. But we get the cost difference through banks after calculating the number of loaves produced by each bakery using a smart ration card system,” Elhady told IPS.

“Some bakeries gather cards from ordinary residents and report fictitious sales to gain the value of subsidised bread for themselves, increasing their earnings considerably while reselling raw wheat on the informal market,” he explains.

In August 2021, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said it was time to increase the country’s subsidised bread price, revisiting the issue for the first time since 1977, when then-president Anwar Sadat reversed a price rise in the face of riots.

“It is time for the five-piece loaf to increase in price,” Sisi said.

Elhady believes that the government will turn the president’s words into action soon, expecting that the new increase in subsidised bread will take place by April, the anticipated time for receiving wheat from the new suppliers. This will decrease daily production rates and, therefore, his profits.

“Once the wheat prices increase, the government will reduce the number of subsidised loaves from five a day to three or increase the price of the 5-piaster loaf,” Elhady says.

The president is also expected to exclude more citizens from the subsidy programme covering more than 60 million Egyptians.

“People will have to choose; to eat less or to pay more,” Elhady adds.

Egypt’s main state buying agency, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), has issued a second international wheat tender to import wheat from April 13 to 26. The tender was issued 48 hours after it was cancelled because it only received a single offer of French wheat. A least two offers are required before a purchase can go ahead.

The Egyptian GASC set the end of February as a deadline to receive offers for the new tender. In addition to Russia and Ukraine, the GASC sought bids from the United States, Canada, France, Bulgaria, Australia, Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Paraguay, and Kazakhstan. The delivery needs to take place before April 1, 2022.

Despite the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian military escalation, an Egyptian ship carrying 60 tons of Ukrainian wheat has left the Ukrainian ports and is en route to Egypt, a grain consultant at the Ministry of Supply, Salah Hamza, told IPS.

“This shipment was contracted with Ukraine for $361 per ton in an international tender in December 2021. The consignment is part of a 300 000-ton wheat shipment that will arrive by March 2022.”

“Egypt produces 275 million loaves of bread per day, consumes 900,000 tonnes of wheat per month, and the strategic stock is enough for the next five months, in addition to 4 million tons expected from the domestic harvest by mid-April, “Hamza adds.

Egypt has a strategic reserve of wheat, enough to cover the local market’s needs for nine months, the Cabinet’s spokesman, Nader Saad said.

The strategic wheat stock is approximately five million tonnes, according to Saad, and will be augmented when the local wheat harvest season begins on April 15.

In February of this year, the price of an ardeb of wheat climbed by 65 percent compared with February of last year.

The US Foreign Agricultural Service expected Egypt’s wheat consumption in 2021-22 would exceed 21.3 million tonnes, up about 2.4 % from 2020-21.

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A lake in Ukraine, which has a relative scarcity of naturally-occurring water supplies in populated areas. Credit: Vitaliy Motrinets/cc by 4.0

By Ed Holt
KIEV, Jun 21 2018 (IPS)

A campaign to raise awareness of water security in Ukraine could be an inspiration around the world, activists behind it say, after it forced a change in the country’s approach to its water resources.

After almost five years of promoting a vision of water security and proactive water management among various stakeholders and the government in Kiev, the issue of water security is now a top development priority for the government.“Ageing infrastructure dating back to Soviet times, canals, dams and reservoirs require huge resources – financial, human and technical – and there are new challenges as the climate changes." --Andriy Demydenko

Anna Tsvietkova of local NGO MAMA-86, a partner of the Global Water Partnership (GWP) intergovernmental organisation, and which was involved in the campaign, told IPS this was an example of how expert knowledge combined with awareness-raising could move water, or potentially other topics, to near the top of a country’s development agenda.

“Our work could be an inspiration for groups in other countries. We were active and we gave the best advice. Our government had to accept our proposals [on water security],” she said.

Like many countries, the issue of water security is becoming increasingly important for Ukraine.

Groups like GWP Ukraine have said that the state of water resources and water supply in Ukraine is a serious threat to national security, with its effects exacerbated by economic and political crisis, military conflict and climate change.

The country has a relative scarcity of naturally-occurring water supplies in populated areas and studies have shown that surface and ground water resources are unequally distributed between seasons and across the country.

The inefficient management of available water resources, including excess abstraction and pollution, has led to depletion and contamination of water resources, according to local environmental groups.

Meanwhile, ageing and poorly-maintained infrastructure and outdated water and wastewater treatment and technology have caused further problems, including serious sanitation and related health issues.

But until relatively recently, water security in Ukraine was not viewed by the authorities as a concept on its own and was dealt with as part of wider, overarching environmental protection legislation. Authorities – and the wider public at large – were fixed on the concept of water protection rather than risk-based management.

“One of the main threats to water security is that water management is perceived by the people managing it as management of water infrastructure and extracted water, which leaves all other sources of water unmanaged,” Dr Andriy Demydenko of the Ukrainian Center of Environmental and Water Projects told IPS.

“As a result authorities just control water quality and quantity parameters without having any responsibility to reach water targets,” he explained.

He added: “Ageing infrastructure dating back to Soviet times, canals, dams and reservoirs require huge resources – financial, human and technical – and there are new challenges as the climate changes.

“Also, a lack of a scientific basis for decision making and management, shortages in in knowledge and capacity building leave Ukraine very vulnerable and unprepared for events such as water scarcity, droughts and floods.”

However, through campaigns and national stakeholder dialogues over the last five years, GWP and local partner groups introduced and promoted the new concept of risk–based or proactive water management.

In 2016 GWP Ukraine organized four stakeholder consultations on the strategic issues of water policy entitled “Rethinking of Water Security for Ukraine”.

As a result, GWP Ukraine prepared a publication presenting a proposed set of national water goals, targets of sustainable development, and indicators to assess the progress in achieving goals on the water-energy-food nexus.

And in the last year, multi-stakeholder consultations have taken place to push Ukraine to an integrated water resources management approach.

Indeed, the GWP Ukraine’s work has helped change the Environment Ministry’s policy on water strategy.

Having initially said its water sector development programme was covered under other state programmes and strategic documents for water sector development, after seeing GWP’s proposals for a water strategy the ministry decided to approach the EU Water Initiative+ project to help develop its strategy.

Of GWP Ukraine’s original proposals in its consultation document, the Ukrainian government has already accepted proposals on some targets and indicators for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 on ensuring access to water and sanitation for all.

The group continues to work with the government to accept other SDG 6 indicators and include them in the country’s development strategy.

It is hoped a concept paper on water sector reforms will be formulated this summer and then passed to government for approval. A draft of the country’s water strategy is to be presented and discussed at the next National Water Policy Dialogue, which is expected to take place sometime at the end of this year.

But, stresses Tsvietkova, the importance of GWP Ukraine’s work is not confined to Ukraine.

The group’s success in pushing change in Ukraine has led to other groups within the GWP CACENA network – covering Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia – to ask for support in the development of their countries’ water policies as part of national development programmes.

“They have been very interested,” she said.

Arkady Babchenko. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Ed Holt
KIEV, Jun 14 2018 (IPS)

When news broke on May 29th that journalist Arkady Babchenko had been murdered in Ukraine, serious questions about the safety of journalists in the country were raised.

When news broke less than 24-hours later that Babchenko’s murder had been staged by the Ukrainian security service, serious questions about the credibility of journalists in the country were raised."Now we know we should check everything the authorities say not twice, but three or four times." --Anna Babinec

Now, say global press freedom advocates, efforts to keep journalists in Ukraine and other parts of the world safe have only been hampered by the deception.

Johann Bihr, Head of the East European and Central Asian Desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS: “This discredits journalists and hampers efforts to effectively protect them.

“The global impact of this story means that it will have an effect in other countries. Whenever something similar happens, doubts will be raised.”

Babchenko, a former Russian soldier who had fought in Chechnya, had been a vociferous critic of the Kremlin for years. He fled Russia last year fearing for his life and eventually moved to Kiev where he had been working for the Tatar TV channel ATR.

When reports of his death first emerged, there was immediate speculation of Russian involvement – a theory Ukrainian authorities swiftly confirmed.

In the hours after the killing was reported, Moscow denied any involvement and, after Babchenko appeared alive, claimed it was evidence of Kiev’s anti-Russian propaganda.

But as soon as Babchenko appeared at a press conference held by the Ukrainian security services (SBU) the day after his apparent death, revealing he had been co-operating with the SBU in an operation to expose people apparently planning to kill him, press freedom watchdogs were outraged.

In a statement, Philippe Leruth, President of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), described it as a “complete circus” and told the Ukrainian authorities it was “intolerable to lie to journalists around the world and to mislead millions of citizens”.

RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said there “could be no grounds for faking a journalist’s death”. He said staging the killing “would not help the cause of press freedom,” adding in a tweet: “It is pathetic and regrettable that the Ukrainian police have played with the truth, whatever their motive…for the stunt.”

And the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned it could potentially “undermine public trust in journalists and to mute outrage when they are killed”.

The SBU, and Babchenko, have continued to defend the operation. In posts on Facebook, Babchenko said he did not care about criticism questioning the journalistic ethics of what he and the SBU had done, saying he was grateful that the operation had saved his life.

But groups like RSF, CPJ and IFJ say while they are relieved Babchenko is alive, they question whether the mass deception, and subsequent damage to journalists’ and the Ukrainian authorities’ credibility, was worth it.

“We are glad that Babchenko is alive and are in no doubt that the threats he had been facing were real. However, what we are waiting for is the Ukrainian government to present hard evidence that this was worth it and it has really led to some results. So far, they have failed to do so,” Bihr told IPS.

Ukraine has a poor record on journalist safety. Journalists regularly face harassment and physical attacks as well as ‘doxing’ – the publication of their personal information.

Seven journalists have been killed in the last four years in Ukraine, the most recent being Belarusian-born Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet who died in a car bomb assassination in July 2016.

The investigation into his murder has stalled amid claims of a lack of effort from investigators and Ukrainian involvement in the killing.

After Babchenko’s staged murder, Larysa Sargan, spokesperson for Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, drew up a list on her Facebook page of journalists she claimed had been “traitorous” for criticising the operation.

In the wake of the faked murder, while all local journalists have been quick to stress their relief that Babchenko is alive, their opinions on the merits of the operation differ.

Some have praised it as the best way to save a threatened journalist’s life and expose a Russian plot, but many others have been critical of it and some have linked it back to what they say are serious shortcomings among institutions of power towards journalists‘ safety and freedom of speech.

Olga Rudenko, deputy editor-in-chief at the Kyiv Post newspaper, told RFE/RL: “Ukrainian journalists feel even less safe than they used to. To make it a safer place for journalists, the authorities need to investigate crimes against journalists.

“The whole plot to kill Babchenko, if we presume there was one, was only possible in the first place because so many earlier murders and attacks on journalists remain un-investigated, making for an atmosphere of impunity. Who’d sign up to kill a high-profile journalist if they knew all previous killers had been found and punished?”

Anna Babinec, co-founder of the investigative journalism agency Slidstvo.Info, said the incident had, for many journalists, stripped them of what trust they had left in Ukrainian authorities.

She told IPS: “Many journalists who lacked trust in the Ukrainian government before now have absolutely no trust in it.

“As an investigative journalist, working the whole night at the scene of the ‘crime’ was a great test of my skills. Now we know we should check everything the authorities say not twice, but three or four times. We need to check not only if the police are doing their work properly, but whether they are lying about crimes.”

She added: “As a journalist and human being I’m happy that my colleague is alive, but there are still a lot of questions that the security service and Arkady [need to answer] about this special operation.”

This distrust has deepened in the days since the operation with the SBU reluctant to give further details and both the alleged killer and man who hired him claiming to have been working with the SBU all along.

The leak of a reported ‘hit list’ of 47 people, supposedly discovered by the SBU during the operation, has added to the confusion.

The list, which includes journalists and political activists, contains the names of many critics of the Ukrainian authorities, among others, but, pointedly, does not include Babchenko.

Some local journalists believe it is genuine, but others doubt its veracity. Speaking to RFE/RL, three journalists on the list said they had been contacted by the SBU and shown a list with their names on. They said what they had been shown was similar to the list leaked in Ukrainian media, but had a different order of names and, in some cases, spellings.

One of the journalists said they had been questioned by the SBU about their political opinions.

Whether the SBU will give any further details on the operation and show it was, as the RSF said ‘worth it’, anytime soon is uncertain.

But the fact that local and global media were misled by authorities, with the willing help of a journalist, means this is likely to be a boon for those looking to repress free speech or spread propaganda as it leads to questions about the skills and credibility of those who are supposed to be presenting unbiased facts, critics say.

Russian journalist Tanya Felgenhauer told British daily newspaper The Independent: “This story has been a victory of the post-factual world and it makes our jobs even more difficult.

“One of the only advantages we have over social media and state media is accuracy and fact-checking. Here, our fact-checking model wasn’t sufficient, and our credibility has suffered badly.”

The RSF’s Bihr told IPS: “It provides help for organisations who sow doubt and spread misinformation, who blur the lines between truth and fiction. It provides fuel for repressive governments and propaganda media working to hamper freedom of speech.”

By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Dec 31 2015 (IPS)

In November 2015 I visited Syria together with an International Peace delegation. This was my third visit to Syria in the last three years. As on previous occasions I was moved by the spirit of resilience and courage of the people of Syria.

Mairead Maguire

In spite of the fact that for the last five years their country has been plunged into war by outside forces the vast majority of the Syrian people continue to go about their daily lives and many have dedicated themselves to working for peace and reconciliation and the unity of their beloved Syria. They struggle to overcome their fear, that Syria will be driven by outside interference and destructive forces within, to suffer the same terrible fate of Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen, and so many other countries.

Many Syrians are traumatized and in shock and ask ‘how did this happen to our country’? Proxy wars are something they thought only happened in other countries, but now Syria too has been turned into a war-ground in the geo-political landscape controlled by the western global elite and their allies in the Middle East.

Many of those we met were quick to tell us Syria is not experiencing civil war but a foreign invasion. To tell us too that this is not a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims who, in the words of the Patriarch Gregorios III Laham ‘Muslims and Christians not only dialogue with each other but their roots are inter-twined with each other as they have lived together over 1436 years without wars, despite disagreements and conflicts…over the years peace and co-existence have outweighed controversy.’ In Syria our delegation saw that Christian and Muslim relationships can be more than mutual tolerance, they can be deeply loving.

During our visit we met hundreds of people, local and national political leaders, government and opposition figures, local and national Muslim and Christian leaders, members of reconciliation committees and internally displaced refugees. We also met numerous people on the streets of town and cities, Sunni Shia, Christian, Alawite, all of whom feel that their voices are ignored and under-represented in the West.

The youth expressed the desire to see a new state which will guarantee equality of citizenship and religious freedom to all religious and ethnic groups, and protection of minorities, and said this was the work of the Syrian people, not outside forces, and could be done peacefully. We met many Syrians who reject all the violence and are working for conflict resolution through negotiation and implementation of a democratic process.

Few Syrians we met were under the illusion that their elected (7O percent) leader President Assad, was perfect yet many admired him and felt he was much preferred to the alternative of the government falling into the hands of the Jihadists fighters, fundamental extremists with ideology that would force the minorities (and moderate Sunnis) to flee Syria (or many to get killed).

This had already been experienced with the exodus of thousands of Syrians, when they fled in fear of being killed or homes destroyed by jihadist foreign fighters, and alleged moderates, trained funded and accommodated by outside forces. In Homs we witnessed the bombed out houses when thousands fled after Syrian rebels attacked Syrian forces from residential areas, and the military responded causing lethal damage to civilians and buildings (the rebel strategy of Human Shields) and they also done the same with cultural sites (cultural shields).

In the old city of Homs we had a meeting with members of the reconciliation committee, which is led by a priest and sheikh. We also visited the grave of a Jesuit priest who was murdered by IS fighters and visited the rebuilt Catholic church, the original of which was burned down. During the meeting by candlelight, because of regular power blackouts, we heard how Christians and Muslims in the town had been instrumental in the rehabilitation of fighters who choose to lay down their arms and accept the Syrian Government’s offer of Amnesty.

They appealed to us to ask the international community to end the war on Syria, and support peace, and it was for our delegation particularly sad and disappointing that that very day the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, (UK), publicity announced his support for the UK vote to bomb Syria! (And subsequently the UK Government, voted for War on Syria). (If the UK/USA/EU, etc., wish to help the Syrian people they can immediately lift the sanctions which are causing great hardship to the Syrian people).

We also visited the Christian Town of Maaloula, where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken and it is one of the oldest Christian towns in the Middle East. We visited the church of St. George and the priest explained how after their church was burned to the ground by western backed rebels, and many Christians killed, the people of Maaloula, carried a table onto the ruins of the church and after praying started to rebuild their church and homes. Sadly also in this place some Muslim neighbours also destroyed Christian neighbours’ homes and this reminded us all of the complexities of the Syrian conflict and the need to teach nonviolence and build peace and reconciliation. It also brought us to a deeper awareness of the plight of not only moderate Sunnis from extremists, but the huge numbers of Christians now fleeing from Middle Eastern countries, and that if the situation is not stabilized in Syria and the Middle East, there will be few Christians in what is called the cradle of civilization and birth of Christianity, and where the followers of the three Abrahamic faiths have lived and worked as brothers and sisters in unity. The Middle East has already witnessed the tragic and virtual disappearance of Judaism, and this tragedy is happening at an alarming rate to the Christians of the Levant.

But there is hope and Syria is a light to the world as there are many people working for peace and reconciliation, dialogue and negotiations, and this is where the hopes lies and what we can all support by rejecting violence and war in Syria, the Middle East and our world.

(End)

Excerpt:

Liow Tiong Lai, Minister of Transport of Malaysia, addresses the U.N. Security Council on July 29, 2015. The Council failed to establish a tribunal on the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 due to a veto by Russia. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Andrey Klishas and Aslan Abashidze
MOSCOW, Aug 10 2015 (IPS)

We refer to the IPS article posted by Mr. Somar Wijayadasa, a former Representative at the United Nations.

Now that the tribunal fiasco is over, let us examine the legal aspects of the inquiry into the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 still being conducted by Dutch experts.Here the question arises: why demand the establishment of an international tribunal, when results of the investigations are still not complete?

As Mr. Wijayadasa correctly pointed out, the toxic game of political football has, unfortunately, dragged this on for over a year without any honest attempt to find out what happened.

The United States and its allies are ever ready to use any excuse to blame Russia. They often abhor any moral imperatives.

There are many questions that demand clarification from a legal point of view.

(a) What rules should be applied in situations of such tragic incidents?
(b) What legal steps should be taken by the State in whose airspace the tragedy took place?
(c) What is the legal status of ongoing investigations?

First, the tragic incident (in which all 298 people on board were killed) took place in the Ukrainian airspace. Therefore, the Ukrainian authorities must bear full responsibility for whatever happened in Ukrainian airspace and/or inside its territory.

From an international law perspective, the incident affected the interests of the State of Ukraine, in whose airspace the tragedy took place; the State of Malaysia as owner of Malaysia Airlines; the Netherlands and other States whose nationals died in the tragic incident. Thus, it should be stressed that this tragedy does not affect Russia at all.

In such tragic situations the rules of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, adopted on 7 December 1944 in Chicago, U.S. (Chicago Convention) are to be applied. All U.N. Member States are parties to this Convention, including those affected by this tragedy.

Article 9 of the Convention states that “each contracting State may, for reasons of military necessity or public safety, restrict or prohibit uniformly the aircraft of other States from flying over certain areas of its territory.”

A vivid example is the tragedy that occurred in 2001 in international airspace over the Black Sea, when Ukrainian air defence forces fired a missile and shot down a Russian plane TU-154 with passengers on board.

In this case, the Ukrainian authorities were obliged to follow the Convention requirements of preventive character by immediately providing the description of restricted areas to other contracting States and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Article 9 of the Convention further requires each contracting State establishing such restricted area to require any aircraft entering such areas to effect a landing at a designated airport within its territory.

But the Ukrainian authorities announced a no-fly zone only after this tragic event occurred on 17 July 2014.

Article 26 of the Convention states that “In the event of an accident to an aircraft of a contracting State occurring in the territory of another contracting State, and involving death…, the State in which the accident occurs will institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the accident, in accordance, so far as its laws permit, with the procedure which may be recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).”

However, the Ukrainian authorities did not initiate an inquiry into the circumstances of the accident, and they did not appeal to ICAO regarding the procedure for the investigation into the tragedy.

Article 26 further states that “The State in which the aircraft is registered shall be given the opportunity to appoint observers to be present at the inquiry, and the State holding the inquiry shall communicate the report and findings in the matter to that State.”

It is evident that Malaysian authorities could not appoint observers because the Ukrainian authorities failed to establish an investigation into the tragedy.

Also, the Convention does not provide for another State the right (other than the State in which the tragedy occurred) to conduct inquiry into its circumstances. If so, what is the legal basis for Netherlands to make any investigation into the Malaysian Airline tragedy?

Furthermore, Article 82 of the Convention states: “The contracting States accept this Convention as abrogating all obligations and understandings between them which are inconsistent with its terms, and undertake not to enter into any such obligations and understandings.”

Therefore, any agreements between the authorities of the Ukraine and the Dutch authorities, including those related to the inquiry into the circumstances of the catastrophe of the Malaysian airplane – inside Ukraine’s airspace – are contrary to the rules of the Convention.

Article 83 of the Convention states that even arrangements “not inconsistent with the provisions of this Convention shall be forthwith registered with the ICAO Council, which shall make it public as soon as possible.”

Notably, the ICAO Council did not publicise any such agreement. We wish to stress that even with such “secret” agreement between the Ukrainian and the Dutch authorities, the latter do not have the right to investigate the circumstances of the tragedy.

The whole irony of the situation lies in the fact that visiting the crash site by experts from the Netherlands and other countries, picking up debris and other evidence to shed light on the causes of the tragedy was made possible only thanks to the support of the militia of Donetsk People’s Republic.

What is surprising here is the lack of professionalism on the side of the Dutch experts who selectively chose some wreckage, dismembered it into several parts, and took them to study, which is categorically unacceptable in terms of the methods of collecting and studying of material evidence of a catastrophe.

This case is further complicated by the fact that many important aspects of the investigation are not conducted by the Dutch experts (who lack appropriate qualification), but in the laboratories of the UK, which has no relation to the case.

Here the question arises: why demand the establishment of an international tribunal, when results of the investigations are still not complete? And how is it possible to rely on the findings of the investigation, if the process itself raises concerns regarding the controversial actions (and omissions) of those who have usurped the right to investigate the circumstances of the disaster?

Against the background of the hypocritical policy exercised by the U.S. and its allies, what surprises us most is that the Dutch authorities, acting under the written scenario of the United States, are not being shy of their mockery targeting the victims of the disaster of the Malaysian airlines in the airspace of Ukraine.

It should be remembered that such actions commensurate not only with the imperatives of international law and morality, but also the canons of God.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

U.N. Security Council members observe a minute of silence at the start of the meeting to establish tribunal on downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. The draft resolution failed to be adopted due to the veto by Russia. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Somar Wijayadasa
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2015 (IPS)

On July 29 Russia vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution on the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 flight over eastern Ukraine last year – killing all 298 people on board.

Of the 15 UNSC members, 11 voted in support of the Malaysia-proposed draft resolution, with Angola, Venezuela and China abstaining.The toxic game of political football has, unfortunately, dragged this on for over a year without any honest attempt to find out what happened.

Vetoing the draft UNSC resolution, the representative of Russia to the U.N., Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, noted that Russia had repeatedly said that it wouldn’t support the tribunal “due to the fact the UNSC resolution 2166 [of 2014] didn’t qualify the Boeing tragedy as a threat to international peace and security.”

While all sponsors of the draft resolution and the United States had harsh words condemning Russia’s veto, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said: “There can be no reason to oppose this [draft resolution] unless you are a perpetrator yourself.”

That is a preemptive judgement to blame Russia, ignoring the basic legal tenet that one is innocent until proven guilty.

The Malaysia Airlines passenger jet was shot down on July 17 as it was flying over a war zone, where Ukrainian armed forces and rebels were fighting using military aircraft.

The Ukrainian authorities and Western allies accuse the rebels in eastern Ukraine of downing the plane with a surface-to-air missile allegedly provided by Russia. But Moscow has rejected accusations it supplied the rebels with missile systems. The rebels too deny these accusations.

Meanwhile, Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine are conducting a criminal inquiry into the cause of the crash but they have not yet established responsibility for the tragedy.

Separately, the Dutch Safety Board is due to release their official report on the cause of the crash by the end of this year.

It is regrettable that Russia was never allowed to participate in these investigations. Moscow has repeatedly warned against putting blame on anyone before these investigations into the crash have been completed.

Despite the veto, Churkin said, “Russia stands ready to cooperate in the conduct of a full independent and objective investigation of the reasons and circumstances of the crash”.

From the outset, the draft resolution was doomed to fail for three reasons: First, since these reports are still pending, Russians maintain the position that it was premature to set up an international tribunal.

Secondly, the U.N. Security Council last year unanimously adopted a resolution on this issue. And thirdly, the new draft resolution craftily claimed that the tragic downing of the Malaysian plane is a threat to international peace and security.

On July 21, 2014, the Security Council unanimously adopted the resolution 2166 that demanded that those responsible “be held to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability”.

Therefore, it is surprising that a new draft resolution on the same subject surfaced this year with the contentious terminology “a threat to international peace and security”.

As Churkin clearly pointed out, “It is difficult to explain how the event, which wasn’t considered a threat to international peace and security a year ago, now suddenly becomes one.”

Churkin said that “This, in our view, indicates the fact that political purposes were more important for them than practical objectives. This of course is regrettable.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that “the idea to create such a tribunal is aimed at punishing those whom Washington considers to be guilty.”

Furthermore, Chapter VII, Articles 39 to 51 of the U.N. Charter do not provide for the establishment of international tribunals to investigate civil aviation catastrophes of this nature – whether deliberate or accidental.

In the past, there have been similar incidents with civilian aircraft, such as the explosion of the Pan American flight 103 by the Libyans in 1983; downing of Iran Air flight 655 by the U.S. in 1988; and the downing of Korean Air Lines flight 007 by Soviet Union in 1983.

These were investigated according to internationally accepted rules, and the Security Council was not involved in investigations. Therefore, the call for an international tribunal on any pretext is nothing but confrontational.

According to the established rules and regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), it is the responsibility of the airline (Malaysian Airlines) as well as the country (Ukraine) in which the accident occurred to investigate as to what exactly happened.

Dutch investigators admit that the plane was shot down while flying over the conflict zone near Donetsk. It is not only an ICAO requirement but a well recognised international practice to inform ICAO and civilian airlines not to use airspace over conflict zones.

Both Ukraine and Malaysian Airlines failed to adhere to elementary rules. Ukraine warned civilian airlines not to use its airspace only after this accident occurred.

With my experience in the U.N. system for over 25 years, I am confident that the U.N. and ICAO could help establish an Independent Committee of International Aviation Experts to conduct a completely independent and transparent investigation – without undue political pressure – to find out who should be held responsible for this grave tragedy.

But the toxic game of political football has, unfortunately, dragged this on for over a year without any honest attempt to find out what happened.

All countries should bury their hatred and differences, and assist in the ongoing investigations to deliver justice to the families of the 298 innocent victims of the crash.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Daya Thussu
LONDON, Jul 1 2015 (IPS)

As the leaders of the BRICS five meet in the Russian city of Ufa for their annual summit Jul. 8–10, their agenda is likely to be dominated by economic and security concerns, triggered by the continuing economic crisis in the European Union and the security situation in the Middle East.

The seventh annual summit of the large emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – also takes place with a background of escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), as well as the growing economic power of Asia, in particular, China.

Daya Thussu

Nearly a decade and a half has passed since the BRIC acronym was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, a Goldman Sachs executive, now a minister in David Cameron’s U.K. government, to refer to the four fast-growing emerging markets. South Africa was added in 2011, on China’s request, to expand BRIC to BRICS.

Although in operation as a formal group since 2006, and holding annual summits since 2009, the BRICS countries have escaped much comment in international media, partly because of the different political systems and socio-cultural norms, as well as stages of development, within this group of large and diverse nations.

The emergence of such groupings coincides with the relative economic decline of the West.

This has created the opportunity for emerging powers, such as China and India, to participate in global governance structures hitherto dominated by the United States and its Western allies.

That the centre of economic gravity is shifting away from the West is acknowledged in the view of the U.S. Administration of Barack Obama that the ‘pivot’ of U.S. foreign policy is moving to Asia.“The major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades … [it is predicted that] by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy”

And there is evidence of this shift. In the Fortune 500 ranking, the number of transnational corporations based in Brazil, Russia, India and China has grown from 27 in 2005 to more than 100 in 2015. China’s Huawei, a telecommunications equipment firm, is the world’s largest holder of international patents; Brazil’s Petrobras is the fourth largest oil company in the world, while the Tata group became the first Indian conglomerate to reach 100 billion dollars in revenues.

Since 2006, China has been the largest holder of foreign currency reserves, estimated in 2015 to be more than 3.8 trillion dollars. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China’s gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed that of the United States in 2014, making it the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power parity terms.

More broadly, the major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades, prompting the United Nations Development Programme to proclaim The Rise of the South (the title of its 2013 Human Development Report), which predicts that by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

Though the individual relationships between BRICS countries and the United States differ markedly (Russia and China being generally anti-Washington while Brazil and South Africa relatively close to the United States and India moving from its traditional non-aligned position to a ‘multi-aligned’ one), the group was conceived as an alternative to American power and is the only major group of nations not to include the United States or any other G-7 nation.

Nevertheless, none of the five member nations are eager for confrontation with the United States – with the possible exception of Russia – the country with which they have their most important relationship. Indeed, China is one of the largest investors in the United States, while India, Brazil and South Africa demonstrate democratic affinities with the West: India’s IT industry is particularly dependent on its close ties with the United States and Europe.

Although the idea of BRIC was initiated in Russia, it is China that has emerged as the driving force behind this grouping. British author Martin Jacques has noted in his international bestseller When China Rules the World, that China operates “both within and outside the existing international system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it.”

One manifestation of this change is the establishment of a BRICS bank (the ‘New Development Bank’) to fund developmental projects, potentially to rival the Western-dominated Bretton Woods institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Headquartered in Shanghai, China has made the largest contribution to setting it up and is likely that the bank will further enhance China’s domination of the BRICS group.

Beyond BRICS, Beijing has also established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which already has 57 members, including Australia, Germany and Britain, and in which China will hold over 25 percent of voting rights. Two other BRICS nations – India and Russia – are the AIIB’s second and third largest shareholders.

Such changes have an impact on the media scene as well. As part of China’s ‘going out’ strategy, billions of dollars have been earmarked for external communication, including the expansion of Chinese broadcasting networks such as CCTV News and Xinhua’s English-language TV, CNC World.

Russia has also raised its international profile by entering the English-language news world in 2005 with the launch of the Russia Today (now called RT) network, which, apart from English, also broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in Spanish and Arabic.

However, as a new book Mapping BRICS Media – which I co-edited with Kaarle Nordenstreng of the University of Tampere, Finland – shows, there is very little intra-BRICS media exchange and most of the BRICS nations continue to receive international news largely from Anglo-American media.

The growing economic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing – most notably in the 2014 multi-billion dollar gas deal – indicates a new Sino-Russian economic equation outside Western control.

Two key U.S.-led trade agreements being negotiated – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and both excluding the BRICS nations – are partly a reaction to the perceived competition from nations such as China.

For its part, China appears to have used the BRICS grouping to allay fears that it is rising ‘with the rest’ and therefore less threatening to Western hegemony.

The BRICS summit takes place jointly with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State Council meeting. The only other time that BRICS and the SCO combined their summits was also in Russia – in Ekaterinburg in 2009.

Apart from two BRICS members, China and Russia, the SCO includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. SCO has not expanded its membership since it was set up in 2001. India has an ‘observer’ status within SCO, though there is talk that it might be granted full membership at the Ufa summit.

Were that to happen, the ‘pivot’ would have moved a few notches further towards Asia.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Aslan Abashidze
GENEVA, Jun 8 2015 (IPS)

The “U.N. Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine”, which was referred to in an Inter Press Service (IPS) article of Jun. 2, does not, in my view, reflect many salient points.

How the lawful Government of Ukraine was overthrown is now well known. The new Kiev regime immediately announced the prohibition of the Russian language in the eastern regions of the country, inhabited mostly by the Russian speaking population.Though more than 6,500 people have died and millions displaced, no one clarifies why the numbers are growing. No one admits that these regions face a humanitarian catastrophe.

As the U.N. report confirms, those who committed numerous murders on Maidan Square and in Odessa have not been prosecuted.

Combat aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force, armed with a full complement of missiles, bombed the centre of Donetsk in broad daylight. These events forced the creation of militia groups to defend their interests and territory.

That is how the military confrontation between the new regime in Kiev and eastern regions of Ukraine was created – thus causing 6,500 deaths, and over a million Ukrainian refugees now living inside Russia.

The fulfillment of all provisions of the Minsk agreements (ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, delivery of aid to the needy, local elections, formation of local authorities, constitutional reforms, etc.) signed by President Petro Poroshenko would no doubt preserve the territorial integrity of the Donetsk People’s Republic (Donetsk) and Luhansk People’s Republic (Luhansk) regions by obtaining acceptable status within the Ukrainian State.

Instead, what are we facing in fact?

The shelling of civilian areas in the eastern regions continues unabated. The observers of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) report violations of the Minsk agreements on the side of Kiev. They probably cannot witness the Ukrainian Military incursions into East Ukraine which undoubtedly spark retaliation.

Civilians in Donetsk, including children, are dying. Various military units wearing fascist symbols act independent of the Kiev authorities, claiming they do not have to abide by Minsk Agreements.

Against this background, Poroshenko publicly states that his goal is to reclaim all areas by military force. To achieve that objective, Poroshenko mobilises the military, equips armies and recruits Private Security Companies from the U.S. and NATO Member States as well as others such as Georgia. Also, he continuously requests aid from Western countries — not only billions of dollars, but also heavy military equipment, including lethal weapons.

What for? To make peace or wage war?

Recently, the Ukraine Parliament – on the pretext of “anti-terrorist operations” – adopted an Act on the non-respect of human rights in Donetsk and Luhansk. But no one, including the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), reminded the Ukrainian authorities that it is a violation of Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In doing so, the Ukrainian authorities ignored the basic human right of the right to life.

It is also required that before passing such drastic laws, the country should declare a state of emergency, and clarify the need and duration of such a regime.

To declare a state of emergency, the Kiev authorities have to first recognise that an internal armed conflict exists in their territory, and secondly, they have to adhere to Article 3 that is common to four Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War of 1949 and Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977.

In such a scenario, Kiev may not have access to loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and others, and it would not ethical to keep draconian restrictions of a socio-economic nature at the expense of the poor segment of the population while doing nothing against the high-level of corruption in government sectors.

Furthermore, the Kiev authorities have arbitrarily cancelled the benefits of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster victims, as well as child allowances. The U.N. human rights laws prohibit such retrogressive measures that worsen the situation of vulnerable groups.

Blatantly ignoring its social and economic obligations, the Kiev authorities have stopped supplying most needed medications; stopped paying pensions and benefits to people in those regions; and have blocked all food and essential items supply routes to these beleaguered regions.

What is also not acknowledged is the fact that since the beginning of this disaster, the Russian Federation has voluntarily sent 29 convoys of humanitarian aid to these regions, and that Russia provided natural gas after Kiev cut gas supplies to these regions in the height of the winter.

On Jun. 4, Poroshenko told the Parliament they will withdraw the economic blockade against Donetsk and Luhansk only if these regions came under their total control.

To achieve this, the Kiev authorities declared a total mobilisation of reservists and strengthened the bombing of the territory by large-scale artillery shells.

The selective approach of human rights organisations in relation to certain events raises concerns. Though more than 6,500 people have died and millions displaced, no one clarifies why the numbers are growing. No one admits that these regions face a humanitarian catastrophe.

You may ask: What else can we do “to stop armed activities in the eastern part of Ukraine”, even though it is the paramount condition spelled out in the Minsk agreements signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, and supported by the U.S.?

First, of course, is to ensure that the Ukrainian authorities unreservedly honour the ceasefire. Secondly, if Kiev does not control certain military groups in territories under its control, then they should be disarmed by the OSCE peacekeepers.

Unfortunately, the structures of international organisations, including U.N. human rights structures, are subject to political influence from the United States and its NATO allies, which has led to a sharp decline in credibility of these establishments.

As we know, the U.S. continues its attempts to control world affairs – including world football. If this trend continues, the principles and norms of international law enshrined in the U.N. Charter will cease to operate – paving the way for military commanders to solve world problems. Any child understands that it would lead to the death of our civilisation.

The U.N. Charter states that “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.”

There is no dispute in the world that cannot be resolved by peaceful negotiations. Figuratively speaking, we live in an “armed peace”, and in conditions of increasing threats and challenges.

What we need is the political will of world leaders to decide what kind of a world we want to live in – and for generations to come.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service.

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