Crimea

Europe

Kakhovka: ‘ecocide’ as war crime in Ukraine

In Episode 177 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the unfolding Kakhovka dam disaster in Ukraine, an evident design by Russia to forestall a Ukrainian counter-offensive into the occupied southeast of the country. Massive flooding has been unleashed downstream, imperiling some of the world’s most important farmland. Upstream, coolant water to the Zaporizhzhia power plant is threatened, escalating Russia’s “reckless nuclear gamble” at the facility. It is true that the disaster gravely impacts much Russian-held territory, including the Crimea Peninsula. However, despite Moscow’s official denials of responsibility, Russia’s online internal propaganda organs are bragging about it. The Wagner Group mercenary outfit calls the disaster “beautiful” and boasts that the destruction of dams on the Dnipro River is a “trump card” against Ukraine. The cataclysm on the Dnipro provides a grim test case as the International Criminal Court moves to adopt “ecocide” as a recognized international crime. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map: PCL)

Europe

Russia liquidates country’s oldest opposition party

The Supreme Court of Russia ordered the liquidation of the People’s Freedom Party (PARNAS) at the request of the country’s justice ministry. The Ministry of Justice contended that the number of the party’s regional offices dropped by seven, from 47 to 40, and law requires parties to have representative offices in half of the regions of the Russian Federation. PARNAS leaders responded that the party still had 44 offices, and was only considered out of compliance with the law because the court counted Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine as Russian administrative regions. (Photo: PARNAS activists at a picket for free Internet in Yekaterinburg, 2019. Credit: Ivan Abaturov via Moscow Times)

Europe

What is the Freedom of Russia Legion?

Fighters in armored vehicles crossed into Russia from Ukrainian territory and seized a town in Belgorod oblast. They were only driven out after Russian forces responded with fighter planes and artillery. Two groups claimed responsibility for the raid, both said to be made up of Russians who are fighting for Ukraine. One is the self-proclaimed Freedom of Russia Legion, which released a video message to coincide with the attack, calling on Russians to take up arms “to put an end to the Kremlin’s dictatorship.” The other is the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), characterized as far-right nationalists—although this does raise the question of why they are fighting for Ukraine. (Image: LvivMedia via YouTube)

Europe

Putin design to rebuild Russian Empire: blatanter and blatanter

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia reacted with outrage after China’s ambassador in Paris appeared to question the sovereignty not only of Ukraine, but all the former Soviet republics, saying they “do not have an effective status in international law.” Fearing diplomatic censure, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry backpedalled, releasing a statement saying: “China respects the sovereign status of former Soviet republics ” But such sentiments are fast gaining an alarming currency in Russian political circles. A commentator for pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda opined that “according to the Ukrainian scenario, we have an historical right” to Russian-inhabited lands of Kazakhstan. Former president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, tweeted a call for Ukraine to “DISAPPEAR” (in caps), and referred to the country as “Malorossiya” (Little Russia)—a term from the empire of the czars for territories outside Great Russia (Russia proper). (Photo: Wikipedia)

Europe

Podcast: Donbas = Sudetenland

In Episode 143 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the all too telling irony that Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Donbas region came on exactly the same day as the 1938 Munich Agreement, which approved Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region. Russian annexation of the Donbas was preceded by that of Crimea, just as the Nazi annexation of Sudetenland was preceded by that of Austria. This is the same pattern of escalation toward world war—only this time Putin’s overt nuclear threats make the stakes even higher. Signs of hope include the anti-draft uprising in Russia and mass exodus of Russian youth, which undermine Putin’s war effort and threaten his very regime. War Resisters International has issued a petition demanding that European states offer asylum to all Russian deserters and conscientious objectors to military service. Alas, much of the Western “left” continues to make excuses for Putin’s criminal aggression. Dissident websites such as CounterVortex and Balkan Witness debunk the Russian war propaganda being recycled by Putin’s internet partisans on the pro-fascist pseudo-left. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, interpreter, and Neville Chamberlain meeting in Munich, September 1938: German Federal Archives via Encyclopedia Britannica)

Europe

Russia: anti-draft uprising spreads

More than 2,000 people have been detained in protests across Russia since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization of military reserve troops to fight in Ukraine. The demonstrators are risking long prison terms under laws passed shortly after the Ukraine invasion was launched, which have facilitated a harsh crackdown on dissent. At least 20 were detained in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, where police fired in the air to disperse local villagers who were blocking a highway. But the following day, the protests spread to the regional capital of Makhachkala, where demonstrators shouting “No to war” were attacked by riot police. Reports indicate that it is not only military reservists who are being called up, and that a general conscription is actually underway in some areas. There are also reports of disproportionately high numbers called up in poor regions populated by ethnic minorities, such as the North Caucasus. (Photo via Moscow Times)

Europe

Crackdown on civil society widens in Crimea

Drone strikes and unexplained explosions on the Russian-annexed Criman Peninsula have prompted the Moscow-controlled administration to urge citizens to hunt for possible saboteurs. This comes amid widening repression on civil society, especially targeting the Tatar people. A local court jailed four people involved in a Tatar wedding in Bakhchysarai for performing a Ukrainian patriotic song. Officers of the FSB security agency raided the home of Vilen Temeryanov, an independent journalist working with the rights group Crimean Solidarity, in the village of Vilne. Temeryanov was detained on charges of collaborating with a “terrorist organization.” In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists said: “Authorities must drop all charges against Temeryanov, release him immediately, and stop cracking down on Crimean Tatar journalists.” (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

UN documents Russian rights abuses in Ukraine

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission (UNHRMM) accused Russia of hundreds of arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances in Ukrainian territory, and violating the basic human rights of Ukrainian war captives. The UNHRMM documented numerous cases of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, finding that at many detention sites they lack adequate food, water, healthcare and sanitation. The UNHRMM also documented 416 cases of forced disappearance of Ukrainian civilians. (Photo: chief39/Pixabay)

Europe

Nuclear flashpoint Crimea?

A series of explosions tore through a Russian airbase on the Crimean Peninsula, leaving one dead. Saki airfield is some 200 kilometers from the Ukrainian lines, and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office denied responsibility for the blasts. However, an unnamed Kyiv official anonymously told the New York Times that Ukrainian forces carried out an attack on the base. Zelensky later stated: “Crimea is Ukrainian, and we will never give it up. This Russian war against Ukraine and against all of free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea—with its liberation.” But last month, in response to the arrival of US High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) in Ukraine, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedevimplied that Ukrainian strikes on targets in Crimea would meet Russia’s stated criteria for use of nuclear weapons. Saying that the refusal of Ukraine and Western powers to recognize Moscow’s control of Crimea poses a “systemic threat” to Russia, he added: “Doomsday will come very fast and hard. There will be no hiding from it.” (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Podcast: Tolstoy would shit

In Episode 132 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that deputy Duma speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, one of the most bellicose supporters of Putin’s Ukraine war, is a direct descendent of Leo Tolstoy—and recently invoked his great-great-grandfather’s “slaughter” of British and French troops during the Crimean War as a warning to the West. This is, of course, an utterly perverse irony given that the literary giant’s anarcho-pacifist beliefs were antithetical to everything that his descendant Pyotr stands for. Indeed, it was Leo Tolstoy’s experiences in the Crimean War that turned him into a committed pacifist. His final novel, Hadji Murat, vivdly depicts the brutality of Russia’s counterinsurgency campaign in Chechnya in the 1850s—a history that repeated itself in Chechnya in the 1990s. This is bitterly recalledby the Chechen volunteers now fighting for Ukraine, where this history is repeating itself yet again. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image adopted from Europeana Foundation)

North America

Russia: irredentist claims on Alaska

The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament threatened to “claim back” Alaska if the United States freezes or seizes Russian assets in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. “Let America always remember: there’s a piece of territory, Alaska,” Vyacheslav Volodin said at the last session of the State Duma before summer break. “When they try to manage our resources abroad, let them think before they act that we, too, have something to take back,” Volodin said. He noted that deputy speaker Pyotr Tolstoy had recently proposed holding a referendum in Alaska on joining Russia. The day after Volodin’s comments, billboards proclaiming “Alaska Is Ours!” appeared in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, apparently placed by a local “patriot.” (Map via Wikipedia)

Europe

Russia imprisons still more Crimean Tatars

A court in Russia sentenced another group of Crimean Tatars to lengthy prison terms on charges of belonging to a banned political organization. A military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Bilyal Adilov to 14 years, while Izzet Abdullaev, Tofik Abdulgaziev, Vladlen Abdulkadyrov and Mejit Abdurakhmanov each received 12-year sentences. The men are accused of being members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organization that advocates for the peaceful restoration of an Islamic Caliphate. It operates freely in Ukraine but is banned in Russia as an “extremist” organization. The men, arrested in March 2019 in a sweep along with more than a dozen other Tatars, were also members of the group Crimean Solidarity, formed to oppose the illegal Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Since the annexation, over 30 Crimean Tatars have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, more than half this year alone. (Shirts read: “Truth cannot be imprisoned, killed, or hidden!” Photo via RFE/RL)