Obozrevatel, June 8, 2014
Pro-Russian local terrorists near Donetsk would like to join the ranks of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO): they want to clear Donbass together with ATO from Russian mercenaries.
Journalist Andrey Bulgarov posted in his FB account with reference to a source that a group of terrorists at a Ukrainian military checkpoint near Donetsk asked to join the servicemen of the ATO.
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Aisen Tacho, April 25th 2014
It was noticed a while ago that the children of our patriotic governors live and study in the West. Parents send their children to live in the West, buy property there, send money there, and even have dual citizenship… All this happens for one simple reason: they despise Russia, her people, and they have long since given up on the country they rule. The list of Russian governor`s children who live practically permanently in the West is huge, and I will give just a few examples.
I will briefly list the family members of Russian governmental officials and the places where they live.
1. President V. Putin’s family
Very little is known about the President`s family, considering their private lifestyle. He was married, then divorced. In the early 90s, Putin returned to Leningrad [St. Peterburg] and sent his daughters back to Germany…
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By Halya Coynash
06.05.14 kharkiv human rights protection group
Oleg Sentsov
Dmitry Dinze, lawyer representing Oleg Sentsov, the well-known Ukrainian film director, has said that Russia’s FSB used torture to extract testimony from his client. The FSB are claiming that Sentsov, together with three other people from the Crimea, was involved in a terrorist plot. All four have been active in peacefully protesting against Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimea. Sentsov was also active in the AutoMaidan movement.
Dinze has told RBK that the FSB prevented him from seeing Sentsov for two weeks so that the bruises would have time to disappear. On June 4 he lodged a complaint with the Investigative Committee demanding that a criminal investigation be initiated against the enforcement officers who he accuses of beating and threatening his client and exceeding their powers.
The complaint states that a plastic bag was pulled over Sentsov’s head until he fainted and he was threatened with being raped or killed in order to get him to confess to organizing explosions; arson attacks; possessing a weapon and explosives. Dinze says that the bruises to Sentsov’s back, buttocks and other parts of his body were recorded by staff at the temporary holding facility in Simferopol, and in the SIZO [detention centre] there. He asks that the relevant documents be sought from those places.
Dinze, who earlier represented Pussy Riot members, agreed to take on the case soon after Sentsov’s arrest late on May 10, but up till the end of May was not able to see him.
Two members of the Public Supervisory Commission, Dilyara Tasbulatova and Zoya Svetova visited the men in Lefortovo on May 29. Svetova told RBK that this was the first time in her practice that she had had to sign an undertaking to not divulge any information about the conversation with Sentsov. RBK reports Tasbulatova as saying that Sentsov did not complain of ill-treatment. The meeting did, however, take place with two federal penitentiary service employees present, and judging by a report by New Times journalists who were also allowed to see Sentsov, he was referring only to the situation in Lefortovo. He said to the journalists:
You yourselves understand very well: here all is within the law. If they were putting pressure on me, I wouldn’t stay silent. I don’t want to write home for the moment, . It’s simpler for me like that. I know that my friends and family will help me. My country, for whose freedom I fought, will not abandon me”.
The other three accused did not complain either though they did say that it had been bad in Simferopol. Tasbulatova believes that they are all under pressure from the SIZO administration to keep quiet, a charge denied by an official penitentiary service official.
According to RBK all but Sentsov have ‘confessed’. It is not clear when or if 23-year-old Alexander Kolchenko did so. On May 30 Russian TV channels showed 23-year-old Gennady Afanasyev and Alexei Chirny asserting that they had received instructions from Sentsov.
As reported, all four arrests and the charges against the men seem very clearly linked with their civic activities and protest against Russian occupation (more details here). Sentsov is a film director who gained renown for his film Gaamer and was involved in another film, Rhino which had both Ukrainian state funding and financing from a German film fund. He is also a solo father of two, with his 9-year-old son suffering from autism. It is difficult to understand where he could have found the time to ‘mastermind’ the purported terrorist plans, let alone why he would have done so.
Amnesty International earlier issued an urgent appeal in the cases of Sentsov and Kolchenko, stating :
Ukrainian citizens and Crimea residents Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko are among a group of detainees from Russian-occupied Crimea who have been unlawfully detained and transferred to Moscow. They are believed to be accused of terrorism offences under Russian legislation and do not have adequate access to their lawyers.
FSB issued its statement on May 30, claiming that the men were part of a Right Sector terrorist conspiracy. Right Sector was recently found to have been mentioned almost as many times in the Russian media as the ruling United Russia party and far more than any other Russian party. Both the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin media have consistently exaggerated its role in EuroMaidan and the post-Yanukovych government of this far-right nationalist movement whose presidential candidate on May 25 gained less than 1% of the votes.
Dmytro Yarosh’s dismal showing in the elections has not stopped the demonization by the Russian media of Right Sector as this trial shows. The lack of any evidence or in fact likelihood that the charges are genuine is almost certainly designed to send a chill to all civic activists in the Crimea.
see also:
• Russia’s FSB launches first Crimean show trial
• ’Terrorism’ trials for Crimean film director and other opponents of annexation
• Ukrainian film producer facing Russian ‘terrorism’ charges
• Russian FSB detains Ukrainian film producer in Simferopol
Source: khpg.org
Reprinted with permissions.
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Amnesty International, Ukrainian Men Unlawfully Detained in Russia:
http://amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR50/026/2014/en/e21a7c12-d245-4e3d-b210-463223fd5c80/eur500262014en.html
The Hollywood Reporter, Ukrainian Director Arrested by Russian Secret Service in Crimea, Accused of Terrorist Act:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ukrainian-director-arrested-by-russian-705183
Protest by Russian activist Ilya Rivkin and director of Babylon13 project Christian Zherehy together with German activists on 5th of June in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin:
06.08.2014
By RFE/RL’s Russian Service
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
Based on an interview by RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Translated by Luke Johnson in Washington.
Sergei Ivanov
Amid the two-month occupation by separatist forces in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk and subsequent military campaign by the central government, thousands have fled for other parts of Ukraine. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 10,000 civilians have been internally displaced after the occupation of Crimea by Russian forces and subsequent fighting in eastern Ukraine.
By Halya Coynash
06.09.2014 khpg.org
The March 16 ’referendum’ on the Crimea’s status was condemned by Ukraine and the international community. Russia invited a number of far-right and neo-Stalinist parties to act as ’observers’
Russia has already added information about its annexation of the Crimea to a school history textbook with the version presented just as doctored as the results of the ‘referendum’ used to claim overwhelming support for the move.
Lenta.ru reports that a new Russian textbook for the 9th grade is about to go on sale with a brief, but rather specific, presentation of the events around Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has ordered that other textbooks also be brought into line.
The textbook’s authors – Alexander Danilov, Ludmila Kosulina and Maxim Brandt – have followed Putin’s lead in stressing the role played by the Crimea and Sevastopol in Russian history. With respect to the events in 2014, the account is best quoted in full.
“At the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 the situation in Ukraine became exacerbated. In February 2014 the legitimate president of the country, Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown, and power went to the opposition. One of its first decisions was to revoke a law on the status of the Russian language and to prohibit its use on an equal basis with Ukrainian. The parliament of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, refused to obey the Kyiv authorities,
On March 6 2014, the Crimean parliament passed a decision that the Republic would join the Russian Federation and set a referendum on this for March 16. According to the results of the referendum, 96.77% of Crimeans, and 95.6% of residents of Sevastopol were in favour of the Crimea and Sevastopol reuniting with Russia. On March 18 an agreement was signed on the Crimea and Sevastopol joining Russia as a subject of the Federation. Following ratification by both sides of the agreement on March 21, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the law on the Crimea joining Russia and on the formation of two subjects of the Russian Federation – the Republic of the Crimea and as city of federal significance, Sevastopol. A Crimean federal district was created.”
The good thing about most school kids is that they don’t ask inconvenient questions, Their teachers may which was doubtless the reason for such immense haste in presenting a ‘correct version of events’, the kind students should learn – and repeat for good grades.
Silence about the EuroMaidan protests which made world headlines for more than 3 months was not unexpected. Nor the police gunning down of unarmed protesters which led to Maidan’s ultimatum for Yanukovych to go. This, in fact, is what he did, fleeing first to Kharkiv, then to Russia where he has been in hiding ever since. The version could have been much worse, as the Kremlin and Russian media have demonstrated, but for a school textbook greater accuracy would have been desirable.
Doctoring the records is also inadmissible. Yes, a slim parliamentary majority did vote on Feb 23 to revoke a notorious ‘language law’ pushed through despite mass public protest in July 2012. This law purported to protect the rights of any minority ethnic group comprising 10% of the population of a region, but in fact simply allowed Russian to become the main language in a number of regions of the country. The law was unconstitutional and highly contentious but it touched on a vital nerve in eastern regions of the country and the move was disastrously insensitive. It also allowed the Kremlin to trumpet about the Russian language having been ‘banned’, conveniently ignoring the fact that interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov stated immediately that he would not sign the bill, and the language law remains in force. It is worth mentioning also that on June 7, during his inauguration speech, Ukraine’s new president Petro Poroshenko assured eastern Ukrainians – in Russian – that he guaranteed their right to freely use Russian.
Perhaps the main lie is highlighted by Russian historian Andrei Zubov who lost his post at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations over his condemnation of Russia’s invasion of the Crimea. Not only was the law not revoked, but it did not cover the Crimea which as an autonomous republic had its own law on language. The Russian language was never under any threat at all.
The version of events which school students in Russia are to receive makes no mention of the armed seizure by soldiers without insignia of government buildings on Feb 27 and takeover by the leader of a marginal party with 4% support at the last parliamentary elections. 14-year-old school students may not understand that a ‘referendum’ cannot be arranged within 10 days, even if the decision it is intended to approve has already been taken. They will not learn from their history lessons that the referendum was condemned by many Crimeans and by all democratic countries; that the near 100% vote for joining Russia has been rubbished even by the Russian Human Rights Council under the President; and thatthe United Nations and western countries do not accept Russia’s annexation of part of Ukraine’s territory.
On June 2 Putin instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to work together with the Russian History Society on supplementing by August 15 the concept framework for new standardized textbooks of Russian history with information about the role of the Crimea and Sevastopol for the Russian state. These textbooks, he said, should be written in good Russian and not contain any internal contradictions or ambiguous interpretations.
For almost seventy years the Soviet Union foisted a single ‘correct’ view on everything, including history. The grip on ‘correct’ historical interpretation in Putin’s Russia has been tightening for some years, and a historic iron curtain now seems to be falling over Russia’s annexation of the Crimea.
see also:
• PACE condemns illegal annexation of the Crimea
• Sergei Kovalev: Stop Russian expansion!
• Kremlin-orchestrated “federalist” protest and western inaction
• Donetsk Front in Putin’s Dirty War
• Scurrilous rumours used to spread fear and distrust in Eastern oblasts
• AutoMaidan activist shot at near Chongar
• Russian troops already deployed in mainland Ukraine
• The Crimea is our Home: Get your troops out!
• Crimean “referendum” a grotesque farce
• Crimean Tatars call on all Crimeans to boycott “referendum”
Source: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
Re-posted with permissions.
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