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Category: War

In Sweden and Finland, even the skeptics are coming round to NATO bids

In Sweden and Finland, even the skeptics are coming round to NATO bids

Politico reports: The prospects of Sweden and Finland joining NATO will ultimately be decided by how many people feel the same way as Peter Gustavsson. A long-time Social Democrat lawmaker in the Swedish city of Uppsala who now edits a party newsletter in Stockholm, Gustavsson says Moscow’s decision to attack Ukraine has scrambled the security picture facing Russia’s neighbors and it is now time for Sweden to join the defense alliance. “It is a whole new chapter,” Gustavsson said. “We…

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Russia’s grotesque intervention in Syria

Russia’s grotesque intervention in Syria

Kareem Shaheen writes: One of the most fascinating and deplorable subplots of the Syrian war (which entered its 12th year last month) has been the proclivity of the anti-imperialist left to justify Russia’s intervention in the war on the side of Bashar al-Assad and to excuse the myriad war crimes that Moscow engaged in or abetted, such as bombing hospitals and civilians, carrying out starvation sieges or protecting a regime that deployed chemical weapons on its own people. The central…

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How the West’s desire for agreement at any cost has created chaos

How the West’s desire for agreement at any cost has created chaos

Jasmin Mujanović writes: In the months leading up to the resumption of open Russian aggression in Ukraine, another European country consistently made international headlines concerning renewed threats of conflict: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Beginning last summer, Serb nationalist authorities in the country’s Republika Srpska entity (RS) — one of the two administrative regions within Bosnia created after the conclusion of the Bosnian War (1992-95) — launched a renewed secessionist bid following the imposition of an anti-genocide denial law. By January, the…

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Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

The Guardian reports: Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country’s lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the “period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end”. After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal…

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German intelligence intercepted Russian military radio traffic from suspected perpetrators of Bucha atrocities

German intelligence intercepted Russian military radio traffic from suspected perpetrators of Bucha atrocities

Der Spiegel reports: The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence service, has acquired gruesome new insights into the atrocities committed by Russian military forces. DER SPIEGEL has learned that the BND has new satellite images and has intercepted incriminating radio traffic from Russian military personnel in the region north of Kyiv, where Bucha is located. Some of the intercepted radio traffic might be linked to dead bodies that have been photographed in Bucha. Following the withdrawal of the Russian military from…

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Russia suspended from UN Human Rights Council for ‘systematic abuses’

Russia suspended from UN Human Rights Council for ‘systematic abuses’

RFE/RL reports: The UN General Assembly has voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine. The resolution received 93 votes in favor, 24 against, and 58 abstentions. The U.S.-initiated resolution adopted by the 193-member General Assembly expressed “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.” [Continue reading…]

Execution of a village mayor becomes a symbol of Russian brutality in Ukraine

Execution of a village mayor becomes a symbol of Russian brutality in Ukraine

The Wall Street Journal reports: Mayor Olha Sukhenko took care of her village like a family for more than a decade, locals say, sprucing up public buildings, organizing concerts and settling disputes. When the Russian army withdrew last week after a monthlong occupation, her neighbors found Ms. Sukhenko’s lifeless body in a shallow grave, her hands bound. Her husband and son lay next to her, dead. Olha, Ihor and Oleksandr Sukhenko are but three of the faces of the brutal…

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The viral ‘Ukrainian biolab’ conspiracy theory hatched in rural Virginia

The viral ‘Ukrainian biolab’ conspiracy theory hatched in rural Virginia

Update: On Tuesday, April 5, 2022, Creech appeared on the Alex Jones Show, where he confirmed his identity — and his role in perpetrating the biolab conspiracy theory. The ADL Center on Extremism has, with a high degree of confidence, identified “Clandestine,” the man behind the viral biolab conspiracy theory, as Jacob Creech, a self-described former restaurant manager and Army National Guard veteran living in rural Virginia. The discovery highlights how a fringe QAnon figure, harnessing the power of social…

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Russia’s stunning failure to seize Kyiv

Russia’s stunning failure to seize Kyiv

The Associated Press reports: Kyiv was a Russian defeat for the ages. The fight started poorly for the invaders and went downhill from there. When President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of buildup on Ukraine’s borders, he sent hundreds of helicopter-borne commandos — the best of the best of Russia’s “spetsnaz” special forces soldiers — to assault and seize a lightly defended airfield on Kyiv’s doorstep. Other Russian forces struck elsewhere across Ukraine, including toward…

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U.S. blocks Russian debt payments and unveils new sanctions in bid to raise pressure on Moscow

U.S. blocks Russian debt payments and unveils new sanctions in bid to raise pressure on Moscow

Reuters reports: The United States stopped the Russian government on Monday from paying holders of its sovereign debt more than $600 million from reserves held at American banks, in a move meant to ratchet up pressure on Moscow and eat into its holdings of US dollars. Under sanctions put in place after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, foreign currency reserves held by the Russian central bank at US financial institutions were frozen. But the Treasury Department had been allowing…

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As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

Inside Climate News reports: In the six weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict has not only sent energy prices soaring, but has disrupted food production, pushing costs upward and stoking fears of global food shortages. The United Nations has warned of surging food insecurity in countries that depend on wheat from Ukraine, a critical and major breadbasket. Many of them were already teetering on the edge of hunger before the crisis. As these effects of the conflict ripple across…

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How a Russian propagandist justifies genocide in Ukraine

How a Russian propagandist justifies genocide in Ukraine

Mariia Kravchenko has posted a translation of an article by a Russian propagandist, originally published by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti: In this article, the author is describing ways how Russians want to wipe out Ukraine in the same way the Soviet regime did it. ⠀ It’s important to spread this article. The Russian war should be stopped now. It was supposed to be stopped 8 years ago when it only began. 71% of Russians feel proud about…

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Russia’s biggest rappers are going hard against Putin’s war on Ukraine

Russia’s biggest rappers are going hard against Putin’s war on Ukraine

Rolling Stone reports: A blazing-yellow Bentley. Face tattoos. Booming bass lines in a parking garage. The burnt-out husk of a bullet-riddled car. As the rapper, who would look comfortably at home on a Tekashi 69 set, spits bars about Cartier and riches from behind the wheel, a woman and her son are held at gunpoint. Suddenly, blood spatters the car’s glossy yellow contour as the victims are dispatched offscreen. This might look like just another hip-hop video. In fact, the…

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Russian invaders are now treating the whole Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed

Russian invaders are now treating the whole Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed

Franklin Foer writes: On the morning of March 4, a teacher was sheltering in a basement in Bucha, an old railroad stop northwest of Kyiv that over the centuries had grown into a verdant suburb. The town lay along the Russian military’s intended path of conquest, leading into the Ukrainian capital. And while the invaders struggled to realize their overarching plan, they gained a toehold in Bucha. At 7 a.m., the teacher, huddled alone with her two dogs, heard a…

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History stokes Putin’s imperial dream of a ‘Greater Russia’

History stokes Putin’s imperial dream of a ‘Greater Russia’

Samuel McIlhagga writes: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become an exemplary instance of the use of historical ideas to justify invasion. Whereas U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq was couched in abstract rhetoric about “the power and appeal of human liberty,” Putin has resorted to esoteric historical arguments to explain his choice to invade. Putin, in his information and propaganda war, has repeatedly used certain imperial tropes that make historical claims about how Russia should be…

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Women and girls recount huge scale of sexual violence inflicted by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

Women and girls recount huge scale of sexual violence inflicted by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

The Guardian reports: Women across Ukraine are grappling with the threat of rape as a weapon of war as growing evidence of sexual violence emerges from areas retaken from retreating Russian forces. The world was horrified on Sunday by a picture taken by the photographer Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20km outside the capital, Kyiv, in which the bodies of one man and three women were piled under a blanket. The women were naked and their bodies had been partially…

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