Founder of Wagner private mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (here pictured with fighters), claims that Bakhmut is now in Moscow’s control. However his claims are disputed by Ukraine.

By Fawzia Moodley
JOHANNESBURG, May 24 2023 (IPS)

The Wagner Group, a shadowy mercenary group that has been operating for many years in African countries such as Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, and other mainly Francophone countries, has again been thrust into the limelight due to its involvement in the Ukraine war on behalf of Russia.

Wagner is believed to have a presence in 18 countries in Africa – and its influence goes far beyond security matters.

Julian Rademeyer of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime told DW.com, “Wagner itself has developed over time as an organization that’s gone from being a purely private military contracting entity into a multiplicity of business alliances and relations and a network of companies. Some of them are front companies across the countries in which they operate on the African continent.”

He sees the Wagner Group as primarily a Kremlin military tool to boost Russia’s economic and military influence in Africa.

Rademeyer’s colleague and lead author of a study titled Russia’s military, mercenary and criminal engagement in Africa, Julia Stanyard, told IPS, “The Wagner Group is unique as an organization in the breadth, scale, and boldness of its activities. However, our study also shows that Wagner did not emerge in a vacuum: The group’s activities and characteristics reflect broader trends in the evolution of Russia’s oligarchs and organized crime groups, their respective relationships with the Russian state, and their activities in Africa.”

“The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies.

“It appears to target unstable governments embroiled in civil wars and forms alliances with the ruling elite and offers them military support and weapons.”

This is exactly what happened in the CAR, where the government has been fighting multiple rebel forces since December 2020. A beleaguered President Faustin-Archange Touadéra reached out to Russia shortly after taking power in 2016.

“He received Russian military instructors and weapons, and Wagner mercenaries soon followed,” says CIVICUS, a global alliance promoting civic action.

In return, Wagner receives economic and mining concessions. According to the New York Times, the group has been involved in mining operations in the CAR, where it has secured contracts to mine gold and diamonds.

Stanyard says: “The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies.”

While the governments and sections of their population have welcomed the group, Wagner’s been accused of gross human rights abuses, with local communities reporting forced labour and sexual violence.

Human Rights Watch says it has collected compelling evidence that Russian fighters have committed grave abuses against civilians in the CAR with complete impunity since 2019. The HRW interviewed 40 people between February 2019 and November 2021 about abuses by men speaking Russian.

Stanyard’s research substantiates the allegations of abuse: “Wagner Group has been accused of using whatever means necessary to achieve its aims, including criminal activity.”

Russia officially does not recognize mercenaries, but Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch, has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Significantly, on Sunday, May 21, Putin reportedly congratulated the Wagner mercenary force for helping in what he called the “liberation” of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Reuters quoted Putin from a statement on the Kremlin’s website, saying: “The Head of State congratulated Wagner’s assault groups, as well as all members of the units of the Russian Armed Forces who provided them with the necessary support and cover on their flanks, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, said Bakhmut had not been occupied by Moscow.

Wagner’s activities go beyond promoting the military and economic interests of the Kremlin.

Stanyard says the group is also involved in promoting Russian propaganda and interests by “targeting the social media profiles of Kremlin critics — spamming them with pro-Putin and pro-war comments.”

Britain, in particular, has expressed concern that among the targets are “senior UK ministers’ social media accounts, alongside other world leaders.”

“The operation has suspected links to Prigozhin,” she says, quoting a UK report exposing the misinformation campaign by Russia.

The Wagner Group’s involvement in Africa has raised concerns about the role of private military contractors in the continent’s conflicts. While some African governments have welcomed its presence, others are concerned about the lack of oversight and accountability.

In 2019, the African Union adopted the African Standby Force Concept of Operations, which seeks to strengthen the capacity of African states to respond to crises and reduce their reliance on external actors. However, the implementation has been slow, and there are concerns that the Wagner Group and other mercenary groups will continue to operate with impunity.

CIVICUS warns that Wagner’s involvement is “contributing to the closing of civic space. In the CAR, with his position bolstered, Touadéra has further repressed dissenting voices. Humanitarian workers and independent journalists are among those subjected to violence and intimidation by Wagner forces.”

Likewise, in Mali, French media outlets have been banned and “the junta banned the activities of civil society organizations that receive French support, at a stroke hindering civil society’s ability to help people in humanitarian need due to the conflict and monitor human rights abuses.”

The issue of private military contractors in Africa is not limited to the Wagner Group. Other companies, such as Academi (formerly known as Blackwater), a private firm hired by the U.S. that became synonymous with civilian killings in the Iraq war, have been involved in conflicts in the continent, often with little oversight or accountability.

Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) was also involved in Mozambique in areas where the country is trying to deal with the Islamist insurgency. DAG claimed to have worked closely with the government to keep the insurgency at bay before the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sent deployments to Cabo Delgado province. Wagner was reportedly also involved in the conflict but left after experiencing a number of losses.

The use of private military contractors has raised questions about the role of states and the responsibility of corporations in conflicts, as well as the need for greater transparency and accountability.

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Rhine River, Cologne,,Germany,10.08.2022. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 25 2023 (IPS)

Apologies to those Western politicians and media who continue to say that Ukraine’s brutal proxy war stands behind whatever catastrophes, disasters or crises occur in the Planet.

Is this accurate?

Scientific evidence confirms that, much earlier than that war, Europe, like many other regions, was already walking closer to the edge of extreme weather consequences.

Europe’s worst drought in 500 years?

“The drought episode that affected Europe in 2022 could well be the worst in 500 years,” reports Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme which “looks at our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens and offers information services.”

The most expensive hazards during the period 1980-2021 include the 2021 flooding in Germany and Belgium (almost EUR 50 billion), the 2002 flood in central Europe (over EUR 22 billion), the 2003 drought and heatwave across the EU (around EUR 16 billion), the 1999 storm Lothar in Western Europe and the 2000 flood in France and Italy (both over EUR 13 billion), all at 2021 values

This European service further explains that the 2022 drought episode “is attributable to a severe and persistent lack of precipitation, combined with a sequence of repeated heat waves that have affected Europe from May to October.”

Put simply, the reported climate extremes in Europe are not the consequence of the Ukraine war, and they were already there many years earlier to when it started in February 2022.

Anyway, European citizens now hear the devastating impacts of climate extremes in their own rich continent, which is one of the major global contributors to the ongoing climate emergency.

Are climate emergencies just an impoverished regions’ problem?

So far, the severe impacts of climate extremes in Africa and other impoverished regions, would jump to the news every now and then, by showing short videos of errant human beings and deserts… before analysing in-depth the latest soccer games or reporting on the new friend of a reality-show star. And highway accidents or a fight between young gangs.

Western citizens are also used to hearing that the horrifying numbers of hungry people (more than one billion human beings), in particular in East Africa due to long years of record droughts, is either caused by the war in Ukraine or that their situation was exacerbated by it.

Now European citizens wake up to the upsetting fact that they also fall under the heavy impact of the steadily rising human, economic, and environmental toll of climate change.

How come those impacts are now becoming news?

A swift answer is that such climate extremes, heat waves, severe droughts, water and food production shortages have been causing increasing damage to private businesses, as well as to medium-to-small-size agriculture activities. In short, damaging their pockets.

See what the very same European Union officially says at the macro level:

– Weather- and climate-related hazards, such as temperature extremes, heavy precipitation and droughts, pose risks to human health and the environment and can lead to substantial economic losses.

— Between 1980 and 2021, weather- and climate-related extremes amounted to an estimated EUR 560 billion (2021 values).

– Hydrological events (floods) account for over 45% and meteorological events (storms including lightning and hail, together with mass movements) for almost one-third of the total.

– When it comes to climatological events, heat waves are responsible for over 13% of the total losses while the remaining +/-8% are caused by droughts, forest fires and cold waves.

– The most expensive hazards during the period 1980-2021 include the 2021 flooding in Germany and Belgium (almost EUR 50 billion), the 2002 flood in central Europe (over EUR 22 billion), the 2003 drought and heatwave across the EU (around EUR 16 billion), the 1999 storm Lothar in Western Europe and the 2000 flood in France and Italy (both over EUR 13 billion), all at 2021 values.

– A relatively small number of events is responsible for a large proportion of the economic losses: 5% of the weather- and climate-related events with the biggest losses is responsible for 57% of losses and 1% of the events cause 26% of losses (EEA’s own calculations based on the original dataset).

– This results in high variability from year to year and makes it difficult to identify trends. Nevertheless, the average annual (constant prices, 2021 euros) losses were around EUR 9.7 billion in 1981-1990, 11.2 billion in 1991-2000, 13.5 billion in 2001-2010 and 15.3 billion in 2011-2020.

– The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that climate-related extreme events will become more frequent and severe worldwide. This could affect multiple sectors and cause systemic failures across Europe, leading to greater economic losses.

– Only 30% of the total losses were insured, although this varied considerably among countries, from less than 2% in Hungary, Lithuania and Romania to over 75% in Slovenia and the Netherlands.

Also at the medium-to-micro level

Most medium-to-small agricultural cooperatives, unions and associations in those European countries more stricken by droughts, have been rising their public protests, demanding their governments to compensate them for the big losses of their harvests.

In the specific case of Spain, farmers’ unions and agri-food cooperatives report crop losses of up to two-thirds of the expected harvest.

Back to Copernicus

The “historical drought” affected Europe as evidenced by the Combined Drought Indicator of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service European Drought Observatory for the first ten-day period of September 2022.

On this, Copernicus reports the following findings:

– Heatwaves: 2022 was also characterised by intense, and in some areas prolonged, heatwaves which affected Europe and the rest of the world, breaking several surface air temperature records.

– As reported in the July 2022 Climate Bulletin published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service July 2022 was the sixth warmest July in Europe.

– Temperature anomalies reached peaks of +4ºC in Italy, France, and Spain.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus:

– The prolonged drought that has affected various parts of the globe together with the record temperatures were contributing forces that have certainly caused an increased wildfire risk, which peaked during the summer season both in Europe, in the Mediterranean region, and in the north-west of the United States.

– The Combined Drought Indicator (which is published by the European Drought Observatory as part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service) reported that more than one-fourth of the EU territory was in “Alert” conditions in early September.

– Another extreme phenomenon of 2022 was the marine heatwave that affected the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 2022.

European countries are highly dependent on the Mediterranean Sea for shipping goods, including oil tankers; tourism (one country – Spain receives more than 80 million tourists a year, double its total population); industrial fishing; refineries; harbours, and a long etcetera.

Press freedom watchdogs say the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is a sign of the Kremlin’s greater intolerance of independent voices.

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 12 2023 (IPS)

The arrest of a US journalist in Russia has not only sent a chilling warning to foreign reporters in the country but is a sign of the Kremlin’s desire to ultimately stifle any dissent in the state, press freedom watchdogs have warned.

They say the detention at the end of March of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich signals the Russian regime may be tightening its already iron grip on control of information and expanding its repression of critics.

“The scale of this move is enormous. Not only is it the first time since the Cold War that an American journalist has been detained, but very serious charges have been brought against him. This is a big step,” Karol Luczka, Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute (IPI), told IPS.

“[Cracking down on independent voices] has been the Kremlin policy for some time now and it seems they are targeting more and more people,” he added.

Gershkovich, a US citizen, was arrested in Yekaterinburg on suspicion of spying. He is being held at Lefortovo prison in Moscow pending trial and faces up to 20 years in jail on espionage charges. Among his recent reporting were stories about problems Russian forces faced in their war effort, as well as how Western sanctions were damaging the Russian economy.

The Wall Street Journal has denied the accusations against their reporter and the arrest has been condemned by western leaders and rights campaigners.

Some have seen the detention as a political ploy by the Kremlin and believe Gershkovich is being held to be used as part of a prisoner exchange with the US at some point in the future.

But press watchdogs say that, even if that is the case, the arrest also sends out a very clear message to any journalists not following the Kremlin line.

“I have no doubt that the arrest is a political thing. When I heard about the charges against Evan, the first thing that I thought was, ‘what high-profile Russian do the Americans have in one of their jails at the moment?’” Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

“Foreign correspondents offer a rare glimpse of the real picture in Russia to a global audience. The arrest sends a message to all foreign journalists that they are not welcome in Russia, and they can be charged with a crime at any time. From now on, it’s clear that the situation for them unpredictable and unsafe,” she added.

Independent media in Russia had faced repression even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but it has increased since then.

The regime has moved to block websites of critical newspapers, as well as social media platforms, to stop people from accessing information critical of the war, while military censorship has also been introduced with new draconian laws criminalising the “discrediting” of the military.

This has led to some outlets shutting pre-emptively rather than risk their employees being sent to prison, while others have been forced to drastically slash staff numbers, or move newsrooms out of the country, operating in de facto exile.

But until now, foreign media outlets had been relatively unaffected by this crackdown. At the start of the war, many pulled their correspondents out of the country amid safety concerns. But a number, like Gershkovich, returned and had been able to report on the war with comparatively far greater freedom than their Russian counterparts.

For this reason, Gershkovich’s arrest is so worrying for the future of independent journalism under the current Russian regime, Jeanne Cavelier, Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said.

“To arrest a foreign journalist for such serious charges is a new critical step in Putin’s information warfare. The aim is to intimidate all the remaining Western journalists on Russian territory who dare to report on the ground and investigate on topics linked to the war on Ukraine,” she told IPS.

“It is a signal that they are no more relatively protected than their Russian colleagues. As usual, [this is] to spread fear and silence them. Dozens of foreign media outlets have already left Russia since March last year, as well as hundreds of local independent journalists. This blow may worsen the situation and further reduce the sources of trustworthy information from Russia.”

Others believe that the arrest could signal the Kremlin is moving towards a goal of almost total control over information in Russia.

“We are still some way off the kind of censorship that existed in the USSR, but Putin and the Russian ruling regime have said for a long time that the system of censorship in the USSR is a role model for them. This is the way it is going in Russia and the way the government wants it to go. It is deplorable but it is the reality of things,” said Luczka.

“Eventually, it could become like the Cold War when all information coming out of Russia was strictly controlled,” added CPJ’s Said.

Meanwhile, some believe that the arrest is also a signal to the wider population.

In recent years the Kremlin has moved to shut down the opposition, both political and in other areas of society. While vocal critics such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny have ended up in jail, many civil society organisations, including domestic and foreign rights organisations, have been closed down by authorities.

This repression has intensified since the start of the war, and Russians who spoke to IPS said that, particularly following the introduction of legislation criminalising criticism of the invasion, many people have grown increasingly wary of what they say in public.

“It’s crazy. There are shortages because of the war, there are supply problems, and we see it at work all the time. We can talk about the shortages as much as we want to at work, but we cannot say what is causing them – the war – because just using the word ‘war’ can land you in jail for years,” Ivan Petrov*, a public sector worker in Moscow, told IPS.

He added that he knew many people who were against the war but were afraid to express even the slightest opposition to it.

“They know it’s wrong but just can’t speak about it. There is so much censorship. You can get jailed for treason just for mentioning its negative effects on the economy,” he told IPS.

Against this backdrop, Gershkovich’s arrest is likely to reinforce fear among ordinary Russians who do not support the war or the government and stop them speaking out, rights campaigners say.

“It’s hard to separate the stifling of all media freedoms from the stifling of all independent voices – they go hand in hand. When [the Russian authorities] arrest such a high-profile reporter on patently bogus grounds, no matter what the true purpose of the arrest may be, they are no doubt fully aware of the chilling message it sends to the broader public,” Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

*Name has been changed

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The main newspapers and news programmes do not treat the climate crisis as an emergency, says Greenpeace Italia Spokesperson Giancarlo Sturloni. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Apr 11 2023 (IPS)

If an alien landed on Planet Earth today and started watching television and reading the newspapers, it would probably not realize that humanity and the natural world face an existential threat – one that has taken us into the Sixth Mass Extinction, is already devastating the lives of many, especially in the Global South, and is set to hit the rest of us soon.

“I don’t know what is scarier, the fact that atmospheric CO2 just hit the highest level in human history, or that it has gone close to completely unnoticed,” tweeted Greta Thunberg on April 9 regarding data from the Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Aside from some notable exceptions, the climate crisis has not brought out the best in the mainstream media.

The main Italian dailies only publish around 2.5 articles a day explicitly dealing with the climate crisis. The newspapers give plenty of space, on the other hand, to businesses whose activities generate big greenhouse-gas emissions, running an average of six adverts a week to firms involved in fossil fuels and in the automobile, cruise tourism and air-transport sectors.
The scientists and activists who sound the alarm are often portrayed as dangerous extremists or loonies.

The treatment dished out last year by a popular television show, Good Morning Britain, to Miranda Whelehan, a young member of the UK’s Just Stop Oil civil-disobedience group, is a good example.

Instead of considering her valid points about the looming dangers outlined in the IPCC’s reports, she was ridiculed and bullied with bogus arguments, including criticism for ‘wearing clothes’ that may have been transported using oil. Was she supposed to turn up naked?

It was so bad that it seemed to have come straight from Adam McKay’s 2021 satirical film about the climate crisis, Don’t Look Up.

But butchering climate coverage is only a small part of the problem.

What is perhaps worse is the extent to which global heating and its effects are largely ignored, with celebrity gossip and sports among the subjects that seem to take precedence.

There are not enough stories about the climate emergency and those that do get published or screened are not given the prominence they deserve.

New research by the Italian section of Greenpeace gives an idea of the scale of the problem.

The ongoing monitoring study, conducted with the Osservatorio di Pavia research institute, showed that the main Italian dailies only publish around 2.5 articles a day explicitly dealing with the climate crisis.

The newspapers give plenty of space, on the other hand, to businesses whose activities generate big greenhouse-gas emissions, running an average of six adverts a week to firms involved in fossil fuels and in the automobile, cruise tourism and air-transport sectors.

The study revealed that less than 3% of the stories on Italy’s biggest TV newscasts deal with the climate crisis.

“The main newspapers and news programmes do not treat the climate crisis as an emergency,” Greenpeace Italia Spokesperson Giancarlo Sturloni told IPS.

“The news is scarce and sporadic; the climate crisis is hardly ever a front-page topic.

“Suffice it to say that in the main prime-time news, climate change is mentioned in less than 2% of the news and in some periods it falls below 1%.

“Moreover, in the Italian media there is little mention of the causes, starting with fossil fuels, and even less of the main culprits, the oil and gas companies”.

Naturally, this problem is not limited to Italy.

In 2019 the Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The Guardian and WNYC set up Covering Climate Now (CCNow), a consortium that seeks to work with journalists and news outlets to help the media give the climate crisis the treatment it deserves.

Since then over 500 partners with a combined reach of two billion people in 57 countries have signed up.

But co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope say that, although progress has been made, much of the media is still failing to convey that climate change is “an imminent, deadly threat” lamenting that less than a quarter of the United States public hear about the issue in the media at least once a month

There are several reasons why the climate crisis is under-reported.

The climate crisis is complicated and often depressing, so editors may be reluctant to run stories that require lots of explaining and risk turning the public off.

Furthermore, Hertsgaard, the environment correspondent of The Nation, and Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, report that many major outlets have privately said they will not sign CCNow’s Climate Emergency Statement because it sounds like activism and they do not want to look biased.

Sturloni believes that money is a factor too.

“Our analysis shows that the voice of companies is almost always the one that gets the most space in the media narrative of the climate crisis, even more than the voice of scientists and experts,” he said.

“The companies most responsible for the climate crisis also find ample space in the main Italian media, and often take advantage of this to greenwash or promote false solutions, such as gas, carbon offsetting, carbon capture and storage, nuclear fusion etc…

“This is due to the Italian media’s dependence on the funding of fossil fuel companies, which are able to influence the schedule of newspapers and TV and the very narrative of the climate crisis.

“This prevents people from being properly informed about the seriousness of the threat, and thus also about the solutions that should be urgently implemented to avoid the worst scenarios of global warming”.

The Abortion Dream Team (from left to right Natalia Broniarczyk, Justyna Wydrzynska, Kinga Jelinska) outside the Warsaw court after Wydrzynska's conviction. Credit: Abortion Dream Team

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 5 2023 (IPS)

“People want the abortion laws here liberalised. Society has changed; even the politicians can see it,” Kinga Jelinska, a Polish reproductive rights activist, says. “In four or five years, I believe, the abortion laws here will be liberalised, because it’s what the people support.”

Jelinska, a member of the Abortion Dream Team (ADT) collective, which provides assistance to women in Poland who need an abortion, spoke to IPS not long after her fellow activist and ADT co-founder Justyna Wydrzynska had been sentenced to eight months of community service for giving abortion pills to another woman.

She is disappointed by the ruling but, like her colleague, remains defiant and determined to carry on her work.

“The case against Justyna was politically motivated,” said Mara Clarke, co-founder of Supporting Abortions for Everyone, told IPS, pointing out that the judge in the case was promoted on the same day as she handed down the verdict and that the Christian fundamentalist group Ordo Iuris was allowed a role in the trial helping the prosecution.

“We’re just going to keep going. The court claimed Justyna was ‘guilty of helping’ someone have an abortion. Well, we have to help each other in cases where people are being systematically denied access to care.

Without people like Justyna, women are left to take their own decisions [on abortions], and they may take an unsafe option,” Jelinska says.

It is this public support which, Jelinska believes, may have stopped the court from handing down a jail sentence to the activist.
“Justyna’s case put even more focus on the issue and the ways women can access abortion services,” says Jelinska.

“People want access to abortions; public surveys have shown that. We see it too in the work we do every day,” Jelinska says, adding that during Wydrzynska’s trial, “public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Justyna.”

Wydrzynska’s trial and conviction have, activists such as Jelinska say, highlighted problems connected with abortion access in Poland and the risks women needing the procedure – and those they turn to for advice – often face. Poland has some of the world’s strictest abortion laws – terminations are only permitted where the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health, or if it results from a criminal act, such as rape or incest – and while not illegal to have an abortion, it is illegal to help someone do so.

Many women in Poland who want an abortion self-administer pills bought online from abroad or travel to neighbouring countries with less restrictive legislation, such as Germany and the Czech Republic, for terminations. Some contact groups like ADT for help. It is not illegal to give out information about abortions, including advice on how to buy pills online.

In February 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic in Poland, ADT had been contacted by a woman named Anya*, who was 12 weeks pregnant and desperate. She said she was a victim of domestic violence and was considering going abroad to terminate her pregnancy as the pills she had ordered online were taking too long to arrive.

Wydrzynska decided to give Anya her own pills, but the package she sent was intercepted by Anya’s partner, who reported what had happened to police. Anna later miscarried.  Wydrzynska was convicted of “aiding an abortion” – a crime under Polish law which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison – by a Warsaw court in March 2023 in what is believed to be the first time in Europe that a women’s health advocate has gone on trial for aiding an abortion.

The conviction was immediately condemned by both local and international activists who said the case should never have been brought to court.

“We were disappointed that Justyna was convicted. We are happy that she is not going to jail, but her trial has dragged on for a year, in which time a lot of international organisations, including gynaecologists, said the case should be dropped. It should never have come to trial, and this would never have happened in another country,“ Clarke says.

Amnesty International described the court’s ruling as “a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland”.

“This ruling is going to have a chilling effect and we are already seeing women who are worried about what they should do if they found themselves in the situation that they need an abortion,” Mikolaj Czerwinski, Senior Campaigner at Amnesty International, told IPS.

Others believe the trial was part of a wider campaign to crack down on women’s rights and those of the minorities such as the LGBTQI community, by the right-wing government and its conservative religious allies.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has long been accused by critics in Poland and abroad of systematically suppressing women’s rights, and it was instrumental in pushing through a tightening of abortion laws in 2021 which banned abortions even in cases where the foetus was diagnosed with a severe birth defect.

Meanwhile, the European Commission (EC) has raised serious concerns over judicial independence in the country under the PiS, with some judicial bodies seen as being under the control of the ruling party.

Czerwinski said that following the trial, there were now “questions over the independence of the judiciary in Poland and what impact that [lack of independence] might have on women’s rights, and human rights in general, in Poland”.

But while anger remains at Wydrzynska’s conviction, activists such as Jelinska and Clarke believe that the trial has only highlighted how out of touch Poland’s government is with society on abortion laws.

Since the abortion laws were tightened even further in 2021 – a move which was met with massive street protests – surveys have shown strong support for liberalisation of abortion laws. In one poll last November, 70% of respondents backed allowing terminations on demand up to 12 weeks.

“People want access to abortions, public surveys have shown that. We see it too in the work we do every day,” she says, adding that during Wydrzynska’s trial “public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Justyna.”

In a public opinion poll carried out in February for Amnesty International, 47% of respondents said they would have done the same as Wydrzynska. The survey also found that people were overwhelmingly against punishment for helping to access an abortion in Poland.

Meanwhile, some opposition politicians have suggested they would introduce legislation which would allow for abortion on demand if they get into power, pointing to public support for such a measure.

It is this public support which, Jelinska believes, may have stopped the court handing down a jail sentence to the activist.

“This is an election year, and the government knows it would be political suicide to give her a harsher sentence with so many people in favour of liberalising access to abortion,” she explains.

It may also be behind Polish parliament’s rejection in early March of a bill, proposed by an anti-abortion group as a citizen’s legislative initiative under a special parliamentary procedure, which would have criminalised even providing information about abortions. Government MPs voted against it with some reportedly saying they did back it for fear of fuelling protests just months away from elections.

“Even they know that would have been going too far,” said Czerwisnki. The trial, which was reported extensively in Poland and widely in international media, has also helped raise awareness of the work of groups like ADT and others with some organisations, including the Abortions Without Borders network, which has a Polish helpline reporting a three-fold rise in calls since the trial began.

“Justyna’s case put even more focus on the issue and the ways women can access abortion services,” says Jelinska.

If the conviction was designed to put activists off their work, it seems to have backfired, said Czerwinski.

“A lot of activists have been re-energised by this because they have seen Justyna and her response to the ruling,” he said. “They are aware of the risks, but at the same time, will not stop helping women.”

Wydrzynska has appealed her conviction and insists that she has done nothing wrong. She has also vowed to continue her activism.

Speaking on public radio after her trial, she said: “Even if I should leave the country, I will never stop. In the same way, I know that there are thousands of people who’d do the same for me.”

*NOT REAL NAME

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Finland began construction of a fence along its border with Russia, the Finnish Border Guard (RAJA), announced on February 28th. Credit: The European Conservative

By Élisabeth Vallet
QUEBEC, Canada, Mar 29 2023 (IPS)

In the wake of Finland’s announcement last fall that it will build a barrier along its border with Russia, the discussions surrounding the European Council meeting of 9 February 2023 confirmed that the tide had turned.

Demands for stronger border measures have multiplied and some states have made it clear that they are willing to finance border barriers in other member states on the edge of the European Union.

They are thus projecting their own anxieties beyond their territories: in the midst of a moral panic, Europe now seems to be building what the geographer Klaus Dodds calls a ‘barbed-wire curtain’: a protective bulwark, in the spirit of what Samuel Huntington imagined when he wrote The clash of civilizations.

However, Brussels doesn’t seem quite ready to build a continuous external and concrete border wall itself. Yet.

Europe has a historical yet complicated relationship with walls. At the outset of the millennium, the continent, which had long rejected the idea of border walls as relics of a bygone era, in time would change its tune.

As the European Union expanded, it inherited the fenced-off borders in the heart of Cyprus and on the edge of Lithuania. But these were seen as mere remnants of conflicts from the past.

For in the 1990s, the EU became the champion of a world without borders, a world of free movement and flow. Yet, this was a mirage: the Schengen area abolished internal border controls while the physical barriers on its periphery were gradually hardening — such as Spain, which was walling up its border with Morocco in its two enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, situated on the African continent. However, towards the end of the Cold War, there were still only 200 km of fenced borders in existence: vestiges of an ancient period, reminders of geopolitical obsolescence.

Breaking ‘the wall’ taboo

The great change towards erecting walls instead of tearing them down in Europe happened in two phases, starting in 2015, when the Syrian crisis led the EU to believe that there was also a ‘migratory crisis’ in Europe.

Then, in the following years, the change in the mindset continued both because of the Russian strategic threat in the wake of the invasion of Crimea and the instrumentalisation of refugee flows by Europe’s cumbersome neighbours.

Thus, in 2023, all over Europe, stretching from Finland to Greece, from Ukraine to Calais in France, there are 17 walled-in dyads. While 1.7 per cent of Europe’s land borders were barricaded at the end of the 20th century, 15.5 per cent are fenced today – 2008 kilometres of walls now scar the continent.

The fact that Europe is fully embracing the walled-in world and its own border limits is effectively breaking a taboo – that of the wall – as explicitly expressed by some heads of government on the eve of the European summit in February 2023. The Trumpian formulae, both gruesome and horrifying, is no longer an exception.

The wall has become an acceptable solution no longer limited to the vocabulary of populism and the Far Right, but rather entering fully mainstream discourse; legitimising exclusion as a tool of identity-based resistance in a world shaken by the winds of globalisation.

Yet, walls, which now represent a lucrative and globalised market with astronomical direct and indirect costs, do not fulfil the objectives for which they are being built. While political rhetoric suggests they are intended to seal and render the border impervious, it fails to recognise that flows shift – both spatially and temporally – when impeded.

Smuggling (whether of drugs, weapons, or people), irregular crossings and insurgency reorganise and become more opaque and thus more difficult to monitor. Flows disappear briefly to reappear elsewhere or in other forms. In the meantime, passage (both legal and illegal) becomes more costly and a magnet for organised crime.

Thus, although border walls sketch a fantasised imperviousness, they are not meant to serve as watertight membranes but rather as mere sieves.

Research shows that not only do walls burden bilateral trade and borderlands’ health, and affect a nation’s image, but they are also limited in effectiveness, as they do not block unwanted flows nor do they significantly increase security. Indeed, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website has long claimed that the wall serves only as a ‘ speedbump’.

This perspective is shared by Finland’s Border Guard which states that the prototype barrier being tested will ‘slow down and guide the movements of any crowds that form’, adding that ‘even if people skirt the fence, it still fulfils its task by slowing down illegal entry and helping the authorities to manage the situation.’

However, this clear-mindedness doesn’t necessarily spill over into the public arena because border walls, as Trump proved in 2016, are an undeniably effective electoral weapon. An aspect that does not seem to have escaped the Austrian chancellor when he recently called for the erection of a wall along Europe borders – with the upcoming legislative elections in Austria less than a year away.

The wall as a silver bullet?

Just as a wall obscures the other side of the border, it also hides disagreements and opportunities for cooperation between border actors and border security policies. By de-structuring border areas economically, politically and ecologically, border walls amplify vulnerabilities and differences, which in turn accentuate violence. In their subsequent quest for security, states engage in damaging behaviours (such as suddenly shifting funding priorities, militarising border areas and mismanaging labour migration at the expense of local economies and ecosystems) – motivated by the prevailing rhetoric of a visible, theatrical silver bullet: the wall as a panacea.

As a matter of fact, border walls accentuate the global hierarchisation of mobility: a wall isn’t an impenetrable rampart for everyone but a filter that dissociates flows, selecting which is the wheat and which is the chaff. For some, it will impose cruel choices and added difficulties. For others, it will be barely a speck in the landscape.

For a few, it will even be an opportunity to enrich themselves. This unbalancing contributes to the political longevity of the wall-building process while also accomplishing a self-fulfilling prophecy: it becomes the announced remedy to the instability it breeds. Border walling creates a ‘tragedy by design’.

Hence, any transgression of the wall – Professor Scott Nicol calls these barriers ‘ladder magnets’ – becomes a demonstration of its very necessity, despite the fact that the wall itself is the reason some of these activities are now illegal.

By succumbing to the sirens of border fortification, European states are contributing to the normalisation and dissemination of the walling phenomenon. Walls are – above all – an admission of failure (of cooperation – both international and European) and a renouncement of the founding values of the European Union.

The resulting backlash will see an increased rift, accentuated flows, growing incomprehension and fears that are ever more primal, for which only greater cooperation can offer a remedy. For walls do not solve the problems they address. They merely act as a bandage on a broken limb, a smokescreen before increasingly glaring problems that remain unsolved.

Élisabeth Vallet is an Associate Professor at the RMCC-Saint Jean in Canada. She is also the director of the Centre for Geopolitical Studies of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies (UQAM-Canada). Her main field of interest include Borders, border walls and US politics.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS) which is published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

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Pinar Selek, a Turkish writer, is the victim of one of the most Kafkaesque trials in Turkey's history. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
BIARRITZ, France, Mar 23 2023 (IPS)

The woman we’re meeting in a house on the outskirts of Biarritz -800 kilometres southwest of Paris- is a university professor, the author of several books and hundreds of articles, and a well-known human rights activist.

Several human rights watchdogs have consistently denounced Selek's case. Human Rights Watch describes it as “the perversion of a criminal justice system”; the International PEN Club - a world association of writers with consultative status at the UN- includes Selek in its list of 115 authors who suffer harassment, arrest or violence around the world

According to Turkish courts, she also planted a bomb that killed seven people and injured more than 120 in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar 25 years ago.

“Up to four scientific reports, including the one from the Turkish police themselves, pointed to a gas explosion, but later they said that it had been a bomb, and that I had planted it,” Pinar Selek tells IPS. This 51-year-old Turkish woman is embroiled in one of the strangest trials in the history of the Turkish judiciary.

“It’s Kafkaesque,” she blurts. “The case is based on the testimony of a Kurdish man who said that we had planted the bomb together. Later, he claimed to have confessed under torture, and that he didn’t even know me. He is free in Turkey, and I am in exile.”

On June 21, 2022, the Turkish public news agency Anadolu announced the annulment by the Supreme Court of Turkey of Pinar Selek’s fourth acquittal. Previously, she had been found innocent in three criminal proceedings.

But the sentence to life imprisonment is already firm and unappealable. On January 6, 2023, the Istanbul Court of First Instance issued an international arrest warrant for her.

Martin Pradel, Selek’s lawyer, talks about a “purely political case”.

“I have never heard of any other case that has gone on for 25 years without legal evidence of any kind. And this is without mentioning that Pinar has been acquitted up to four times,” Pradel told IPS over the phone from Paris.

The lawyer urged the French state to give Selek protection as a French citizen. If not, he added, the next step would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Several French town halls such as the one in Marseille have also turned to her case. On March 29 she will receive the Medaille de la Ville de Paris, a recognition awarded by France´s capital city (Courtesy Pinar Selek)

“Where are they?”

Born into an Istanbul family of left militants, Pinar Selek has devoted her life to making visible those “invisible” in her country of origin: women and Kurds, prostitutes, Roma, homosexuals, Armenians…

“Where are they?” has always been her question as a researcher, and also as an activist. It was this vital commitment that brought her to prison in 1998, after refusing to hand the police a list of Kurdish contacts for one of her sociological studies.

“When they started building new prisons, we resisted being transferred. More than 300 died under attacks in which prisons were even bombed,” remembers Selek.

She was released after more than two years of captivity, torture, and a hunger strike in which, she says, dozens died. Back on the street, she was one of the founders of Amargi, a groundbreaking feminist organization in Turkey, and also the first feminist bookstore in the history of her country.

She has added a set of tales and a few books of her own to its shelves, but she has not been back in a long time. She had to leave the country in 2009 and, after getting her French citizenship in 2017, she settled down in Nice, where she teaches at the University Côte d’Azur, a public institution.

Ilya Topper, a Spanish journalist and analyst based in Istanbul for more than ten years, sees the trial opened against Selek in 1998 as “part of that brutal campaign against everything that seemed to treat Kurdish demands as a topic that could be discussed.“

“Until around 2005, anyone within a hundred meters of a protest which held a banner with a slogan that had any remote resemblance to a phrase once said by someone from the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) would be put in jail for many years,” the expert told IPS over the phone from Istanbul.

Until just over a decade ago, he adds, mayors were still sentenced for saying something in Kurdish on charges of “speaking a non-existent language.” He illustrates it with a concrete case:

“In 2011, a Kurdish mayor was sentenced to half a year in prison and a fine of 1,500 euros for naming a public park after Ehmedi Xani, an 18th-century Kurdish poet. The controversial issue was not the writer, but the initial letter of his last name: it is written with X, which exists in Kurdish, but not in Turkish.”

The trial against Selek, underlines the analyst, “highlights the deterioration of the Turkish Judiciary in a country where you can go to prison for any reason.”

Pinar Selek fears that her international arrest warrant will affect her family in Turkey and restrict her movement even within France. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS

Solidarity

Several human rights watchdogs have consistently denounced Selek’s case. Human Rights Watch describes it as “the perversion of a criminal justice system”; the International PEN Club – a world association of writers with consultative status at the UN- includes Selek in its list of 115 authors who suffer harassment, arrest or violence around the world.

In a telephone conversation with IPS, its president, Burhan Sönmez, mentioned other notorious cases in Turkey, such as that of the publisher and human rights defender Osman Kavala, or the opposition politician Selahattin Demirtaş

“Both remain behind bars despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling for their immediate release,” Sönmez stressed from London.

Solidarity goes hand in hand with denunciation. More than a hundred personalities including intellectuals, political leaders and social agents will attend the hearing to be held in Istanbul on March 31. It’s a legal formality to notify Selek of her firm life sentence.

Michele Rubirola, former mayoress of Marseille and today the first deputy of the consistory, is the one chosen to represent the city. In a telephone conversation with IPS, Rubirola spoke of “someone who is a victim of injustice and oppression.”

“Selek ‘s academic struggles have turned into political struggles, and the relentlessness of the political and judicial power she is facing consolidates her as a true human rights activist,” added the delegate.

A judicial process that has lasted a quarter of a century is reaching a key moment just a few weeks before decisive elections in Turkey, a referendum on the more than two decades in the power for Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“My trial is one of the indicators of the evil rooted in Turkey: it reflects both the continuity of the authoritarian regime and the configurations of the repressive devices,” laments Selek.

She also confesses concern about how it may affect her family in Turkey, and herself in her host country.

“I am convicted of a massacre and my movement may be restricted internationally, and even within France. Moreover, Turkey is asking me for millions in compensation for the deaths and the destruction and there´s an international financial convention that could be executed in France,” she recalls.

Today, her only certainty is that she will try to move on with her life. Other than her work at the university, she also gives talks and organizes events and protests. Exile, she says, “may have uprooted me from my country, but not from the street.”

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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Cedit: Daro Sulakauri/Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 17 2023 (IPS)

Georgian civil society can breathe a sigh of relief. A proposed repressive law that would have severely worsened the space for activism has been shelved – for now. But the need for vigilance remains.

Russia-style law

A proposed ‘foreign agents’ law would have required civil society organisations (CSOs) and media outlets in Georgia receiving over 20 per cent of funding from outside the country to register as a ‘foreign agent’. Non-compliance would have been punishable with fines and even jail sentences.

The law’s proponents, including Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, claimed it was modelled on one passed in the USA in 1938. The US law was introduced to check the insidious spread of Nazi propaganda in the run-up to the Second World War, and wasn’t targeted at CSOs.

For civil society it was clear the source of inspiration was much more recent and closer to home: Russia’s 2012 law, since extended several times, which allows the state to declare a ‘foreign agent’ any person or organisation it judges to be under foreign influence. The law has been used extensively to stigmatise civil society and independent media. It’s been imitated by other repressive states looking for ways to stifle civil society.

In Georgia, as in Russia, the ‘foreign agent’ terminology is deeply suggestive of espionage and treachery. Any organisation it’s applied to can expect to be instantly viewed with suspicion. This meant the law would stigmatise CSOs and media organisations.

Alarmingly, the proposed law was no isolated event: the government has been ramping up the rhetoric about groups ‘opposing the interests of the country’ and the need to save Georgia from foreign influence.

The initial proposal for the law came from a populist political faction, People’s Power, that split from the ruling party, Georgian Dream, but works in coalition with it. People’s Power has a track record of criticising foreign funding, particularly from the USA, which it claims undermines Georgia’s sovereignty, and has accused CSOs and the main opposition party of being US agents.

CSOs insist they already adhere to high standards of accountability and transparency, making any further regulations unnecessary. They point to the vital role civil society has played over the years in establishing democracy in Georgia, providing essential services the state fails to offer and helping to introduce important human rights protections.

This work necessarily requires financial support, and since there are few resources within Georgia, that means foreign funding, including from the European Union (EU) and other international bodies – sources the government is also happy to receive funding from.

The power of protest

The scale of the reaction took the government by surprise. Many states around the world have enacted repressive civil society laws, and it’s often hard to get the public to take an interest. But the issue cut through because of the larger concerns many people have about Russian influence, heightened by the war on Ukraine.

Russia is an ever-present issue in Georgian politics. The two countries went to war in 2008, and two breakaway parts of Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – claim autonomy and receive heavy Russian support. Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire business tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, has an official policy of pragmatism towards Russia while also cultivating links with the EU – but opponents accuse it and People’s Power of being too close to Russia.

Many see the country’s future as lying within a democratic Europe and fear returning to Russia’s domination. This made the proposed law about a fundamental question of national identity.

That’s why, when parliament started discussing the bill in early March, thousands gathered over several nights, many waving Georgian and EU flags and chanting ‘no to the Russian law’.

When the bill passed its hurried first reading it sparked some violent clashes. Some people threw stones and the police responded disproportionately with teargas, stun grenades, pepper spray and water cannon. But people kept protesting and the government feared the situation could spiral out of its control. So, at least for the time being, it backed down.

What next?

The immediate threat may have passed, but it isn’t game over. The government hasn’t said the law was a bad idea, merely that it failed to explain it properly to the public and withdrew it to reduce confrontation.

Georgia was one of three countries that applied to join the EU following the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the other two, Moldova and Ukraine, were quickly granted EU candidate status, Georgia wasn’t.

The EU cited the need for both economic and political reforms. This includes measures to reduce corruption, organised crime and oligarchic influence, improve the protection of human rights and enable civil society to play a stronger role in decision-making processes. In introducing the proposed law, the government took steps further away from the EU and made clear it doesn’t trust civil society.

This raises concerns the bill could return in some revised form, or other restrictions on civil society could be introduced. In numerous countries, the kind of verbal attacks on civil society recently made by the government have led to restrictions.

But Garibashvili should be more attentive to the message of the protests. By taking to the streets, people told the government they’re paying attention and disagree with its current direction – and forced it to back down. Civil society has shown its power, and deserves to be listened to rather than treated with suspicion.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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'The road to Kabul airport was a one-way street, - We couldn't go back. Not to pick up clothes, computer or notebooks, says Afghan journalist Seyar Sirat. Credit: Journalists on the scene of attack against journalists in Tabian Cultural Center, Mazar-e-Sharif, March 11 2023

By Gie Goris
BRUSSELS, Mar 17 2023 (IPS)

Every year, Afghan journalists celebrate their national day on 18 March. This year, there is little reason to party, because of general restrictions, increasing intimidation and a recent attack on journalists. However, at a unique gathering in Brussels, Afghan journalists showed resilience.

‘I have always felt good at my desk,’ says Seyar Sirat. ‘I am rather introverted by nature, and so spending hours in front of my screen for TOLO News was a blessing rather than a curse. Until 15 August 2021, when the world of Afghanistan began to crumble. But even that morning, I continued to work with concentration until the moment the news arrived that President Ashraf Ghani had left the country. That was the moment some people burst into tears. That was the moment I left.’

What we should resist is the idea that Afghan media is helped by helping Afghan journalists flee the country. There they become package deliverers, taxi drivers or cooks, while the country needs their expertise, commitment and courage

Sirat tells his story at the first international gathering of Afghan journalists since the day Kabul fell. Some journalists were able to come over from Afghanistan, others travelled from various European countries where they now live and try to work. And where they have to try to build a second life, “like newborn babies”, as Sirat puts it. In a new language, in a foreign context, but with intense and family ties to the homeland. And with deep, mental scars.

‘The road to Kabul airport was a one-way street,’ Sirat observes visibly emotional. ‘We couldn’t go back. Not to pick up clothes, computer or notebooks. Not to go back to work or old life. Those three days and nights around and at the airport are the most tragic and traumatic moments of my life.’

Dead and injured

There is no shortage of trauma, among Afghan journalists. A colleague from the north of the country informed me of this just a few days ago that on 11 March, in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, there was an attack on a meeting of local journalists from various media. The toll was heavy: three dead and 30 injured, including 16 journalists. Te Afghanistan Journalists Centre confirms. The attack, meanwhile, was claimed by IS-KP, the local branch of Islamic State.

After the attack in Mazar-e-Sharif, a number of journalists ended up in hospital. Even there, they were not reassured by the armed representatives of the current rulers. ‘They should have killed you all,’ they heard from the Taliban, who had to guard and protect them.

In his opening address to the meeting of Afghan journalists in Brussels on 15 March, EU Special Envoy for Afghanistan Tomas Niklasson also referred to that recent tragedy and put it in the broader context of a dramatic deterioration of human rights and rule of law since the Taliban took power. He cited the recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett, who was able to document 245 cases of press freedom violations since August 2021. These include not only attacks, but also arrests, arbitrary detention, physical violence, beatings and torture. ‘Most of you will say that this figure is an underestimate,’ Niklasson said. All the journalists present nodded.

Lost space

The trauma does not begin for everyone on 15 August 2021. ‘At least 120 journalists from home and abroad have been killed in Afghanistan over the past 20 years,’ Hujatullah Mujadidi, director of the Afghan Independent Journalist Union, noted in his opening remarks to the meeting. ‘Afghanistan had 137 TV stations, 346 radio stations, 49 news agencies and 69 print media until two years ago. Together, these accounted for 12,000 jobs. Little of that remains. 224 media platforms meanwhile closed their doors and at least 8,000 media workers – including 2,374 women – lost their jobs.’

‘We had finally created space for ourselves after centuries of restrictions,’ says Somaia Walizadeh, a journalist who was able to flee the country. ‘That space has been taken away from us again. Of the few media that were founded, run and nurtured by women, a few still exist. But even there, men now call the shots.’ Reporters Without Borders states that in half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, not a single female journalist is still employed and more than eighty percent of female journalists are out of work. RSF also estimates that 40 per cent of media platforms have ceased to exist and 60 per cent of all media workers became unemployed after August 2021. No wonder, then, that some 1,000 journalists have already fled abroad.

The heart of the problem

Those who want to do real and independent journalistic work in Afghanistan come up against one difficulty after another. “It was never easy to get reliable information,” says Somaia Walizadeh, “but today it is quasi-impossible. According to her colleague Abid Ihsas, who remains active in Afghanistan, this has to do with the fact that journalists on the ground face Taliban fighters ‘who do not know or recognise the importance of independent media.’ But it doesn’t stop there, he says, because the entire administration under the current authorities is extremely centralised and hierarchised. ‘Every detail and every shred of information has to be approved and released by a higher authority every time.’

But the real root of the problem, according to Ihsas, lies in the deliberately created ambiguity. There is a 10-point regulation – which is very vague – but no real media law. ‘It is never clear what is allowed according to the authorities and what is not. Ultimately, it depends on the moment and the person in front of you. Usually, the rules are communicated verbally and ad hoc. This not only leads to a lot of outright censorship, but also too much self-censorship due to the constant uncertainty.’ Rateb Noori, a refugee journalist, summed it up this way: ‘The fact that relatively few journalists are in jail is not even good news in these circumstances. It mainly shows how effective the intimidation is.’

The insecurity also applies to what journalists do outside their formal assignment. ‘Forwarding a WhatsApp message or liking a tweet or FB message can already get you in trouble,’ says Ahmad Quraishi, director of the Afghanistan Journalists Centre. Other problems he identifies: ‘There are very limited lists of journalists invited to press conferences or given access to those in charge. These almost never include women, and if they do, they are additionally screened and checked.’

Fariba Aram adds that foreign journalists are treated much better than domestic colleagues. ‘It seems that those in power still want a reasonable image in the rest of the world, while in Afghanistan they are averse to anything journalistic,’ she says. Hujatullah Mujadidi of the Afghan Independent Journalist Union confirms that: They are trying to divide us. International against national. Diaspora against interior. “Good media” against “bad media”. That is why it is crucial that journalists and media continue to speak and negotiate with one voice,’ he concludes. True as that be, maybe Tomas Niklasson put it better when he described the journalists in the room as ‘not united, as this is overly ambitious, but connected’.

The hard hand and the long arm of power

Legal uncertainty, censorship, lack of access to information and economic difficulties combine to form an almost insurmountable obstacle for Afghan journalists. And for the hundreds of journalists who continue to practise their profession from Europe, Pakistan, Australia or North America. Indeed, they face the same barriers to information and have to navigate with extreme caution what they write or bring, as there is always a chance that family members left behind will pay the price for their truth-telling.

Someone testified about an article he was to write for an international news site on climate change and air pollution. The requested information never came, but the statement that they knew where his family lived, did. Rateb Noori also had a similar experience. His news site investigated a story on the de facto lifting of the requirement for women to appear on TV wearing a face mask. In that case, it was not the journalist’s family that was threatened, but local colleagues – even though they thought they were safe at their changing hiding addresses.

What to do?

Analysing the current situation proved to be the simple part of the programme. When asked what could or should be done about it, Afghan journalists and their international partners from the EU, Unesco, RsF and the International Federation of Journalists got little beyond tentative ideas. ‘You cannot solve problems that are more than 20 years old in a matter of weeks,’ argued Najib Paikan, who recently had to shut down his own TV station. ‘But what we should resist is the idea that Afghan media is helped by helping Afghan journalists flee the country. There they become package deliverers, taxi drivers or cooks, while the country needs their expertise, commitment and courage.’

That earned Paikan applause, even though everyone knew that leaving is the choice of a large section of now desperate journalists. Moreover, the problems do not disappear when you cross the border, Wali Rahmani, a fugitive media activist, noted. ‘Hundreds of journalists are stuck in Pakistan and are only concerned with survival. Food and shelter for themselves and for their families. They too are entitled to international support.’

At the awards

On the sidelines of the conference in Brussels, the annual Journalist of the Year Awards were also presented. The 2023 Awards went to Mohammad Yousuf Hanif of ToloNews, Mohammad Arif Yaqoubi of Washington-based Afghanistan International TV, and Marjan Wafa, reporter for Killid Radio. Over the past 10 years, a total of 14 journalists received the award, including five women.

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

Last October, Ales Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of three winners, alongside two human rights organisations: Memorial, in Russia, and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The Nobel Committee recognised the three’s ‘outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power’.

But Bialiatski couldn’t travel to Oslo to collect his award. He’d been detained in July 2021 and held in jail since. This month he was found guilty on trumped-up charges of financing political protests and smuggling, and handed a 10-year sentence. His three co-defendants were also given long jail terms. There are many others besides them who’ve been thrown in prison, among them other staff and associates of Viasna, the human rights centre Bialiatski heads.

Crackdown follows stolen election

The origins of the current crackdown lie in the 2020 presidential election. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has held power since 1994, but in 2020 for once a credible challenger slipped through the net to stand against him. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko after her husband, democracy activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested and prevented from doing so. Her independent, female-fronted campaign caught the public’s imagination, offering the promise of change and uniting many voters.

Lukashenko’s response to this rare threat was to arrest several members of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign staff, along with multiple opposition candidates and journalists, introduce additional protest restrictions and restrict the internet. When all of that didn’t deter many from voting against him, he blatantly rigged the results.

This bare-faced act of fraud triggered a wave of protests on a scale never seen under Lukashenko. At the peak in August 2020, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. It took a long time for systematic state violence and detentions to wear the protests down.

Everything Lukashenko has done since is to suppress the democracy movement. Hundreds of civil society organisations have been forcibly liquidated or shut themselves down in the face of harassment and threats. Independent media outlets have been labelled as extremist, subjected to raids and effectively banned.

Jails are crammed with inmates: currently it’s estimated Belarus has 1,445 political prisoners, many serving long sentences after trials at biased courts.

Lukashenko’s only ally

Lukashenko’s repression is enabled by an alliance with an even bigger pariah: Vladimir Putin. When the European Union and democratic states applied sanctions in response to Lukashenko’s crackdown, Putin provided a loan that was crucial in helping him ride out the storm.

This marked a break in a long strategy of Lukashenko carefully balancing between Russia and the west. The effect was to bind the two rogue leaders together. That’s continued during Russia’s war on Ukraine. When the invasion started, some of the Russian troops that entered Ukraine did so from Belarus, where they’d been staging so-called military drills in the days before. Belarus-based Russian missile launchers have also been deployed.

Just days after the start of Russia’s invasion, Lukashenko pushed through constitutional changes, sanctioned through a rubber-stamp referendum. Among the changes, the ban on Belarus hosting nuclear weapons was removed.

Last December Putin travelled to Belarus for talks on military cooperation. The two armies took part in expanded military training exercises in January. Following the constitutional changes, Putin promised to supply Belarus with nuclear-capable missiles; Belarus announced these were fully operational last December.

Belarussian soldiers haven’t however been directly involved in combat so far. Putin would like them to be, if only because his forces have sustained much higher-than-expected losses and measures to fill gaps, such as the partial mobilisation of reservists last September, are domestically unpopular. Lukashenko has struck a balance between belligerent talk and moderate action, insisting Belarus will only join the war if Ukraine attacks it.

That may be because Belarus’s enabling of Russia’s aggression has made people only more dissatisfied with Lukashenko. Many Belarussians want no involvement in someone else’s war. Several protests took place in Belarus at the start of the invasion, leading to predictable repression similar to that seen in Russia, with numerous arrests.

Crucially, Belarus’s security forces stuck by Lukashenko at the peak of protests; if they’d defected, the story could have been different. Full involvement in the war would likely see even Lukashenko loyalists turn against him, including in the military. Soldiers might refuse to fight. It would be a dangerous step to take. As Russia’s war drags on, Lukashenko could find himself walking an increasingly difficult tightrope.

Two countries, one struggle

It’s perhaps with this in mind that Lukashenko’s latest repressive move has been to extend the death penalty. State officials and military personnel can now be executed for high treason. This gives Lukashenko a gruesome new tool to punish and deter defections.

As well as worrying about their safety, Belarus’s activists – in exile or in jail – face the challenge of ensuring the cause of Belarussian democracy isn’t lost in the fog of war. They need continuing solidarity and support to make the world understand that their struggle against oppression is part of the same campaign for liberty being waged by Ukrainians, and that any path to peace in the region must also mean democracy in Belarus.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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People lay flowers and candles outside the Teplaren LGBTQI bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, following an attack outside the popular a meeting place for members of the city's LGBTQI community in which two people were killed, and a third seriously injured. Credit: Zuzana Thullnerova/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 7 2023 (IPS)

When D.A.* first heard about the fatal attack on a gay bar in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, last October, their first reaction was a mix of grief, shock and anger.

But then, soon after, the university student and member of the country’s LGBTQI community immediately began to worry.

“I was scared for my own safety,” D.A. told IPS.

Even now, months later, that fear remains in the community.

“I know people who have told me they are afraid to go out at night or who won’t go out on their own and stick together in a group instead. I’m the same,” they said.

The attack on the Teplaren bar, which was carried out by a teenage far-right sympathiser, left two dead and a third, who later recovered, seriously injured. It shocked many and sparked debate about attitudes towards LGBTQI people in the conservative, predominantly Catholic country.

But it also highlighted the threat of extreme violence faced by members of the LGBTQI community not just in Slovakia, but across Europe, coming just months after an attack on a gay bar in Oslo, Norway, which killed two and injured a further 21 people.

And groups working with LGBTQI communities across Europe say that violence is becoming increasingly planned and deadly, leaving many feeling unsafe in countries across Europe.

A report by the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) released in February showed that 2022 was the most violent year for LGBTQI people across the region in the past decade, both through planned, ferocious attacks and through suicides.

It said this violence came in the wake of rising and widespread hate speech from politicians, religious leaders, right-wing organisations and media pundits.

“We have noticed a rise in hate speech for some time now and have been flagging it up for a number of years. But what we have been surprised by is the sheer ferocity and violence of the hate, and the physical attacks against LGBTQI people,” Katrin Hugendubel, Advocacy Director at ILGA, told IPS.

ILGA’s report shows that problems with hate speech – be it online, or publicly from politicians, state representatives, or religious leaders – against LGBTQI people run right across the continent from Armenia and Austria to Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine, with dire consequences for people and communities “not only in countries where hate speech is rife, but also in countries where it is widely believed that LGBTI people are progressively accepted”.

ILGA’s report highlighted hate speech used during debates on transgender laws in Finland’s parliament, while previously Finnish prosecutors have voiced concerns about hate speech fuelling anti-LGBTQI sentiment in society.

And in Slovakia, politicians, including former prime ministers, have publicly denigrated LGBTQI people, talked of homosexuality and transgender people as “perversions” and, in some cases, even called for legislation to limit LGBTQI people’s rights.

D.A., who said they had friends who had been attacked because of their identity, believes this kind of rhetoric, from politicians or anyone else, helps fuel violence against the LGBTQI community.

“People in Slovakia are often and easily influenced by the kind of information they receive on a daily basis. So yes, hateful rhetoric leads to violence,” they said.

In some other countries, politicians have taken things even further, enacting legislation which effectively prevents any positive public portrayal of the LGBTI community.

At the end of last year, a new law banning LGBTQI ‘propaganda’ was passed in Russia banning any promotion of what authorities see as “non-traditional sexual relations”.
Groups working with Russia’s LGBTQI community said the new law – an extension of 2013 legislation banning the positive portrayal of same-sex relationships to minors – was the latest part of a state system designed to further stigmatise the minority and was brought in amid intensifying anti-LGBTQI political rhetoric.

Violence against the community has been on the rise in Russia over the last decade, and they worry the new law will only fuel it further.

In Hungary, a similar law was passed in 2021, and experts there say it has emboldened people to express their hatred of the LGBTQI community physically.

“According to statements made by the perpetrators of hate incidents (and from looking at social media) it seems that the law reaffirmed already existing homophobic and transphobic prejudices and made it ‘okay’ to act upon them – people are citing that the law is on their side,” Aron Demeter, Programme Director at Amnesty International in Hungary , told IPS.

“Since the law is purposely confusing (and absurd) it is enough that they have an understanding of that it ‘protects children from LGBTI people’ and that serves as a ‘lawful authorisation’ to be hostile,” added.

While such overtly repressive legislation is not common in other countries in Europe, rights activists point out there are gaps in laws in many states protecting the community.

“In quite a lot of countries, there is still a lack of legislation dealing with hate speech specifically against the LGBTQI community,” Hugendubel pointed out.

She added that this should be addressed, but that it was crucial that people at the highest political levels must speak out against anti-LGBTQI hate.

“We feel that we need to see much more from EU institutions and national leaders in a real effort to stop the hate. There need to be clear statements from them saying that hate is not acceptable,” she said.

Immediately after the attacks in Norway and Slovakia, many politicians, both domestic and in other states, were quick to condemn it and the hatred behind it.

But worries remain that LGBTQI people will continue to be used as a welcome source of polarisation by politicians.

“It is important to see how politicians are using LGBTQI as a polarising tool. It’s something they can use to motivate a specific conservative voter base, and it is a tool with works to a certain extent. It is also being used to distract from other issues, such as corruption – it is polarisation at the expense of the LGBTQI community,” said Hugendubel.

However, while hate speech, and the violence it drives – prior to the killings in Norway, there was a massive rise in anti-LGBTQI hate crimes, jumping from 97 in 2020 to 240 in 2021, according to ILGA – is on the rise in Europe, action is being taken against it with growing numbers of prosecutions for hate speech and crimes in many countries.

Progress is also being made on legislative protections for LGBTQI people.

Meanwhile, despite an intensifying instrumentalization of LGBTQI issues by politicians and others against the community, there is a growing acceptance and support for the community in societies, notably in countries where governments are pursuing strongly anti-LGBTQI policies, such as Poland and Hungary, according to the group.

More needs to be done though, said Hugendubel.

“We are calling on all political leaders to step-up, speak out, and be proactive in fighting hate speech, rather than being reactive when faced with its consequences,” she said.

Note: *D.A.’s name has been withheld for reasons of personal safety.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Map of Eastern Bloc, 1948.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 6 2023 (IPS)

Putin’s regime recently suspended Russia’s participation in a nuclear arms agreement with Washington. After the decision Putin declared that the move was a retaliation for the US’s, France’s and Britain’s “targeting” of Russia with nuclear weapons. He was forced to take action to “preserve our country, ensure security and strategic stability”:

“the West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia.”

Such rhetoric finds fertile ground in Latin America and Africa, which suffer from a long tradition of Western exploitation carried out under the false flag of peace keeping, democratization and progress. On 26 February, Putin added that a:

“new world is taking shape, being built only on the interests of just one country, the United States. […] I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today.”

The statement is part of a recurrent discourse suggesting that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an act of self-defence, an answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization/NATO’s expansion. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were added to NATO; in 2009 they were followed by Albania and Croatia, in 2017 by Montenegro and in 2020 by North Macedonia.

In 2014, after Ukraine’s corrupt president Viktor Yanukovych had been ousted, pro-Russian unrest erupted in eastern and southern parts of the country. Unmarked Russian tanks and troops moved into Crimea, taking over government buildings, strategic sites and infrastructure. Meanwhile, armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings in the Donbas region.

In 2014 the Donbas was the industrial heartland of Ukraine with 35 per cent of the country’s mining, 22 per cent of its manufacturing industry, providing 20 per cent of energy supply and 18 per cent of water supply. Recently vast amounts of natural gas have been detected underground.

The separatists received considerable support from Russia and Ukrainian attempts to retake separatist-held areas were unsuccessful. In October 2014, Ukraine’s new government made joining NATO a priority. Putin at once declared that the Russian involvement in Crimea and Donbas was a reaction to NATO’s threatening expansion.

Part of Putin’s discourse, repeated by influencers all over the world, is that during a summit in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachov accepted the reunification of Germany within the framework of NATO, he was given an assurance that NATO would not expand further. The Historian Mary Elise Sarotte has recently tried to disentangle the thorny issue, underlining that no written document of the promise exists. Gorbachov later declared that:

“the topic of NATO-expansion was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. [What was agreed] was that NATO’s military structures would not advance in the sense that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR, after German reunification. Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”

During a 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin declared himself to be a stout defender of democracy, nuclear disarmament and international solidarity. Contrary to the US, which had “promised” that NATO was not going to expand beyond the borders of Germany. Putin stated that:

“unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. […] a situation in which countries that forbid the death penalty even for murderers and other, dangerous criminals are airily participating in military operations that are difficult to consider legitimate. And as a matter of fact, these conflicts are killing people – hundreds and thousands of civilians! […] As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.” […] I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?

The answer is beyond doubt. However, as a proverb states “Evil cannot with evil be defended.” Can Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine actually be defended by alluding to the encroachment and support to brutal dictatorships that “democracies” like the US, France and Britain have been guilty of around the globe?

Putin repeatedly refers to “history”. He labels Ukrainian leaders as Nazis, while stating that Ukraine has always been part of Russia. Glaring exaggerations – if not outright lies.

History tells us that Russia’s past, like that of other nations, has its hidden skeletons. In 1939, the Soviet Union annexed more than 50 per cent of Polish territory. From 1939 to 1941 about one million Polish citizens were arrested, or deported; including approximately 200,000 Polish military personnel held as prisoners of war; 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested and imprisoned of whom approximately 30,000 were executed. The total loss of lives was 150 000.

On 30 November 1939 the Soviet army attacked Finland. The war ended after three months. The Soviets suffered severe losses and made little headway. To avoid more bloodshed Finland ceded 9 per cent of its territory. In spite of superior air force and heavy tanks the Soviet losses had been considerable – 168 000 dead or missing. The Finns lost 26 000 dead or missing.

In the previously independent Baltic States the Soviets had during 1940-41 carried out mass deportations. They became even more extensive after Soviet Union finally conquered the area. In March 1949, Soviet authorities organised a mass deportation of 90,000 Baltic nationals. The total number deported from 1944 to 1955 is estimated at over half a million: 124,000 from Estonia, 136,000 from Latvia, and 245,000 from Lithuania. The estimated death toll among Lithuanian deportees had between1945 and 1958 been more than 20,000, including 5,000 children.

When the Soviet Union fell apart and archives were declassified it was revealed that, between 1921 and 1953, 799,455 executions had been officially recorded. Approximately 1.7 million prisoners had died in Gulag camps, some 390,000 were reported dead during forced resettlements in the 1930s, and during the 1940s at least 400,000 persons died during deportations.

After World War II, the Soviet Union subdued several nations in Eastern Europe, introducing a political system aspiring to gain total control of all citizens and backed by an extensive, repressive apparatus.

Opposition was initially essentially liquidated, while steps towards an authoritative communism were enforced. The General Secretary of a nation’s Central Committee became the most powerful figure, while a Politburo held sway over a party machine lacking a popular foundation, since it in accordance to Leninist ideology favoured a group of three to fourteen per cent of a country’s population. Members of this exclusive group enjoyed considerable rewards, like access to shops with a selection of high-quality foreign goods, as well as special schools, holiday facilities, well-equipped housing, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates.

Suppression of opposition was a prerequisite for retaining power. Citizens were kept under surveillance by political police with raw power and violent persecution of dissidents. In East Germany were Stasi, Volkpolizei, and KdA, in Soviet Union the KGB, in Czechoslovakia STB and LM, in Bulgaria KDS, in Hungary AVH and Munkásörség, in Romania Securitate and GP, in Poland Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, Słuźba, and ZOMO. Nevertheless, people occasionally revolted.

During one day in 1953 an uprising took place in Berlin. It was violently suppressed by tanks and soldiers of the Soviet German forces. More than 150 persons were killed, or missing.

In 1956, a two day protest in Polish Poznan resulted in more than 100 deaths. About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Popalavsky suppressed the demonstration. Among the dead was a 13-year-old boy, Romek Strzalakowski, eventually hailed as a patriotic martyr.

During two weeks in November 1956, USSR troops killed 2,500 revolting Hungarians, while 200,000 sought political refuge abroad. Some 26,000 Hungarians were put on trial by the Soviet-installed János Kádár government, of those 13,000 were imprisoned.

During the night between 20 and 21 August 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia came to an abrupt end when Eastern Bloc armies under Soviet command invaded Prague. The invasion comported with the Brezhnev Doctrine, compelling Eastern Bloc states to subordinate national interests to a Soviet right to intervene. A wave of emigration followed, with a total eventually reaching 300,000.

The pattern of Soviet invasions of neighbouring states has continued, for example in Georgia and Moldova. In 1991 Tjetjenia declared itself independent and in 1994, 40 000 Russian soldiers invaded the recently proclaimed Tjetjenien Republic. After a year of harsh fighting the capital Grozny was conquered, but another war erupted in 1999. The rebels were vanquished after an effective but exceedingly brutal war. Tjetjenia is now governed by a Moscow-allied clan leader.

Estimated losses of the two wars are 14 000 Russian and 16 000 Tjetjenien soldiers killed, while at least 25,000 civilians were killed and 5,000 disappeared.

One month before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Kazakhstan plunged into political unrest. At the request of President Tokayev, Russian forces headed an intergovernmental Eurasian military alliance, CSTO, which invaded the country. After “pacifying” the protests, CSTO forces evacuated the country after a month.

Considering this history, paired with the Russian destruction of Syrian and Ukrainian towns, it is somewhat difficult to consider Russia as threatened by NATO’s expansion. It is actually not so strange that Russia is feared by its neighbours and that Finland and Sweden are seeking membership in NATO.

The Swedish government is currently supporting an expansion and restoration of Sweden’s once comprehensive, but now neglected network of nuclear shelters, introducing obligatory conscription of youngsters fit for military service, and strengthening the defence of Gotland, a strategically important island located in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

After World War II, the Soviet Union usurped an enclave which actually ought to have belonged to either Poland or Lithuania – Kaliningrad, situated by the Baltic coast and equipped it with the highest density of military installations in Europe. It became headquarter of the large Russian Baltic fleet. In Kaliningrad, Russia has recently built up a formidable military presence encompassing nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of soldiers.

Not being a supporter of policies and actions United States has exercised in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, cannot overshadow the fear that most Europeans nurture while facing the powerful giant of the East, which, admittedly, does not have an impressive record when it comes to protecting human rights.

Some sources: Putin, Vladimir (2007) Speech delivered at the MSC http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/copy/24034 Sarotte, Mary Elise (2022) Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pucci, Molly (2020) Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

IPS UN Bureau

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US weapons to Ukraine include 100 M-113 armored personnel carriers and 50 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. Credit: US Department of Defense (DoD)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 2023 (IPS)

The overwhelming political, economic and military support for war-ravaged Ukraine seems never ending—even as the Russian invasion moved into its second-year last week.

The US and Western allies have vowed to help Ukraine “as long as necessary” with no reservations or deadlines.

According to a report in the New York Times last week, the total amount of US humanitarian, financial and military aid approved for Ukraine has risen to a hefty $113 billion.

But still, it has been never enough, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky keeps asking for “more, more, more– and faster, faster, faster.”

Asked how much longer this would continue – and perhaps reach $200 billion or $300 billion over the years?– US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: “This is going to have to go on as long as it takes for Ukraine to defend itself and for Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine”.

In an Interview with Roland Martin on the Black Star Network, she said: “And I think we’ve heard it said over and over again: freedom is not free. We have to pay for freedom. We have to fight for freedom. And that’s what we’re fighting for”.

“Ukraine is a smaller country having been attacked by a larger neighbor. Russia is a bully, and if Russia gets away with bullying Ukraine, then who will be next? And then who will be next after that? And suddenly we’re all engaged in this,” she declared.

The rising costs of the war in Ukraine comes amid complaints from the United Nations of a massive shortfall in funding, mostly from rich donor nations, for sustainable development, including climate change and the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the world is failing to protect people from the disastrous impacts of climate change—particularly in the world’s poorer countries.

“Adaptation needs in the developing world are set to skyrocket to as much as $340 billion a year by 2030. Yet adaptation support today stands at less than one-tenth of that amount,” he said last November.

“The most vulnerable people and communities are paying the price. This is unacceptable,” he declared. According to a UN report released last year, progress on climate adaptation has been “slow and spotty”.

Since Russia’s invasion last February, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

“It’s the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II”, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The uninterrupted flow of US and Western weapons has also triggered a debate among academics and civil society organizations (CSOs).

But defense contractors argue it has boosted the American arms industry and will provide employment to hundreds and thousands.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told IPS there are huge risks in an endless continued supply of military materiel to Ukraine.

“Although the Biden administration asserts that the government of Ukraine has committed not to transfer the weapons we’re supplying to other countries or unauthorized users, that’s not the only risk associated with these transfers,” she added.

There is a significant risk of weapons being stolen or captured. The more weapons that are transferred, the more difficult it is to assure that they aren’t falling into the wrong hands, she warned.

It’s not at all clear how the US government thinks that this war will end, or when. In a recent interview, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated, “This is going to have to go on as long as it takes for Ukraine to defend itself and for Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine.”

“That statement seems to assume that Ukraine can win this conflict, but doesn’t indicate whether US officials think that this is likely to take weeks, months, or years.”

“It also doesn’t make clear what it means for Ukraine to defend itself. Does that mean gaining back all of the territory lost in the last year, all of the territory lost since 2014, or something else?” asked Dr Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Meanwhile, the White House released its long-awaited Conventional Arms Transfer policy on February 23, 2023.

One highlight of the policy is the establishment of the standard that the United States will not authorize arms transfers when the US government assesses that “it is more likely than not” that the arms transferred would be used to commit or facilitate the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.

The Biden administration’s new conventional arms transfer policy raises the standard for US arms transfers. This is evident in contrast with a State Department fact sheet issued just three days earlier that dealt with using Presidential drawdown authority to release materiel from Defense Department stocks.

That fact sheet had a significantly lower standard: “…the Department works to ensure assistance does not go to units credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights.”

Elaborating further, Dr Goldring said that US military contractors continue to profit extensively from the war. Remarkably, they’re even willing to admit publicly that the war suits their business purposes.

Last week, at an international arms exposition in Abu Dhabi, a US defense contractor told CNBC that “From our perspective, Putin is the best weapons salesman there is.”

This ghoulish statement, she pointed out, treats weapons sales as simply another commodity to be sold, like computers or toasters. It doesn’t consider the human costs when these weapons are used.

The Biden administration’s new conventional arms transfer policy has welcome language on giving human rights concerns a higher priority when deciding whether to transfer weapons.

But the real test will be how the policy is applied. Which transfers that were previously approved would not be allowed now? Will this new policy have any effect on the seemingly open-ended supply of weapons to Ukraine?, asked Dr Goldring.

A Fact Sheet from the US State Department provides a long list of American weapons to Ukraine, including: 20 Mi-17 helicopters; 31 Abrams tanks; 45 T-72B tanks; 109 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles; Over 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; Over 8,500 Javelin anti-armor systems; Over 54,000 other anti-armor systems and munitions; Over 700 Switchblade tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems; 160 155mm Howitzers and over 1,000,000 155mm artillery rounds; Over 6,000 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds; Over 13,000 grenade launchers and small arms; Over 100,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition; Over 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets; and approximately 1,800 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems.

https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/

The Western European states have collectively pledged over $50 billion in financial aid, and played host to more than eight million refugees from Ukraine.

As of September 9, 2022, nearly 50 allies and partner countries have provided security assistance to Ukraine.

Among their many contributions to Ukraine, were 10 long-range Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 178 long-range artillery systems, nearly 100,000 rounds of long-range artillery ammunition, nearly 250,000 anti-tank munitions, 359 tanks, 629 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), 8,214 short-range air defense missiles, and 88 lethal UAVs.

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By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Feb 24 2023 (IPS)

Over the year since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, on one side of the border civil society has shown itself to be a vital part of the effort to save lives and protect rights – but on the other, it’s been repressed more ruthlessly than ever.

Ukraine’s civil society is doing things it never imagined it would. An immense voluntary effort has seen people step forward to provide help.

Overnight, relief programmes and online platforms to raise funds and coordinate aid sprang up. Numerous initiatives are evacuating people from occupied areas, rehabilitating wounded civilians and soldiers and repairing damaged buildings. Support Ukraine Now is coordinating support, mobilising a community of activists in Ukraine and abroad and providing information on how to donate, volunteer and help Ukrainian refugees in host countries.

In a war in which truth is a casualty, many responses are trying to offer an accurate picture of the situation. Among these are the 2402 Fund, providing safety equipment and training to journalists so they can report on the war, and the Freefilmers initiative, which has built a solidarity network of independent filmmakers to tell independent stories of the struggle in Ukraine.

Alongside these have come efforts to gather evidence of human rights violations, such as the Ukraine 5am Coalition, bringing together human rights networks to document war crimes and crimes against humanity, and OSINT for Ukraine, where students and other young people collect evidence of atrocities.

The hope is to one day hold Putin and his circle to account for their crimes. The evidence collected by civil society could be vital for the work of United Nations monitoring mechanisms and the International Criminal Court investigation launched last March.

As is so often the case in times of crisis, women are playing a huge role: overwhelmingly it’s men who’ve taken up arms, leaving women taking responsibility for pretty much everything else. Existing civil society organisations (CSOs) have been vital too, quickly repurposing their resources towards the humanitarian and human rights response.

Ukraine is showing that an investment in civil society, as part of the essential social fabric, is an investment in resilience. It can quite literally mean the difference between life and death. Continued support is needed so civil society can maintain its energy and be ready to play its full part in rebuilding the country and democracy once the war is over.

Russia’s crackdown

Vladimir Putin also knows what a difference an enabled and active civil society can make, which is why he’s moved to further shut down Russia’s already severely restricted civic space.

One of the latest victims is Meduza, one of the few remaining independent media outlets. In January it was declared an ‘undesirable organisation’. This in effect bans the company from operating in Russia and criminalises anyone who even shares a link to its content.

Independent broadcaster TV Rain and radio station Echo of Moscow were earlier victims, both blocked last March. They continue broadcasting online, as Meduza will keep working from its base in Latvia, but their reach across Russia and ability to provide independent news to a public otherwise fed a diet of Kremlin disinformation and propaganda is sharply diminished.

It’s all part of Putin’s attempt to control the narrative. Last March a law was passed imposing long jail sentences for spreading what the state calls ‘false information’ about the war. Even calling it a war is a criminal act.

The dangers were made clear when journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years in jail over a Telegram post criticising the Russian army’s bombing of a theatre where people were sheltering in Mariupol last March. She’s one of a reported 141 people so far prosecuted for spreading supposedly ‘fake’ information about the Russian army.

CSOs are in the firing line too. The latest targeted is the Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia’s oldest human rights organisation. In January, a court ordered its shutdown. Several other CSOs have been forced out of existence.

In December an enhanced law on ‘foreign agents’ came into force, giving the state virtually unlimited power to brand any person or organisation who expresses dissent as a ‘foreign agent’, a label that stigmatises them.

The state outrageously mischaracterises its imperial war as a fight against the imposition of ‘western values’, making LGBTQI+ people another convenient target. In November a law was passed widening the state’s restriction of what it calls ‘LGBT propaganda’. Already the impacts are being felt with heavy censorship and the disappearance of LGBTQI+ people from public life.

The chilling effect of all these repressive measures and systematic disinformation have helped damp down protest pressure.

But despite expectation of detention and violence, people have protested. Thousands took to the streets across Russia to call for peace as the war began. Further protests came on Russia’s Independence Day in June and in September, following the introduction of a partial mobilisation of reservists.

Criminalisation has been the predictable response: over 19,500 people have so far been detained at anti-war protests. People have been arrested even for holding up blank signs in solo protests.

It’s clear there are many Russians Putin doesn’t speak for. One day his time will end and there’ll be a need to rebuild Russia’s democracy. The reconstruction will need to come from the ground up, with investment in civil society. Those speaking out, whether in Russia or in exile, need to be supported as the future builders of Russian democracy.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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It is estimated that about a hundred thousand migrants work in the greenhouses, scattered throughout the area. Credit: Floris Cup/IPS

By Floris Cup and Arnaud De Decker
ALMERIA, Spain, Feb 24 2023 (IPS)

Chances are that the fruits and vegetables sold in European supermarkets have been picked and packed by a migrant worker in southern Spain. By the tens of thousands, they work there, in sweltering hot plastic greenhouses – often underpaid and without residence permit – in the vegetable garden of Europe. “Cheap vegetables, yes. But at what price?”

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon, warm and dry, when we leave the city of Almería, in the southern province of Andalusia, to drive towards the countryside. Leaving the freeway, the lane narrows and turns into a dirt road. The hot desert breeze blows a dusty, brown cloud of sand into the air that completely covers the car in no time. We take a slight turn and drive past impressive mountain ranges.

After ten minutes of driving, in the shadow of a series of imposing rocks, a sea of white plastic appears before us, stretching as far as the eye can see, before merging into the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of greenhouses are neatly arranged in endless straight rows that turn the arid landscape pale. In all, the greenhouses cover an area 30,000 hectares, visible from outer space. 

Spaniards prefer to leave those jobs for migrant workers. They come from North and West Africa, from countries like Morocco, Senegal, Guinea or Nigeria, and in most cases they don't have residence permits, making them easy targets for the local greengrocers

We park the car along the road near the village of Barraquente, a thirty-minute drive east of Almería, and head out into the hot desert. A day earlier we got word of a slum, a “barrio de chabolas”, around here. Undocumented workers picking fruits and vegetables in the greenhouses and working the fields for meager wages are said to have built semi-permanent homes with scrap metal over the years.

Lethal cocktail

Since Spain joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union, in the 1980s, agriculture in the province of Andalusia became increasingly intensified and industrialized. Small farms gave way to agricultural giants as monoculture gradually became the norm and has since then become a very lucrative business, with a total annual export value of twelve billion euros worth of agricultural products, destined for the entire European market.

To meet the ever-growing demand for fruits and vegetables from the rest of Europe, more and more hands are needed in the fields. And although Andalusia is one of the country’s poorest regions, with sky-high unemployment rates, it is mostly underpaid undocumented migrants who perform the ungrateful jobs. Temperatures in the greenhouses soar above 45 degrees Celsius in the summer, drinking water is scarce and, combined with the intensive use of pesticides, the work on that southern outskirt of Europe forms a deadly cocktail.

Estimates vary, but according to union representative José García Cueves, about a hundred thousand migrants work in the greenhouses, scattered throughout the area. Along with his wife, José García represents union SOC SAT, the only organization that exposes and represents the interests of the victims of exploitation in the greenhouses around Almería.

Flat tires

“Spaniards prefer to leave those jobs for migrant workers. They come from North and West Africa, from countries like Morocco, Senegal, Guinea or Nigeria, and in most cases they don’t have residence permits, making them easy targets for the local greengrocers,” he says from behind his cluttered office in an impoverished neighborhood of Almería.

Despite his noble mission, José is not loved by most Andalusians, quite the contrary. “The farmers could drink our blood. The tires of my car get regularly punctured and physical intimidation is also not exceptional.”

“Even the local authorities turn a blind eye to the region’s problems and challenges. All in the name of economic growth,” Garcia said. “Look, there are only 12 inspectors responsible for greenhouse inspections, and that’s in a vast area where you can drive around for hours without running into anyone. Do you think that’s realistic? Workers are reduced to expendable tools, overnight someone can lose their job.”

Thousands of greenhouses are neatly arranged in endless straight rows that turn the arid landscape pale. In all, the greenhouses cover an area 30,000 hectares, visible from outer space. Credit: Arnaud De Decker/IPS

Afraid of the sea

In the slum by the roadside, we speak with one of the workers, Richard, a 26-year-old man from Nigeria. Bathing in sweat, he arrives on his bicycle. His morning shift in the greenhouse is over and he takes us into the village. The sun is at its highest, it is scorching hot.

“The shifts start early in the morning, when the temperature is still bearable,” he points out. “By noon we are entitled to a break, because it is too hot to work then. Around 5 p.m. we return into the greenhouse and pick tomatoes and peppers until after sunset.” He says the hard work earns him about thirty euros a day.

The young man puffs, grabs a bottle of water from a decayed refrigerator and falls down in a dusty seat in the scorching sun. His clothes and worn-out shoes are covered in dust. “I have lived here for two years now,” he says in between large gulps of water. Via Morocco, he crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat. “It was dangerous, I can’t swim and was afraid of falling overboard.” Through a shadowy network of human smugglers, Richard ended up here in Andalusia, undocumented. 

Traces of destruction

We move further into the village, accompanied by Richard, when several residents gather around us. They point to a large pile of sand, one meter high, that has been raised like a wall around one part of the camp. Two years ago, a large fire broke out there, killing one person. “We were able to stop the fire by digging a large moat, preventing it from spreading throughout the camp,” they say. Traces of the fire are still clearly visible; blackened shoes and charred clothes are still scattered throughout the moat.

Fire is the greatest danger for many residents. Unionist José Garcia confirms this. The various homes in the slum have grown intertwined. They are made of wood and recycled plastic from the greenhouses. Combined with the hot weather and dryness of the desert, those neighborhoods form a dangerous cocktail of easily flammable fuels.  

Homemade gym

Still, the residents of the camp try to make the best of it. They take us to a small hut where they stare furiously at an English Premier League football match. Further down the camp, a man is doing his dishes. They illegally tap running water – and electricity – from the regular grid. The atmosphere is good. Boubacar, 24, from Senegal, proudly shows us the gym he was able to cobble together with his own hands using some materials lying around: empty cans filled with concrete have been transformed into homemade dumbbells and a large bag of sand serves as a weight to train his back.

Next to the gym is a vegetable garden where traditional African crops grow. The peace is disturbed when a Spaniard arrives in a red van. Half a dozen men rush up to it and begin negotiating vigorously with the man. It turns out he is selling fish. “Straight from the sea,” he proudly proclaims. The boys don’t care what kind of fish they buy. “We have no choice. Because of our limited budget, we can’t really afford to be picky.”

Many residents of the camps are eager to get out of the area. “Once we have worked for five years, we will become a long-term resident of the European Union, so we can travel freely around Europe,” says Boubacar. How exactly that works out, he does not know. “It depends on my boss and how well I do my job. I hope to live in France or even the Netherlands and build a life there with my family, away from Spain. There is no future here.”

A view of the Security Council Chamber as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (on screen) of Ukraine, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine. April 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine began 24 February 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Arul Louis
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2023 (IPS)

Paralysed by its own Charter and structure, the world organisation that is charged with preventing wars confronts an existential challenge from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When Security Council Permanent member Russia sent its troops into a smaller neighbour defying the UN Charter and all norms of international relations a year ago next Friday, Antonio Guterres, “This is the saddest moment in my tenure as Secretary-General of the United Nations”.

Beyond sadness from the betrayal and the pain inflicted on nations around the world, especially the poorest, the war drives into the very foundation of the UN built nearly 78 years ago.

Guterres warned this month, “I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war, I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open”.

And the invasion has raised questions about the UN’s resolve “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as the first sentence of its Charter declares.

Yet the Charter itself has paralysed the UN by conferring veto powers for permanent members at the Security Council, which alone can act,.Russia’s vetoes have mired the Council in the morass of inaction renewing calls for its reform.

Describing the situation, General Assembly President Csaba Korosi said, “The Security Council — the main guarantor of international peace and security – has remained blocked, unable to fully carry out its mandate”.

“Growing numbers are now demanding its reform,” he said noting that at the Assembly’s High-Level Week in September, “one-third of world leaders underscored the urgent need to reform the Council — more than double the number in 2021.”

While the reform process — in which India has a special interest as an aspirant for a permanent seat –that has itself been stymied for nearly two decades has come to the fore, it is not likely to happen any time soon.

But the General Assembly, which does not have the enforcement powers of the Council, has used the imbroglio to set a precedent forcing permanent members when they wield their veto to face it and explain their action.

Russia appeared before the Assembly to answer for its vetoes while facing a barrage of criticism.

The Assembly also revived a seldom-used action under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution of calling for an emergency special session when the Council fails in its primary duty of maintaining peace and security.

It passed a resolution in March demanding that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”.

It received 141 votes – getting more than two-thirds of the votes 193 required for it – while India was among the 35 countries that abstained. This, as well as the subsequent three passed last year ultimately were but an exercise in moral authority with no means to enforce it.

A proposal made by Mexico and France in 2015 calling on permanent members to refrain from using their vetoes on issues involving them also has been getting a re-airing– but to no avail.

India, which was a member of the Council last year was caught in the middle of the polarisation at the UN, both at the Council and the Assembly, because of its dependence on Russian arms and the support it had received at crucial times in the Security Council from its predecessor the Soviet Union.

India abstained at least 11 times on substantive resolutions relating to Ukraine in both chambers of the UN, including resolutions at the Council sponsored by Moscow.

India faced tremendous pressure from the West to join in voting on resolutions against Russia and openly take a definitive stand condemning Moscow.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the Security Council in September, “As the Ukraine conflict continues to rage, we are often asked whose side we are on. And our answer, each time, is straight and honest. India is on the side of peace and will remain firmly there”.

And while keeping the semblance of neutrality while voting, India came closest to taking a stand in support of Ukraine — and by inference against Russia — when he said, “We are on the side that respects the UN Charter and its founding principles”.

Now out of the Council, New Delhi’s profile has been lowered and it also does not have to publicly display its tight-rope walk as often, although it may yet have to do it again this week when the Assembly is likely to have a resolution around the invasion’s anniversary.

The pain of the invasion is felt far beyond the borders of Ukraine.

Guterres said, “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is inflicting untold suffering on the Ukrainian people, with profound global implications”.

The fallout of the war has set back the UN’s omnibus development goals.

More immediately, several countries came to the brink of famine and the spectre of hunger still stalks the world because of shortages of agricultural input, while many countries, including many developed nations, face severe energy and financial problems.

The war shut off exports of food grains from Ukraine and limited exports from Russia, the two countries that have become the world’s food baskets.

Besides depriving many countries of food grains, the shortages raised global prices.

The one victory for the UN has been the Black Sea agreement forged with Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in July to allow safe passage for ships carrying foodgrains from Ukrainian ports.

Guteress’ Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that in about 1,500 trips by ships so far, “more than 21.3 million tonnes of grain and food products have been moved so far during the initiative, helping to bring down global food prices and stabilising markets”.

A UN outfit, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has also made an impact during the war, working to protect nuclear facilities in Ukraine that were occupied by Russia’s forces while shelling around them.

It said that it has managed to station teams of safety and security experts at Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and at Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 disaster “to help reduce the risk of a severe nuclear accident during the ongoing conflict in the country”.

Arul Louis is a New York-based nonresident senior fellow with the New Delhi-based think tank, Society for Policy Studies.

IPS UN Bureau

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Two of the six Russian women who were detained by the Argentine immigration authorities when they reached the country on Feb. 8 and 9 sleep in the Buenos Aires airport. A federal judge ruled that they were placed in a situation of vulnerability and ordered that they be allowed to enter the country. CREDIT: TV Capture

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES , Feb 16 2023 (IPS)

They began to arrive en masse in Argentina in the second half of 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are pregnant Russian women who land in the capital to give birth, with the hope of gaining an Argentine passport, given the fact that so many countries refuse to let in people with Russian passports today.

Authorities are investigating whether they are the victims of scams by organizations holding out false promises.

“Of the 985 deliveries we attended in 2022, 85 were to Russian women and 37 of them were in December. This trend continued in January and so far in February,” Liliana Voto, Head of the Maternal and Child Youth Department at the Fernández Hospital, one of the most renowned public health centers in the Argentine capital, located in the Palermo neighborhood, told IPS.“One thing are human trafficking networks, which make false promises in exchange for large sums of money, and another thing is the rights of women to enter Argentina and have their children here. They are victims.” -- Christian Rubilar

“Some come with an interpreter and others use a translation app on their phones. We do not ask them how they got to Argentina, but it is clear that there is an organization behind this,” added Voto.

In this South American country, public health centers treat patients free of charge, whether or not they have Argentine documents.

The issue exploded into the headlines on Feb. 8-9, when the immigration authorities detained six pregnant Russian women who had just landed at the Ezeiza international airport, on charges of not actually being tourists as they claimed.

The six women filed for habeas corpus and on Feb. 10 a federal judge ordered that they be allowed to enter the country, after some of them spent more than 48 hours on airport seats.

The ruling handed down by Judge Luis Armella stated that the authorities’ decision not to let them into the country put the women in a vulnerable situation that affected their rights “to proper medical care, food, hygiene and rest,” and said he was allowing them into the country to also protect the rights of their unborn children.

In addition, the judge ordered a criminal investigation into whether there is an organization behind the influx of pregnant Russian women that is scamming them or has committed other crimes. The results of the investigation are sealed.

On Feb. 10, shortly after the court ruling was handed down, 33 Russian women who were between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant arrived in Buenos Aires on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa. (There are no direct flights between Russia and Argentina.)

As reported by the national director of the migration service, Florencia Carignano, in 2022, 10,500 people of Russian nationality entered Argentina and 5,819 of them were pregnant women.

The immigration authorities carried out an investigation in which it interviewed 350 pregnant Russian women in Argentina. They discovered that there is an organization that “offers them, in exchange for a large sum of money, a ‘birth tourism’ package, and gaining an Argentine passport is the main reason for the trip,” Carignano tweeted.

The Fernández Hospital, in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, is one of the most prestigious public health centers in Argentina. In December 2022, 37 Russian women gave birth there. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“Argentina’s history and legislation embrace immigrants who choose to live in this country in search of a better future. This does not mean we endorse mafia organizations that profit by offering scams to obtain our passport, to people who do not want to live here,” she added.

Under Argentine law, foreign nationals who have a child born in Argentina are immediately given permanent residency status, in a process that takes a few months. To obtain citizenship, they have to prove two years of uninterrupted residence here, in a federal court.

“Becoming a citizen is a difficult process that takes many years. If the organizations promise Russian women a passport in a few months, they are lying or there is corruption behind this,” Lourdes Rivadeneyra, head of the Migrant and Refugee Program at the National Institute against Discrimination (INADI), told IPS.

Rights in Argentina

“One thing are human trafficking networks, which make false promises in exchange for large sums of money, and another thing is the rights of women to enter Argentina and have their children here. They are victims,” Christian Rubilar, a lawyer for three of the six women who were held in the Ezeiza airport, told IPS.

Rubilar pointed out that the constitution guarantees essential rights “for all people in the world who want to live in Argentina.” He added that the country’s laws do not mention “false tourists”, and that therefore the immigration office exceeded its authority by denying them access to the country.

Argentina received different waves of European migration from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. This created a culture of respect for the rights of immigrants among citizens and in the country’s legislation, which see Argentina as a land that welcomes foreigners in trouble, such as Venezuelans who have arrived in large numbers in the past few years.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia, in what has been described by some as a third historic exodus, after the ones that followed the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Although there are no official figures, recently the English newspaper The Guardian estimated that between 500,000 and one million people have left Russia since the beginning of the war. Many leave out of fear of being sent to the front lines, or because they are in conflict with the government or due to the consequences of international economic sanctions on the country.

The RuArgentina website offers a package of services including a hospital birth for pregnant woman in Buenos Aires and the promise of obtaining Argentine passports for the parents, which gives them entrance without a visa to most countries around the world. CREDIT: Online ad

As can be quickly verified in an Internet search, there are organizations operating in Argentina that promise Russian women who give birth in this country that they and their husbands can quickly obtain citizenship here.

“Give birth in Argentina. We help you move to Argentina, obtain permanent residence and a passport, which gives you visa-free entry to 170 countries around the world,” announces the RuArgentina website, which offers a package that includes accommodation in Buenos Aires, medical assistance, the help of a translator and aid in applying for documents, among other services for pregnant women.

The founder of RuArgentina is a Russian living in Argentina, Kirill Makoveev, who said in an interview on TV that “there are a variety of reasons why our clients come to Argentina: some want a passport because the Russian passport is toxic now. So we explain that the constitution and immigration laws here allow you to obtain a passport without breaking the law.”

The Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires did not respond to IPS’s request for comments, but the pregnant women have not been defended by the Russian community in Argentina.

“They are not coming to Argentina as immigrants, to work and seek a better future, as many Russians did in different waves of immigration. They are coming in order to use Argentina as a springboard to go to Western European countries or the United States,” Silvana Yarmolyuk, director of the Coordinating Council of Organizations of Russian Compatriots in Argentina, which brings together 23 community associations from all over the country, told IPS. .

Yarmolyuk, who was born in Argentina and is the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, said that the Russians who are coming to Argentina now are people of certain means who are taking advantage of Argentina’s flexible immigration policies.

“Just the ticket from Russia to Argentina costs about 3,000 dollars,” she said. “The danger is that this exacerbates the spread of Russophobia, which hurts all of us.”

A week after the earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria, cleaning up works continue in Adiyaman, in Turkey´s south-east. Credit: Lara Villlalón.

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Feb 14 2023 (IPS)

Geology explains the terrible earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria on February 6 with academic coldness: the Arabian, Eurasian and African plates pressure the Anatolian plate. On the surface, geopolitics resorts to concepts like “fault”, “tension” or “fracture” to explain things too. When one looks at Turkey, both disciplines’ maps can easily overlap each other, with a death toll calculated in the tens of thousands.

The earthquake’s epicentre lies in a chasm that has been widening since World War I (1914-1918), when the Kurdish people were left stateless. Over 40 million Kurds remain spread across the borders of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Half of them live in the southeastern region of Turkey. It is not by chance that the broken North-South socioeconomic divide in Anatolia actually shows itself from west to east.

Tour operators offer two main tourist packages: touring the west of the country in clockwise or anti-clockwise directions.

The east is never an option, even if you miss the astonishing Neolithic archaeological site of Gobekli, or the source of the Tigris and Euphrates, among other treasures.

Actually, “Kurdistan” has always been a taboo word for the Turkish national narrative, which favours euphemisms such as “the southeast” to refer to that part of the country. After all, what name can be given to what doesn’t even exist?

For decades there was no talk of Kurds, but of “mountain Turks.” Their language, Kurmanji, still has not reached newspapers or schools. There is indeed a television channel in Kurdish – there are around fifty in neighbouring Iraq – but it is government funded. Accordingly, there´s no deviation from the official discourse.

Without leaving the epicentre of the earthquake, the city of Kahramanmaras owes its name to the Turkification of its original Maras (of disputed origin) to which is added the Turkish Kahraman, “hero”. Also, better not look for “Amed” on maps when trying to get to Diyarbakir, Turkey’s main Kurdish city.

These are just two of the thousands of examples that speak of this drive to erase all “foreign” traces from the maps. The next step is to do it physically. The city of Hasankeyf, a 12,000-year-old archaeological treasure once protected by UNESCO, was completely flooded in 2020.

Diyarbakir´s city centre after the military operation launched by Ankara in 2015-2016 across the country´s main Kurdish cities. Credit: KNK.

Today, Hasankey lies out of reach under a network of dams through which the water supply from the Tigris and the Eufrates to Syria and Iraq is often cut off.

The most modern cities are not spared either. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Kurdish towns were burned down by the Turkish Army in the war against the Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

In the wake of the umpteenth military operation launched by Ankara in 2015 and 2016, the rubble in several of them was reminiscent of that of the last earthquake. Once again, the civilians then took the worst part.

"If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means that you built your state on my land"

Musa Anter, a Kurdish journalist and writer assassinated by Turkish intelligence agents in 1992


“You are not Kurdish, you are Armenian and we are going to do the same we did to you a hundred years ago,” this reporter heard a Turkish police officer shout over a loudspeaker during the curfew enforced on the Kurdish city of Cizre, in September 2015.

Two earthquakes (in 1912 and 1914) announced what was to become the first genocide of the 20th century, when more than a million and a half Armenians were swallowed by that same fault.

Today, in Turkey there are barely 60,000 castaways from that Eurasian plate, and the waves are still hitting neighbouring Armenia, which remains sandwiched between two Turkic states (the second one is Azerbaijan).

“How happy is the one who says I am a Turk,” read murals across Turkey, paraphrasing Kemal Ataturk, the controversial father of the republic. “The homeland is indivisible” is also a recurrent one.

The cruelest paradox decrees that the country celebrates its first hundred years of existence slit open. Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdoğan has already declared a state of emergency for three months in ten devastated regions.

The complaints that relief does not arrive pile up, creating an even more precarious situation for over three million Syrian refugees who´ve crossed the border to Turkey since the war started in Syria in 2011.

The earth has burst under their feet after more than a decade since the war broke out in his country. They are the most direct victims of the Arabian plate, the one governed by autocrats such as Bashar al Assad in Syria, General Abdulfatah al Sissi in Egypt or the satraps of the Persian Gulf.

They all share with Erdoğan an obsession with perpetuating themselves in power and an exclusive discourse on which to articulate their respective country models.

More paradoxes in history make Erdoğan come to power in the aftermath of the Izmir earthquake in 1999 -it left more than 17,000 deaths-, and the last one occurred on the eve of decisive elections next May.

But perhaps the deepest fault is that of democracy.

After more than two decades in power, Erdoğan had shielded his re-election by disqualifying Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and his most direct rival in the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

He had also outlawed the third political force, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Their leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yüksekdağ, have been in prison since 2016.

“If my mother tongue is shaking the foundations of your state, it probably means that you built your state on my land,” said Musa Anter, a Kurdish journalist and writer assassinated by Turkish intelligence agents in 1992.

Add to that the brutal jolts of geology, and disaster is served.

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

By Helmut W. Ganser
HAMBURG, Germany, Feb 6 2023 (IPS)

The decision of Germany and other NATO states to supply modern battle tanks and other armoured infantry vehicles to Ukraine takes the West’s involvement in the war to a new level.

Presumably, in the further course of the war, the numbers mentioned so far will not be enough; the decision to provide tanks immediately sparked an international debate on delivering fighter planes as well.

We are also hearing initial calls for NATO troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a ‘deterrent’, which would mean NATO becoming embroiled in the war. However, the discussion about the objectives in the Ukraine war mustn’t be muddied, even if clarifying these leads to a fierce dispute both within and amongst the NATO states. There is just too much at stake.

The American and German governments indicate that they want to enable Ukraine to hold the frontline which it has fought for so far and liberate more areas wherever possible. All occupied territories, including Crimea, would probably be regained through a strategic approach of lengthy negotiations under the pressure of overwhelming Western sanction packages.

This objective comes with the broader demand that Ukraine be enabled to reconquer its entire territory through military counterattacks, something also put forward by the Ukrainian leadership. The serious risks of escalation associated with this must be thoroughly analysed, which has largely been skirted around in the discussions so far.

The fog of war prevents us from predicting how things will play out. All professional military policy experts are aware that their analyses, evaluations and forecasts are clouded by this; there are always bound to be frictions and surprises. However, looking at various scenarios can help us refine our assessments of what might be on the horizon.

We will attempt to assess the potential effects of the new tank deliveries to Ukraine, using two scenarios that look ahead to the early summer of 2023. In both scenarios, it is assumed that the Ukrainian army will gradually receive about 100 Western battle tanks, most of the Leopard model, and around 100 largely German and American infantry vehicles by early summer 2023.

The 31 M1 Abrams tanks previously promised are unlikely to be delivered by this point. Two tank battalions and two tank grenadier battalions – roughly equivalent to a brigade – will be equipped with the new heavy weapons systems by the early summer under both scenarios.

Another assumption is that the widely anticipated Russian spring offensive, targeting the Luhansk or Donetsk area, will begin around the end of February or March. Very few Western battle and infantry vehicles, if any, are likely to be used, in what are expected to be highly intense battles with severe casualties.

It is assumed with some uncertainty that the more professional and mobile Ukrainian defence can ward off larger operational gains from the major Russian units. These two scenarios look to the early summer after the Ukrainian army has taken delivery of the tanks from the West.

By the late spring, it becomes clear that the Ukrainian military intends to push hard towards the south from the area east and southeast of Zaporizhzhia. The goal is to advance over about 100 km to the Sea of Azov and cut the Russian troops off south of the river Dnieper and, more than anything, to stop Crimea from being supplied via the land bridge.

The terrain in this area is mostly open and flat – highly beneficial to tanks – and, with the exception of the town of Melitopol, is only dotted with small villages. In the early summer of 2023, Ukraine makes bold advances south under favourable weather conditions, targeting the Sea of Azov coast.

This results in the first major tank battle of the war, which sees German Leopards and Marders deployed at the front, as well as the American Bradleys and Strikers. With their better armour, agility and weapon effect, they clearly come out on top in a head-to-head battle.

Ukrainian commanders, however, struggle to master the complexity of mixed-weapons combat, in which battle tanks, armoured infantry vehicles with tank grenadiers, artillery, sappers and air support must work together in close coordination to achieve the full force of impact. Heavy Russian tank and infantry forces withstand the advancing units.

The Ukrainian counterattack progresses for about 30 km but then gets bogged down in the huge defensive firing, after Russian mechanised units succeed in pushing into the flank of the Ukrainian tank formations, jeopardising their supply. Soldier and material losses are severely high again on both sides.

Pictures of destroyed Leopard tanks are plastered across the internet. German television channels and online media increasingly draw parallels with historical footage of German tanks during the Second World War in the same region.

From a political and strategic perspective, attrition warfare has been consolidated in this scenario, despite tactical gains on both sides. Russia still has about 10 to 12 per cent of the Ukrainian territory under its control.

The extensive exhaustion of weapons systems, spare parts and ammunition from the German and American armies is increasingly running down the operational capability and perseverance of the NATO forces on both sides of the Atlantic.

As production capacity remains limited, there is increasing support for an agreement between the US, Ukraine and Russia to bring an end to the war. In Ukraine, the devastating losses are affecting more and more families, leading to political demands for a ceasefire. Opposition politicians demand that their president publish the actual losses incurred since the war began.

Scenario 2 is identical to scenario 1 up to the Ukrainian army’s counterattack from the area east of Zaporizhzhia. But in this scenario, operations are proceeding as planned by the Ukrainian General Staff. Kyiv has deployed forces equipped with Western tanks and infantry vehicles to the heart of the battlefield.

With the superior firepower, armour and agility of the Leopard 2 tanks, they advance towards intermediate targets northeast of Melitopol after a few days. Leadership, fighting strength and motivation are once again proving weak amongst Russian ranks, while the Ukrainian troops’ command of mixed-weapons combat is better than initially expected by Western military experts.

Leopard spearheads reach villages just off the coast, opposite Crimea. As Ukrainians advance, American-made HIMARS rockets destroy the new Russian bridge near Kerch in some places, rendering it unusable for supplying Crimea. Russia responds with the most intense air raid ever launched on Kyiv, with numerous casualties reported and electricity supply destroyed.

The Russian president makes a brief statement following a stage-managed press conference with his General Staff. Putin first states that the Russian Federation now considers the NATO states that supplied heavy weapons to Ukraine as direct opponents in the war, regardless of any fine details in international law.

The ongoing attack on Russian-occupied Crimea could only have come about through the massive involvement of Western states. The war has now created an existential dimension for the Russian Federation. As far as Russia is concerned, the entire war zone now extends to the territory of the Western states supporting Ukraine.

He refrains from verbal warnings of nuclear war because his earlier threats were not taken seriously. Putin says he has ordered his Defence Minister and General Staff to supply some of the nuclear-capable missile troops with the nuclear warheads stored in depots.

If the blockade of supplies to Crimea via the land bridge is not removed, Russia must use force through its tactical nuclear weapons. Russian bloggers report that the course of the war has brought unity to Kremlin leaders and only made them more determined to see it through, but this cannot be verified.

A few hours later, American satellites pick up Russian convoys beginning their journey from the nuclear weapons storage facilities to the nuclear missile battalion deployment areas. This secret intelligence becomes public across the world.

In a widely unexpected twist, China announces the largest mobilisation of its naval forces ever in the Strait of Taiwan. Its first fleet of warships has already set sail. The US and its NATO partners are now on the verge of a nuclear face-off that has escalated faster than many had believed, with consequences unimaginable for the whole of Europe.

Western governments, the NATO Council and Military Committee, as well as the UN Security Council, meet day after day. Commentators can’t help but compare it to the height of the Cuban crisis. But NATO leaders clash on their assessments of the situation and their approach. In Berlin, huge demonstrations are held calling for an immediate end to the war, with the slogan ‘Stop the madness’.

Of course, more optimistic scenarios can also be envisaged in which the Kremlin hands back Crimea without nuclear escalation. The powers that be, including those in Berlin, Washington and Paris, have so far held firm on their objective of not stepping into the grey area of getting directly involved in the war.

But the danger of slowly and unintentionally sleepwalking into what would be the biggest catastrophe for the whole of Europe is growing and growing. Unexpected twists and turns (sometimes referred to as black swans or wild cards) can also create dynamic developments that are likely to be extremely difficult to control and contain.

As more German tanks are sent to Ukraine, Germany’s share of responsibility for the course that the war takes – and the consequences thereof – increases and ultimately so does its right and need to influence the leadership in Kyiv.

Helmut W. Ganser, Brigadier General (retd), is a graduate psychologist and political scientist, who acted as Deputy Head of the Military Policy Department at the Ministry of Defence in Berlin, lecturer on strategy at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College and military policy advisor to the German Permanent Representatives to NATO and to the UN.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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Youn Sun Nah in Brussels (photo by A.M.)

By SWAN
BRUSSELS, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

When the parents of Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah realized that the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, they called and urged her to return to Seoul from New York, where she was based at the time.

“They said buy the ticket immediately,” the singer recalls. “There’ll be a total lockdown and you might never be able to come home. When I watched television and heard that borders would be closed, I packed my bags and I got the last ticket. I thought I would come back in three months, but not a year.”

In Korea, under travel restrictions like most of the world, Sun Nah wondered how she could fight the blues that threatened to overwhelm her. She began writing lyrics and composing music for what would become the extraordinary Waking World (Warner Music), her 11^th album, released in 2022.

The songs are an exploration of the life of an artist, confronting angst and despair, and their haunting beauty – as well as experimental range of styles – may help Sun Nah to broaden her already substantial international audience, as she embarks on a “Spring Tour” beginning in March. With the memorable track Don’t Get Me Wrong, the album also contains a message about the dangers of spreading misinformation and hate, the “other” ills of the pandemic.

Born in Seoul to musician parents (and named Na Yoon-sun), Youn Sun Nah learned to play the piano as a child but grew up focusing on the usual curriculum at school. She graduated from university in 1992 with an arts degree, having studied literature, and she thought this would be her career direction. She didn’t want to pursue music, she says, because she had seen her parents – a choir director and a musical actress – work too hard.

Still, when the Korean Symphony Orchestra invited her to sing gospel songs in 1993, she began taking her first steps in the world of performing and recording, eventually moving to France to study music, as she relates. In Paris, she followed courses in traditional French chanson and enrolled at the prestigious CIM School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she had to overcome certain artistic challenges.

In the years since then, she has performed worldwide, sung at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, contributed to a Nina Simone tribute album, and taken part in the 2017 International Jazz Day concert which was held in Havana, Cuba. (International Jazz Day is an initiative of legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO.) In addition, she has received the Officier des Arts et des Lettres award from the French Ministry of Culture, the Sejong Culture Award from Korea, and a host of other music prizes and accolades.

In an interview with SWAN before a recent concert in Brussels, Youn Sun Nah spoke of her career with self-deprecating humour, discussing the effects of the pandemic on her art and the meanings behind the songs on Waking World. She shed light, too, on the experience of being a jazz singer amidst the global Korean pop music phenomenon. The edited interview follows.

SWAN: How would you describe yourself?

Youn Sun Nah: I’m a jazz singer from Korea. I studied jazz in France, and I travel around the world, and I’m kind of all mixed up, but I’m very happy with that.

SWAN: Are you now based in France?

YSN: No, I used to live in Paris for a long time, but actually, I don’t have a place to stay in France now. Every time I go there, it’s just for the tour, so I go to different places. I could say I live in Korea, but it’s a nomadic life.

SWAN: Let’s speak about Waking World, which was released last January. You’re doing a tour to promote it now, as that wasn’t possible earlier, during the pandemic.

YSN: Yes, we couldn’t really do the promotion thing, but c’est la vie. My manager called in 2021 to say: now you can come, you can take the plane now. So, I quickly bought the ticket, came back to France and recorded the album in Paris, and then I did some shows.

SWAN: A lot of artists have had to find ways to keep going during the pandemic, and it’s been especially difficult for many musicians who couldn’t tour, couldn’t be on the road. Has that been the case for you too?

YSN: As you know, jazz is really live music, and I think most jazz musicians feel the same way. You want to do as many gigs as possible. I don’t know if people listen to my music on platforms like Spotify or iTunes, but I feel very lucky to perform live music. More than 400 jazz festivals exist in France, so it’s a privilege.

SWAN: How did Waking World come about, and what does it mean for your fans, for you?

YSN: When I went back to Korea at the start of the pandemic, I was kind of optimistic that things wouldn’t last long. Everyone was wearing masks, but we could move around, just not take the plane. Then … six months, seven months, eight months. From that moment, I got really depressed, and I thought that maybe I should change my job, that maybe I would never be able to go back to Europe and perform. What can I do, I thought. All the musicians I played with were in Europe because I studied jazz in France, and I don’t know that many jazz musicians in Korea. So, I had a kind of homesickness even though I was home. But in Korea, we never lose hope, so I think that’s in my DNA. I told myself: you should wake up, and you should do something else; you can’t disappoint the people who’ve supported you for a long time, you should have something to present to your audience. So, I started writing some new tunes. Without the musicians I usually work with, I had to do it all by myself.

SWAN: But you’re used to singing in English?

YSN: Yes, after I started studying jazz. You know, when I came to France, I didn’t know what jazz was. If I’d known, I would definitely have gone to the States. I was so naïve … and maybe stupid? One day I’d asked one of my musician friends in Korea what kind of music I should study to become a good singer, and he’d said: do jazz. What is jazz, I asked him. And he said: jazz is original pop music, so if you learn how to sing jazz, you can sing anything. And I said: oh, it sounds great!

I’m a huge fan of French chanson, so he said one of the oldest jazz schools in Europe is located in Paris, so go there. Oh, great! I arrived there, and what you learn at school is American standards, and everything was in English. I actually studied in four different schools at the same time because, well, I’m Asian, and I’m used to that education system where you don’t have to have any free time for yourself! When I had only six hours of lessons, I thought: what am I gonna do with the other eighteen hours? (Laughter.)

SWAN: That kind of approach must have helped with the album?

YSN: Well, I didn’t know when I could record this album, so I just kept writing and composing. And arranging by myself, as I had a lot of time. But, as you know, jazz is like … we should gather together and arrange in the moment. When I could finally fly to France, I just gave all the material to the musicians. And they said, oh, we’ll respect your scores. And I said, no, no, do what you want. But they played exactly what I wrote, every single note. I’m embarrassed.

SWAN: Tell us about the inspiration behind some of tracks, such as Bird On The Ground, the first song, which has the refrain “I want to fly. I want to fly. I want to fly.”

YSN: Well, “bird on the ground” – that’s me during the pandemic.

SWAN: Don’t Get Me Wrong, the second track, has an infectious melody, but the message is clear: the world “has no chance with those who lie and lie”. Tell us more.

YSN: During the pandemic, I could only watch TV or go on the internet to know what was happening. But sometimes the information wasn’t true, and even though it’s a lie you end up believing everything. Yeah, so I thought the world has no chance with people who lie.

SWAN: The sixth track has an intriguing title – My Mother. (Lyrics include the line: “How can you keep drying my eyes every time, my mother?”) What’s the story behind it?

YSN: With the touring, I usually don’t spend that much time at home. But with the pandemic, I was home for a whole year, and I spent a lot of time with my mother, and I really had the chance to talk about everything, about her life and what she experienced. She’s my best friend, and we became even closer.

SWAN: And the title song Waking World?

YSN: I wanted this to be a dream and not real, but at the same time this is the reality, so it was kind of ambiguous for me. Where am I? Am I dreaming? No, you’re wide awake.

SWAN: Tangled Soul, track eight?

YSN: My soul was completely tangled. (Laughter.) And then one day, I felt: it’s okay, everything will be all right.

SWAN: Speaking about music in general, K-pop has become a global phenomenon. Are you in the wrong field? (Laughter.) More to the point, are you affected by the huge interest?

YSN: At every show, I’m really shocked or surprised because the audience says “hello” and “thank you” in Korean. Unbelievable! There are many people who’ve told me about their experience in Korea, too, saying they’ve spent a month or six months there. It’s something that my parents’ generation couldn’t have expected because the country was destroyed during the war – it’s not that long ago – and they had to build a completely new country. They worked so hard, and because of them, we have this era. People know Korea through K-pop, through Netflix.

SWAN: Then there’s this Korean jazz singer – you. When listeners hear your work, the “soul” comes through. Can you talk about that?

YSN: When I arrived in Paris, not knowing what jazz was, as I mentioned, I told my parents: Oh, I’m gonna study jazz for three years, and I think I can master it, and then I’ll come back to Korea and maybe teach. And afterwards, I felt so stupid, and so bad because I can’t swing, and I don’t have a voice like Ella Fitzgerald, and I could barely learn one standard song. So, I tried everything. On Honeysuckle Rose, I think I wrote down every moment that Ella breathed in, breathed out. But … I couldn’t sing like her, it sounded so fake. So, I said: No, I’ll never be able to sing jazz, this is not for me. After a year, I told my professors that, sorry, I made a wrong choice, I’m going to go back home. And they laughed at me. They said: What? Youn, you can do your own jazz with your own voice. And I said, no, I can’t. Then they recommended some jazz albums of European jazz singers, such as Norma Winstone, who’s an English singer, and my idol. She has a kind of soprano voice like me, and when she interprets, it’s like a whole new tune. And I said, oh, we can call this jazz too? I didn’t know.

So, I learned to try with my own voice and my own soul, with my Korean background, and the more I used my own voice, the more I did things my own way, the more I felt accepted.

SWAN: What is next for you?

YSN: Well, everyone has told me that this album is not jazz, but that’s what I wanted to do. Herbie Hancock always said that jazz is the human soul, it’s not appearances, so you can do whatever you want to do. We’ll see. It’s been a while that I’ve wanted to do an album of jazz standards, so we’ll continue this tour in 2023 and then we’ll see. – A.M. / SWAN

Youn Sun Nah’s Spring Tour runs March 9 to May 26, 2023, and includes concerts in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The Ukrainian Carpathians. Credit: Muhlynin/Shutterstock

By Jiavi Zhou and Ian Anthony
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

Next month (February 24) will mark one year since Russia began its full-scale war on Ukraine. This large-scale land invasion has had repercussions across the geopolitical, humanitarian, financial, and even food and energy domains. It has also had devastating ecological impacts.

Measurable environmental damage—valued by Ukrainian authorities at an estimated US$46 billion and still rising—includes direct war damage to air, forests, soil and water; remnants and pollution from the use of weapons and military equipment; and contamination from the shelling of thousands of facilities holding toxic and hazardous materials.

The longer-term costs for Ukraine with regard to lost ecosystem services are much harder to quantify. On top of this, the war effort has directed government attention and resources away from environmental governance and climate action, posing additional risks for national, regional and global sustainable development.

However, as this SIPRI Topical Backgrounder sets out, Ukrainian authorities, civil society and international partners are responding vigorously to these challenges, not only by drawing attention to the ecological impacts of the war but also by recording and measuring those impacts, pursuing accountability and restitution, and laying the groundwork for a green reconstruction.

All this dovetails with efforts already under way to strengthen the international normative and legal framework for the protection of the environment in the context of armed conflict.

As well as benefiting Ukraine itself, all this could set positive precedents for and strengthen international mechanisms to account for, remediate and perhaps even prevent environmental crimes and damage related to armed conflict.

Hence, although the war appears to have its origins in the most rigid of traditional, state-centric and zero-sum considerations, its fallout may help to propagate a more integrated and holistic understanding of security, and the consideration and protection of the shared natural environment in all phases of the conflict cycle.

The environment as a casualty of the war

The environmental impacts and risks associated with the war in Ukraine include, but also go far beyond, direct physical damage to and contamination of natural habitats from, for example, munitions, materiel and troop movements.

Another set of risks is posed by pollution from industrial facilities and infrastructure that are damaged or cannot be properly managed due to the fighting. Ukraine’s industrial base includes many mines, chemical plants and factories that hold potentially hazardous substances.

These, along with infrastructure including nuclear power stations, have frequently been incidentally damaged or even deliberately targeted during a conflict that has been active in Ukraine’s east since 2014. Russia has also been accused of deliberately targeting hydropower dams in order to cause flooding since the earliest days of the war.

According to one estimate, there were more than 1100 incidents of disruption to or destruction of industrial facilities and critical infrastructure in Ukraine between February and December 2022.

The implications of damage and toxic contamination from fighting are especially grave given that Ukraine is home to 35 per cent of Europe’s biodiversity and around a quarter of the earth’s chernozem, a rich, highly fertile soil type.

Hundreds of protected areas are or have been under occupation, including up to 23 national parks and nature and biosphere reserves. There has also been considerable attention paid to the war’s large carbon footprint, as is discussed below.

The ecological consequences of conflict have periodically come into focus in the past, particularly in relation to the Second Indochina War and the first Gulf War. Even so, the war in Ukraine stands out in terms of the amount of attention being given to ecological damage during an ongoing conflict.

Shortly after the February 2022 invasion, international civil society groups raised the issue at the United Nations Environment Assembly. This was quickly followed by a high-profile open letter signed by hundreds of scholars, peacebuilders and organizations and a joint statement from an international alliance of parliamentarians, both condemning the environmental damage and risks caused by military activity.

The Ukrainian government has been proactive in highlighting the environment as a key casualty of Russian aggression. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s appeals to international partners regularly refer to the environmental dimensions of the conflict.

This includes recent speeches at the COP27 climate summit in November 2022 and at the G20 summit a week later, where protection of the environment featured as one element of Zelensky’s 10-point peace plan.

Recording and assessing the environmental damage

Another reason for the degree of international attention on the environmental dimensions of the war is certainly the ‘unprecedented’ volume of data that has been gathered and made publicly available by Ukrainian authorities, society and international partners.

Open-source data collection, including by a range of civil society actors and citizen scientists, has played a particularly important role in this. Several online platforms present data on environmental damage and risks due to the war, and some, such as SaveEcoBot, allow users to report instances of environmental damage or suspected environmental crime.

The Ecodozor platform—developed by the Zoï Environment Network, together with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the REACH Humanitarian Initiative—recorded over 29 000 reported cases of ‘damage or disruption due to military activities’ between February and December 2022, affecting critical infrastructure, industrial facilities, farmland and settlements.

Locally based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as EcoAction and Environment People Law are also at the frontlines of this data collection, complementing efforts by Ukrainian authorities.

As of 18 January 2023, the Ukrainian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources’ EcoZagroza platform claimed to have verified 2215 reports of alleged environmental crimes by ‘occupiers of the Russian Federation’ since the start of the conflict, based on the work of more than 16 000 Ukrainian citizens, along with ecological experts, NGOs and others.

EcoZagroza also gives estimates of the damage due to these alleged environmental crimes calculated by the State Environmental Inspectorate, expressed in Ukraine’s hryvnia currency.

There is currently no international standard for measuring ecological damage from conflict. However, since the February 2022 invasion the Ukrainian environment ministry has been developing methodologies for determining damage and losses in the areas of land, water, air, forest, subsoil resources and nature reserves, and continues to refine them.

This approach—focused as it is on quantifying damage in discrete sectors—is a rough indicator that does not fully capture the complexity of ecosystems and the non-tangible services they provide, including in terms of cultural value and heritage.

Nevertheless, it has benefited Ukraine’s environmental messaging around the war, drawing attention to the scale of environmental destruction. In addition, it helps to underpin calls for accountability and justice.

The war in Ukraine has also resulted in the first emissions estimate for an active conflict: 97 million tCO2e of war-related greenhouse gas emissions between February and September 2022, with around half linked to the future repair or replacement of civilian infrastructure damaged by the war.

All of the work to develop these assessment methodologies that has been prompted by the war may eventually have much wider international applicability, or at least help to unify current approaches.

The pursuit of accountability, justice and reparations

Several avenues are being explored by Ukraine and its international partners for ensuring that Russia is held to account, sanctioned and made to compensate Ukraine for the consequences of its aggression. Since 2001 the Ukrainian criminal code has included the crime of ecocide, defined as the ‘mass destruction of flora and fauna, poisoning of air or water resources, and also any other actions that may cause an environmental disaster’, punishable by imprisonment.

In the hope of bringing a degree of accountability for Russia that reflects the scale of the destruction, as well as seeking commensurate levels of compensation, Ukrainian and other legal experts have also been considering how a case could be brought at the international level.

The International Criminal Court does not currently recognize ecocide as an international crime under the Rome Statute, although there is growing pressure in that direction. International humanitarian law does prohibit the employment of ‘methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment’. However, the lack of specific thresholds for these criteria makes it difficult to build cases using this provision.

Ukraine also has a clear goal of making Russia pay reparations, including for environmental damage due to the war. This has been a consistent feature of Ukrainian preconditions for entering peace negotiations with Russia. Avenues for extracting reparations seem to be opening up through seized Russian assets in specific national contexts.

There is also precedent for compensation mechanisms at the international level. In 1991 the UN Security Council established a Compensation Commission that bound Iraq to pay reparations for damage during its invasion of Kuwait, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources.

Russia’s veto power in the Security Council effectively rules this option out in the case of the present war. However, in November 2022 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution ES-11/5 ‘Furtherance of remedy and reparation for aggression against Ukraine’.

The resolution recommends the creation of an international register of ‘evidence and claims information on damage, loss or injury to all natural and legal persons concerned, as well as the state of Ukraine’. While the register does not itself create a mechanism for reparations, it coordinates evidence gathering in that direction and helps to promote justice and accountability.

The war in Ukraine comes at a time when work is under way to develop a more robust international normative and legal framework for the protection of the environment in armed conflict. In 2020 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) released updated guidelines on the protection of the natural environment in armed conflict, to clarify existing rules and promote their application.

In December 2022 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that included 27 principles on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict (PERAC), which had been developed by the International Law Commission. Other resolutions on the topic were adopted in the UN Environment Assembly in 2016 and 2017. The 2016 resolution, ‘Protection of the environment in areas affected by armed conflict’, was tabled by Ukraine.

Although in some cases they reflect binding treaty law, both the ICRC guidelines and the PERAC principles are dependent on voluntary state implementation. They also, of course, cannot reduce the harm already inflicted on Ukraine’s natural environment. However, they still provide reference points to help to identify and characterize the environmental damage inflicted by Russia, and to build a stronger case for restitution.

Whether bids to sanction Russian individuals or the Russian state ultimately succeed, Ukrainian efforts nonetheless serve to strengthen the normative grounds and help to clarify the legal avenues for environmental justice and accountability in the context of armed conflict.

Prospects for green reconstruction

Another environmental dimension to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that it has set back, and in some cases reversed, Ukraine’s pre-war efforts towards environmental reform and green transition. Ukraine has long been one of the world’s most energy-intensive economies, with outdated infrastructure and low energy efficiency—a fact that was even acknowledged in Ukraine’s 2020 National Security Strategy as a matter of strategic concern.

The war has threatened progress Ukraine was making in these areas, including towards its goal of increasing the share of renewables in the national energy mix to 12 per cent by 2025. Russia has reportedly destroyed much of Ukraine’s renewable energy infrastructure, which is concentrated in occupied areas or zones of active conflict.

Of course there are now more immediate concerns related to the deliberate attacks by Russian forces on critical energy infrastructure in Ukraine, which have deprived residents of heat, power, water and other basic services in the depths of winter.

In other respects, however, the war may serve to accelerate the green transition in and beyond Ukraine. Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction is likely to see some of the most emissions-intensive and polluting assets that have been destroyed, particularly in heavy industry, replaced with greener alternatives.

Clear imperatives for decarbonization come from not only the obvious need to achieve greater energy security and independence, but also the requirements for accession to the European Union, following Ukraine’s acceptance as a candidate state in June 2022.

Both Ukraine and its likely partners have committed to building the country back ‘better’, and greener, than previously. The outcome document of the Ukraine Recovery Conference held in Lugano, Switzerland, in July 2022 incorporates sustainability as one of seven core principles for rebuilding, and commits to alignment with the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and a green transition more broadly.

Ukraine’s current draft recovery plan for the energy sector includes decarbonization, modernization and increasing energy efficiency as core tasks. Updating the housing stock and infrastructure represents the best and fastest route to improving energy efficiency, and indeed this constitutes one of the main components of the draft recovery plan. It is also the focus of the Eastern Europe Energy Efficiency and Environment Partnership (E5P), a multi-donor fund that has earmarked €175 million for Ukraine.

Further challenges and reflections

International recognition of the key role of a healthy environment in sustaining peace and human security has never been greater. The war in Ukraine has only driven the point home more forcefully. Nevertheless, the eventual success of the efforts outlined above—in protecting Ukraine’s natural environment and supporting the green transition, and in holding Russia to account—depend on many factors.

Not the least of these, the environmental damage and risks continue to grow with each day of the war. Public resources and priorities have already shifted from environmental conservation, governance and monitoring towards war efforts, and many scientific personnel have left the country or joined the fighting.

In addition, although the amount of data already gathered is impressive, war conditions and the Russian occupation of large swathes of Ukraine make full monitoring and assessment extremely difficult.

The collected data will also need careful independent verification, attribution and matching against baselines that may not be available, especially if it is to be used in legal cases, domestically or internationally, or to demand compensation.

Holding Russia to account for the enormous and growing environmental damage caused by the war will be tremendously challenging. There are currently no viable international legal avenues for seeking reparations and, perhaps more importantly, no willingness on Russia’s side to consider these demands, even as part of negotiations.

Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction will come at a high financial cost, and even if it results in a greener Ukrainian economy in the long run will also have a carbon footprint of its own. Furthermore, to create the conditions for recovery, it will be necessary to mitigate the risks posed by toxic and hazardous materials, such as rocket fuel, as well as the explosive remnants of war, such as unexploded ordnance and landmines.

External actors such as the Halo Trust have expanded their activities in Ukraine in order to assist, but it will still be difficult when Ukrainian resources are stretched thin. Arrangements for financing, capacity building, coordination and governance for reconstruction projects remain to be worked out—and ambitions for turning Ukraine into a green and clean energy hub are largely declarative for now.

Nevertheless, the efforts of Ukraine’s authorities and citizens are invaluable in setting precedents and serving as a positive example of how to understand and respond to environmental damage in armed conflict.

In previous cases such as the first Gulf War and the second Indochina War, large-scale environmental destruction has led to the creation of new international mechanisms and even treaties geared towards prevention.

The war in Ukraine could perhaps serve as another such watershed moment in international security governance—even if those changes come too late to remedy the impacts that Ukraine has already suffered.

Dr Jiayi Zhou is a Researcher in the Conflict, Peace and Security research area at SIPRI; Dr Ian Anthony is the Director of the European Security Programme.

The authors offer their sincere thanks to the participants in the recent SIPRI event ‘Beyond War Ecologies: Green Ways Forward for Ukraine’, whose insights are included in this topical backgrounder.

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US M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank Credit: Military.com

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2023 (IPS)

After much reluctance, the US and its Western allies last week agreed to provide Ukraine with some of the world’s most sophisticated battle tanks: American-made Abrams, German-made Leopards and British-made Challengers.

But the question remains as to whether these weapons will make a decisive difference to Ukrainian armed forces fighting a relentless battle with one of the world’s major military and nuclear powers.

According to the US Department of Defense (DOD), the new $400 million package announced last week represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional capabilities to Ukraine.

The package includes: 31 Abrams tanks with 120mm rounds and other ammunition; Eight Tactical Vehicles to recover equipment; Support vehicles and equipment; Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.

Alongside the battalion of Abrams tanks, a European consortium is committing to provide two battalions of Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

The DOD says the United States will “continue to work with our allies and partners to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs to counter Russian aggression and ensure the continued freedom and independence of the Ukrainian people.”

Speaking from the White House on January 25, US President Joe Biden thanked every member of the Western coalition for continuing to step up.

The UK, he said, recently announced that it is donating Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. France is contributing AMX-10s, armored fighting vehicles.

In addition to the Leopard tanks, Germany is also sending a Patriot missile battery. The Netherlands is donating a Patriot missile and launchers.

France, Canada, the UK, Slovakia, Norway, and others have all donated critical air defense systems to help secure Ukrainian skies and save the lives of innocent civilians who are literally the target — the target of Russia’s aggression, Biden said.

Listing the flow of arms to Ukraine, he said, Poland is sending armored vehicles. Sweden is donating infantry fighting vehicles. Italy is giving artillery. Denmark and Estonia are sending howitzers. Latvia is providing more Stinger missiles. Lithuania is providing anti-aircraft guns. And Finland recently announced its largest package of security assistance to date.

Will the on-again, off-again proposal for peace talks and diplomatic negotiations be undermined by the massive flow of new weapons?

Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, told the US Senate last week “We want to put them in the best possible position so that whether this war ends on the battlefield, or whether it ends with diplomacy, or some combination, that they are sitting on a map that is far more advantageous for their long-term future, and that Putin feels the strategic failure.”

Captain Matthew Hoh, a former US Marine Corps Captain and State Department Officer said: “US and NATO tanks will not serve as wonder weapons to win the war for Ukraine.’

“Rather we should expect a reciprocal escalation by Russia that solidifies the stalemate and threatens expansion of the war. Only de-escalation, ceasefires and negotiations will bring an end to the war,” he added.

Lt Col Bill Astore, a former professor of history, co-author of three books and numerous articles focusing on military history and the history of science, technology, and religion, said a few dozen U.S., British, and German tanks won’t be decisive in Ukraine.

“What is needed is talks not tanks,” he pointed out.

“Talks aimed at ending this war before it escalates further. Talks, not tanks, will help to move the doomsday clock further from midnight and the nightmare of nuclear war,” he added.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said January 18 he did not believe there was an opportunity yet, to organise “a serious peace negotiation” between the warring parties in Ukraine, nearly a year on from Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Guterres told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he remained committed to alleviating the suffering of Ukrainians and vulnerable people in the wider world, still reeling from the conflict’s “dramatic, devastating impacts” on the global economy.

“There will be an end…there is an end of everything, but I do not see an end of the war in the immediate future,” Guterres said. “I do not see a chance at the present moment to have a serious peace negotiation between the two parties.”

Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $29.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine and more than $27.1 billion since the beginning of Russia’s “unprovoked and brutal invasion” on February 24, 2022, according to DOD.

Ltc Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly at the Pentagon, National Security Agency and a noted critic of the U.S. involvement in Iraq said “the incremental escalation, tank company at a time, by US neoconservatives and NATO chickenhawks is unfocused, reactionary, and virtue-signaling instead of strategic”.

“For these reasons alone, the Western ‘alliance’ is in big trouble,” he declared.

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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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Destroyed Residential Building in Dnipro, Ukraine. Credit: WFP/Viktor Pesenti

By Jana Puglierin
BERLIN, Jan 23 2023 (IPS)

Russia has been at war with Ukraine for more than 10 months, with no end in sight and with just as little prospect for direct negotiations between the warring parties. These were last broken off mutually on 17 May 2022.

Since then, there have been repeated calls in Germany, whether in opinion articles or open letters, for more diplomatic efforts to end the hostilities. Such calls were often combined with demands for the federal government to cease arms deliveries to Ukraine: when all is said and done, peace is achieved not with arms, but with a truce, the argument goes.

And continuing the war with the already unrealistic goal of a Ukrainian victory and the recapture of all the territory occupied by Russia would only mean useless bloodshed. These calls are all too understandable given the horrific images of suffering and destruction that reach us daily from Ukraine.

Even so, it would be wrong right now to urge Ukraine to negotiate – or even give up parts of its territory and the people living there.

Jana Puglierin

When the air raid sirens sound, it is they who sit in the shelters and who go without heating, electricity or running water, often for hours or days on end. The exact number of soldiers who have died at the front is unknown; US estimates put the count at up to 100,000.

And yet, the Ukrainian government wants to continue the fight against the Russian aggressor – and only negotiate directly with Russia if and when the Kremlin first answers for its war crimes before an international tribunal and withdraws all troops from Ukraine, including from the illegally annexed areas. In this, the government is supported by the vast majority of the Ukrainian population.

Putin wants total control of Ukraine

It is clear to the Ukrainians that the Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in finding a way for a secure coexistence with a sovereign and independent Ukraine that can determine its own future. He wants it gone.

In his view, today’s Ukraine is nothing more than a ‘colony with a puppet regime’, an externally controlled and hostile ‘anti-Russia’, set up against the ‘real cultural, economic and social interests of the people and the true sovereignty of Ukraine’. For Putin, Ukraine and Russia are ‘one people’.

A Ukraine that is independent of Russia and wants to open up to Europe along the lines of its central European neighbours is unacceptable because it calls into question the very foundations of the Russian imperium, which Putin is determined to prevent from falling apart.

The repeatedly expressed assumptions that Russia is ultimately only concerned with preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, or only has geographic interests in the Donbas, are wrong. In truth, Moscow wants Ukraine to relinquish much more: its freedom, its identity, its self-determination, its culture.

The destruction of Ukrainian life, Ukrainian art and Ukrainian statehood, together with repressions – from murder to rape to abduction – in the occupied territories are clear demonstrations of this.

So far, there is no reason to believe that Putin’s thinking has changed in recent months. On the contrary, with every further step, Putin makes clear that he is not ready to make concessions. Although he and other members of the Russian government regularly mention the word ‘negotiations’, they have so far not presented a concrete option.

As recently as the end of December 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated the call for the ‘demilitarisation and denazification’ of Ukraine and described the illegally annexed areas of Ukraine as Russia’s ’new territories’.

Clearly, Putin has not abandoned his goal of complete political control over the country but has merely adjusted his approach and timeline. Because Russia was not militarily successful, the devastating airstrikes on the Ukrainian civilian population and the energy infrastructure are now intended to break the population’s will to resist and to wear down the country – until Russia is able to launch a new offensive in the spring.

Putin is also counting on the fact that the western supporter states – also under pressure from their populations – will soon tire and run out of weapons, ammunition and money for Kyiv.

If the West were now to press for a ceasefire or peace negotiations, perhaps with the threat that it would otherwise end support for Ukraine, that would signal to the Kremlin that its method is working and that all it has to do is wait until we lose patience.

So far, none of the advocates of an imminent ceasefire have been able to convincingly explain how Putin can be persuaded to make concessions without exerting further military pressure on him.

Preventing Russia from dictating peace

We Germans, in particular, have for years been repeating the mantra that ‘there is no military solution’ to this or that conflict. Unlike Vladimir Putin: in Georgia, the Crimea and Syria, he has learned that he can very successfully use military force to achieve his political goals.

In the current conflict, therefore, only Ukraine’s military successes prevent such a dictated peace from happening. In other words, Russia must first be stopped and pushed back militarily before there can be any chance of real diplomacy. It’s about enabling Ukraine to hold its own against the Russian invasion and showing Putin that even a new military offensive in the spring has no chance of succeeding – and that this won’t change over time.

The West itself has a paramount interest in Putin not making any gain from his war of aggression. His ambitions are a danger to all of Europe. If he gets away again with using force and nuclear blackmail to bring parts of another state under his control, this invites repetition elsewhere, be it by Russia or another state.

The goal of an overall revision of the European security order, which is essential for peace and prosperity also here in Germany, was announced by Russia in the treaty texts of December 2021.

The decision by Germany, the US and France to now also supply Ukraine with armoured personnel carriers and reconnaissance vehicles is therefore logical. It emphasises that the major military powers of the West will not force Ukraine into an unacceptable deal with Russia.

Of course, the danger of escalation must always be kept in mind when providing military support. However, the reactions after missiles fell on the Polish-Ukrainian border in particular has shown that the West is aware of this and is reacting prudently and is capable of risk management.

Real negotiations will only begin again when both Russia and Ukraine come to the conclusion that there is more to be gained from a truce than from fighting on. Perhaps the cards will be reshuffled after spring — if the ’hot autumn’ and the ’winter of fury’ in Europe fail to materialise, if the western democracies continue to stand firmly on the side of Ukraine and if a new Russian offensive proves unsuccessful.

What is certain is that any negotiations and compromises will reflect the resulting balance of power between the parties. Our goal must therefore be to get Ukraine ready as well as possible for this point in time and to prepare together with Kyiv for the moment when the window for diplomacy indeed opens.

Dr. Jana Puglierin heads the Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies. Prior to this, she was a program officer at the German Council on Foreign Relations’ (DGAP) Future Forum Berlin and an advisor on disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation at the German Bundestag.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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War damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 20 2023 (IPS)

As if the 100 billion dollars that the United States has so far provided to Ukraine in both weapons and aid were not enough, the US has now started to install in Europe its brand new, more destructive nuclear warheads.

The US 100 billion dollars are to be added to all the weapons and aid that 40 Washington’s ‘allies’ –Europe in particular– have been sending to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.

The US spending on the Ukrainian war in less than a year amounts to the desperately needed funding that the United Nations require to partially alleviate some of the horrifying suffering of over one billion human beings over two long years.

From illegally developing nuclear weapons to non-sanctioned use of force, States continue to flout international law with impunity - The rule of law stands between peace and ‘brutal struggle for power', warns the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.


In a further escalation, the United States began in December 2022 to ship new nuclear warheads to Europe: “the B61-12 warhead is a more advanced warhead from the ones currently deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey,” according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Boeing designed the bomb’s new guided-tail kit, giving it additional manoeuvrability and the appearance of more precision.But, it’s a nuclear weapon, and has different yields, from 0.3kt to 50kt, ICAN reports.

Much more destructive

“These bombs can detonate beneath the Earth’s surface, increasing their destructiveness against underground targets to the equivalent of a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 1,250 kilotons––the equivalent of 83 Hiroshima bombs.”

Even if the bombs are American and the US retains launch authority, they would most likely be dropped by Europeans. If the US decides to use its nuclear weapons located in Germany, the warheads are loaded onto German planes and a German pilot drops them, ICAN further explains.

This Geneva-based coalition of 652 non-governmental partner organisations in 107 countries, promoting adherence to and implementation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

The ‘brutal struggle for power’

The production, testing, and use of nukes is one of the reasons why the biggest powers are now pushing the world into the abyss of lawlessness. In fact, the UN chief has once more sounded the alarm bell.

“From illegally developing nuclear weapons to non-sanctioned use of force, States continue to flout international law with impunity”, said the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.

The rule of law stands between peace and ‘brutal struggle for power,’ he warned in his 12 January message to the UN Security Council – where five countries: US, Russia, China, UK and France– hold a self attributed authority to override the well of over 190 states, members of the UN.

‘Grave risk’ of lawlessness

The UN chief painted a grim picture of civilians around the world suffering from devastating conflicts, rising poverty, and surging hunger, warning that “we are at grave risk of the Rule of Lawlessness”.

The rule of law “protects the vulnerable; prevents discrimination; bolsters trust in institutions; supports inclusive economies and societies; and is the first line of defence against atrocity crimes.”

Guterres cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; unlawful killings of both Palestinians and Israelis; gender-based apartheid in Afghanistan; the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s unlawful nuclear weapons programme; violence and severe human rights violations in Myanmar; and a deep institutional crisis in Haiti.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, the world is falling apart, witnessing an “ongoing collision of crises for which traditional response and recovery are not enough,” warns the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

“Our future is at stake, as wars, epidemics, the climate emergency and economic upheaval leave almost no country untouched.

From the war in Ukraine that sparked a global cost of living crisis to the climate emergency, the floods in Pakistan, the global pandemic, hunger in the Horn of Africa, to the crisis in Yemen — we face never before seen challenges to our future, adds UNDP.

Developing economies accounting for more than half of the world’s poorest people need urgent debt relief as a result of “cascading global crises. Without action, poverty will spiral and desperately needed investments in climate adaptation and mitigation will not happen.”

Also meanwhile, millions of children under armed conflicts

The UN Children Fund (UNICEF) reports that more than 400 million children live in areas under conflict; an estimated 1 billion children – nearly half the world’s children – live in countries at extreme vulnerability to the impacts of climate change…

… And at least 36.5 million children have been displaced from their homes; and 8 million children under age 5 across 15 crisis-hit countries are at risk of death from severe wasting.

Today, there are more children in need of humanitarian assistance than at any other time since the Second World War. Across the globe, “children are facing a historic confluence of crises – from conflict and displacement to infectious disease outbreaks and soaring rates of malnutrition.”

UNICEF has appealed for 10.3 billion US dollars to reach more than 110 million children with humanitarian assistance across 155 countries and territories.

Daisaku Ikeda. Credit: Seikyo Shimbun

By Daisaku Ikeda
TOKYO, Japan, Jan 18 2023 (IPS)

The Ukraine crisis that erupted in February last year continues with no prospect for cessation. The intensified hostilities have inflicted great suffering in population centers and destroyed infrastructure facilities, compelling large numbers of civilians, including many children and women, to live in a state of constant peril.

The history of the twentieth century, which witnessed the horrors caused by two global conflicts, should have brought home the lesson that nothing is more cruel or miserable than war.

During World War II, when I was in my teens, I experienced the firebombing of Tokyo. To this day, I remember with great vividness getting separated from family members as we fled desperately through a sea of flames, and not learning that they were safe until the following day.

How many people have lost their lives or livelihoods in the ongoing crisis, how many have found their own and their family’s ways of life suddenly and irrevocably altered?

Many other countries have also been seriously impacted in the form of constrained food supplies, spiking energy prices and disrupted financial markets.

It is crucial that we find a breakthrough in order to prevent any further worsening of the conditions facing people worldwide, to say nothing of the Ukrainian people who are compelled to live with inadequate and uncertain supplies of electricity amidst a deepening winter and intensifying military conflict.

I therefore call for the urgent holding of a meeting, under UN auspices, among the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine and other key countries in order to reach agreement on a cessation of hostilities. I also urge that earnest discussions be undertaken toward a summit that would bring together the heads of all concerned states in order to find a path to the restoration of peace.

Together with calling for the earliest possible resolution to the Ukraine crisis, I wish to stress the crucial importance of implementing measures to prevent the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, both in the current crisis and all future conflicts.

Nuclear rhetoric has ratcheted up, and the risk that these weapons might actually be used stands today at its highest level since the end of the Cold War. Even if no party seeks nuclear war, the reality is that, with nuclear arsenals in a continuing state of high alert, there is a considerably heightened risk of unintentional nuclear weapon use as a result of data error, unforeseen accident or confusion provoked by a cyberattack.

Along with reducing tensions with the goal of resolving the Ukraine crisis, I feel it is of paramount importance that the nuclear-weapon states initiate action to reduce nuclear risks as a means of ensuring that situations do not arise—either now or in the future—in which the possibility of nuclear weapons use looms. It was with this in mind that in July last year I issued a statement to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in which I urged the five nuclear-weapon states to make prompt and unambiguous pledges that they would never be the first to launch a nuclear strike—the principle of “No First Use.”

Regrettably, the August NPT Review Conference was unable to reach consensus on a final document. But this in no way means that the nuclear disarmament obligations set out in Article VI of the treaty no longer pertain. As the various drafts of the final document indicate, there was widespread support for nuclear risk reduction measures such as the adoption of No First Use policies and extending negative security assurances, by which nuclear-weapon states pledge never to use nuclear weapons against states that do not possess them.

The pledge of No First Use is a measure that nuclear-weapon states can take even while maintaining for the present their current nuclear arsenals; nor does it mean that the threat of the some 13,000 nuclear warheads existing in the world today would quickly dissipate. However, what I would like to stress is that should this policy take root among nuclear-armed states, it will create an opening for removing the climate of mutual fear. This, in turn, can enable the world to change course—away from nuclear buildup premised on deterrence and toward nuclear disarmament to avert catastrophe.

Looking back, the global state of affairs during the Cold War era was characterized by a series of seemingly insoluble crises that rattled the world, spreading shockwaves of insecurity and dread. And yet humankind managed to find exit strategies and pull through.

One example of this is the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) held between the United States and the Soviet Union. Intention to hold these was announced on the day of the 1968 signing ceremony for the NPT, which had been negotiated in response to the bitter lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The SALT negotiations were the first steps taken by the US and the USSR to put the brakes on the nuclear arms race based on their nuclear disarmament obligations under Article VI of the NPT.

For those involved in these talks, to impose constraints on the nuclear policies that had been developed as the exclusive prerogative of the state could not have been easy. Nonetheless, this was a decision indispensable to the survival not only of the citizens of their respective nations, but of all humankind.

Having experienced first-hand the terror of teetering on the brink of nuclear war, the people of that time brought forth historic powers of imagination and creativity. Now is the time for all countries and peoples to come together to once again unleash those creative powers and bring into being a new chapter in human history.

The author is Peace builder and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda, who is President of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI). https://www.daisakuikeda.org/ Read full statement here full statement

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F-16A fighter aircraft. Credit: US Air Force photo

By Natalie Goldring
ARLINGTON, Virginia, Jan 5 2023 (IPS)

More than 10 months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States and its allies continue to seek the most effective military, humanitarian, political, and economic means of assisting Ukraine.

In his December 2022 visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly reiterated his desire for advanced US weapons; Ukraine’s wish list includes Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter aircraft. Fulfilling President Zelensky’s request for US combat aircraft and tanks would be a significant escalation of the US military commitment to Ukraine and could further increase the risks associated with that commitment.

The situation is fraught, with threats of conventional war beyond Ukraine’s borders and even possible nuclear weapons use, as well as uncertainty about weapons suppliers’ ability to ensure that the weapons transferred reach their intended users and are not retransferred.

Danger of transferring weapons and munitions that could be used to attack Russia

The US weapons that have been transferred to Ukraine so far have been largely defensive in nature; these include anti-aircraft and anti-armor systems. The US has reportedly not provided the munitions with the longest range for systems such as rocket launchers, making it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to strike far beyond the Ukrainian-Russian border.

In contrast, weapons such as battle tanks and fighter aircraft can be used in offensive roles that may increase the likelihood of Russian reprisals against the United States and our European allies. In particular, providing weapons that can reach deep into Russian territory may increase the likelihood of escalation, with Russia potentially responding by attacking countries in Europe that have assisted with Ukraine’s war effort.

Through its actions, the US government implicitly seems to assume that the Russian government will perceive these transfers the way that the US government wants them to — as defensive in nature. There’s no guarantee that this will be the case. And even if the Russian government does not deliberately choose escalation, it may still occur because of accident, mistake, or miscalculation. Focusing US aid on defensive weapons and shorter-range munitions is likely to decrease this risk.

Insufficient accountability for weapons transfers

Far too often, the US government transfers weapons and ammunition without putting sufficient systems in place to ensure accountability for their storage, deployment, and use. Without robust controls, these weapons can be stolen and sold to the highest bidder or transferred to other conflicts.

The capture of US weapons by Russia would present a particular threat — the potential disclosure of US technology through Russian reverse engineering of US weapons systems.

The hurried nature of transfers to Ukraine further increases the likelihood of diversion. Continuing to expand the number and capability of US weapons provided may also exacerbate these risks.

In addition, even if US military forces are not deployed in Ukraine, in the future they could still face US weapons that were diverted to other conflicts.

The risk of diversion can be reduced by verifying that only authorized users receive US weapons and ammunition, that they carefully track the deployment and use of the weapons, and that weapons and their ammunition are securely stored when not deployed. In addition, diversion to other conflicts can be reduced by destroying the weapons and ammunition that remain when the conflict ends.

US even more dominant in assistance to Ukraine than in global conventional weapons transfers

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States continues to be the world’s largest supplier of conventional weapons, supplying nearly 40 percent of the global value of weapons transferred from 2017-2021. This was virtually identical to the total value of weapons transferred by the next four countries during the same period (Russia, France, China, and Germany). US dominance in aid to Ukraine is even more pronounced.

In conjunction with President Zelensky’s visit to Washington, the US Department of Defense announced the 28th drawdown of US defense stocks to aid Ukraine since August 2021. The press release acknowledging the latest commitments indicated that the US has provided more than $21 billion in security assistance since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The omnibus spending bill that President Biden signed in late December 2022 contains $47 billion in additional military, economic, and humanitarian assistance.

In contrast, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) issued a press release on 30 December 2022 stating that the UK had provided £2.3bn of military aid in 2022, and that this was second only to the United States. The MOD also indicated that they planned to provide the same level of funding in 2023. This commitment is a small fraction of US assistance.

As with other US transfers of conventional weapons, transfers to Ukraine risk diversion to other countries and other conflicts. US dominance of the supply of weapons means that it also holds a disproportionate responsibility for the use and potential misuse of the weapons.

Danger of nuclear weapons use

During the Cold War, one of the most significant concerns was that a conventional war might escalate to the nuclear level. Analysts and political leaders alike recognized while this could take place because of deliberate action, it could also occur because of accident or miscalculation.

This likelihood of nuclear use persists today, and is arguably higher as a result of Russian President Putin’s threat to use all means of military force in the conflict in Ukraine.

If Russia is losing the conventional war, they may decide to turn to nuclear weapons to try to change the war’s outcome. The US providing Ukraine with weapons designed primarily for offensive use may increase this risk.

The continued use of nuclear threats is yet another illustration of the danger of nuclear weapons. As long as nuclear weapons exist, this danger continues. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a roadmap for escaping this existential threat.

Danger of ignoring long-term risks in favor of potential short-term gains

Taken together, these risks highlight the danger of giving priority to potential short-term political and military gains over longer-term negative consequences.

Further weapons transfers to Ukraine need to be subjected to rigorous analysis of potential long-term consequences before the transfers occur. Saying yes to Ukraine may be the easier response from a short-term perspective.

For example, saying yes is likely to enhance the political connection between the US and Ukraine, and military contractor’s profit from weapons sales. However, that response may well endanger US security interests in the longer term.

Dr. Natalie Goldring, a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional and nuclear disarmament issues.

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Roma community protest in the Serbian city of Nis after dozens of families in a settlement in the city had their electricity cut off. Credit: Opre Roma Srbija

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 5 2023 (IPS)

As European households brace for energy shortages this winter and leaders draw up support packages to help people heat homes in the coming months, experts fear that the largest minority on the continent, the Roma, will be left behind.

Many of the 12 million Roma in Europe have a low standard of living, and even before the energy crisis, energy poverty was rife among their communities.

Roma leaders and rights organisations say the current crisis has only deepened the problem and are calling for governments to ensure that one of the continent’s most vulnerable groups gets the help they need this winter and beyond.

“EU leaders and policymakers must ensure that energy policies already agreed, or any agreed in future, must be tailored and implemented in such a way that the most vulnerable, including the Roma, can access and benefit from them,” Zeljko Jovanovic, director of the Open Society Roma Initiatives Office at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), told IPS.

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

Energy poverty is also common. It is estimated that at least 10% of the roughly 6 million Roma living in EU countries have no access to electricity at all.

Roma protest after electricity supplies to 24 families in the ‘12 February’ Roma settlement in the southern Serbian city of Nis was cut off over unpaid bills. There are calls for European countries to take into consideration the plight of the Roma during the energy crisis. Credit: Opre Roma Srbija

Meanwhile, where utilities are available, many struggle to afford them.

Rising energy prices this year have exacerbated the problem. But while governments have rolled out help in the form of one-off payments and other support for families and businesses to pay energy bills, this aid is often not filtering through to Roma despite the minority being among those most in need, say rights activists.

Unemployment in Roma communities is often high, with only one in four Roma aged 16 years or older reporting being employed, and many earn money working in the grey or black economies. But because of this, they often struggle with accessing state support schemes. This is especially true for measures approved to provide financial aid during the energy crisis.

“Even before the energy crisis, there was a problem with energy poverty in Europe, and for the Roma, this was even more so because so many were not in the formal system.

“Measures [approved] for the energy crisis are made for those in the formal system. Many Roma are not in that system – they are unemployed, or not formally registered, or earning money and paying into the social welfare system – so they cannot access those measures,” explained Jovanovic.

Roma NGOs working in some countries say they have already seen these problems.

In Romania, which has a Roma population of 1.85 million according to the Council of Europe, a programme to help the vulnerable with energy payments has been launched.

But Alin Banu, Community Organiser at the Aresel civic initiative, told IPS some Roma are unable to access it precisely because “they work in the grey or black economy and don’t have the right documentation of social insurance payments, wages etc.”.

Meanwhile, even those who are eligible for help are often being denied it, he claimed. He said that some municipalities had put conditions on receiving help to pay energy bills – for example, evidence of historical tax debt, or car ownership, makes an individual ineligible for the help.

The group says this is illegal.

“We have solved this problem in some cases, but most Roma will not complain about this because often they simply will not know it is illegal,” Balu said.

There are also concerns that other measures already adopted will actually make things worse for Roma.

Last year European leaders agreed on a non-binding goal for EU countries to reduce overall electricity demand by at least 10% by 31 March 2023, and a mandatory reduction of electricity consumption by 5% for at least 10% of high-demand hours each week.

Jovanovic fears that politicians’ first steps to save on energy consumption could involve simply cutting off power supplies to those not formally connected to the energy grid.

“Countries’ reductions in energy demand might come from cutting energy to those who do not have formal access to it, like the Roma,” said Jovanovic.

Nicu Dumitru, a Community Organiser at Arsesel, agreed – “the Roma would be the first to be cut off in that case,” he told IPS – but said that even if that does not happen, many Roma are already struggling with soaring energy costs.

Information collected by his group suggests that a fifth of all Roma households have had their electricity cut off since the start of the crisis because they cannot afford to pay. They are then connecting informally to the grid – usually through one person in their community who has a connection and who then charges high prices for others for use of that power – often borrowing money to do so, and worsening their already precarious financial situation.

There are an estimated over 400,000 people informally connected to the power grid in Romania, many of them Roma.

“The situation is getting critical for Roma,” Dumitru said.

Meanwhile, Roma activists in other countries are worried that politicians will use the energy crisis as an excuse to ignore long-term problems with energy poverty among the Roma or even as a justification to allow Roma settlements to be cut off from supplies.

In May this year, electricity supplies to 24 families in the ’12 February’ Roma settlement in the southern Serbian city of Nis were cut off over unpaid bills. The families claim this debt pre-dates their time living there, but the local power distributor demanded proof of house ownership from the families before reconnection.

People in many Roma settlements often lack such documents as the process for obtaining them is costly and difficult for many to navigate without expert legal help, and none of these families was able to provide the required proof.

It was only after both local and nationwide protests by members of the community themselves and negotiations between the families, who were represented by the Opre Roma Serbia rights group, local authorities, and the local distributor Elektrodistribucija Nis, that in December, limited supplies of electricity were restored to the families involved.

Jelena Reljic of Opre Roma Serbia said she was pleased those affected could now access electricity again but warned “the situation in this settlement is an example of a much wider systemic problem” which politicians are not doing enough to solve.

“The last cut off in this settlement was because of historic debt, but the problems with electricity [there] have been going on for a decade. Politicians are relying on being able to cut Roma settlements off from electricity during the energy crisis without too much public outrage or resistance. Around 99% of the reaction we have seen to the problem in this settlement has been of the type ‘oh, no one should be getting energy free during this crisis, we pay, so why shouldn’t they?’” she told IPS.

“Politicians are using the energy crisis to cover up the fact that they have never dealt with the problem of energy poverty for years and years,” she added.

The OSF’s Jovanovic wants European policymakers to review their proposed help during the crisis, including not just the approved reductions in energy demand but plans for energy price caps and a solidarity levy on the profits of businesses active in the oil, natural gas, coal, and refinery sectors.

He said the 5% reduction must not lead to electricity cuts for those already in energy poverty and that public revenues from the energy cap and solidarity levy – estimated at €140bn within the EU – should be redistributed along principles that are both morally and macroeconomically justified.

He has been involved in high-level EU committee meetings on energy crisis support policies, but, he told IPS, at those meetings, there seemed to be “little idea of the perspective of Roma and other vulnerable groups and how they would cope in the crisis”.

Now he and other activists are trying to arrange further talks with EU and national policymakers to urge them to address shortcomings in current policies affecting vulnerable groups, including Roma.

“We want to raise these issues,” he said.

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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (on screen) of Ukraine, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine. “We are dealing with a State that is turning the veto of the United Nations Security Council into the right to die”, President Zelynskyy warned. If it continues, countries will rely not on international law or global institutions to ensure security, but rather, on the power of their own arms. April 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 2 2023 (IPS)

A US Senator once described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, perhaps facetiously, as “a Winston Churchill in a tee shirt”.

And last month, when he addressed the US Congress – with the presence of about 100 Senators and 435 Congressmen – he tried to re-live that moment.

While most of the Senators and Congressmen were in business suits for the formal occasion, Zelensky opted for green military fatigues and a matching sweatshirt

And he was the second war-time head of government to address the US Congress, after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s 1941 address to Congress during World War II.

In his address December 21, the 44-year-old Zelensky appealed for increased economic aid, sophisticated weapons and security assistance.

According to a report in the New York Times last month, if Congress passes the budget bill (it did), the US aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion last February would amount to a hefty 100 billion dollars “allocated over four emergency spending packages.”

“We have artillery, yes thank you,” Zelensky told Senators and Congressmen, “We have it. But is it enough? Honestly, not really?”

Although the US has been sending a staggering array of weapons, including 1,400 Stinger missiles, GPS-guided joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and the Patriot missile system, Ukraine has requested even more advanced weapons, including M1A2 Abrams battle tanks and F-16 fighter planes.

But the US is holding back both for security reasons.

According to the State Department, more than 40 US allies, have provided economic aid, political support or weapons to Ukraine in its hard-fought battle with Russia, one of the world’s major nuclear powers.

Norman Solomon, Executive Director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) told IPS while the Russian government is entirely responsible for its horrendous decisions to invade Ukraine and to persist with warfare there, the United States has refused to engage in actual diplomacy to avert the war or to seek a workable end to it.

The vast ongoing shipments of arms from the U.S. to Ukraine are of such a huge magnitude that they signify many billions of dollars in profits for U.S.-based weapons makers, he pointed out.

And those shipments of weapons represent eagerness in Washington to escalate the conflagration rather than seek ways to reduce and end it, said Solomon, author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death”

“The tremendous quantity of weaponry flowing from the USA to Ukraine can be understood as an extension of the U.S.-led NATO approach to Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union — encirclement and confrontation with Russia instead of trying to find genuine geopolitical solutions for Europe as a whole.”

The U.S. withdrawals from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 and from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, he argued, were reckless steps for conflict between the world’s two nuclear superpowers that could end in global omnicide.

Now, the United States is proceeding to maximize the profits of its military-industrial complex while boosting the likelihood that the war in Ukraine will keep getting worse. The vows of victory in Ukraine, he noted, are fervent expressions of madness in Washington and in Moscow.

“Rather than pursue avenues for diplomacy that could bring the terrible suffering in Ukraine to an end, the U.S. government policy is to further enrich U.S. military contractors and escalate even further a war that is already a catastrophic reality,” he declared.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters last month the United States will continue to work closely with more than 40 allies and partners in support of the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence with extraordinary courage and boundless determination.

“We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, so it can continue to defend itself and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table when the time comes,” he declared.

In a “Fact Sheet” released last July, the State Department provided a partial breakdown of US arms to Ukraine, which includes:

Over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; more than 6,500 Javelin anti-armor systems.

Over 20,000 other anti-armor systems.

Over 700 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems.

126 155mm Howitzers and up to 411,000 155mm artillery rounds.

72,000 105mm artillery rounds.

126 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm Howitzers.

22 Tactical Vehicles to recover equipment.

16 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and ammunition.

Four Command Post vehicles.

Two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS).

20 Mi-17 helicopters.

Counter-battery systems.

Hundreds of Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles.

200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers.

Over 10,000 grenade launchers and small arms.

Over 59,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition.

75,000 sets of body armor and helmets.

Approximately 700 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems.

Laser-guided rocket systems—and more.

The United States also continues to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with additional capabilities to defend itself

According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Russian Federation’s military and paramilitary services are equipped mostly with domestically-produced weapons systems, although since 2010, Russia has imported limited amounts of military hardware from several countries, including Czechia, France, Israel, Italy, Turkey, and Ukraine.

The Russian defense industry is also capable of designing, developing, and producing a full range of advanced air, land, missile, and naval systems. As of 2021, Russia is the world’s second largest exporter of military hardware.

The Russian armed forces include approximately 850,000 total active-duty troops (300,000 Ground Troops; 40,000 Airborne Troops; 150,000 Navy; 160,000 Aerospace Forces; 70,000 Strategic Rocket Forces; approximately 20,000 special operations forces; approximately 100,000 other uniformed personnel (command and control, cyber, support, logistics, security, etc.); estimated 200-250,000 Federal National Guard Troops.

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Some Afghan women put their lives at risk by migrating to Europe. Along the way, and even at the destinations, they face sexual violence at the hands of traffickers, but they often take the risk so that they can live free from the constraints of the Taliban. This photo shows a woman from the Hazara minority in Bamiyan. She used to be a singer and appeared on local TV but is now forced to stay at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
KABUL & ATHENS, Dec 22 2022 (IPS)

Maliha looks confident in a café in Athens as she tells the story of her journey from Afghanistan to Europe. But as she starts recounting how a smuggler assaulted her in Turkey two years ago, she pauses, looking the other way and fiddling with her loose hair.

It makes her anxious when she remembers it. She was traveling alone and soon realized she was the only woman on board a bus to the border with Greece.

“[The smuggler] told me to get off. He wanted me to himself.” With unusual strength, the young woman managed to escape as the man was trying to rape her. Still shaken, she tried to report the crime to the local police, but she felt they were more concerned about her status as an illegal migrant than the attempted rape. “Luckily, I had a contact on Facebook [who is] a cousin who I knew lived in Turkey but whom I never met.” He happened to live near that police station, and he convinced the officials to let her go.

Afghan refugees picnic in a park in Athens. Their journeys to Europe are often dangerous. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Now Maliha lives in Athens as a “free woman” – a fact that she remarks upon while wearing leggings and no head covering.

The violence experienced by Mahila is not an isolated case. An investigation into the journey of Afghan women from their home country to Europe carried out in Afghanistan, Turkey and Greece has revealed a pattern of systematic violence throughout, their vulnerability heightened by lack of documents and money. Women, some traveling alone or only with their children, pay to get to Europe only to become victims of trafficking and sex slaves.

According to 31-year-old Aila, an Afghan refugee and former Médecins sans Frontières worker in refugee camps in Athens, “some 90% of women suffer a form of violence during the journey.”

“When your life is in the hands of smugglers,” continues Aila, “it’s not up to you to decide whom to stay with, what to do, where to go: it’s the smuggler who decides. Even if you are with your family or the members of your family, he can still threaten you with a weapon, and if he wants to separate you from them, he’ll do it”.

Afghans are now the second largest group of asylum seekers in the EU after Ukrainians, but the flow of asylum seekers started well before the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 77,000 women and girls were registered at arrival by sea and by land in Europe between 2018 and 2020, making up 20 percent of total arrivals. Women make up an increasing percentage of asylum requests globally, all facing gender-based risks.

The reasons behind Afghans’ search for a safe place run deep in a country torn by decades of war. Social and financial restrictions within a deeply patriarchal society and the hope for a better life abroad had already pushed many to leave the country even before the arrival of the Taliban.

However, the challenges of the journey can be harrowing. “I remember traveling with a 10-year-old and her grandmother,” Aila recalls. “During the journey, her grandmother died, and she was handed over to the trafficker,” says Aila, describing one of the most traumatic episodes she witnessed.

“Was she raped? Of course. For them, she was a woman”.

Women escaping from the increasingly restrictive Taliban regime in Afghanistan find their journeys to freedom are fraught with dangers. This week the Taliban banned women from universities. They are increasingly forced to remain at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

The risks are so stacked against women that word of mouth has led to the development of ‘survival’ techniques, such as dressing up as a man. Aila says she put on a similar short jacket, jeans, and sneakers to that of other boys. “I kept my hair hidden under my cap. And when the trafficker gave me his hand to get on the boat, he said, “Hey, boy.” I didn’t answer. “Never talk to traffickers,” is the second ‘tip’ dispensed by Aila.

Acceptance rates of Afghan asylum seekers are now high, especially in countries such as Spain and Italy, with 100% and 95% in 2021, respectively, and 80% in Greece, the first EU frontier for the many who come after spending months or years in Turkey or Iran.

Yet getting adequate assistance after suffering abuse, rape and forced prostitution is a different story. The violence suffered often doesn’t get denounced by the police due to cultural or linguistic barriers and the stigma surrounding rape or forced prostitution. Lack of adequate protection in Europe is also a reason, so NGOs set up by fellow Afghans try to step in.

Months of interviews with Afghan asylum seekers in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Europe expose the extent of the danger for women who embark on a journey organized by smugglers. Direct witnesses’ accounts and NGO transcripts, seen exclusively by this reporter, reveal a pattern of how women – and in particular Afghans belonging to ethnic minorities – fall into a ‘trap’ of violence.

Freshta spent years between Iran and Turkey with a sick brother before eventually succeeding in reaching a refugee camp in Greece and then a place in Athens hosted by a friend. However, her attempts to find a job and become independent soon turned into a prolonged series of tortured experiences. The possibility of asking for help was radically reduced by her illegal status and lack of documents.

“One day, I was in a café with my friend, and she introduced me to this man. We only knew that he was a trafficker of Iraqi nationality.” He, himself a refugee, knew very well how vulnerable women like Freshta are. “He started following me and kept saying that I should go with him.” Her constant rejections didn’t work. On the contrary, he threatened to kill her brother, who was still in the refugee camp – a sign of the long reach of influence traffickers can call upon.

One day, despite attempts to protect herself, hiding for days at a friend’s house, the man managed to kidnap her and take her to her apartment. He then hit her on the head, threatening her with a knife pointed at her stomach and forcing her to get into his car. At that moment, Freshta became a slave, first suffering violent rape, with beatings that made her pass out because she also suffered from asthma.

“When I woke up, he wasn’t there. I was full of pain and didn’t know what to do; I was in shock. I went to the bathroom, got washed, dressed, and cried.”

Upon his return, the trafficker told her that she now belonged to him. If she went out and told anyone what had happened, then he would kill her.

Freshta managed to hide at her friend’s again, but again the man managed to take her by force, beating her and locking her up at home for weeks, repeatedly raping her. Freshta got pregnant. “He told me I couldn’t do anything because he had become a Greek citizen, and I was nothing; I didn’t have any document.”

It took many weeks and the help of an association to allow her to report the incident. She had an abortion. The woman has since been moved by the Greek government to a secure facility in an undisclosed location.

To add to Freshta’s tragic testimony is the fact that, as the operator of an NGO in Athens explains, “There are many cases of sexual slavery like this, which are not reported by the victims because they are afraid of being stigmatized and of their lack of documents.” The perpetrators of the violence can be fellow nationals, generally belonging to a different ethnic group and, to a lesser extent, other nationalities.

The lack of support is accentuated by a form of class distinction within the refugee community and by the way resources are thus distributed, according to some of the Afghan women interviewed in Athens. “The refugees who arrived in Europe through the evacuation program [in Kabul] consider themselves ‘different’ from those who arrived here on foot, with the traffickers. And they are also treated differently by the authorities,” says Aila.

While for men, the lack of documents, money, and a family network leads more easily to labor exploitation, women can often fall victim to sexual exploitation. Some women are “passed from trafficker to trafficker,” says Aila, while the local association also reports cases of forced prostitution just outside the camps. But even in the aftermath of a violent attack, NGOs are worried about the short time women are allowed to spend in safe structures, as well as the limited space available there. Resources do not meet the seriousness and extent of the problem.

“When they asked me if I wanted to report the man [who kept me as a slave], I said yes, but only if I had a safe place to stay first,” says Freshta. “I was so desperate that I left behind everything I had.”

This project on trafficking has been developed with the financial support of Journalismfund.eu

https://www.journalismfund.eu/

IPS UN Bureau Report

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