Your questions needed for episode 4 of 'This Week in Ukraine'
Dear Kyiv Independent community members,
We want your questions for the next episode of our podcast “This Week in Ukraine.” In light of emerging evidence of the Russian army executing Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, the topic of this week will be Russian war crimes in Ukraine and around the world.
To send in your questions, you can leave them in the comments below, message us on Patreon, or email community manager Brooke at brooke@kyivindependent.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
And a big thank you to everyone who has sent in questions and listened to the podcast so far! We have a small favor to ask you: If you have a few minutes, it would help a lot if you could rate “This Week in Ukraine” or leave a review on whichever listening platform you use. This will help us reach more people and grow our audience.
We also noticed there was interest in being able to download episodes for offline listening. Here are the links to the audio file of episode 3: “What the US intelligence leak reveals about the war in Ukraine” with your questions starting at 18:40. You can download the episode using these apps:
Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3KMaq2L
Spotify: https://bit.ly/40b1OYZ
Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3okABpG
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!
What US intelligence leak reveals about war in Ukraine | This Week in Ukraine Ep. 3 (YouTube)
Comments (16)
It seems from the leaked documents, US Intelligence agencies have deeply penetrated the day to day operation of at least parts of the Russian Military and the Wagner group. These agencies will have a hyper-sensitivity around protecting their "sources and methods". It will take a high level focused effort by Ukrainian leadership to get US Intelligence agencies to compile evidence of war crimes made know through their collected data, even if the war crimes compilation is kept within the US Agencies for now. Has anyone asked Ukrainian Leadership whether they have asked their US counterparts to at least compile any war crimes revealed through their intelligence collection program? Sometimes a well placed question can prompt action.
There are several hurdles preventing foreign intelligence agencies from becoming involved in war crime identification and proof. 1. Legal preceding relay on a chain of custody. To reduce or prevent either side from falsifying information, strict processes exist for who collects evidence and how it is handled. Intelligence gathering agencies would need to be set up to handle that. Instead, intelligence agencies are more likely to tell law enforcement agencies to "look over here." So they can do the evidence collection themselves. 2. Intelligence agencies attempt to collect information about what a target is about to do or is currently doing. Courts require proof of what someone has done in the past. 3. Contrary to what is shown in the movies, intelligence-gathering agencies have limited resources. They must prioritize between these two types of information.
In terms of Russian War crimes, accountability has happened at low levels served by Ukranian Authorities. 1. So one war crime happening in Ukraine is directed from Moscow's highest level (Putin) - that being a Cultural Genocide. They are trying to Russify the population in occupied territories. This is a systemic objective coordinated across the occupied Administrations. In the occupied area there has been the imprisonment and torture of former soldiers, and executions. Those resisting the Russification such as not getting Russian Passports or even singing Ukrainian songs are targeted for abuse. It is an ethnic cleansing based on the intensity of ones Ukrainian "identity" rather than religion or race. Has the UN ever dealt with cleansing based on how a population perceives its identity? 2. There is another type of war crime; where random killings, rape, physical beatings, etc. appear to be caused by rogue Russian units or individual soldiers. Thievery of civilian home goods is systemic and rampant. While perhaps not directed from the top, there never is the slightest consequence, or even public admonition by Russian Authorities. Instead they passed a law against criticizing the Military. But is "tolerance" by higher level officers of the individual brutality itself a war crime, as of course are the leadership directed and intentional war crimes such as the Russification or Missile attacks on power stations etc.? Is there a historical precedent for holding accountable those in positions of authority or command that "looked the other way" from the basic brutality of random individual soldiers against civilians or POWs?
If you are interested in learning more about the complexity of war crimes and the International Criminal Court, Geoffrey Nice has a done a number of lectures for Gresham College that are available on youtube. Many of the lectures relate to his time as a prosecutor for the ICC. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/professor-sir-geoffrey-nice
As for war crimes around the world, can you please discuss Syria, as well as Wagner PMC’s crimes in Africa, including alleged gold theft and involvement in the armed conflict in Sudan? How many people in the places formerly colonized by western powers are starting to realize that Russia is not there to “liberate” them but ro rob them under new schemes?
How was the UN commission able to say recently that they had not found evidence of genocide by Russia against the Ukrainian people “yet”? The official denial by Putin of the Ukrainian nation’s very existence, followed by invasion, massive attacks on civilians, destruction or theft of cultural heritage objects - and kidnapping Ukrainian children, for which there are already ICC arrest warrants, including for Putin himself - none of that is enough?! What are they waiting for? (Shudder to think!)
The challenge, for better or worse, is that from the UN perspective genocide is a very specific legal term and there are very specific processes for proving it. In general powerful nations are very reluctant to widen those definitions to prevent those law from being used against them in the future. A fascinating, if macabre, situation is the US refusal to sign the ICC treaties lest they be held liable for their own actions. The 'they' we shudder at is often us.
People say that those identified and charged will never face justice but I disagree look at how long it took to bring Germans to justice for crimes against humanity in WW2
Most people don't realize it's the non-commisdioned officers who are the backbone of the Ukrainian Army. Is there a way to offer thanks for their part.
What are the key narratives that the Moscow regime spreads as propaganda worldwide, to distract from or cover war crimes? Can you suggest some talking points to counter the propaganda?
@Karla Wagner The key narrative is that the west, controlled by the US, is bad while russia is good. Different variants are used for different audiences and different situations. I would suggest the the singled best way of countering that narrative is focusing on transparency, accountability, and anti-corruption. A youtuber called Perun did a very interesting video related to russian propaganda this week at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUBTyAZg5OA&t=1s
As far as he big war criminals (Putin etc) are concerned, it seems unlikely that they will be capable of being successfully arraigned and punished unless Russia is defeated in the way Germany was in 1945. Although one hopes that Russia will be thoroughly defeated militarily, this degree of military annihilation seems unlikely. Will it make sense to have a trial of those leaders responsible for aggressive war in absentia.
There seems to be areal lack of personnel available to document the Russian war crimes in a way which would stand up in a court and many witnesses re probably too shocked by their experience to wish to give testimony in a court. a small number of captured Russians have successfully been put on trial but is it realistic to expect that the prosecution effort will be more than symbolic?
For 'Questions', I'm curious what information you have about the number of Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and taken to Russia. Are these children being adopted into Russian families, or are they being collected or sold and exploited by criminals?
I have supplies for civilians and I need to know where in Sumy Oblast would be the best place, people, especially seniors, that need help.
Hello J. McNeill, Thank you for your message – I will pass this question along to the team, although I'm not sure we have the information for this.