Russian and Separatist Media Distort Savchenko’s Words

Russian and separatist media mockingly distorted a comment made by a Ukrainian politician and pilot who is now being tried in Russia for killing two Russian journalists.

The reports said that Nadiya Savchenko had decided to give evidence in Russian. RIA Novosi quoted her as saying: “It is difficult for me to speak in Russian, but as I have pains in my tongue and ears I will give evidence in Russian, and if I forget any words I will ask the interpreter for help.”

Some media distorted her comments by mockingly and incorrectly reporting,“Savchenko had decided to give evidence in Russian because she had pains in her tongue and ears from the Ukrainian language.”

New York stand up Ukraine

The meat for Ukrainian solders.

A blogger and journalist Vyacheslav Poezdnik from Dnipropetrovsk, posted a video that shows a Ukrainian soldier cutting up frozen meat with a chainsaw. On the video, one can see the meat has been stamped with the figures “10-01-68.” Poezdnik then comes to the absurd and incorrect conclusion that the meat is from 1968 and is to be fed to other Ukrainian solders.The Ukrainian and Russian media picked up on this story, further perpetuating that the meat served to soldiers was 47-years-old. It can be read on online resources.

The stamp in fact lists the place of production, and not the date. The three sets of numbers indicate, respectively, the region of production, the district or city, and the exact enterprise. (#10-01-68 indicates the Kyiv region, Belotcercivsky district, the city of Uzin, and LLC Visit.)

Photos Russian solders who fighting in Donbass

While Russia denies its military involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russian soldiers continue posting proofs of their presence in the Donbas in social networks and do not disdain to make photos near dead bodies. Sometimes these soldiers delete their profiles very quickly. But not all of them.

St. Petersburg resident Aleksandr Yurievich Milchakov, who is fighting along with the militants in eastern Ukraine, reposted on his page bloody photos, accompanied with the musical track “To fry meat”.

 Milchakov holds the opinion Ukraine and Ukrainian people have never existed.

Before this, journalist of Channel 5 Oleksandr Arhat posted on his Facebook page screenshots and photos of Russian terrorists in the Donbas, who betrayed themselves by bragging before their friends in VK that they were fighting “Ukrops” (pejorative for Ukrainians).

Arhat had gathered links that pointed not to pages of some “volunteers”, but to pages of real Russian soldiers of regular army. This fact proves Russia’s direct involvement in bloody conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Users deleted all the pages, so it was not possible to find detailed information about their activity.

It is far easier with Russian “volunteers”. It is not difficult to find Russian “hired guns” in the Internet; however, it takes quite a lot of time. INSIDER decided to search through special social network groups like “RUSSIAN VOLUNTEERS | DONBASS”.

“Hot tours to Ukraine” are proposed to people of “free will” in order to “stop violence of Ukraine occupational government against inhabitants of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics”. This group has almost 15,000 participants, including 10,000 people from Russia and Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Administrators of the group assure that their activity is legal and that they only provide assistance for those who ask. Thereafter group participants position themselves as liberators and saviors.

Russian trooper Dmitriy Grytsiuk posts his photos near dead Ukrainian soldiers on his page in the social network VK.

St. Petersburg resident Kirill Rimkus do not disdain to make photos near dead bodies too.

Photo of Israel сhildren was presented as the ONE DEPICTING EVENTS ON DONBASS!!!

The photo of children at the age of 1,5-3 years, lying on the floor in a kindergarten during an air alert, is being actively spread in Twitter. The photo is captioned “Save the children Donbass! These are small children at the age of 1,5-3 years during an air alert in a kindergarten! Please, forward, the entire world must see it!”

 In fact, this is a freeze-frame from the video filmed in an Israeli kindergarten and for the first time published in the Network on July 28, 2014.

About Russian television channel and fake about sequester cars from all Ukrainian citizens

Russian television channel LifeNews falsely reported that the Ukrainian authorities are allowing the military to sequester cars as needed from all Ukrainians during mobilization.

    The report said: “Residents of Ukraine should give up cars for the period of mobilization… In the document it is specified that the authorities of the country can expropriate a car for the needs of the army from any Ukrainian for 30 days.”

The Zvezda television channel reported that “the new wave of mobilization of equipment concerns not only legal entities, but also natural persons”.

     In actuality, the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers № 405  stated that for the period of mobilization, authorities may requisition vehicles from enterprises, institutions, and organizations only. Vladimir Kidan, the military commissioner of Kyiv, made this point on Ukrainian television. Taking cars from individual Ukrainians citizens is possible only in exceptional cases – for example, in the case that martial law is imposed (as stated in paragraph 2).The director of scientific development for the Center of Political and Legal Reforms, Nikolay Havronyuk, told DW: “Article 41 of the Constitution defines two rules for the sequestering of private property: on condition of public need and the condition of initial and full compensation of their cost. The exception occurs under conditions of martial law or states of emergency, when full compensation must be made following the event, and not preceding it.” In any event, the state must fully compensate for any appropriation of property.

About Russian television channel Lifenews

On June the Russian television channel Lifenews show a piece called “Enrichment in a Kyiv Way,” during which it falsely reported that Ukrainian mobile operators are charging the mobile accounts of residents of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic for the needs of the Antiterrorist Operation (ATO). It also reported on organized SMS campaigns by the operators.

      Representatives of the mobile operator life:) have denied their involvement in the SMS campaign. Moreover, if we look closely at the SMS shown in the Lifenews item, we observe some details proving that the Ukrainian mobile operators had nothing to do with the SMS deliveries to the inhabitants of the occupied territory.

The press office of the company says that “all official text messages are delivered with the official way of writing of our brand, that is with the smiley and lower case letter – life:)”.

       We can see on the phone screen, which was shown in the news program, the text message from the user “Kievstar.” But the mobile operator Kyivstar only uses its brand name “Kyivstar” when sending text messages to customers. Moreover, Kyivstar does not serve customers in the temporarily occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts at all. By the way, there is a mistake in the text of the message – underlined word  was written as “принадлежит”(prinadlegit).

There is a “marriage boom” in “LPR”: “miners” from Buryatiya become enviable grooms

Registry offices of Luhansk is experiencing “the marriage boom”. 62 applications for marriage were given only in one registry office of Leninsky district. The main part of grooms is the mercenaries from Russia (in particular, the Buryats and representatives of other “northern peoples of the RF»), the bridges is the girls from depressive miners’ cities.

According to source such applications is addressed in an expeditious manner.

As it was report earlier drunk Buryats barely didn’t set fire in a hotel near railway station in Luhansk.

05\06\2015 Video. Graveyard

Russian-backed separatists fighting in southeastern Ukraine have not always been willing to acknowledge the extent of casualties and mortalities in battle. Frequent gunfire and disruption in communications have made it difficult both to count and to bury the dead.This is intervention has become increasingly hard to hide, growing bigger, with more advanced weapons, and capturing more territory for the nominal "separatist army".

In Russia, it is now forbidden to talk about Russian soldiers killed during peacetime. President Vladimir Putin, for whom the outcry over Russian boys dying in eastern Ukraine apparently got too loud, signed a decree to this effect.

That’s interesting, since according to Putin, there aren’t any Russian soldiers who could be killed there. One who leans toward being cynical could see in the edict – which bans discussion of something that, according to the government, doesn’t exist – a kind of advancement for the rule of law: Opposition leader Boris Nemzov paid with his life for his investigation into Russian soldiers killed in the Donbas; he was gunned down. Russian mothers who still dare to whisper the names of their dead sons, on the other hand, can count on only having to report to a prison camp.

The Russian army determined a change in the way it would use force across the border, forming composite units of volunteers from a variety of garrisons and units so their identity would be harder to prove

Sustaining the operation in Ukraine and on its borders has, however, required the mobilisation of units across the breadth of Russia.

The Execution of Militia Man and His Pregnant Wife. Fake video from "Luhansk Public Republic"

The News Front site published a fake video and entitled “The Execution of a Militia Man and His Pregnant Wife, Presumably by the Donbas Battalion.”

The News Front site alleges that the video of the execution by hanging was found on the phone of one of the “chastisers of the Ukrainian battalion, who was terminated by the Popular Militia of the Luhansk Public Republic.”

The video of the alleged execution is a fake. One can notice the bad acting, but the main indicator is the unnatural movements of the bodies when lifted.

When being pulled up, the man moves forward. With this, it becomes clear that the body is not hanged by the neck. The body hanged by the neck would move differently, the trunk would be relaxed. They are apparently wearing mountain climbing equipment to support them.

The bodies are poised a little bit forward. A body hanged by the neck should look like the following:

The fact that the man in a military uniform in front of them holds their legs in order not to let them turn their backs to the camera also proves that the bodies have another support. Thats why this video fake.

Children's stories about war

In the future, there are will be the children of war.

Children in the city, village  play war with sticks among the real war damage. To them, the so-called ‘bad guys’ are the pro-Russian separatists.

The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that 1.7 million children on both sides of the front line have been harmed through lack of proper shelter, nutrition, medicine or schooling.

Seven-year-old Seryozha, drawing with coloured pencils and crayons flags on his battle tank to put the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian.

The five-year-olds Nikita, when the bombing starts, parents point to the bathroom. He already knows that the family hides there during the frequent shelling. "In the future, these will be the children of war."

"Everyone talks about the same thing, about when the war will end," says Katya, who lives in a two-room apartment with her mother and her eight-year-old son, Gleb. The distribution centre where she worked has closed down, and instead she spends half the day hauling water to the apartment. In the afternoons and evenings, she sits and talks with neighbours.

"Kids draw tanks and planes when earlier they drew flowers and trees… My kid wakes up every day and asks, 'Did they bomb us?' He's scared," she says, telling me how last month they came under heavy shelling at the children's hospital where they were getting a doctor's note for Gleb's summer camp to say he was in good health.

Tolik, who is 11, said he got too close to the real fighting: “The bullets tore through the cloth on my shoulder here and flew past… I was born lucky.”

Tatyana (29 years old) has taken shelter in a basement with her daughter Marina.

The mother said: “She is three years old, she knows what a tank is, that’s not normal! Children have psychological problems already at this age. What next? They say children of the 90s are unbearable. What will happen to these children? They will grow up among the ruins. There are no kindergarten or schools, nothing!”

"Earlier, we didn't have to scrimp on the kids' food; we bought veal, chicken, milk and sweets," Tatyana says. "Now we go home and they say, 'Momma, give me sweets', and you can't explain to a child that there's no money."

Story from Lugansk (+21)

Natalya a 38-year-old woman from Lugansk told me her story.

She had been captured in late August 2014 by security forces of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) and accused of cooperating with the Ukrainian army. She described being held for 43 days in the basement of the former Ukrainian security services building in Lugansk. The rape and sexual abuse started on the first night, she said. During an interrogation, she was severely beaten on her head, stomach, and legs. Her male interrogators threatened to pour acid on her genitalia and kicked her stomach, saying she did not deserve to have children. Natalya said eventually a guard injected her with a substance that caused her to black out. 

When she regained consciousness, she realized that the clothes she was wearing had been ripped in several places. She said she also suffered from vaginal bleeding. On another occasion during her first week in detention, Natalya said she was taken by a male guard into an empty room, where she was forced to perform oral sex on him and was threatened with rape by up to 12 men if she did not comply. 

Natalya also spoke about her cellmate, Svetlana, who she said was repeatedly gang raped by guards until she was so traumatized that they lost interest in her. Natalya said Svetlana was taken out of the prison, supposedly to a medical facility. But she couldn’t help but wonder if the guards murdered Svetlana instead to protect themselves. Natalya also said some women prisoners were offered “protection” from being raped by prison guards. The protection was provided in exchange for sex with higher-ranking LNR officials.

Girls Power!! On the right side of humanity!

Women-warriors is a big topic in the narrative of post-soviet countries. There are many stories about women patriots, warriors and martyrs in the history. Today we evidence the same patern in the Ukrainian conflict.

After the death of her husband Tatyana is trying to rise money for the Ukraine army. Irina, the other heroe of the story, has joined the army and participated in the millitary action, because "every decent person should defend his/her country from Russian imperialism".

Women as heroes. The story of a female pilot Savichenko, who is supposingly being captured and being accused for war crimes in Russia, is being used by both sides of the conflict.

 Women in the World Today are very important players in the conflicts. Women role in the Ukrainian conflict proves this statement, though in this story I have used only a few examples. All of them show either - women can be used as a tool of propaganda, women can be the actors in the conflict, and, the worst, women are almost always the victims.

Effects of war on children

Millions of children and young people worldwide are affected by armed conflict. They are confronted with physical harm, violence, danger, exploitation, fear and loss. Many children are forced to flee. Some witness the death of loved ones. Some are forced to pull the trigger themselves. Communities are ripped apart and can no longer provide a secure environment for children. 

Adults are busy surviving, parents have little time for their children. Schools and playgrounds are damaged or taken over by armed groups.

During conflict, children and young people’s rights are violated on a massive scale; their rights to be protected from violence, abuse and neglect, to live in dignity and be supported to develop to their full potential.

 

Loss of trust 

As a consequence of conflict, children and young people can lose their confidence, their trust in others and their trust in the future. They often become anxious, depressed and withdrawn, or rebellious and aggressive.

Protective environment 

Growing up in a protective environment is essential for children and young people to develop to their full potential. War Child’s programmes support children and young people to regain their confidence and build positive relationships with their peers, families and wider communities. They can play and have fun together, learn and develop. With a positive outlook, children and young people can shape their own futures and contribute to a peaceful future for their communities.

Because no child should be part of war. Ever.