From the editor
Countries lined up behind their respective teams again this week, with democracies backing Ukraine at the peace summit in Switzerland and authoritarian states welcoming Vladimir Putin on state visits. A Joint Communiqué was signed at the weekend summit by 78 states and six international organisations calling for an end to threats to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and threats to use nuclear weapons, the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over its nuclear power plants, freedom of navigation for merchant ships and the release of all POWs and Ukrainian children and other civilians. Brazil, India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia participated in the summit but did not sign the communiqué.
Children waving Russian and North Korean flags cheered Putin and Kim in Pyongyang
Ukraine received support not only from the usual European and North American countries but also from Ghana and Chile. Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said his country views the invasion as “great power hegemony and the bullying of small states by big powers.” Chile’s President Gabriel Boric said the summit was “not about NATO, not about left or right political ideas, not about northern or southern countries, [but] about respect of international law and human rights, foundational principles of living together.”
Putin demonstrated how much he cares about Ukraine’s sovereignty, international law and human rights, and principles of living together by meeting Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang and thanking him for his support for the invasion. Visiting North Korea with a large delegation Putin signed a “Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” that promised their respective countries would help each other if attacked. Well-rehearsed crowds of flag-waving children and adults were placed strategically everywhere Putin went in the city, including when he boarded his plane to depart in the evening.
Russia and North Korea are now competing for the title of most depraved country in the world, but if military aggression is taken into account then the former is far ahead, while the latter is still only sabre-rattling. North Korea has always been considered to be one of the most closed and repressive countries, but Russia is fast heading in the same direction. Many Russians are quick to inform authorities about conversations they overhead that sounded critical of the war or the government, and prison sentences for any kind of alleged dissent are getting longer and longer. By going to North Korea Putin reminded his people yet again that this is the type of country he seeks to emulate.
The next stop on the whirlwind tour was Vietnam, where the Russian president was greeted with similar manufactured excitement. Putin offered investment in liquefied natural gas projects in the country, while the United States hastily sent a top diplomat to Hanoi to try to prevent neutral Vietnam from falling completely into the Russian camp. It is relatively easy for far-off Asian countries to be indifferent to the invasion of Ukraine, but in the long term all association with Russia is harmful, except perhaps for the most extreme regimes such as North Korea. There is always time to commit to international law and to treat others as you would hope to be treated yourself. The benefits are much greater.
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Another independent journalist arrested for alleged Navalny ties
Moscow activist and journalist for the independent channel SotaVision Artem Kriger has been arrested and sent to jail to await trial on a charge of participating in an extremist organisation, Alexei Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption. Kriger is one of several journalists who have been jailed and charged for their alleged association with Navalny’s groups in recent months. The opposition leader himself died in prison in February. Kriger, 23, is the nephew of longtime activist with the Solidarity group Mikhail Kriger, who picketed in support of Ukraine from 2014 and is now in prison for “justifying terrorism” and “calling for extremism”.
Three sentenced for suspected pro-Ukraine actions
A military court has sentenced Lipetsk Oblast art teacher Daniil Klyuk to 20 years in prison for treason for sending 20,000 roubles ($235) to his brother in Luhansk. Prosecutors claimed the money was intended to fund Ukraine’s Azov battalion and that Klyuk had “anti-Russian views”. Klyuk said the case was brought against him after someone complained that he had drawn a caricature on a pro-war propaganda newspaper. He was fired from his job and told that he had “dirt in his head”. When he was arrested FSB agents demanded that he confess to sending money to Azov.
Meanwhile the Pacific Fleet Military Court sentenced 21-year-old Yekaterina Gazieva and 36-year-old Sergei Malyuchenko to 12 ½ years and 13 years in prison respectively for an arson attack in September last year that was considered terrorism “in the interests of Ukraine”. They allegedly made Molotov cocktails and Gazieva threw one at a printing house in Magadan, mistaking it for a military recruiting office
A military court in St. Petersburg also sentenced 59-year-old Yelena Komaricheva to 10 years in prison for an attempt to set fire to a military recruiting office that she said was instigated by scammers. Komaricheva was found guilty of committing a terrorist attack. She started receiving calls from people claiming to be law-enforcement officers in summer last year and the fraudsters convinced her to send them 10 million roubles. She then followed their instructions and threw a Molotov cocktail at the door of a building, which she did not know was a military recruiting office. This is one of several cases in which Russians claim they were tricked into committing arson attacks.
Ukraine war veterans and hopefuls commit more violent crimes
A violent criminal who was released from prison to fight in Ukraine has been arrested for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Kemerovo Oblast after he returned to Russia in a POW exchange. Andrei Bykov allegedly threw the girl’s body into a well. In 2019 he was sentenced to 13 ½ years in prison for the murder of an elderly woman who lived in a dacha near his. He strangled her and hid her body.
A court in Orenburg has refused to quash the conviction of another violent criminal who fought in Ukraine, received a medal for courage and went on to beat a man to death outside a café in Orsk. Ruslan Magdiev was sentenced to seven years in prison for the murder, which took place in November last year soon after his return from Ukraine. Both he and the victim were drunk. Magdiev had been sentenced to nine years and 11 months in prison for “the murder of two or more people committed by a group of people motivated by hooliganism and theft” in 2018, and in 2022 he signed a contract with Wagner. After fighting in Bakhmut he was given the medal and pardoned.
Another former Wagner contractor in Yakutsk Oblast has returned to the war in Ukraine after beating his pregnant girlfriend so badly that she lost her baby. The victim contacted the human rights organisation “You Are Not Alone, Yakutia is with You” late last year after police refused to investigate the beating. She had suffered a head injury and broken ribs and fingers. The rights organisation pressured prosecutors to open a criminal case, but the attacker was not charged and instead ended up in jail for theft, from where he was allowed to go back to the military.
In Chelyabinsk 39-year-old Alexander Yerutin, who together with his partner killed their 18-year-old daughter in 2022, put her body in a sack and threw it into a rubbish bin, has been released from prison to fight in Ukraine. Yerutin had been sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder.
A court in Tomsk Oblast has agreed that a man’s desire to join the war in Ukraine was a mitigating circumstance when he shot his friend and given him a two-year suspended sentence. Alexei Orlov from Rybinsk said he shot his friend with a hunting rifle while drinking with him to get a “ticket to the special military operation”. He had tried to join the military previously but was refused because he wasn’t registered as a resident of Tomsk Oblast. When Orlov told his friend that he wanted to fight in Ukraine the friend allegedly laughed at him. In response Orlov aimed the gun at his head but the friend protected himself and the bullet hit his thigh. The judge expressed sympathy for the fact that Orlov’s friend had mocked his wish to fight.
US soldier sentenced in Vladivostok for theft from girlfriend and threats
A court in Vladivostok has sentenced US soldier Gordon Black to three years and nine months in prison for allegedly stealing from his Russian girlfriend and threatening to kill her. Staff Sgt. Black pled not guilty to the threats but partially admitted stealing 10,000 roubles ($116) from her. The couple met in South Korea, where Black was stationed. The US Defence Department did not authorise his visit to Russia.
ISIS prisoners killed after taking guards hostage
Six prisoners in a jail in Rostov-on-Don, some of whom were charged with having association with ISIS and other Islamist groups, escaped from their cells on Sunday morning and took two guards hostage, holding them at knifepoint. Five of the prisoners were killed in an operation to end the hostage-taking, and a sixth was shot in the head but survived. Three were serving long sentences for allegedly plotting to commit a terrorist attack at the Supreme Court building of Karachaevo-Cherkesia. In March ISIS took responsibility for killing 145 people at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow. Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack.
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