I often find and save links and articles that I mean to share. Sometimes they become part of a larger, cohesively-themed post, or sometimes part of one of my “Short Notes” posts. And then there are these — assorted things that I’ve collected for which there’s just not much to say, or for which there hasn’t been much written. I’ll add comment and/or context as best I can, but most of these stories just are what they are.
¶ I’ve mentioned the filtration camps in the past, but never really wrote about what they do. Here’s a fairly detailed story from some of the people who have survived the “filtration” process: ‘The Russians said beatings were my re-education’ – BBC News
¶ Not an article, just a Twitter post that showed up today and, for obvious reasons, pisses me off no end. I have no doubt that in Russian state media reports, the mural will be attributed to a grateful Mariupol citizen:
In Russian-occupied Mariupol, the war that destroyed the city is being glorified pic.twitter.com/A6SD9Q3kgu
The Mariupol CIty Council Telegram channel still exists and does posts, though I’m sure the occupying forces would complain that it’s not the “real” (i.e., Russian-controlled) city council. That reason alone is probably a good reason to believe what gets posted, but since I’ve been watching the channel for the past 4 months as well, I know that the information that shows up there is good. In a recent post, it highlighted a recent presentation by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at a meeting in Geneva. It’s somewhat gratifying to me to know that Mariupol is still on the minds of some people out there in the world.
‼️The deadliest place in Ukraine! The UN human rights report on Mariupol
“From February to the end of April, Mariupol was probably the deadliest place in Ukraine. The intensity and scale of the fighting, destruction, death and injury strongly indicate serious violations of international humanitarian law and gross violations of international law,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
Conclusions of the report:
1,348 civilians, including 70 children, have been confirmed dead in Mariupol. But the actual death toll is many times higher.
Residents spent more than a month under siege: in basements without water, heat and medical care
Damaged or destroyed up to 90% of high-rise buildings, as well as up to 60% of private
All hospitals were damaged or destroyed.
There was no water – people ran out to wells or open reservoirs, and on the way many died
The city was bombarded with tanks and heavy artillery, used multiple launch rocket systems, rockets and air strikes.
Many residents have not yet been buried.
The evacuation of civilians in Mariupol was carried out within a month. 350,000 people left the city. They were ready to evacuate in any possible direction, but not everyone had the opportunity.
The current situation in Mariupol is terrible. The WHO warns of the dangers of an outbreak of infectious diseases, in particular cholera.
Many of those bullet points have been mentioned here, so nice confirmation in that regard. Again, it’s good that what happened (and, to some degree, is still happening) to Mariupol hasn’t completely fallen off the world’s radar. Maybe there will actually be some consequences in the future.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of the Donetsk oblast made a statement the other day about the latest shelling of Bakhmut, and had a perfect summary of the war in Ukraine:
“The Russians call the war a ‘military operation’, but in reality it is an operation against civilians. Every now and then they fight where the military has never been. This is terrorist behavior and the attitude towards the enemy must be appropriate,” Kyrylenko said.
Things are not really improving in Mariupol, and live is not becoming any easier or better since the Russians and their puppets, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), assumed power. I’d written previously about how their attempts to restore electricity and water have been, at best, terrible, and no real progress has been made on that front. The only water for people to use has to be trucked in and distributed. People have to sign up to get water, wait about 2 days for their place in line to come up, and then actually wait in line to get their water.
Waiting in line for potable water, June 7 2022
In the mean time, the DPR is trying to put a pretty face on the rubble by watering the plants in the city so that they can get photos of life returning to normal (or maybe how things are “thriving” now that the Russians are in charge?). And to note, I know this is non-potable, “technical” water that’s being used; it just seems like wrong message when people are still thirsty.
Water is only part of the story, there is also a lack of food and supplies in the city. When I was young, I remember the stories about bread lines and such in the Soviet Union (which always seemed to be accompanied by black and white photos from the 40’s and 50’s). Well, the lines are back:
Food lines, June 10 2022
I haven’t read about any process for getting this assistance, but I can’t imagine it would be any easier than getting water. And on this particular day, the temperatures were in the upper 80s, so not a great time to just be standing out (especially if you don’t have water to stay hydrated).
In addition to the lack of water, the other big contributor to the fear of a cholera outbreak is the garbage. There’s a lot of it, and it’s not being addressed.
Because of the scope of recovery of the bodies of those killed by their aggression, the Russians and DPR have decided that they just aren’t going to bother anymore. There had been some stories and photos initially of workers, including citizens of Mariupol, going through the rubble of destroyed building to recover the dead. (The people of Mariupol were doing this work because it was one of the few ways to get food.) But that was slow going because there are a lot of destroyed buildings and a lot of bodies. So now there are no recovery efforts; they are just scooping up the rubble and carting it off – In Mariupol, the occupiers carry construction debris along with the remains of bodies to closed landfills – PHOTOS – 0629.com.ua.
While I’m sure part of the argument for doing this is to more quickly address the decomposition and stench that has been enveloping the city, it also give cover to mask the true numbers of the dead and to prevent meaningful closure for a lot of people. And to make investigating war crimes more difficult.
As if we need punctuation to that, here’s a video from last week of one of the mass graves outside of Mariupol. Before the task became too great and/or instructions to conceal the extent of the issue came down, there was some horrifying effort to at least bury some of the bodies. Not that they were necessarily identified. I remember seeing a couple of those Maxar satellite photos of newly dug mass graves (Apparent mass graves near Mariupol expanding in size, satellite photos show – National | Globalnews.ca), but it’s really different when you see a video of someone driving the length and width of it.
They had to work to change the Ukrainian “i” into a Russian “и,” but that was much better propaganda for state media broadcasts than, say, giving the people of Mariupol running water. I’m sure the people of Mariupol will take the time to do it right when the city is reclaimed and rebuilt.
There hasn’t been a lot of updates of late because there hasn’t been all that much to report. Hopefully (or not) that might change soon.
Zhenya is still on the farm, and it’s driving him crazy. It’s still probably one of the safer parts of Ukraine, and if it were up to me, I’d tell him to stay there and make the best of it until, hopefully, all this is over. But I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Zhenya doesn’t like farm life, and Viktoria is convinced he’s just seconds away from being thrown into the Army and sent to the front lines. Something’s likely to give at some point; I don’t know what and I don’t know when, but I think it’s coming.
Katya 2 and Vanya are still in Vienna. Although they’ve both gotten their approvals to go to Canada, there was a typo on Katya’s visa and that needs to be fixed before they can go anywhere. This is having the secondary effect of delaying the travel permit that Vanya needs, because it may turn out that Katya will need one as well, and it would make sense to get that all done at the same time. The Canadian immigration service might not be quite as bad as the US one, but it’s still taking quite a bit of time. (It took a month for Katya’s original approval, and now it’s been at least three weeks since we initially told them about the typo. Ugh.)
Artem was able to talk to Zhenya briefly about a week ago. He, his mother Katya 1 and her new husband are still in the Mariupol area, which means they’re scraping by somehow. Still no running water, consistent electricity or communications. But Artem did get a new phone number (the Russian/DPR phone service Phoenix is the only one that operates in the area now), and relayed that to Zhenya.
Viktoria heard from her long-time friend Angela, whom I’ve mentioned once or twice. She and her husband had taken refuge in a costal town on the eastern/Russian side of Mariupol, but have now returned to Mariupol itself. I didn’t hear all the details from Viktoria, who herself probably didn’t get all the details. (They didn’t talk, it was just a message of some kind.) Sadly, it sounds like Angela is a Russia/DPR booster, which is really too bad. Angela is a nice and bubbly person (I’d met her a couple times), so to hear that she swallows the bilge coming from Russia is disappointing.
Sadly, there’s still been no news about Viktoria’s sister Inna. V had tried looking at the DPR site she’d found back in March (the one that had said Inna had received some humanitarian assistance), but there was nothing helpful there. There was an entry from sometime in April, but V felt it was the same information as before, just with a different date. (Even if it was new information, it would still have been about two months old, so not really helpful.) I don’t think V’s given up hope yet, but there’s not much to go on. As is too often the case, it’s the not knowing that makes this hard.
For other family and friends, there hasn’t been any new word one way or another. And for the foreseeable future, I don’t really think the “no news is good news” maxim will necessarily apply. All fingers will need to remain crossed.
Just a quick post to highlight a video I came across. The footage is somewhat old, but was only recently released because of the military sensitivity.
As you will recall, the army regiment defending Mariupol held out for an astoundingly long time. This, despite the fact that the city was well-surrounded by Russian forces on three sides, with the fourth side being the Azov Sea. (With Russian naval vessels in the Azov, you could make the argument that the city was fully surrounded.) But the Azov regiment defended Mariupol for nearly three months. Part of the reason they could hold out for so long was that they had gotten some supplies early in the war, thanks to a gap in the Russian coverage of the city. With that gap, helicopters missions were able to sneak in seven or eight times before Russia managed to close the gap.
The video below shows some footage of those missions and how they had to fly extremely low to the ground (or sea) in order to sneak in. Flying so low is difficult, so it’s quite a testament to the skill of the Ukrainian pilots. The flights at the time (back in late March or early April) had to cover about 60 miles to get to Mariupol, and while I don’t think they flew that low the entire distance, it was still a very impressive feat.
The BBC has an article up wherein some of their correspondents respond to questions they’ve received. It’s not too long and covers some of the situational questions and rumors. A good recap as the war closes in on 100 days. – Ukraine war: Your questions on the conflict answered
Of course the biggest question — which isn’t in the BBC article — is what’s the endgame? Someone’s comment on this DailyKos post (https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2101601) caught my eye. The commentator was apparently on a Common Cause Zoom call (I looked, but couldn’t find anything on their website) where a retired US general was doing some Q and A. The general apparently thinks that:
the war will run for about a year, with Ukraine being the ultimate victor;
Putin will be pushed out in that one-year time frame, because coups (or whatever will happen) take some time to plan, and;
Russia will get another authoritarian ruler from that, just one not as bad as Putin.
Seems like a reasonable assessment, but we just won’t know until it’s over.
The BBC posted an interview (well, part of it, I’m sure) with the Russian ambassador to the UK and it is a sight to behold. The interviewer shows the ambassador some video and images of some of the events from the war, including Bucha and Mariupol, and essentially asks if this is indicative of how Russia is conducting the war. The answers boggle the mind.
I was expecting the dissembling on Bucha and a shooting from another city, but the lies about Mariupol really got me. Mostly because (a) I’d been watching the images and reports coming out of Mariupol for the past three months, (b) I’m not an idiot, and (c) I’ve got an eye-witness in my house that contradicts his lies about what happened in 2014. He talks about a referendum in Mariupol in 2014 where (he claims) the people voted to leave Ukraine but then the army showed up and forced the city to stay. Utter crap.
Despite having a majority Russian-speaking population, Mariupol was then and had always been proudly Ukrainian. There was never a referendum and it was never part of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Some Russian-support “separatists” took control of the city’s administration building (City Hall) for about three weeks, but that was it. People didn’t want them there, didn’t support them (especially after they set fire to the building), and never wanted anything to do with the DPR. (Given what has happening in Donetsk and Luhansk, you can’t blame them. It’s when the term “warlord” was being used to describe the leaderships of some of the factions in those locations.)
Mariupol always had an independent streak and for much of the past eight years just wanted to be left alone. They didn’t like the Ukrainian army being stationed there, but with Russian forces only a few kilometers away put up with it. They didn’t want to join Russia or the DPR; they were always Ukrainian through and through. For that Russian ambassador to say anything else is lies and propaganda.
This annual celebration probably has special significance this year. The city of Kyiv is 1540 years old, but there has only been a “birthday party” for the city for the past 40 years. At least, that’s what Wikipedia says, and who am I to doubt such an authority? And as for Kyiv versus Moscow? Really no comparison…
I remember seeing this comparison from sometime ago, well before the current conflict. Most likely during the 2014 invasion, though I don’t remember the context. (Kyiv wasn’t threatened then and I don’t recall Russian rhetoric about Ukraine never historically existing.)
Viktoria and I were actually in Kyiv during their Day of the City celebrations in, I think, 2013. Just happened by chance, because I didn’t know it existed and Viktoria didn’t know what day it would have been. (Mariupol’s City Day yes, Kyiv’s no.) I know I’ve got some really bad pictures of hot air balloons that were in the square in front of St. Michael’s Cathedral and I’ll try to post one below. That’s where the taxi had to drop us off because the crowds of people (and blocked off streets) made it impossible to get any closer to the apartment we’d rented. I recall that there were events going on for two or three days after that, though I don’t really know if they were all connected to Kyiv Day or not. Whatever the reason, that was my first extended time in Kyiv, and the first trip Viktoria and I took together, so it holds a special place in my heart and memories.
People of Kyiv greeting Viktoria and me on our arrivalScreens and a stage set up for something (different night)
