Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responds to videos of Ukrainian POWs beheaded by Russian fighters, April 12, 2023

Wednesday’s Coverage: Russia’s Hungary Lifeline

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1559 GMT:

Human Rights Watch has added to documentation of Russian “torture chambers” in Kherson in southern Ukraine.

HRW’s report, published on Thursday, described a torture center in Teploenerhetykiv Street in Kherson. Other detention facilities were in a municipal building, a local school, and an airport hangar.

Victims gave accounts of beating, electric shocks, painful stress positions, and threats of death or mutilation.

“Those responsible for these horrific acts should not go unpunished,” said HRW’s Yulia Gorbunova. “And the victims and their families need to receive redress for their suffering and information about those still missing.”

Kherson was seized by Russian forces in the opening days of their invasion in March 2022. It was liberated in November.

In early March 2023, the international lawyers of the Mobile Justice Team investigated more than 20 torture chambers in Kherson, taking evidence from more than 1,000 people. The team concluded that the facilities were planned and directly financed by the Russian State in a “calculated plan to terrorize, subjugate, and eliminate Ukrainian resistance and to destroy Ukrainian identity”.

UPDATE 1556 GMT:

Russian artillery and aerial attacks have killed two civilians and wounded two in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said “guided aerial bombs” hit a school in Zmiivka, slaying one person was killed and injuring another.

A man was killed by shelling in a park in Kherson city.

UPDATE 1341 GMT:

The Russian military is continuing to block the international medical group Médecins Sans Frontières from occupied areas of Ukraine.

MSF spoke with Russian diplomats in Geneva last month about providing aid to the areas:

Our discussion…concerned the areas of Ukraine under Russian military occupation, where we are aware of substantial medical humanitarian needs, including the lack of doctors, nurses and essential medicines.

However, our teams have not yet been granted access to these areas. We continue to discuss this, and other points related to impartial medical humanitarian care in Ukraine.

UPDATE 1303 GMT:

The Kremlin has denied that Vladimir Putin personally approved the detention of Evan Gershkovich, the US citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter seized on March 29 in Yekaterinburg.

Sources told Bloomberg that Putin authorized the proposal of “hawks among top officials of Russia’s security services”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “No, it is not the president’s prerogative, it is the special services who are doing their job.”

He then pointed to the conclusion of any show trial, “Once again, I would like to remind you that this journalist was caught red-handed.”

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov indicated that Gershkovich is being held as leverage to get the release of Russian personnel detained abroad.

Ryabkov indicated talks could be held with the US for a prisoner exchange, after a court handed down the verdict on Gershkovich’s espionage charge, “We have a working channel that was used in the past to achieve concrete agreements, and these agreements were fulfilled.”

UPDATE 1031 GMT:

Norway is expelling 15 Russian intelligence officers, operating from Moscow’s embassy under the cover of diplomatic positions.

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said, “The government’s decision is in response to the changed security situation in Europe, which has led to an increased intelligence threat from Russia.”

Foreign inister Anniken Huitfeldt explained:

This is an important step in countering, and reducing the level of, Russian intelligence activity in Norway, and thus in safeguarding our national interests.

Soon after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s intelligence network was disrupted by the expulsion of hundreds of personnel from embassies in Europe, North America, and Asia.

UPDATE 1006 GMT:

Russia has been ordered by an arbitration court in The Hague to pay $5 billion in compensation for unlawfully expropriation of gas assets in occupied Crimea.

Ukraine State gas company Naftogaz said the ruling is a “key victory on the energy front…despite Russia’s attempts to obstruct justice”.

UPDATE 0843 GMT:

The latest Russian attacks on the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine have killed one civilian and injured two.

S-300 missiles damaged a school, residential buildings, and the city water canal in Slovyansk.

Ukrainian officials said four civilians were killed and at least five injured across nine regions: Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, and Donetsk.

A total of 135 settlements and 50 infrastructure facilities were struck by fire from mortars, tanks, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), small arms, S-300 missiles, drones, and tactical aviation.

UPDATE 0835 GMT:

The World Bank has allocated $200 million for the repair of Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure.

The Bank’s partners will provide another $300 million as the project is developed.

The initial $200 million will be used for emergency repairs transformers, mobile heat boilers, and other emergency-critical equipment.

The World Bank, with commitments from donors, has authorized more than $23bn in emergency financing for Ukraine. More than $20 billion of this has been disbursed.

The Bank estimates that Ukraine energy infrastructure has suffered $11 billion in damage over the last year.

Russia tried to destroy the grid with almost 20 waves of missile and drone strikes since October 10. At one point, more than half of the system was offline.

However, there has not been a significant Russian wave of assaults since early March, and Ukrainian officials said earlier this month that the grid has been fully repaired.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: The beheading of Ukrainian POWs by Russian fighters is being condemned by the international community.

One video on social media shows the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle. An off-screen witness says, “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off.”

A second video, apparently from last summer, shows a Russian fighter using a knife to cut off the head of a captured Ukrainian.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says it is “appalled” by the “gruesome” videos.

The mission emphasized that the executions are “not an isolated incident”:

In recent reports the Mission documented a number of serious violations of international humanitarian law, including those committed against prisoners of war. The latest incidents must also be properly investigated, and the perpetrators must be held accountable.

The European Union pledged to hold those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine to account. Spokesman Nabila Massrali said:

We don’t have more information on the veracity of the video. Having said that, if confirmed, this is yet another brutal reminder about the inhumane nature of the Russian aggression.

“There Will Be Legal Responsibility”

Earlier on Wednesday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had appealed for international action: “There is something that no one in the world can ignore. How easily these beasts kill.”

He emphaszied that the beheadings were “not an accident”, citing the mass killings of civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv, by occupying Russian forces in March 2022.

Don’t expect it to be forgotten. That time will pass. We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba added, “It’s absurd that Russia, which is worse than Islamic State, is presiding over the UNSC [UN Security Council]. Russian terrorists must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN and be held accountable for their crimes.”

Caught off guard by the videos, the Kremlin carried out damage control. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the beheadings were “awful” but declaring that the authenticity of the footage needed to be checked.