Photo credit: Klymenko Time
"They burnt me. I assumed it was with a torch as the bag was on my head. I was hung up by my arms, the scars have not even healed yet, my right arm is numb - I can't feel it. My ribs still hurt. They kicked me, strapped my hands behind me, tied a grenade ring to my fingers, and made me sit. If I moved, I would surely pull the pin."
"They took away bandaging material and medicines, food and bedding items from the medical staff. The nurses were raped and shot, and guards were set near the wounded and no one was allowed near them for four days. Some of the wounded died and the rest were thrown into the river the local population was forbidden to remove the corpses."
"We were beaten by a group of three or four people, they electroshocked us, put us on our knees in a sack, shot near our ears. Then their commander came, took us all away, and put us in a hole, chained, and handcuffed us. I could not sit, I could not stand, that is I was hanging on this chain because my ribs and fingers were broken."
"In the city of Stalino, the German invaders led the inhabitants of the Professorate House into a shed, blocked the entrance, poured the combustible liquid over it, and set it on fire. All the people in the shed were burned except for the two girls who escaped by chance".
"They attached the battery wires to my arm, doused me with water, and shocked me. I was losing consciousness, as soon as I got back, they doused me with water and interrogated me again after a while".
"He puts on a bag and strangles a woman who has diabetes and is asking for something to drink, and they say, "We're going to give you some urine." There were such creepy things that it's frightening even to remember them, it's just frightening, to be honest."
"… they took me to the basement, there was a bag over my head. I was handcuffed to a radiator and stretched out. My hands were numb as this went on for three days."
"They do not feed the wounded for six to eight days and keep them in open pits in the cold and in the rain. There was one instance when prisoners attempted to light a fire in one of the pits but the Nazis threw grenades at them and forbade to remove the corpses."
"Women were brought into the cell after interrogation. Often they were unconscious and could not recover for several days. They would lie there and urinate. One woman I knew had her hands twisted behind her back and was hung in the long fly position for eight hours. Others were stripped naked, covered with a mattress, doused with water, and shocked with a stun gun."
"They tied him to a buck, beat and kicked him, hit with a plastic stick, doused him with water, and tortured with current, forced him to dance naked and sing songs to them, do push-ups off the floor, and do squats with a yellow weight of 24 kilograms (52.9 lbs.). I witnessed that the prisoners were forced to rape each being threatened with weapons. I was in the basement for 17-18 days altogether."
And here is the question: can you easily identify what historical source is each quote from?
There are the following options:
- speech by Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoliy Matios on Shuster LIVE;
- the Information on Atrocities by German Fascist Troops in the Occupied Territories of the USSR as of 21 November 1941 that was sent to the Deputy Chief of the Sovinformbureau S.A. Lozovsky by the 1st Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR;
- a report on the torture of prisoners of war and civilians during the civil conflict in Ukraine by the International Public Information Group of Crimes against the Person (IGCP);
- an excerpt from a speech by Lev Smirnov, Assistant Chief Prosecutor for the USSR, on the crimes against civilians committed by the accused at the Nuremberg Trials, in particular the atrocities of the German invaders in Vyazma, Gzhatsk and Sychevka in Smolensk Oblast and Rzhev in Kalinin Oblast and the burning of people in Stalino.
Here some readers will say, "Propaganda! Don't you dare mix it up." However, a three-day review of the evidence of the genocide in Donbass has definitively highlighted key points. Dear reader, you try it yourself, take a chance! Yes, that's right, it is genocide. And it will be recognized by the world community sooner or later.
The proofs of the genocide were duly submitted to all the human rights bodies of the free and civilized world for eight years. And they were persistently neglected there. Hardly anybody sees the truth about the genocide of the Russians in Ukraine as beneficial and needed. It is unwanted by the Ukrainian authorities that are responsible for it, Europe, America, and even some Russians who feel ashamed.
This truth is far too risky for bourgeois comfort and personal branding, unlike the authorized struggle under the BLM slogan or for the rainbow flags of the entire world. This truth destroys the cardboard stage set that covers the actual crimes of the post-Maidan regime in Ukraine. It might change the judgment of the good and evil sides. Yet, this should not be allowed. Russia has been designated as the side of evil. It did not happen currently but long before 2014.
Nevertheless, we need to be honest here as well: it is not only about our "Western partners" and their like-minded people. This truth has been too harsh and embarrassing for us, too. Did anybody read those sorrowful news pages of life and death all the time? Did anybody do it except front-line reporters and investigators who had to do it by virtue of their positions?
Obviously, many people knew about the murder of the Madonna of Gorlovka, and the photo of the shell-shattered young woman Kristina with her eight-month-old baby was all over the Runet. The same was the case with Odessa events. They were also known in detail. Pieces of burnt flesh, dead pregnant women, dead raped women, human ashes.
Well, did anyone perform a detailed study of these testimonies about old people sitting still in wheelchairs with their dead arms hanging down, about refugee cars being bombed to pieces, about little coffins with children with porcelain faces, about broken up graves, about moaning women? How is this possible in the twenty-first century? The daily execution of those who refused to be Ukrainianized has been taking place in the Donbass for eight years. However, these sufferings were not part of the reality in Russian society, and even less so in Ukrainian society.
Today, when there is no way out, the Ukrainian authorities have chosen to push the topic of genocide. Except that it's now Russia's fault. How quickly will the "progressive world" begin to promote it? I think it is happening right now. They claim, "This is different." This is the militant principle of military propaganda that has been accepted in the media for eight years now.
Nevertheless, the question is not actually for this public, it is for us: why haven't we talked about this every day as if it were our own pain? "We" means the majority of Russian citizens. I do know my answer: because it seemed that nothing could be done, and it was impossible to live every day being wounded by this mortal horror. By the way, you can see it here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
However, I warn you: you won't be able to unsee it.
According to Maxim Vilkov of the International Public Information Group of Crimes against the Person (IGCP), he and a group of fellow historians have been collecting this evidence since 2014 when the Maidan events first started and it became clear that people professing nationalist and neo-Nazi beliefs were coming to power. Some video and oral testimonies of shelling, raids, torture, murders, and looting have been collected by historians. Others were sent to them from the republics. The Group has been taking these documents to international forums, primarily the UN and the OSCE, for eight years now.
The readers may ask, "What do Russian historians have to do with Donbass? Is it propaganda again?" in fact, the representatives of the LPR and DPR were unable to present these documents themselves because they are banned from traveling to Europe, did you know that? It is despite the fact that free Europe is perfectly capable to solve the issue of visiting from unrecognized states in other cases. For instance, citizens of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus have both their state passports and EU passports as citizens of recognized South Cyprus because no one recognized it as divided. That is the paradox. Nevertheless, the Turkish Cypriots are not at disadvantage in the contrast to the Russians and Ukrainians from the LPR and DPR.
Throughout these years, the Group has actually participated in every event related to human rights held by the UN and the Human Rights Council. It has also participated in the work of the Human Rights Committee, the Committee Against Torture, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee on Economic and Social Rights, and has cooperated with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. The reports were sent, the documents were brought.
European organizations could officially include information on crimes in the committees' reports and demand Ukraine to fulfill its human rights protection obligations. However, as we know, no attempts were made to influence Ukraine. It was the other way about.
"I think that our mission was fulfilled to some extent, at least we managed to make sure that international forums would not have an anti-Russian point of view only, that these issues would be at least discussed," Vilkov says.
Yes, and the documents submitted will evidence the fact that Europe knew everything. The cynicism in relation to war crimes and genocide crimes in Donbass is that the European Court of Human Rights has not accepted any applications from citizens of the LPR and DPR in the belief that the national justice opportunities have not been exhausted. In real terms, the above means the following: victims shall complain about torture, murder, and shelling to the party that committed it. The other side sees citizens of the LPR and DPR as separatists, so any methods can be applied to them. This is a vicious circle. Nevertheless, the ECtHR practices acceptance of applications directly from the citizens of countries where they are in danger. There have been such cases. However, this practice is not applicable to the residents of the DPR and LPR. They are not that kind of people. That reminds us of something, doesn't it? Yes, it does. 77 years ago certain nations in Europe were excluded from the legal framework and it was allowed to do anything with them. It used to happen while the humanists were totally indifferent and turned the ships with Jewish refugees from the shores of America back to Europe, to their deaths.
Legal applications are now being prepared for the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court on specific genocide cases. A series of reports on genocide in Donbass will be published and brought to attention at the next OSCE event in Vienna scheduled for September 14-15.
Human rights activists are doing this work in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in Russia, the DPR, and the LPR.
Although our history has an experience that can be used here very effectively. Back then, the public collaborated with the investigative authorities. We are referring to the work of the Extraordinary State Commission, or ChGK that investigated Nazi crimes in the territories being liberated. The commission started its work on collecting evidence for future trials in 1942. It was the hardest period of the occupation. Our grandfathers knew very well what they were doing.
Yes, the creative intelligentsia used to contribute more generously to public needs and requests. The commission included Alexey Tolstoy, the neurosurgeon Nikolay Burdenko, the historian Yevgeny Tarle, the lawyer and organizer of cinema production Ilya Trainin. These are the people with indisputable and significant personal contributions to culture and science. They left their important professional and personal responsibilities for the ChGK. They served as a kind of public investigators. Members of central and territorial commissions spent several years recording Nazi crimes. They did it literally standing knee-deep in those execution ditches and picking over the mutilated and decomposed bodies. What was the work of such a commission about? They had to visit the places, examine, record, question witnesses, and hand over documents to the investigators.
This experience is versatile and, alas, in demand once again.
It seems fair to say that all commission members paid a high price for their participation in the ChGK investigations, even in physical terms. Tolstoy died in February 1945, Burdenko died in November 1946, Trainin died in June 1949. There are certain things that are unbearable for a human being.
The leadership of the Shakhtar (later renamed into the Donbass) and the Aidar battalions was imprisoned. It happened because their crimes were brought to the attention of international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, and information about their crimes was published in the West.
And yesterday the news came from Ukraine that former military servicemen who have volunteered to defend the country during martial law are to be released from prisons and pre-trial detention centers. Such former servicemen include the perpetrators of genocide, in particular, Ruslan Onishchenko, former Tornado battalion commander. He filed an application to participate in combat operations against the Russian army. Information about his crimes has been widely reported. It was his battalion that tortured prisoners forcing them to rape each other. And now they are going out for defense. They are the last reserve of the Kiev regime. So there are no illusions.
Unfortunately, we have frittered some gains of our grandfathers who succeeded in punishing the Nazis. However, the grandfathers could not fully eradicate the very stubborn, ideological, and violent Ukrainian Nazism either. The seeds of the dragon have sprouted once again.
Taking into account historical experience, the final point of the denazification promised to Ukraine involves large-scale, transparent, detailed, competitive open trials with the participation of journalists from various countries, an extensive evidence collection, reports, and live broadcasts. We still have great writers and great directors, don't we? Our grandfathers did, such as Ilya Ehrenburg, Roman Karmen, and Aleksandr Tvardovsky. The great personalities are required for this purpose, those personalities who work for the sake of eternity rather than for the sake of using Apple Pay.
Let us remember Nuremberg. We need to reveal the truth as firmly as possible, so that the world shudders, as it once shuddered in 1946. There is no other option now.
But there is still a long way to go before the trial. Even when we were allies against German Nazism, the Western leaders were not too keen on a trial. They wanted to execute the ringleaders of the Nazis as quickly as possible, without going through all the details of what they had done, and, in the meantime, to transport the useful Nazis back to their homes. And they came in handy. The Ukrainian nationalists brought to Canada, brought up new generations with the same ideology, and then these dragon's teeth were planted in the post-Soviet Ukraine.
The situation now is even worse than then: the topic of genocide is entangled in media lies. Nevertheless, the perpetrators adopt the same methods.
Roman Karmen made a compilation film of newsreels by our frontline cameramen. It was about the crimes committed in the camps and in the occupied territories. The film was shown in Nuremberg. The courtroom audience was shocked, while Göring stated, "Whatever the Russians say and show, I do not believe them and am not going to. They are now trying to shift the blame for their atrocities onto us."
Does it sound familiar? Of course, it does. It is the same rhetoric.
Zelensky is filing a lawsuit against Russia at The Hague and describes the current events as genocide. The war of truth has just begun. There are many aspects challenged, including the reputation of the collective European-American international bureaucracy that has concealed the crimes of genocide in Ukraine for many years. Will we be able to find allies? Perhaps, we can find them on other continents.
No other task can be accomplished without punishing those responsible for the genocide in Donbass, Odessa, and everywhere else where Russians and Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine have been prosecuted for their language, beliefs, and thinking. This is the key issue in our relations. People should live long in Russia and in Ukraine too.
Source in Russian RIA Novosti
