Russian attacks hit at least 9 Ukrainian medical facilities, visual evidence shows

Windows blasted out, a car in flames, patients limping away to safety — this was the scene at a maternity hospital in Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, after a Russian strike tore through the facility, killing at least three people and injuring 17 on March 9, according to Mariupol officials.

The maternity hospital was one of many health care facilities hit amid Russia’s siege on key Ukrainian cities since the nation’s invasion in late February, a new Washington Post analysis reveals.

To confirm which hospitals have been damaged, The Washington Post examined more than 500 videos and photos, reviewed social media posts from the hospitals, spoke to witnesses and hospital employees, and compared key details from these incidents to reports from Ukrainian officials, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Information Resilience and ACLED, a group that monitors armed conflict around the world.

The Post’s visual analysis verified nine incidents, including the strike in Mariupol, where hospitals faced direct damage as a result of a reported Russian attack. There were fatalities in at least three of the incidents verified by The Post, according to officials. Three of the facilities specifically served women or children.

“Hospitals and medical facilities are protected by international humanitarian law," a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jason Straziuso, said in an email.

Medical facilities are considered “protected objects” under the law unless they are used for military purposes, said Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict and Human Rights Project at Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute. “When you are hitting in the hospital, you’re not only risking killing people who are receiving medical care, who are sick and wounded, but also because of the long-term effects on a civilian population,” she said. Motaparthy added that the opposing party must give warning before it attacks.

International law experts who reviewed The Post’s findings said they appear to show evidence that Russian forces have violated these laws. In at least one case, a pro-Russian media outlet has claimed that a hospital damaged in Ukraine was used for military purposes. The Post found no evidence to support this claim. Motaparthy said an investigation into the incidents should consider any statement the Russian military gave for why it struck the hospital, but hospitals are presumed to be civilian.

The deadliest attacks
In one of the deadliest incidents The Post reviewed, Russian forces fired a ballistic missile carrying a cluster munition, which hit the Central City Hospital in Vuhledar, a town in the separatist Donetsk region on Feb. 24, according to visuals obtained and analyzed in a report by Human Rights Watch. The munition hit just outside the hospital, killing four and injuring 10 civilians, six of whom were health care workers. Human Rights Watch confirmed the events by speaking to a doctor and official from the hospital and verifying photos posted to social media and sent directly by hospital staff. The Post confirmed the geolocation of the photo of damage to the hospital by comparing it to available source imagery on Google Earth, and the incident was also reported by ACLED. The World Health Organization, which has not released the locations of the 24 attacks it has confirmed, listed a single strike on Feb. 24 with the same number of casualties.

Cluster munitions are “inherently indiscriminate weapons,” Motaparthy noted. She explained they often malfunction, leaving behind bomblets that can explode months or years after an attack. They also disperse over a wide area, making them extremely dangerous in populated areas. The UN human rights office has found “credible reports” that Russian forces have used cluster munitions several times since the war began, and that these attacks “may amount to war crimes.”

In addition to the events in Vuhledar and Mariupol, three people died after a strike on an intensive care hospital in Vasylivka, according to officials.

A medical campus in the southeastern city of Vasylivka was struck by Russian rockets on March 1, killing three people and injuring four, the Official channel of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration reported on Telegram. The Post geolocated video showing damaged buildings on the compound by comparing it to source imagery on Google Earth.

“Hospitals and medical facilities are protected by international humanitarian law," a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jason Straziuso, said in an email.

Medical facilities are considered “protected objects” under the law unless they are used for military purposes, said Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict and Human Rights Project at Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute. “When you are hitting in the hospital, you’re not only risking killing people who are receiving medical care, who are sick and wounded, but also because of the long-term effects on a civilian population,” she said. Motaparthy added that the opposing party must give warning before it attacks.

International law experts who reviewed The Post’s findings said they appear to show evidence that Russian forces have violated these laws. In at least one case, a pro-Russian media outlet has claimed that a hospital damaged in Ukraine was used for military purposes. The Post found no evidence to support this claim. Motaparthy said an investigation into the incidents should consider any statement the Russian military gave for why it struck the hospital, but hospitals are presumed to be civilian.

The deadliest attacks
In one of the deadliest incidents The Post reviewed, Russian forces fired a ballistic missile carrying a cluster munition, which hit the Central City Hospital in Vuhledar, a town in the separatist Donetsk region on Feb. 24, according to visuals obtained and analyzed in a report by Human Rights Watch. The munition hit just outside the hospital, killing four and injuring 10 civilians, six of whom were health care workers. Human Rights Watch confirmed the events by speaking to a doctor and official from the hospital and verifying photos posted to social media and sent directly by hospital staff. The Post confirmed the geolocation of the photo of damage to the hospital by comparing it to available source imagery on Google Earth, and the incident was also reported by ACLED. The World Health Organization, which has not released the locations of the 24 attacks it has confirmed, listed a single strike on Feb. 24 with the same number of casualties.

Cluster munitions are “inherently indiscriminate weapons,” Motaparthy noted. She explained they often malfunction, leaving behind bomblets that can explode months or years after an attack. They also disperse over a wide area, making them extremely dangerous in populated areas. The UN human rights office has found “credible reports” that Russian forces have used cluster munitions several times since the war began, and that these attacks “may amount to war crimes.”

In addition to the events in Vuhledar and Mariupol, three people died after a strike on an intensive care hospital in Vasylivka, according to officials.

A medical campus in the southeastern city of Vasylivka was struck by Russian rockets on March 1, killing three people and injuring four, the Official channel of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration reported on Telegram. The Post geolocated video showing damaged buildings on the compound by comparing it to source imagery on Google Earth.

Women and children’s services hit
At least a third of the incidents verified by The Post included centers that treated women or children. The attack in Mariupol hit a maternity ward and another damaged a pediatric dental clinic in Chernihiv.

In the northern city of Chernihiv on Feb. 27, visual evidence shows impact to a central courtyard, near a pediatric dental clinic, which The Post confirmed via imagery on Google Earth. The attack left a crater in the ground, uprooted trees and blew the windows and debris from the surrounding buildings. The facility posted video of the aftermath to Facebook, showing blasted-out windows and debris scattered throughout the building.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/12/ukraine-hospital-attacks-video/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_world&utm_source=reddit.com

Russian authorities and multinational companies have erected a digital barricade between the country and the West, erasing the last remnants of independent information online.

Even as President Vladimir V. Putin tightened his grip on Russian society over the past 22 years, small pockets of independent information and political expression remained online.

Any remnants of that are now gone.

As Mr. Putin has waged war on Ukraine, a digital barricade went up between Russia and the world. Both Russian authorities and multinational internet companies built the wall with breathtaking speed. And the moves have ruptured an open internet that was once seen as helping to integrate Russia into the global community.

TikTok and Netflix are suspending their services in the country. Facebook has been blocked. Twitter has been partly blocked, and YouTube’s future is in doubt. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and others have pulled back or withdrawn entirely from Russia. Even online video games like Minecraft are no longer available.

The actions have turned Russia into a walled-off digital state akin to China and Iran, which tightly control the internet and censor foreign websites and dissent. China’s internet and the Western internet have become almost completely separate over the years, with few overlapping services and little direct communication. In Iran, the authorities have used internet blackouts during protests.

Russia’s cleaving off is a defeat for the once-held Western belief that the internet is a tool for democracy that would lead authoritarian countries to open.

“The vision of a free and open internet that runs all over the world doesn’t really exist anymore,” said Brian Fishman, a senior fellow at the New America think tank and former director of counterterrorism policy at Facebook. “Now the internet is lumpy. It has choke points.”

The internet is only one piece of Russia’s growing isolation since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The country has been largely cut off from the world’s financial system, foreign airlines are not flying in Russian airspace and global access to its oil and natural gas reserves is in question.

But the digital cutoffs stand out as the culmination of attempts by the Russian authorities to tame what was once an open and freewheeling internet. For years, officials stiffened a censorship campaign at home and tried to move toward what is known as a “sovereign internet.” The war led multinational companies to take the final steps.

While Russia is paying a stiff economic cost for being cut off, the digital isolationism also serves Mr. Putin’s interests. It allows him to clamp down further on dissent and information that does not follow the government line. Under a censorship law passed last week, journalists, website operators and others risk 15 years in prison for publishing “misinformation” about the war on Ukraine.

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“This is going to feel like a return to the 1980s for people who lived in that era, because suddenly information is back in the hands of the state,” said Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, a London organization that tracks internet censorship.

Internet censorship efforts in Russia have grown for the past decade, said Tanya Lokot, an associate professor at Dublin City University who specializes in digital rights in Eastern Europe. Mr. Putin first cracked down on government critics and independent news outlets online. Russia then began a campaign to install new censorship equipment to block or slow down access to websites like Twitter.

But the final break since the invasion began has jarred Russians who used the internet to stay connected with the wider world, get independent information and build their careers.

Aleksei Pivovarov, who quit his job on state television almost a decade ago in the face of growing censorship, said he had experienced a “second birth” when he started producing news shows and distributing them on YouTube. Almost three million people subscribe to his YouTube channel, where he and a team publish investigations and news reports that are unavailable on state media.

“I was completely sure that this part of my life was over forever, and I would never work as a journalist again,” he said in a recent interview. “I never thought before I came to YouTube that it was possible.”

Now the work risks putting Mr. Pivovarov in jail — or out of business. YouTube, which is owned by Google, last week blocked all Russian accounts from making money from their videos and barred Russian state television outlets from being shown across Europe. YouTube could be one of the next targets to be blocked by Russian regulators, experts predicted.

Mr. Pivovarov, 47, who is based in Moscow, said he planned to keep broadcasting on YouTube despite the risks. But he said it was unclear how long he could keep going.

“For the moment I do plan to work in Russia,” he said. “How this may change in the future, especially if YouTube will be blocked, I don’t know.”

Unlike China, where domestic internet companies have grown into behemoths over more than a decade, Russia does not have a similarly vibrant domestic internet or tech industry.

So as it is cordoned off into its own digital ecosystem, the fallout may be severe. In addition to access to independent information, the future reliability of internet and telecommunications networks, as well as the availability of basic software and services used by businesses and government, is at risk.

Already, Russian telecom companies that operate mobile phone networks no longer have access to new equipment and services from companies like Nokia, Ericsson and Cisco. Efforts by Russian companies to develop new microprocessors were in doubt after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest maker of essential semiconductors, halted shipments to the country. Yandex, Russia’s largest internet company, with a search engine more widely used than Google in Russia, warned it might default on its debts because of the crisis.

“The whole IT, hardware and software market that Russia relies on is gravely damaged right now,” said Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s program on democracy and technology. The Russian authorities could respond by loosening rules that have made it illegal to download pirated software, he said.

The Ukrainian government has also pressured internet service providers to sever access in Russia. Officials from Ukraine have asked ICANN, the nonprofit group that oversees internet domains, to suspend the Russian internet domain “.ru.” The nonprofit has resisted these requests.

Denis Lyashkov, a self-taught web developer with more than 15 years of experience, said Russia’s censorship campaign was “devastating” for those who had grown up with a less restricted internet.

“I was 19 years old when I bought my first computer, and it was the best investment in my life,” said Mr. Lyashkov, who emigrated to Armenia from Moscow in the past week because of the growing restrictions. “When I started, it was a whole new world. There were no borders, no censorship. Everyone could say anything they wanted.”

Mr. Lyashkov said that before he had fled Russia, the company where he worked received a demand from the government to install new government certificates on its website, a technical change that could allow regulators to monitor traffic and potentially close the country’s internet to all but Russian or other approved websites. Last year, Russia tested taking such a step.

Some Russian internet users appeared to be finding ways around tighter restrictions. Demand for virtual private networks, technology that lets people access blocked websites by masking their location, soared more than 600 percent since the invasion, according to Top10VPN, a service that tracks usage of the technology.

But other decisions by multinational companies to punish Russia’s aggression could make those circumvention tools harder to obtain. Many Russians who have VPNs pay for them using Visa and Mastercard, which have blocked payments in Russia.

“That move only helps the Kremlin in my view, unfortunately,” Mr. Pivovarov said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/technology/russia-ukraine-internet-isolation.html

Russian priest has been arrested after delivering an anti-war sermon on Sunday over President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Father Ioann Burdin of the Resurrection Church in Russia's western Kostroma region will be tried for anti-war statements in his sermon, and for publishing a link to an anti-war petition on his parish's website, the BBC's Russian service reported.

The priest "committed a public offense aimed at discrediting the Russian armed forces which are conducting a special military operation" in Ukraine, according to a police report quoted by the Media Zona website.

He held his sermon on the final Sunday before Lent in Russia, which is known in the Orthodox Church as "Forgiveness Sunday."

Father Ioann has been accused of discrediting Russia's armed forces. He told parishioners about "Russian troops in Ukraine shelling the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv and killing citizens of Ukraine—brothers and sisters in Christ," according to Media Zona.

Father Ioann has a court appearance scheduled this week in the Krasnoselsky District Court of the Kostroma region.

His parish reportedly shared a link last week to an anti-war petition, accompanied by a statement that criticized Putin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion against Ukraine on February 24.

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"We, Christians, cannot stand idly by when a brother kills brother, a Christian kills a Christian," the statement said. "Let's not repeat the crimes of those who hailed Hitler's deeds on Sept. 1, 1939."

It comes amid a broader crackdown on free speech in Russia. Russian authorities have prohibited media from calling the invasion of Ukraine a "war"—state-run media outlets adopt the term "special military operation."

The Russian parliament passed a law on Friday that criminalizes the distribution of "fake news" about the Russian military, with those convicted facing up to 15 years in prison.

Since then, a swathe of media outlets have said they were suspending reporting in Russia to protect their journalists, including Britain's BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Bloomberg News, CNN and CBS News.

Other outlets, such as The Washington Post have temporarily removed journalists' bylines to protect their identities.

Independent Russian media outlets TV Rain (Dozhd) and Ekho Moskvy have also suspended operations under mounting pressure from the Kremlin over their coverage of the Ukraine invasion.

Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor issued its first warnings on February 26 to TV Rain and Ekho Moskvy, as well as to InoSMI, Mediazona, The New Times, Svobodnaya Pressa, Krym.Realii, Novaya Gazeta, Zhurnalist and Lenizdat.

Russian officials have accused the West of spreading false information in an attempt to sow discord among the Russian people.
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-priest-arrested-delivering-sermon-anti-war-against-ukraine-1685436

Mintum:
The pro US Ukrainian government is doomed, in less than a week from today, a new pro russian government will take power in Ukraine.

can they keep the power that's the question, ordinary surprise invasion they have spent almost a month... anyone can invade but the real question is can u keep the power.
eve almighty USA couldn't keep power in Afghanistan immediately they leave everything when back to square 1

slimghost:
STFU! We are tired of the silly propaganda. Tell your husband to stop sacrificing Ukrainian lives just to please his master.

if its Nigeria will you want us to just surrender just like that imagine if maybe cameroon invade us will you tell buhari to surrender

Hisbah21:
yes they are committing alots of humanity crimes. but since its Russia,the superpowers are watching.. but imagine a Pakistan,Afghanistan and the middle east president doing such..by now Nato,US and such already landed there,blowing and tearing the cities apart..this world is full of hyprocrisy

simple answer russian have nukes and the west fear ww3 more than anything... so the worst west can do for now is sanction and hope Putin change his mind

Ukraine has 'plans in place' to ensure 'continuity of government one way or another' if Zelensky dies, Blinken says

Zelensky has been on the front lines of the Ukrainian defense against Russia, despite reports of at least one assassination attempt and an attack near his presidential residence.

"The Ukrainians have plans in place that I'm not going to talk about or get into any details on to make sure that there is what we would call continuity of government one way or another. And let me leave it at that," Blinken told Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" on CBS News.

A Ukrainian security and defense chief said last week that Ukrainian forces had thwarted an assassination plot against Zelensky with help from members of Russia's security services.

Later in the week, Zelensky taunted Russians after a top aide claimed what appeared to be a missile fragment fell near the presidential residence in Kyiv. After Ukrainian Press Secretary Sergii Nykyforov posted on Facebook that an apparent piece of a missile was found near the presidential residence, Zelensky responded: "Missed."

Blinken did not elaborate on Ukrainian plans in the event of Zelensky's death, but he did say that the world needs to be prepared for this conflict to last "for some time" despite sanctions against Russia from Western countries. Russia first invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Since the initial attack, Russia has claimed the major city of Kherson as well as a nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian officials and human rights groups have accused Russia of war crimes, alleging Putin's forces are bombarding civilian populations.

"We continue to see President Putin doubling down and digging in on this aggression against Ukraine. That's continuing. I think we have to be prepared, unfortunately, tragically, for this to go on for some time," Blinken said on Sunday.

https://africa.businessinsider.com/news/ukraine-has-plans-in-place-to-ensure-continuity-of-government-one-way-or-another-if/gdlbjqp

LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - Police detained more than 4,300 people on Sunday at Russia-wide protests against President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, according to an independent protest monitoring group.

Thousands of protesters chanted "No to war!" and "Shame on you!", according to videos posted on social media by opposition activists and bloggers.

Dozens of protesters in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg were shown being detained. One protester there was shown being beaten on the ground by police in riot gear. A mural in the city showing President Vladimir Putin was defaced.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage and photographs on social media. Russia's interior ministry said earlier that police had detained around 3,500 people, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St Petersburg and 1,061 in other cities.

The interior ministry said 5,200 people had taken part in the protests. The OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it had documented the detention of at least 4,366 people in 56 different cities.

"The screws are being fully tightened - essentially we are witnessing military censorship," Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info's spokeswoman, said by telephone from Tbilisi.

"We are seeing rather big protests today, even in Siberian cities where we only rarely saw such numbers of arrests."

The last Russian protests with a similar number of arrests were in January 2021, when thousands demanded the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he was arrested on returning from Germany where he had been recovering from a nerve agent poisoning.

Some Russian state-controlled media carried short reports about Sunday's protests but they did not feature high in news bulletins.

Russia's RIA news agency said the Manezhnaya Square in Moscow, adjoining the Kremlin, had been "liberated" by police, who had arrested some participants of an unsanctioned protest against the military operation in Ukraine.

CHURCH SUPPORT

RIA also showed footage of what appeared to be supporters of the Kremlin driving along the embankment in Moscow with Russian flags and displaying the "Z" and "V" markings used by Russian forces on tanks operating in Ukraine.

Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said Russian values were being tested by the West, which offered only excessive consumption and the illusion of freedom.

Putin, Russia's paramount leader since 1999, calls the invasion, launched on Feb. 24, a "special military operation". He says it is aimed at defending Ukraine's Russian-speaking communities against persecution and preventing the United States from using Ukraine to threaten Russia.

The West has called his arguments a baseless pretext for war and imposed sanctions that aim to cripple the Russian economy. The United States, Britain and some other NATO members have supplied arms to Ukraine.

Navalny had called for protests on Sunday across Russia and the rest of the world against the invasion. read more

About 2,000 people attended an anti-war protest in Kazakhstan's biggest city Almaty, according to videos posted on social media. Reuters was unable to independently verify the posts.

The crowd shouted slogans such as "No to war!" and obscenities directed at Putin while waving Ukrainian flags.

Blue and yellow balloons were placed in the hand of a statue of Lenin towering over the small square where the rally took place.

The Russian state polling agency VTsIOM said Putin's approval rating had risen 6 percentage points to 70% in the week to Feb. 27. FOM, which provides research for the Kremlin, said his rating had risen 7 percentage points to 71% in the same period.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/more-than-64-people-detained-anti-war-protests-russia-protest-monitor-2022-03-06/

even at the height of ussr power they couldn't defeat Finland...

DaddyFabooluz:
Abeg make Russia just send small army go shake Finland small make I know if Simon Epka go fight for Finland or him go dey find free Nigerian flight.

Pope Francis says he has dispatched two cardinals to Ukraine, a highly unusual move.

The pontiff said Sunday that “the Holy See is willing to do everything to put itself in service for peace.” The papal almsgiver, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, has been dispatched with aid, along with Cardinal Michael Czerny, who is head of the papal office that deals with migration, charity, justice and peace.

Francis did not say where exactly the cardinals had gone, but said they represented him and all Christian people with the message that “war is madness.”

Referring to Ukraine as “that martyred country,” Francis called for a cessation of violence, the establishment of humanitarian corridors and a return to negotiations.

“In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing. This is not just a military operation, but a war that sows death, destruction and misery,” he said in his traditional Sunday blessing.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pope-francis-dispatches-2-cardinals-to-ukraine/ar-AAUGvAo

That's over 24billion Russian Rubles!

Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth at least 140 million euros ($207 million) from five high-profile Russians who have been placed on an EU sanctions list following Moscow's attack on Ukraine.

The luxury properties were sequestered in some of Italy's most prestigious retail estate locations — the island of Sardinia, by Lake Como and in Tuscany — while two superyachts were seized at their moorings in northern ports.

A police source said a villa owned by billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, and a villa on Lake Como owned by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev, had both been seized.

In addition, sources confirmed that yachts belonging to Russia's richest man, Alexey Mordashov and Gennady Timchenko, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were impounded overnight in the northern Italian ports of Imperia and Sanremo.

Russian oligarchs are believed to have bought numerous villas in choice Italian locations over the past 20 years.

Sources said more assets were expected to be seized in coming days as Western states implemented sanctions to try to force Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.

Italian banks were instructed by the Bank of Italy's financial intelligence division on Friday to urgently let it know of all measures taken to freeze the assets of people and entities placed on the EU list.

Uzbekistan-born metals and telecoms tycoon Mr Usmanov is well known in Italy for owning multiple properties on Sardinia, while Italian media say Mr Mordashov owns a villa worth some 66 million euros on the same island.

Taking into account the assets of his whole family, Forbes magazine estimates that Mr Mordashov had an estimated net worth of US$29.1 billion ($39.46 billion) before sanctions hit.

His 65-metre yacht, Lady M, had a price tag of 65 million euros, while Mr Timchenko's boat, Lena, was worth some 50 million euros, a police source said.

Mr Timchenko, who made a fortune in oil trading, has been described by Mr Putin as one of his closest associates.

Mr Soloviev reportedly complained on Russian television when he found out last month that he risked losing his Italian villa.

"Suddenly someone makes a decision that this journalist is now on the list of sanctions. And right away it affects your real estate. Wait a minute. But you told us that Europe has sacred property rights," The Daily Beast quoted him saying.



https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-06/italian-police-seize-oligarch-assets-russia-ukraine/100886456

biden