Talking Points: Ukraine - April 5, 2023. Topics include Ukrainian Air Defense, Russian abuse of Ukrainian POWs, and life under Russian occupation
Edited by Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
Photo credit: Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
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● The Armed Forces of Ukraine are grateful to Poland and Slovakia for providing MiG-29 fighters. These transfers will allow for the strengthening of the Air Force's ability to perform combat missions.
● The harsh reality is that the MiG-29 is no longer a modern combat aircraft, and Ukraine still has not received enough fighters to take control of the skies.
● While Ukraine has waited for aerial assistance, loitering munitions and bombs of the invading forces continue to be a severe threat to the cities and villages of Ukraine.
● The way to properly change the situation is to provide Ukraine with long-range air defense systems and modern F-16 combat aircraft. This will allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine to push the enemy aircraft away from Ukrainian borders.
● Western combat aircraft will guarantee Ukrainian pilots will gain air superiority by safely and effectively delivering targeted strikes, incapacitating enemy air defenses, and interrupting the already feeble Russian logistic operations. Air superiority in specific directions of the front will also help conduct the liberation and de-occupation process, avoiding bloody battles.
2. Russia's treatment of prisoners of war
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented dozens of gross violations against Ukrainian POWs that could qualify as war crimes.
● Fact: Systematic cases of torture, improper detention of prisoners of war, and denial of access to humanitarian missions for POWs were all documented against Russian enemy units in Ukraine.
● Fact: Russians often detain civilians as POWs together with the military.
● Fact: 15 mass executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war took place during the 13 months of the full-scale invasion.
● Fact: Putin’s war criminals committed unprecedented murder of Ukrainian POWs from the Azovstal at their prison in Olenivka.
● Fact: Russian barbarians do not shy away from filming the torture and executions of prisoners on camera and making the recordings available to the public. It is because of the Russian fetish for gore and torture that the story of the Hero of Ukraine, Oleksandr Matsiyevskyi, the Armed Forces of Ukraine soldier who shouted, “Glory to Ukraine!” before his murder became known.
● Fact: Ukraine is trying to release and rescue all its prisoners: military, and civilians.
● Fact: Ukraine strictly adheres to the norms of international humanitarian law regarding Russian prisoners of war. Recently, Ukraine mercifully and unilaterally transferred seriously wounded POWs back to their home in Russia.
3. Forced Russian citizenship in the temporarily occupied territories
● By making Ukrainians take Russian passports, the Kremlin regime is trying to prove that the Ukrainian population in the temporarily occupied territories has accepted their fate as slaves to Putin. The reality is different. Ukrainians are resisting the invaders, utilizing active and more hidden measures. People refuse to cooperate with the enemy occupiers while waiting for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to liberate them.
● From the perspective of the war criminals, a successful citizenship drive is one of the symbols of subjugation in the occupied territories.
● An aggressive, violent campaign of genocide and forced citizenship continues against Ukrainian citizens in the temporarily occupied areas. Without Russian citizenship, people under occupation are deprived of their human rights and are denied access to jobs, healthcare, and other social services.
● To Putin these Ukrainians are treated not as humans but as slaves. The Kremlin views these brave resisters as nothing more than a resource: it deports them, mobilizes them, forces them to vote, and speaks on their behalf without their consent.
● Ukraine does not and will not recognize the Russian citizenship imposed during the occupation and continues to consider those whose Ukrainian documents were seized or who were forced to renounce Ukrainian citizenship as citizens of Ukraine.
600 years of systematic brutalisation of the Russian people and control by a mix of lies, propoganda, and cheap state-controlled vodka is not overcome in an instant, and it shows in the atrocities that the brief period of Glasnost was not enough. Tsar Putin might as well be Ivan or Peter. Even his own people appeal to him as to a tsar, and expect Vladimir Vladimirovitch to sort out their problems, as their 'little father.' I've been a Russia watcher since my teens, having grown up in the knowledge that Armageddon could be four minutes away, and though all I have seen saddens me, it does not surprise me. I know Ukraine will win; has already won. But winning the peace and subduing the bear will be a harder task for the world community.