Ukrainians living under Russian occupation are coerced to vote for Putin
Yuras Karmanau and Emma Burrows – March 14, 2024
A couple walk past billboards which promote the upcoming presidential election with words in Russian: “Your voice is important” in a street in Luhansk, the capital of Russian-controlled Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday called on people in Ukraine’s occupied regions to vote, telling them and Russians that participation in the elections is “manifestation of patriotic feeling,” Presidential elections are scheduled in Russia for March 17. (AP Photo)A volunteer holds a flag reading “let’s go to the elections” promoting the upcoming presidential election in a street in Donetsk, the capital of Russian-controlled Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday called on people in Ukraine’s occupied regions to vote, telling them and Russians that participation in the elections is “manifestation of patriotic feeling,” Presidential elections are scheduled in Russia for March 17. (AP Photo)A woman walks past a billboard which promote the upcoming presidential election with words in Russian: “Together we are strong, we vote for Russia!” on a bus stop in Luhansk, the capital of Russian-controlled Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday called on people in Ukraine’s occupied regions to vote, telling them and Russians that participation in the elections is “manifestation of patriotic feeling,” Presidential elections are scheduled in Russia for March 17. (AP Photo)
Ukrainians living in regions illegally annexed by Russia are being coerced to vote in the presidential election of their wartime occupier, Vladimir Putin — an exercise denounced by Ukraine as an illegitimate effort by Moscow to tighten control over its neighbor.
Polls don’t open in Russia until Friday, but they are open in four annexed regions of Ukraine close to the front line, some of which are not fully in Putin’s control.
The election is taking place under highly distorted and restrictive conditions. Many Ukrainians fled these regions – or were deported by Russia – after Putin’s invasion two years ago, and there are reports of people being forced to vote at gunpoint. There are no international election observers in Ukraine.
The Russian government is prodding Ukrainians with billboards and posters to vote “for their president” and to “take part in the future of our country.” It is promoting the election with a “V” symbol in the colors of the Russian flag — a letter emblazoned on Russian tanks and a clear nod to Putin’s first name.
“ The elections are an extension of military occupation and of the war itself … rather than an exercise in the democratic franchise,” said Sam Greene, a director at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.
In addition to setting up polling stations, Russia has dispatched officials with ballot boxes to people’s homes, saying it is safer for them to vote on their doorsteps.
The Kremlin views the voting in occupied regions of Ukraine as a “test of loyalty” for civilians and local elites, said Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of Penta, a political think tank.
Polls are already open in Russian-occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. In Crimea, which was annexed from Ukraine by Putin in 2014, polls will open Friday.
In the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, said his city was a symbol of Russia’s “military nightmare” and of an “electoral process in ruins.” He said a woman “accompanied by two Chechen military men with machine guns” showed up at his neighbor’s apartment with a ballot box and made clear that voting was not optional.
There have been multiple reports of Russian-installed authorities forcing people to vote, and threatening to withhold medical care or other social benefits from those who do not. More than two dozen Ukrainians who refused to vote have been arrested, according to human rights activists.
Analysts say the Kremlin is eager for a high turnout — in Russia and the occupied regions of Ukraine — to signify control, silence dissent and present Putin as a legitimate leader. The Institute for the Study of War said it expects the Kremlin and Russia-installed officials in Ukraine to “fabricate” a high turnout.
The Ukrainian governor of the Zaporozhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, said that — based on publicly available lists — the Kremlin has brought more than half of the election officials and activists into the region from Russia.
The Russia-installed governor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said Thursday that turnout in early voting was “better than expected” and that lines were forming at polling stations.
In the eastern region of Luhansk, which has been partially occupied since 2014, some residents told The Associated Press that they were going to vote for Putin, although several said they had no idea who else was on the ballot.
“I will vote for Putin, because I don’t know anyone else,” said Veronica, a 30-year-old nurse.
Tatiana, a 20-year-old student, said of Putin: ”I trust him so much that other candidates are no longer suitable for me.”
The AP is not identifying them by their full names because of concerns for their safety.
In a video address on Thursday, Putin urged people in Ukraine’s occupied regions — and in Russia — to vote, telling them that “each of your votes is valuable and significant.”
It is unclear how many people live in the newly annexed regions of eastern Ukraine, where the Kremlin has been accused of resettling Russians. Britain’s Ministry of Defense estimated Wednesday that a third of the pre-war Ukrainian population remains, and analysts said the lack of transparency makes it easy to manipulate the vote.
In February, the Russia-installed governor of Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, Evgeny Balitsky, said in an interview that he personally ordered the deportation of pro-Ukrainian citizens, because “these were people who we could not convince and we have to deal with them more harshly.”
Balitsky said “a large number of families” were dropped off near the front line because some of them had insulted Russia’s flag, anthem and Putin.
In Mariupol, which was flattened by the Russian military early in the war, the population has dropped from just over 400,000 people to around 200,000. Half of the current population, according to Boychenko, the mayor, are not Ukrainian and include construction workers and laborers from remote Russian regions. The Kremlin, he said, is trying to repopulate Mariupol “to create a loyal majority out of poor settlers.”
At least 27 people have been arrested for refusing to vote in the occupied areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, according to Pavlo Lysianskyi of the Eastern Human Rights Group.
“The Kremlin is demonstratively increasing pressure on local residents,” Lysianskyi said.
Using coercion, Russia has successfully imposed its citizenship in Ukraine’s occupied territories
Lori Hinnant, Vasilisa Stepanenko, Samya Kullab and Hanna Arirova – March 15, 2024
An election commission official inspects the passport of a person who came to vote at a polling station, during a presidential election in Makiivka, Russian-controlled Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Friday, March 15, 2024. People in Moscow-controlled Ukrainian regions are voting in Russia’s presidential election, which is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule after he clamped down on dissent. (AP Photo)42-year-old Vyacheslav Ryabkov, an internally displaced person from Kozachi Laheri in the Kherson region of Ukraine, is pictured in Kolomyya, Ukraine on Feb. 13, 2024. Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, poses with some of her children at the IDP shelter in Kyiv, Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)50-year-old Natalia Zhyvohliad, a displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, is pictured standing outside her temporary modular house in Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivsk region on Feb. 13, 2024. Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)42-year-old Vyacheslav Ryabkov, an internally displaced person from Kozachi Laheri in the Kherson region of Ukraine, shows in Kolomyya on Feb. 13, 2024 the scars on his arms caused by Russian soldiers who cut him with a knife. Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, fries fish for her children at the IDP shelter in Kyiv, on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)42-year-old Vyacheslav Ryabkov, an internally displaced person from Kozachi Laheri in the Kherson region of Ukraine, shows in Kolomyya on Feb. 13, 2024 the scars on his stomach caused by Russian soldiers who cut him with a knife. Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)50-year-old Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, is pictured with her children, daughter-in-law and grandson in their temporary modular house in Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivsk region on Feb. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, fries fish for her children at the IDP shelter in Kyiv, on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — He and his parents were among the last in their village to take a Russian passport, but the pressure was becoming unbearable.
By his third beating at the hands of the Russian soldiers occupying Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vyacheslav Ryabkov caved. The soldiers broke two of his ribs, but his face was not bruised for his unsmiling passport photo, taken in September 2023.
In December, they caught the welder on his way home from work. Then one slammed his rifle butt down on Ryabkov’s face, smashing the bridge of his nose.
“Why don’t you fight for us? You already have a Russian passport,” they demanded. The beating continued as the 42-year-old fell unconscious.
“Let’s finish this off,” one soldier said. A friend ran for Ryabkov’s mother.
Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship ahead of electionsVladimir Putin has made certain he will win, an Associated Press investigation has found. But accepting a passport means that men living in occupied territory can be drafted to fight against the same Ukrainian army that is trying to free them.
A Russian passport is needed to prove property ownership and keep access to health care and retirement income. Refusal can result in losing custody of children, jail – or worse. A new Russian law stipulates that anyone in the occupied territories who does not have a Russian passport by July 1 is subject to imprisonment as a “foreign citizen.”
But Russia also offers incentives: a stipend to leave the occupied territory and move to Russia, humanitarian aid, pensions for retirees, and money for parents of newborns – with Russian birth certificates.
Every passport and birth certificate issued makes it harder for Ukraine to reclaim its lost land and children, and each new citizen allows Russia to claim a right – however falsely – to defend its own people against a hostile neighbor.
The AP investigation found that the Russian government has seized at least 1,785 homes and businesses in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions alone. Ukraine’s Crimean leadership in exile reported on Feb. 25 that of 694 soldiers reported dead in recent fighting for Russia, 525 were likely Ukrainian citizens who had taken Russian passports since the annexation.
AP spoke about the system to impose Russian citizenship in occupied territories to more than a dozen people from the regions, along with the activists helping them to escape and government officials trying to cope with what has become a bureaucratic and psychological nightmare for many.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said “almost 100% … of the whole population who still live on temporary occupied territories of Ukraine” now have Russian passports.
Under international law dating to 1907, it is forbidden to force people “to swear allegiance to the hostile Power.” But when Ukrainians apply for a Russian passport, they must submit biometric data and cell phone information and swear an oath of loyalty.
“People in occupied territories, these are the first soldiers to fight against Ukraine,” said Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer who helped Ukraine bring a war crimes case against Putin before the International Criminal Court. “For them, it’s logical not to waste Russian people, just to use Ukrainians.”
CHANGING THE LAW
The combination of force and enticement when it comes to Russian passports dates to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian citizenship was automatically given to permanent residents of Crimea and anyone who refused lost rights to jobs, health care and property.
Nine months into the Russian occupation of the peninsula, 1.5 million Russian passports had been issued there, according to statistics issued by the Russian government in 2015. But Ukrainians say it was still possible to function without one for years afterward.
Beginning in May 2022, Russia passed a series of laws to make it easier to obtain passports for Ukrainians, mostly by lifting the usual residency and income requirements. In April 2023 came the punishment: Anyone in the occupied territories who did not accept Russian citizenship would be considered stateless and required to register with Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry.
Russian officials threatened to withhold access to medical care for those without a Russian passport, and said one was needed to prove property ownership. Hundreds of properties deemed “abandoned” were seized by the Russian government.
“You can see it in the passport stamps: If someone got their passport in August 2022 or earlier, they are most certainly pro-Russian. If a passport was issued after that time – it was most certainly forced,” said Oleksandr Rozum, a lawyer who left the occupied city of Berdyansk and now handles the bureaucratic gray zone for Ukrainians under occupation who ask for his help, including property records, birth and death certificates and divorces.
The situation is different depending on the whims of the Russian officials in charge of a particular area, according to interviews with Ukrainians and a look at the Telegram social media accounts set up by occupation officials.
In an interview posted recently, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed governor in Zaporizhzhia, said anyone who opposed the occupation was subject to expulsion. “We understood that these people could not be won over and that they would have to be dealt with even more harshly in the future,” he said. Balitsky then alluded to making “some extremely harsh decisions that I will not talk about.”
Even children are forced to take Russian passports.
A decree signed Jan. 4 by Putin allows for the fast-tracking of citizenship for Ukrainian orphans and those “without parental care,” who include children whose parents were detained in the occupied territories. Almost 20,000 Ukrainian children have disappeared into Russia or Russian-held territories, according to the Ukrainian government, where they can be given passports and be adopted as Russian citizens.
“It’s about eradication of identity,” said Rashevska, the lawyer involved in the war crimes case.
Natalia Zhyvohliad, a mother of nine from a suburb of Berdyansk, had a good idea of what was in store for her children if she stayed.
Zhyvohliad said about half her town of 3,500 people left soon after for Ukrainian-held lands, some voluntarily and some deported through the frontlines on a 40-kilometer (25-mile) walk. Others welcomed the occupation: Her goddaughter eagerly took Russian citizenship, as did some of her neighbors.
But she said plenty of people were like her – those the Russians derisively call “waiters”: People waiting for a Ukrainian liberation. She kept her younger children, who range in age from 7 to 18, home from school and did her best to teach them in Ukrainian. But then someone snitched, and she was forced to send them to the Russian school.
At all hours, she said, soldiers would pound on her door and ask why she didn’t have a passport yet. One friend gave in because she needed medicine for a chronic illness. Zhyvohliad held out through the summer, not quite believing the threats to deport her and send her brood to an orphanage in Russia or to dig trenches.
Then last fall, the school headmaster forced her 17-year-old and 18-year-old sons to register for the draft and ordered them to apply for passports in the meantime. Their alternative, the principal said, was to explain themselves to Russia’s internal security services.
By the end of 2023, at least 30,000 Crimean men had been conscripted to serve in the Russian military since the peninsula was annexed, according to a UN report. It was clear to Zhyvohliad what her boys risked.
With tears in her eyes and trembling legs, she went to the passport office.
“I kept a Ukrainian flag during the occupation,” she said. “How could I apply for this nasty thing?”
She hoped to use it just once — at the last Russian checkpoint before the crossing into Ukrainian-held territory.
When Zhyvohliad reached what is known as the filtration point at Novoazovsk, the Russians separated her and her two oldest boys from the rest of the children. They had to sign an agreement to pass a lie detector test. Then Zhyvohliad was pulled aside alone.
For 40 minutes, they went through her phone, took fingerprints and photos and questioned her, but they ultimately let her through. The children were waiting for her on the other side. She misses her home but doesn’t regret leaving.
“I waited until the last moment to be liberated,” she said. “But this thing with my kids possibly being drafted was the last straw.”
WEAPONIZING HEALTH CARE
Often the life-or-death decision is more immediate.
Russian occupation officials have said the day is coming soon when only those with Russian passports and the all-important national health insurance will be able to access care. For some, it’s already here.
The international organization Physicians for Human Rights documented at least 15 cases of people being denied vital medical care in occupied territories between February 2023 and August 2023 because they lacked a Russian passport. Some hospitals even featured a passport desk to speed the process for desperate patients. One hospital in Zaporizhzhia oblast was ordered to close because the medical staff refused to accept Russian citizenship.
Alexander Dudka, the Russian-appointed head of the village of Lazurne in the Kherson region, first threatened to withhold humanitarian aid from residents without Russian citizenship. In August, he added medicine to the list of things the “waiters” would no longer have access to.
Residents, he said in the video on the village Telegram channel, “must respect the country that ensures their safety and which is now helping them live.”
As of Jan. 1, anyone needing medical care in the occupied region must show proof they have mandatory national health insurance, which in turn is only available to Russian citizens.
Last year, “if you weren’t scared or if you weren’t coerced there were places where you could still get medical care,” said Uliana Poltavets, a PHR researcher. “Now it is impossible.”
Dina Urich, who arranges the escapes from occupied territory with the aid group Helping to Leave, said about 400 requests come in each month, but they only have the money and staff for 40 evacuations. Priority goes to those who need urgent medical care, she said. And Russian soldiers at the last checkpoints have started turning back people without the Russian passports.
“You have people constantly dying while waiting for evacuation due to a lack of health care,” she said. ““People will stay there, people will die, people will experience psychological and physical pressure, that is, some will simply die of torture and persecution, while others will live in constant fear.”
IMPORTING LOYALTY
Along with turning Ukrainians into Russians throughout the occupied territories, the Russian government is bringing in its own people. It is offering rock bottom mortgage rates for anyone from Russia who wants to move there, replacing the Ukrainian doctors, nurses, teachers, police and municipal workers who are now gone.
Half of Zhyvohliad’s village left, either at the start of the war when things looked dark for the Kherson region or after being deported across the frontline by occupation officials. The school principal’s empty home was taken over by a Russian-appointed replacement.
Artillery and airstrikes damaged thousands of homes in the port city of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian forces for months before falling under their control. Most of the residents fled into Ukrainian-held territory or deep inside Russia. Russians often take over the property.
Russia also offered “residential certificates” and a 100,000 ruble ($1,000) stipend to Ukrainians willing to accept citizenship and live in Russia. For many people tired of listening to the daily sounds of battle and afraid of what the future might bring, it looked like a good option.
This again follows Russia’s actions after the annexation of Crimea: By populating occupied regions with Russian residents, Russia increasingly cements its hold on territories it has seized by force in what many Ukrainians describe as ethnic cleansing.
The process is only accelerating. After capturing the town of Adviivka last month, Russia swooped in with the passports in a matter of days.
The neighboring Kherson town of Oleshky essentially emptied after the flooding caused by the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam. The housing stipend in Russia looked fabulous by comparison to the shelling and rising waters, said Rima Yaremenko.
She didn’t take it, instead making her way through Russia to Latvia and then to Poland. But she believes the Russians took the opportunity to drive the “waiters” from Oleshky.
“Maybe they wanted to empty the city,” she said. “They occupied it, maybe they thought it would be theirs forever.”
Ryabkov said he was offered the housing stipend when he filled out his passport paperwork but turned it down. He knows plenty of people who accepted though.
By the time the Russian soldiers caught Ryabkov in the street, in December, everyone in his village was either gone or had Russian citizenship. When his mother arrived, he was barely recognizable beneath all the blood and the Russian guns were trained on him. She flung herself over his body.
“Shoot him through me,” she dared them.
They couldn’t bring themselves to shoot an elderly woman, and she eventually dragged him home. They started preparations to leave the next day.
It took time, but they made it out using the Russian passports.
“When I saw our yellow and blue flag, I started to cry,” he said. “I wanted to burn the Russian passport, destroy it, trample it.”
Hinnant reported from Paris. AP journalists Illia Novikov and Susie Blann contributed to this report.
Russia’s war machine is trying to turn Ukrainian teenagers into soldiers
Ivana Kottasová, Olga Voitovych and Svitlana Vlasova – March 15, 2024
Russian forces deported Bohdan Yermokhin from the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the spring of 2022, flew him to Moscow on a government plane and placed him into a foster family. He was sent to a patriotic camp near the capital where flag-waving staff praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and tried to teach him nationalistic songs.
The Ukrainian teenager was given a Russian passport and sent to a Russian school. And then, in the fall of 2023, not long before his 18th birthday, he received a summons from a Russian military recruitment office.
Yermokhin, who’s now back in Ukraine and recovering from his ordeal in Kyiv, told CNN he believed this was the last step in Russia’s attempt to bully him into submission – a bid to sign him up as a soldier to fight against his own people.
“(I was told that) Ukraine was losing, that children were used for organ donations there, and that I would be sent to war right away. I told them that if I was sent to the war, at least I would fight for my own country, not for them,” he said.
Yermokhin was part of a group of children known as the “Mariupol 31,” who were taken to Russia. Ukrainian authorities estimate that 20,000 children have been forcibly transported to Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022. More than 2,100 children remain missing, according to official statistics, but the government says the real number could be much higher.
Bohdan Yermokhin, 18, in central Kyiv. – Ivana Kottasova/CNN
Last March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, for their alleged role in abducting and deporting Ukrainian children. Russia has publicly acknowledged the transfer of Ukrainian children without guardians, despite some having guardians or parents.
Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said his office was convinced that Russia’s efforts to turn Ukrainian teenagers deported to Russia – or living in occupied areas of the east – into soldiers were part of a wider drive by Putin to erase the Ukrainian identity. It is also an opportunity for Moscow to replenish its forces on the front lines.
“It’s not theoretical,” he said. “We now have examples of forcible mobilization of Ukrainian people. All Ukrainian teenagers held in Russia, when they turn 18, they are put on a (recruitment) list of Russian military,” told CNN.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, it is illegal under the Geneva Conventions for an occupying power to compel or pressure the local population to serve in its armed forces. Human Rights Watch has said Russia is committing a war crime by doing so.
But Lubinets told CNN that Ukrainian authorities have seen Russian officials do just that in occupied areas, compelling Ukrainians to serve. The conscription efforts start with the opening of regional offices for various Russian government departments, including health and social services.
“Then comes education. All schools must use new books where the message is that Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation never existed and that Ukrainian children have always been Russian children,” Lubinets told CNN.
“The next step is forcing everyone to take Russian passports. If you don’t, you can’t access any services, you can’t get medical care in hospitals, for example… and the next step is mobilization. All men in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are put in a special recruitment database for the Russian military.”
Yermokhin said he went through the entire process described by Lubinets — although he said the Russians didn’t seem very consistent at times.
“I was always told that I was from Russia and that I was born in Russia, that there is no Ukraine, and that it simply did not exist, that Mariupol was Russia. But in my Russian passport, my place of birth was listed as ‘Ukraine, the city of Mariupol,’” he said, smirking.
Lvova-Belova herself confirmed that Yermokhin received a Russian passport and military summons. In a statement posted on her Telegram channel in November she said that the summons was not unusual, because “all citizens of Russia receive” it. She said that since Yermokhin was still a student, he would be able to defer his military service until after finishing his education.
‘We are losing these children’
Many of the children deported to Russia came from socially vulnerable Ukrainian families. Some had been orphaned or were placed in foster homes when their birth parents became unable to care for them.
It’s these children that Mykola Kuleba is most worried about. He heads Save Ukraine, a Kyiv-based non-governmental organization that specializes in bringing deported children back to Ukraine.
“We are losing these children. Many of them will never come back because they are growing up with this poison, with this horrible propaganda, they are very vulnerable to it,” he said.
Yermokhin said he saw this firsthand. He spent years living with foster families and in group homes after losing his parents as a small child and was in a boarding school in Mariupol when Russian troops took over the city in May 2022.
“Many of us were abandoned by our guardians, abandoned by foster parents during the war… and then the Russians come in and they act in this hypocritical way, offering warmth and pretending that they care, and these children see this and think, well, this is better than it was there (in Ukraine),” Yermokhin said.
He said this happened to Filip, his best friend from Mariupol, who was reportedly adopted by Lvova-Belova. “His foster parents abandoned him in Mariupol during the war and he hadn’t seen any warmth since his (birth) mother died. Now he has it… but I want him to know that we are waiting for him here.”
“Out of the four of us mates from Mariupol, three are now here (in Ukraine) and we are waiting for him,” he added.
The office of Lvova-Belova did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, in a statement posted to her Telegram channel in November 2022, Lvova-Belova recalled adopting a teenage boy called Filip from Mariupol.
“If you look at history, Russians have done this (before), they also took children out of Chechnya and now these children (now adults) are fighting for them,” Yermohkin said, referring to Russia’s wars to reclaim the breakaway republic of Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Kuleba said there is no doubt that the deportations are part of a wider strategy. “It’s a Russian strategy to turn Ukrainian children into Russian children and militarize them. They are kidnapping children, and they are erasing their identity, because they want to destroy the Ukrainian nation,” he said.
Singing the Russian anthem, wearing Russian uniform
Sixteen-year-old Artem’s experience is eerily similar to that of Yermokhin. He too feels like he was being groomed to become a Russian soldier.
He was one of 13 children taken by Russian soldiers from a school in the Kharkiv region in 2022. “We had no choice whether to go or not. We were told we were being evacuated, boys, girls, and small children,” he said.
CNN spoke to Artem at a Kyiv center for children who have been returned from Russian captivity. His social worker was present during the interview but did not interfere in the conversation. Save Ukraine, which runs the center, asked CNN not to release Artem’s last name due to his age.
“The Russian soldiers asked us whether we were (supporting) Ukraine or Russia. And we did not answer anything. The younger children were crying, and we tried to calm them down. We were scared ourselves, but we had to comfort the small children,” he added.
Artem said the group was taken to several locations within occupied areas of Ukraine before being brought to the city of Luhansk, where they started school.
“All the lessons were in Russian, and we were always told that Ukrainians were killing Russians,” he said.
“It was clear they wanted us to turn against Ukraine, but we made a pact (with the other children from his school) that we would not give into the attempts to turn us into Russians and we did not speak Russian,” he said, adding that the smaller children in the group were more at risk of being influenced by the propaganda and were often kept away from the older Ukrainian kids.
“We went to classes every day and were told to sing the Russian anthem. We tried to stand back and pretended to sing, but we did not sing,” he added.
The worst part, Artem said, was the uniform.
He said he and the other older children from the cohort were made to wear a uniform that was very similar to the Russian military uniform and had the letter Z — a symbol of support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — on its sleeve.
“It was made of rough material, similar in color to the uniforms of the Russian military. We were given it and told that when there were holidays, we had to wear it,” he said. “I really thought that this was it and that they gave me the uniform because I might be sent to the Russian army. It was scary.”
Artem said it was impossible to refuse — the teachers threatened the children with severe punishment if they failed to wear the uniform. Yet even then, he felt horrible about putting it on – especially when he found out he was used by Russia for propaganda machine in nationalistic videos.
In one video, Artem is seen with a group of children receiving boxes of tangerines from uniformed members of the National Guard. The children are prompted by their teacher to say, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” and give a thumbs up.
CNN has seen several images of Artem wearing uniform-like clothing at the boarding school in the occupied city of Luhansk. He is shown wearing a camouflage top and trousers with a black armband that prominently features a white letter Z in two photographs, one of which shows him sitting in a classroom during a lesson.
In another, he is in what appears to be a full replica of a Russian military uniform during what the school described as a celebration of the Russian national holiday known as “Defender of the Fatherland Day.” All the photographs were published by the school and are still publicly accessible.
“When I saw myself in the uniform in photos and videos on the Internet, I thought for myself that I was a traitor and that I betrayed Ukraine, I swapped Ukraine for Russia… even though I knew I was forced to do it,” he said.
Ultimately, both Artem and Yermokhin are among the lucky ones – they have managed to return to Ukraine.
Artem said he got hold of a cell phone and was able to reach his mother, who had spent six months not knowing what had happened to him. She was able to locate him and get him back home with the help of Save Ukraine.
Yermokhin tried to escape Russia twice, once through Belarus and once through occupied Crimea, but was caught and returned to Moscow on both occasions.
The Ukrainian authorities and his lawyer had been trying to get him out of Russia for some time before he received his Russian military summons, but those attempts were unsuccessful. He was only allowed by Russia to return to Ukraine upon his 18th birthday.
Ukrainian authorities do not reveal the details of negotiations that lead to the return of Ukrainian children. They said a number of international organizations and third countries, including Qatar, were involved in Yermokhin’s repatriation.
Thousands of Ukrainian children remain in Russia and, according to Save Ukraine, some of them have been enrolled in military and naval academies across the country. The charity says it has been able to return 251 children to Ukraine so far and is helping them to readjust.
Every Monday for more than a year, Yermokhin recalled, he was expected to sing the Russian anthem during a flag-raising ceremony at his school. He tried to avoid it but, when forced to attend, found a way to avoid listening to the anthem and the nationalistic lecture that followed.
“There is such a thing as headphones,” he said. “You put them on and sit there, and no one sees what you’re doing.”
Looking back at his experience, Yermokhin said he might not have realized at the time how much pressure he was under. “They tried to break me,” he said. “Thinking of it all now, I am shocked that I got through it.”
GOP nominee to run North Carolina public schools called for violence against Democrats, including executing Obama and Biden
Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck – March 14, 2024
From Michele Morrow/Facebook
The Republican nominee for superintendent overseeing North Carolina’s public schools and its $11 billion budget has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats.
Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who last week upset the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina’s Republican primary, expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden.
In other comments on social media between 2019 and 2021 reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Morrow made disturbing suggestions about executing prominent Democrats for treason, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other prominent people such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.
“I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” she wrote in a tweet from May 2020, responding to a user sharing a conspiracy theory who suggested sending Obama to prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”
In another post in May 2020, she responded to a fake Time Magazine cover that featured art of Obama in an electric chair asking if he should be executed.
“Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica,” she wrote.
CNN reached out to Morrow and her campaign multiple times but did not receive a response.
From activist to candidate
Last Tuesday, Morrow defeated Catherine Truitt, the incumbent North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, in the Republican primary. Morrow, a registered nurse and grassroots activist who homeschooled her children, ran on a platform of supporting parental rights and opposing critical race theory.
As superintendent, Morrow would oversee the state’s public school system and help set educational priorities, manage the school system’s budgets, and work with the state’s Board of Education to set and implement curriculum standards. Her website lists endorsements by “conservative school boards” but remains light on changes she’d make if elected.
In a campaign speech in February, Morrow advocated for a constitutional amendment to abolish the state Board of Education, which sets policies and procedures for public schools in the state. Doing away with the board would put direct control over the state’s education agenda under the superintendent and the state legislature, which is currently controlled by Republicans.
“I’d like to see a constitutional amendment to get rid of the state Board of Education,”she said. “If the superintendent is elected and works under the legislature – knowing that they’re accountable to the legislature to oversee the DPI and to oversee and have impact into the superintendents in the 115 districts, I think we would be so much better off because you don’t have all these extra people right in mix.”
Morrow has espoused a wide range of extreme views on social media in recent years. Many of her past extreme comments were made on her now-dormant personal Twitter account — which is separate from her campaign account.
Morrow also promoted QAnon slogans and tweeted that the actor Jim Carrey was “… likely searching for adrenochrome” – a reference to a conspiracy theory shared by QAnon believers that celebrities harvest and drink the blood of children to prolong their own lives. Media Matters, a left-leaning publication, was first to report the QAnon tweets.
All together, Morrow tweeted “WWG1WGA” – the slogan that stands for “where we go one, we go all” and is commonly associated with the QAnon conspiracy – more than seven times in 2020.
Central to QAnon lore is the notion of the “Storm,” a belief there will be a day when thousands will purportedly be arrested, subjected to military tribunals, and face mass executions for their alleged crimes, with Donald Trump leading efforts to dismantle them alongside other QAnon “patriots.”
Violent fantasies about executing Democrats
Morrow’s post about publicly executing Obama was just one of numerous she has made espousing carrying out violent fantasies against Democrats.
On Twitter, the platform now known as X, and on the now-defunct conservative Twitter alternative, Parler, Morrow used the hashtag “#DeathtoTraitors” a combined 12 times – usually in relation to prominent Democrats.
In another post from July 2019, Morrow targeted Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and other Democrats, suggesting their impending death for unspecified “treason.”
“@IlhanMN and her other law-hating Dems must be getting a little nervous. Are they just realizing the punishment for treason is death?!?” Morrow wrote.
In a post on Parler, Morrow used the hashtag #deathtotraitors in discussing the Democratic governors of North Carolina and New York, Cooper and Cuomo. Morrow publicized her Parler handle in a tweet and CNN found the deleted Parler posts on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
“Our Communist sympathizer, Comrade Cooper, has the same plans for NC!Expose them NOW!Can we we see the CCP list, @SecPompeo??? #PrisonTimeforFederalCrimes #DeathToTraitors #FreeOurCitizens,” Morrow wrote in 2020, discussing restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In other posts on Parler, Morrow shared posts from other users and a QAnon account about locking up Democrats at Guantanamo Bay and prisons.
Morrow’s ire also went beyond Democrats, including one post in December 2020 calling for putting Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia in prison after he certified Georgia’s results for Joe Biden in that year’s presidential election.
Shared conspiracies and made anti-Muslim comments
In other comments, Morrow repeatedlyshared the false claim that Obama was Muslim, called Islam evil, and expressed belief in a conspiracy theory that tens of thousands of Chinese troops were stationed in Canada to invade the United States to help Joe Biden become president.
“Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers are already in Canada and probably Mexico waiting for orders to invade,” she wrote on January 8, 2021.
In another post from September 2019, Morrow said that Barack Obama (referred to as B.O.) was a puppet for the “Deep State” and the “Muslim movement” and suggested he pay the highest penalty for his alleged crimes.
“B.O. was a puppet for the Deep State and the Muslim movement to destroy our Constitutional Republic. We cannot give up until ALL the guilty pay the highest penalty for their crimes. We will lose our country #SAVEOURNATION #JusticeForAll #TraitorsMustPay
“The DEEP STATE globalists and Muslim extremists, intent on destroying America, placed Omar and MANY others into our govt. #WakeUpAmerica #IslamIsEvil #ToleranceIsDeadly,” she wrote in January 2020.
In one post, Morrow said Muslims should be banned from elected office in the United States and said Rep. Omar, who came to the United States as a refugee, should, “head back to Somalia.”
After Trump ballot ruling, critics say Supreme Court is selectively invoking conservative originalist approach
Lawrence Hurley – March 10, 2024
WASHINGTON — Two years ago, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch excoriated his conservative colleagues for ignoring history and the original understanding of the law in ruling for Oklahoma in a dispute over Native American tribal authority.
The 5-4 ruling against tribes “comes as if by oracle, without any sense of the history … and unattached to any colorable legal authority,” Gorsuch wrote in his dissenting opinion.
His complaint sounds a lot like the chorus of criticism from legal scholars on the left and right directed at the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that said states had no authority to kick former President Donal Trump off the presidential ballot.
For critics, it was just another example of how the conservative justices appear to selectively apply the legal methodology known as originalism, which focuses on the original meaning of the law at the time it was written.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, was unanimous in ruling that Section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment cannot be enforced by states, but critics were quick to point out the absence of originalist arguments.
“What struck me is how much attention was devoted to questions of original meaning in the briefing and at oral argument and how cursory and frankly unpersuasive the discussion of the history was in the published opinion,” said Evan Bernick, a professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law.
J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal judge once considered as a potential Supreme Court nominee, said the decision was “a textbook example of judicial activism” that contained little originalist analysis.
“This is an abomination in every respect,” he added. “That’s just one of many respects.”
The ruling itself was unsigned and none of the conservative justices — including Gorsuch — wrote separately to explain their views.
This came as a disappointment to some self-professed originalists, who believe that Section 3 as written and understood at the time is self-executing, meaning that there is no requirement that legislation be enacted for it to be applied.
The legal argument that Trump could be barred from the ballot had been promoted in part by two conservative legal scholars, William Baude and Michael Paulsen, who wrote a law review article on the subject.
“In my view, the reasoning in the opinion is a disaster,” wrote Michael Rappaport, who leads the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism at the University of San Diego School of Law. He added that the ruling featured a “nonoriginalist, made-up argument.”
Rappaport argued in an email that the court is not an originalist court, but rather “one that sometimes decides things based on originalism.”
Defenders of the ruling have tended to focus on the outcome, which is aimed at preventing a cascade of similar actions throwing presidential candidates off the ballot in other states, rather than the methodology.
An adherence to originalism has long been favored in conservative legal circles, and Supreme Court nominees often claim to espouse it when appearing at their Senate confirmation hearings. But the conservative justices differ on the extent to which they apply it, if at all. Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas are probably the most outspoken proponents among the current justices.
“Suppose originalism does lead to a result you happen to dislike in this or that case. So what?” Gorsuch wrote in his 2019 book “A Republic if You Can Keep It.”
At a 2020 event, Thomas said he aims to ensure the law makes sense to the average American.
“I think we are obligated when we interpret the people’s Constitution to make sense of it and be plainspoken,” he said. “I don’t think it’s that complicated.”
Liberal critics of the conservative majority have long taken aim at the court for ignoring originalist arguments that might lead to liberal outcomes or selectively applying them to reach conservative results.
They point in part to the ruling in 2022 that restricted abortion rights by overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and last year’s ruling that struck down affirmative action programs in college admission as examples.
In an attempt to engage with originalists, lawyers presented arguments to counter the idea that abortion rights and race-conscious policies have no historical underpinnings in the law.
In both cases, “when text and history became inconvenient, a conservative majority was willing to scuttle” long-standing precedents, said Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.
The court’s 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights by finding for the first time that there is a right to bear arms outside the home has also attracted scrutiny for its analysis of the history of gun rights.
With tongue in cheek, Michael Smith, a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law, has taken the criticism to a new level in a soon-to-be-published law review article, “Is Originalism Bulls—?”
His conclusion? “Yes. You’re welcome.”
Smith said in an interview he was hoping to draw attention to how the court can pick and choose what methodology to use in a particular case, which the justices can then say leads inevitably to a specific outcome.
“I think those proclamations are at best bulls—,” he said. “At worst, it could be an outright lie.”
‘A lonely radio nerd. A poet. Vladimir Putin’s crackdown sweeps up ordinary Russians
Dasha Litvinova – March 8, 2024
Artyom Kamardin, left, and Yegor Shtovba, right, stand behind a glass in a cage in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023. Artyom Kamardin was given a 7-year prison sentence Thursday for reciting verses against Russia’s war in Ukraine, a tough punishment that comes during a relentless Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Yegor Shtovba, who participated in the event and recited Kamardin’s verses, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years on the same charges. (AP Photo, File)Viktoria Petrova is escorted by police for a hearing in a court in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 3, 2023. Petrova was sentenced to involuntary treatment in a psychiatric facility after she condemned Russian officials for sending troops into Ukraine on social media. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown. (AP Photo)Police officers detain a woman during a protest in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Ulan-Ude, the regional capital of Buryatia, a region near the Russia-Mongolia border, Russia, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)Police officers detains a demonstrator with a poster that reads: “Freedom for Alexei Navalny,” in Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow on Sunday, June 4, 2023. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)Police detain a man who wants to lay flowers paying last respects to Alexei Navalny at a large boulder from the Solovetsky islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established, in St. Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)Riot police detain a demonstrator during a protest against mobilization in Moscow on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)Police detain people protesting Russia’s attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March. 1, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File) Russian policemen detain a demonstrator protesting mobilization in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A lonely man jailed for criticizing the government on his ham radio. A poet assaulted by police after he recited a poem objecting to Russia’s war in Ukraine. A low-profile woman committed to a psychiatric facility for condemning the invasion on social media.
President Vladimir Putin’s 24 years in power are almost certain to be extended six more by this month’s presidential election. That leadership has transformed Russia. A country that tolerated some dissent is now one that ruthlessly suppresses it.
Along with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in a crackdown reminiscent of the Soviet era. Some human rights advocates compare the scale of the clampdown to the repression from the 1960s to the 1980s, when dissidents were prosecuted for “anti-Soviet propaganda.”
THREE YEARS IN PRISON FOR A RADIO AMATEUR
Vladimir Rumyantsev led a lonely life. The 63-year-old worked stoking the furnace at a wood-processing plant in Vologda, a city about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Moscow. He had no family apart from an estranged brother.
To entertain himself, he bought a couple of radio transmitters online and started broadcasting audiobooks and radio plays that he had liked, along with YouTube videos and podcasts by journalists critical of the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine. He also shared posts on his social network page in which independent media and bloggers talked about Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Rumyantsev did not intend to reach a radio audience. According to his lawyer, Sergei Tikhonov, he listened on headphones in his own apartment.
In a letter from behind bars published by Russia’s prominent rights group OVD-Info, Rumyantsev said “tinkering with and improving” radios has been his hobby since Soviet times, and he decided to set up self-broadcasting as an alternative to Russia’s state TV, which was increasingly airing “patriotic hysteria.” To him, it seemed a better technological solution than Bluetooth speakers because the radio could reach everywhere in his apartment, he said in the letter.
But his social media activity eventually put him on the authorities’ radar, and they discovered his radio frequency. In July 2022, police arrested Rumyantsev, accusing him of “spreading knowingly false information” about the Russian army — a criminal charge authorities introduced shortly after invading Ukraine.
Rumyantsev rejected the charges and insisted on his constitutional right to freely collect and disseminate information, Tikhonov says. The law under which Rumyantsev was charged effectively criminalized any expression about the war that deviated from the Kremlin’s official narrative. In December 2022, he was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
Tikhonov visits Rumyantsev every so often in a penal colony about 200 kilometers away (125 miles) from Vologda and described him as “calm and resilient,” even though incarceration has taken its toll on his health.
He said Rumyantsev deliberately chose to speak out against the war and refuses to apply for parole as “it is unacceptable for him to admit guilt, even as a formality.”
Russian media reported on the case against Rumyantsev when he was in pretrial detention, and he started getting many letters of support, Tikhonov said. Some supporters put money in his prison account, while others have sent supplies — mostly food, but also books and personal hygiene items, according to the lawyer.
“In addition to making the man’s life easier, this (gave him) an understanding that he is not alone and there are many people who share the same values,” Tikhonov said.
ARREST AND VIOLENCE AFTER A POETRY RECITAL
Artyom Kamardin worked as an engineer, but poetry is his passion.
He was a regular at monthly recitals in the center of Moscow, near the monument to Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The recitals continued even after Russia invaded Ukraine. One was billed as an “anti-mobilization” recital several days after Putin announced a partial call-up into the army in September 2022.
Kamardin, 33, recited a poem condemning Russia-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine. The next day, police with a search warrant burst into the apartment he shared with his wife Alexandra Popova and another friend, and took the poet into custody.
Police beat Kamardin, Popova and their flatmate, and raped the poet, both his wife and his lawyer said. All three filed a formal complaint with the authorities, and the allegations were eventually investigated. The authorities concluded that police acted “within the law,” the Russian news outlet Sota reported, citing the lawyer without providing further details.
For the couple, the experience was so traumatic that they “still can’t openly talk to each other” about what happened, Popova said in an interview with The Associated Press.
In addition to Kamardin, police swept up two other poets who didn’t know him, nor each other. They charged all three with making calls undermining national security and inciting hatred. All three were convicted and sentenced to prison terms.
Kamardin got the longest — seven years.
“No one should be in prison for words, for poetry,” Popova said. She said she believes that her husband’s poem “insulted someone so much that they decided to scourge a defiant poet.”
The couple got married while Kamardin was in pretrial detention.
INVOLUNTARY TREATMENT IN A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL FOR WAR CRITICISM
Unlike dozens of other Russians convicted over speaking out against the war in Ukraine and handed prison terms, St. Petersburg resident Viktoria Petrova is spending her days in a psychiatric facility. In December, she was sentenced to six months of involuntary treatment over a social media post condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Her lawyer has said that doctors can keep Petrova there for as long as they want and extend the term indefinitely once the six months run out. So the ruling “can’t be considered good news,” Anastasia Pilipenko wrote in her blog on the messaging app Telegram.
Petrova was arrested in May 2022 and placed in pretrial detention over a post on Russian social network VK, in which she criticized Russian officials for what the Kremlin insists on calling “a special military operation” in Ukraine, the lawyer told Russian independent news site Mediazona.
In her Telegram blog, Pilipenko has described Petrova, 30, as “an ordinary girl” who “merely shared her thoughts on social media.”
“Ordinary life, ordinary gym, a cat. Ordinary job at an unremarkable office,” the lawyer wrote.
The court ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Petrova after other inmates of her pretrial detention center reported that she kept up her “antiwar propaganda,” Pilipenko said in an interview with a local news outlet. These evaluations are common but in a rare turn, Petrova was declared mentally incompetent.
The lawyer argued that it wasn’t true and her client’s words have been misconstrued, but to no avail — Petrova was committed to a psychiatric facility.
In November, Pilipenko reported abuse by facility staff, saying that they forced a strip search of the woman by male workers, pushed her around, strapped her to the hospital bed and injected her with medication that left her unable to to speak for two days.
“This should not happen to ‘political (prisoners),’ criminals, mentally ill people, healthy people — anyone,” Pilipenko wrote on Telegram. The facility didn’t comment on the allegations, but shortly after she spoke out about it, Pilipenko wrote, the abuse stopped.
Trump’s vaccine rhetoric sends chills through public health circles
Nathaniel Weixel – March 9, 2024
Public health advocates are watching in growing alarm as former President Trump increasingly embraces the anti-vaccine movement.
“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” Trump said in a recent campaign rally in Richmond, Va.
It’s a line Trump has repeated, and his campaign said he is only referring to school COVID-19 vaccine mandates — but that hasn’t eased fears that the GOP leader could accelerate already worrying trends of declining child vaccination.
Trump “is an important voice. He has a big platform. And he uses that platform, in this case, to do harm. Because he’s implying by saying that we shouldn’t mandate vaccines, vaccines are in some ways ineffective or unsafe,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The ironic part, Offit noted, is that the Trump administration kickstarted Operation Warp Speed, which helped drug companies use a relatively new technology to make two very effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.
Throughout the campaign, Trump has performed a complicated tap dance regarding COVID vaccines. He simultaneously wants to take credit for their speedy development but has also criticized their use and knocked his now former rivals for being too pro-vaccine.
In a post on Truth Social reacting to Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday, Trump again claimed credit for the COVID-19 shots.
“You’re welcome, Joe, nine month approval time vs. 12 years that it would have taken you!”
Every state and the District of Columbia requires children to get vaccinated against certain diseases before they start school, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox. A plan to withhold federal funding would have widespread impact.
“Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc. So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools,” former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock (Va.) wrote in response to his campaign threat on X, formerly Twitter.
Since the public health emergency ended last May, no state requires students to get the COVID-19 vaccine, while 21 states have laws specifically banning schools from requiring COVID-19 shots.
Trump’s campaign says his comments only apply to states that mandate COVID-19 vaccines — making it essentially an empty threat.
“If you actually listen to the entire section, and also if you’ve been following his speeches for the past year, he’s talking about COVID vaccines in addition to masks in the same breath. This isn’t anything new,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.
Experts say the politicization of vaccines has led to an increase in hesitancy and is sparking more outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles.
There have been measles outbreaks in 15 states this year, most recently in Florida, where state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo did not recommend parents vaccinate their children or keep unvaccinated students home from school as a precaution.
Instead, he sent a letter to parents advising them to make their own decisions about school attendance.
Ladapo was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2021 and has since aligned himself with anti-vaccine sentiments, primarily about the COVID-19 shots.
Ladapo told people not to get the most recent shot and has drawn sharp rebukes from the medical community — as well as federal health agencies — for claims that the shots alter human DNA, can potentially cause cancer, and are generally unsafe.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he worries that Trump is signaling he will empower more people like Ladapo if he wins reelection.
“I worry about any administration that doesn’t follow good evidence and good science, that they will put more and more people like them in their administration,” Benjamin said.
“We know that Trump had some extraordinarily competent people [in his first term]. But we also know that he had some extraordinarily incompetent people, and that in many situations, some of the really incompetent people carried the day because they aligned with his philosophy,” Benjamin added.
Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus of health politics at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the experience in Florida and the comments from Trump are part of a much broader Republican backlash against public health expertise and government mandates that can be traced to anti-COVID policies.
“It isn’t that he’s just going after these anti-vaccine votes,” Blendon said of Trump.
Trust in public health authorities has dropped precipitously among Republicans since 2021, and Blendon said Trump is a symbol of that. The anti-vaccine movement has never been associated with one particular political party, whereas the public health backlash is strongly Republican-centric.
“That’s made it very, very powerful,” Blendon said. “There are Republicans in the House and Senate, who when they’re not investigating public health, want to cut back the budget … so it has caught on within the Republican base very widely.”
Whether it’s anti-vaccine specifically or anti-public health more broadly, the sentiment is growing.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of kindergartners whose parents opted them out of school-required vaccinations rose to the highest level yet during the 2022-2023 school year.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic who is running for president as an independent, has gained a major platform to spread misinformation and widely debunked claims about vaccines.
He has falsely claimed vaccines cause autism, falsely declared the coronavirus shot is the world’s deadliest vaccine and questioned the safety of shots’ ingredients.
Offit, the vaccine expert, said he thinks public health officials could have done a better messaging job on the COVID-19 shots, and that by mandating vaccines they “inadvertently leaned into a Libertarian left hook.”
Still, Offit said he is concerned about the increasing anti-science rhetoric from politicians like Trump.
“I feel like we’re on the edge of a precipice here … you have the most contagious of the vaccine preventable diseases coming back to some extent, and with Donald Trump basically casting aspersions on vaccines, that’s only going to worsen.”
Orbán meeting offers preview of Trump’s 2nd-term strongman idealizations
Analysis by Stephen Collinson – March 8, 2024
Szilard Koszticsak/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/File
Victor Orban is taking his blueprint on dismantling democracy to Mar-a-Lago.
The Hungarian prime minister first won power through a democratic election, then proceeded to weaken the institutions of that democracy by eroding the legal system, firing civil servants, politicizing business, attacking the press and intimidating opposition parties and demagoguing migration.
Former President Donald Trump has left no doubt that he’d try something similar in the United States if he wins a second term – so the presumptive GOP nominee will presumably be eager to compare notes when he hosts Orbán in Florida on Friday.
The prime minister isn’t meeting Biden administration officials. (A Biden administration official told CNN’s Betsy Klein that no invitation for a meeting between the current US president and Hungarian leader was extended.) Instead, he’s choosing to meet the man he hopes will again be US president next year. The two men have a long history of mutual admiration. The fact that one of Trump’s first moves since becoming presumptive GOP nominee this week is to meet a European autocrat speaks volumes.
Trump sees Orbán as the kind of strongman – unencumbered by legal and political restraints – that he’d like to be. Orbán also frequently genuflects to Russian President Vladimir Putin – just like the former US president. Orbán supports Trump’s vow to end the war in Ukraine if he’s elected within 24 hours – a process that could happen only on Putin’s terms and reward his illegal invasion. Their relationship is also helped by the Hungarian leader’s frequent praise for Trump. He knows the way to the ex-president’s heart. At a rally in New Hampshire in January, Trump diverted from his regular stump speech to laud Orbán in a way that offered a chilling glimpse into his own intentions. “Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s good to have a strong man at the head of a country,” Trump reflected.
Orbán’s far-right populism, fierce anti-immigration rhetoric, Christian nationalism and hostility to LGBTQ rights has made him a popular ideological model for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” followers. He has spoken in the past at the Conservative Political Action Conference – an annual gathering of pro-Trump forces – and Hungary will host another edition of CPAC’s overseas conferences next month.
In many ways, Orbán pioneered a demagogic style of leadership that is identical to that of Trump long before the ex-reality star and property mogul went into politics. His country is a member of NATO and the European Union but, like Trump, he has often taken steps that cut against the interests of the western democracies. He has, for instance, long feuded with the EU over his anti-immigration policies and slowed the entry of Sweden into NATO, which finally took place this week.
Ahead of his meeting with the former president, Orbán endorsed Trump’s views on Ukraine, in what will have been music to Putin’s ears and will have added to alarm in Kyiv about what a second Trump term would mean. “It is not gambling but actually betting on the only sensible chance, that we in Hungary bet on the return of President Trump,” Orbán told an economic forum on Monday, Reuters reported. “The only chance of the world for a relatively fast peace deal is political change in the United States and this is linked to who is the president.”
Trump’s antipathy to sending more US aid to Ukraine had prompted House Republicans to block President Joe Biden’s latest $60 billion package and has led frontline soldiers fighting Russia to ration bullets. Trump is not even president, but he’s already influencing US policy in ways that help Putin.
Biden used the early portion of his State of the Union address on Thursday night to castigate Trump over his hostility to NATO allies and affinity with the Russian leader. “My predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want,’” Biden said, referring to a comment by Trump to the effect that if NATO states didn’t make military spending targets he wouldn’t defend them. “A former American president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.”
Biden, who is anchoring his reelection bid on a warning that Trump would destroy US democracy in a second term, was quick to seize on Orbán’s visit to Florida. In a statement, Biden’s campaign rebuked Trump for meeting “Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, notorious for eroding his own country’s democracy and cozying up to Vladimir Putin (sound familiar?)”
The juxtaposition of Biden using his State of the Union address on Thursday to vow to fight to preserve American and global democracy and Trump’s red carpet welcome for Orbán eloquently encapsulates the political and geopolitical crossroads that America’s presidential election represents.
Much of Europe is already recoiling in horror over the possibility of a second term for Trump. But in Budapest, at least, he’s seen as a kindred spirit and his return would be greeted with great satisfaction.
Trump praises ‘fantastic’ Viktor Orbán while hosting Hungarian autocrat at Mar-a-Lago for meeting and concert
Kristen Holmes and Andrew Millman – March 9, 2024
Emin Sansar/Anadolu/Getty Images
Donald Trump heaped praise on Viktor Orbán while hosting the Hungarian prime minister at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered for a concert at the Florida resort, as shown in a series of videos posted to Orbán’s Instagram account.
Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”
Trump called the visit “an honor” and seemed to reference the pair staying in contact after he left White House in 2021, saying they “kept in touch.”
The meeting and subsequent admiration underscore Trump’s history of embracing global strongmen – at times at the expense of more traditional US allies.
The former president and a small group of close advisers met with Orbán for roughly an hour Friday night, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, with one of the sources describing it as a “social meeting” with no agenda. A separate source called it “friendly.”
Trump, according to a readout from his campaign, met with Orbán “to discuss a wide range of issues affecting Hungary and the United States, including the paramount importance of strong and secure borders to protect the sovereignty of each nation.”
Orbán, a fourth source told CNN, sought the meeting with Trump and had been planning to be in the US separately.
Afterward, Trump took him to a tribute concert that was part of a “members only” event at the club, featuring The Beatles and Rolling Stones tribute bands, along with the Palm Beach Symphony.
In one clip posted to social media, Orbán can be seen at the concert – billed as “Orchestral Elegance Meets Rock Legends” – presenting former first lady Melania Trump with a large bouquet of flowers as the band played “Oh, Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison.
A Biden administration official confirmed to CNN that the White House did not extend an invitation to the authoritarian leader to meet with President Joe Biden, and Orbán did not request a White House meeting during his trip to the US this week.
Biden earlier in the day suggested the meeting between the Hungarian strongman and Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, was worrying.
Asked whether he was concerned about the Mar-a-Lago talks, Biden said: “If I’m not, you should be” – suggesting it was only natural for him to be alarmed by the meeting between Orbán and Trump.
Orbán’s far-right populism, fierce anti-immigration rhetoric, Christian nationalism and hostility to LGBTQ rights has made him a popular ideological model for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” followers. He has spoken in the past at the Conservative Political Action Conference – an annual gathering of pro-Trump forces – and Hungary will host another edition of CPAC’s overseas conferences next month.
The Biden administration has mostly declined to comment on Orbán’s meetings with Trump, but the president seized on the visit during remarks Friday evening in the crucial 2024 battleground of Pennsylvania.
“You know who he’s meeting with today, down in Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works – he’s looking for dictatorship,” Biden told the crowd gathered for what was his effectively his first rally of the 2024 general election campaign.
“That’s who he’s meeting with,” Biden added. “I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
This headline and story have been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Betsy Klein, Michael Williams and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
Russia’s presidential election is nearing. We already know who the winner will be
Rob Picheta – March 8, 2024
Russia is nearing a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s.
The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in occupied parts of Ukraine where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority.
But this is not a normal election; the poll is essentially a constitutional box-ticking exercise that carries no prospect of removing Putin from power.
The president’s dominance over the Russian electoral system has already been reinforced as the election looms. The country’s only anti-war candidate has been barred from standing, and Alexey Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia, died last month.
Here’s what you need to know about the election.
When and where will the election take place?
Voting will be held from Friday March 15 until Sunday March 17, the first Russian presidential election to take place over three days.
A second round of voting would take place three weeks later if no candidate gets more than half the vote, though it would be a major surprise if that were required. Russians are electing the position of president alone; the next legislative elections, which form the make-up of the Duma, are scheduled for 2026.
Early voting began late last month in certain hard-to-access areas, with approximately 70,000 people able to cast their ballots in remote areas of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District, according to state news agency TASS. The region makes up more than a third of Russia’s total territory but has only about 5% of its population.
Voting will take place over three days in March. – Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
Early voting in Zaporizhzhia, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia said it would annex in September 2022 in violation of international law, also began on February 25, TASS said.
Russia has already held regional votes and referenda in those occupied territories, an effort dismissed by the international community as a sham but which the Kremlin sees as central to its campaign of Russification.
How long has Putin been in power?
Putin signed a law in 2021 that allowed him to run for two more presidential terms, potentially extending his rule until 2036, after a referendum the previous year allowed him to reset the clock on his term limits.
This election will mark the start of the first of those two extra terms.
He has essentially been the country’s head of state for the entirety of the 21st century, rewriting the rules and conventions of Russia’s political system to extend and expand his powers.
That already makes him Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Putin’s previous efforts to stay in control included a 2008 constitutional amendment that extended presidential terms from four years to six, and a temporary job swap with his then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev the same year, that preceded a swift return to the presidency in 2012.
Who else is running?
Candidates in Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Central Election Commission (CEC), enabling Putin to run against a favorable field and reducing the potential for an opposition candidate to gain momentum.
The same is true this year. “Each candidate fields juxtaposing ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively they feed into Putin’s aim of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” wrote Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.
Nikolay Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to run a candidate in each election this century, but has not gained as much as a fifth of the vote share since Putin’s first presidential election.
Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running. Davankov is deputy chair of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party previously led by ultra-nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered to be reliably pro-Kremlin.
But there is notably no candidate who opposes Putin’s war in Ukraine; Boris Nadezhdin, previously the only anti-war figure in the field, was barred from standing by the CEC in February after the body claimed he had not received enough legitimate signatures nominating his candidacy.
In December, another independent candidate who openly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, citing alleged errors in her campaign group’s registration documents. Duntsova later called on people to support Nadezhdin’s candidacy.
Writing on social media in February, opposition activist Leonid Volkov dismissed the elections as a “circus,” saying they were meant to signal Putin’s overwhelming mass support. “You need to understand what the March ‘elections’ mean for Putin. They are a propaganda effort to spread hopelessness” among the electorate, Volkov said.
Are the elections fair?
Russia’s elections are neither free nor fair, and serve essentially as a formality to extend Putin’s term in power, according to independent bodies and observers both in and outside the country.
Putin’s successful campaigns have been in part the result of “preferential media treatment, numerous abuses of incumbency, and procedural irregularities during the vote count,” according to Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog.
Outside of election cycles, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine targets voters with occasionally hysterical pro-Putin material, and many news websites based outside Russia were blocked following the invasion of Ukraine, though more tech-savvy younger voters have grown accustomed to using VPNs to access them.
Protests are also tightly restricted, making the public expression of opposition a perilous and rare occurrence.
Ballot papers bearing Putin’s name are prepared ahead of the election. – Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP/Getty Images
Then, as elections come into view, genuine opposition candidates almost inevitably see their candidacies removed or find themselves prevented from seeking office, as Nadezhdin and Duntsova discovered during this cycle.
“Opposition politicians and activists are frequently targeted with fabricated criminal cases and other forms of administrative harassment designed to prevent their participation in the political process,” Freedom House noted in its most recent global report.
Is Putin popular in Russia?
Truly gauging popular opinion is notoriously difficult in Russia, where the few independent think tanks operate under strict surveillance and where, even in a legitimate survey, many Russians are fearful of criticizing the Kremlin.
But Putin undoubtedly has reaped the rewards of a political landscape tilted dramatically in his favor. The Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, reports Putin’s approval rating at over 80% – an eye-popping figure virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase compared to the three years before the invasion of Ukraine.
The invasion gave Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians, and even as Russia’s campaign stuttered over the course of 2023, the war retained widespread support.
National security is top of mind for Russians as the election approaches; Ukrainian strikes on Russian border regions have brought the war home to many people inside the country, but support for the invasion — euphemistically termed a “special military operation” by Russia’s leaders — remains high.
The Levada Center found at the end of 2023 that “increased inflation and rising food prices may have a lasting impact on the mood of Russians,” with the proportion of Russians cutting back on spending increasing.
But that is not to say Russians expect the election to change the direction of the country. Putin benefits heavily from apathy; most Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties in a traditional presidential election, and expressions of anger at the Kremlin are rare enough to keep much of the population disengaged from politics.
Putin’s former speechwriter, Abbas Gallyamov, told CNN last month that discontent against the president was increasing in Russia. Gallyamov said Putin is attempting to eliminate opposition leaders from society to at least ensure such discontent remains “unstructured,” “disorganized” and “leaderless” ahead of future elections.
How will Navalny’s death affect the election?
The timing of the death of Alexey Navalny – Putin’s most prominent critic – served to emphasize the control Russia’s leader exerts over his country’s politics.
In one of Navalny’s final court appearances before his death, he urged prison service workers to “vote against Putin.”
“I have a suggestion: to vote for any candidate other than Putin. In order to vote against Putin, you just need to vote for any other candidate,” he said on February 8.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexey Navalny, addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on February 28, 2024. – Johanna Geron/Reuters
His death has cast an ominous shadow over the campaign. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, urged the European Union to “not recognize the elections” in a passionate address to its Foreign Affairs Council a few days after she was widowed.
“Putin killed my husband exactly a month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For propaganda. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.
Thousands gathered for Navalny’s funeral in Moscow despite the threat of detention by Russian authorities.
Navalnaya has since urged Russian people to turn out at noon on the final day of the elections, March 17, as a show of protest. In a video posted on social media, Navalnaya told Russians they could “vote for any candidate besides Putin, you can ruin your ballot, you can write Navalny on it.”
She added that Russians did not have to vote, but could “stand at a polling station and then go home… the most important thing is to come.”
This story has been updated.
CNN’s Anna Chernova, Pauline Lockwood and Mariya Knight contributed reporting.
