Category: Uncategorized

The Washington Post

The secret world of offshore banking is proving it can stand up to kleptocrats

Brooke Harrington – March 8, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has produced an unexpected side effect: The complicated offshore financial system is rapidly proving it can dismantle itself.

The war has galvanized an extraordinary coalition among tax havens that usually compete fiercely with one another to attract Russian wealth. Led by the European Union, the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Monaco – all of which have long been favored asset hiding places for Russia’s richest individuals – are suddenly cooperating to impose sanctions and expel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cronies from the zone of legal and financial impunity known as “fiscal paradise.”

In addition to separate sanctions on Russian banks and other organizations, each of those jurisdictions has now frozen or seized the personal wealth of top Russian government officials, billionaire business executives and state media representatives. Other jurisdictions have also joined the fight. Singapore stopped short of individual sanctions, but the popular tax haven made the “almost unprecedented” move to shut out Russian banks. Even Cyprus – so dependent on Putin’s cronies that it has been described as a “Russian bank with dirty money posing as an E.U. state” – has risked the wrath of its top clients by breaking off an agreement to let Russian planes use Cypriot airspace and Russian naval ships dock in Cypriot ports.

These are extraordinary developments in their own right, no matter what Putin does next in Ukraine. Even if the sanctions don’t produce the intended Russian withdrawal, they have shown that tax havens can act collectively in the best interests of society by refusing to aid and abet kleptocrats. This is such a revelation because for decades, offshore centers – ranging from giants like the United States and Switzerland to tiny islands such as Nevis in the Caribbean – have insisted that this cannot be done under any circumstances. But as several commentators have noted, the news keeps showing us that the impossible is indeed possible.

Most importantly, the fiscal paradises of the world have demonstrated that they are willing and able, when they wish, to break down their own walls of silence and complicity – even though this threatens their core business model. Just how serious a threat that represents to kleptocrats can be judged by their reactions to this move. When the Panama Papers exposed what many suspected to be portions of Putin’s personal fortune, he allegedly viewed the revelations as a “personal attack,” demanding retaliation against the West in the form of interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Those data leaks, filled with revelations about rampant corruption among government and business leaders worldwide, were the first breach in the nearly impenetrable secrecy that has always been the main product of the world’s tax havens.

A few years later, Putin now describes coordinated sanctions against supporters of his regime as “akin to an act of war.” The coalition dealing out the sanctions apparently views these measures in the same light. The French finance minister described last week’s seizure of a yacht owned by Igor Sechin – a former deputy prime minister, now considered the second-most powerful Russian after Putin himself – as part of an “all-out economic and financial war in Russia.”

With Russian offshore wealth estimated conservatively as equivalent to 85 percent of the country’s GDP, there is a great deal at stake, but it is not just the money. Anti-corruption campaigners like Alexei Navalny who have fought for years against Russian kleptocracy insist that sanctioning and seizing oligarchs’ offshore wealth is essential to halting the abuses of Putin’s regime.

Just two years ago, Navalny claimed sanctions on Russian oligarchs were failing precisely because they were implemented in a piecemeal, “chaotic” and halfhearted manner by countries like the United States and Great Britain. But that has changed almost overnight. While some critics still view progress on sanctions as unnecessarily slow – especially in “Londongrad,” as the British capital is sometimes known because of its friendliness to Russian wealth – some observers have already declared that “the era of Russian money in London is over.”

Where will Russian wealth go now that Putin’s war has galvanized so many other tax havens to unite in shutting out the oligarchs? Now that the offshore system has shown that it can expel some of its most cherished clients from fiscal paradise, kleptocrats from outside Russia must be wondering whether that fate will befall them next. They cannot unsee what we have all seen: that the wall of offshore omerta can and will be breached in unpredictable ways.

It would be a consummate irony if Putin himself accomplished with his invasion of Ukraine what a string of devastating offshore leaks could not: the self-destruction of the offshore financial system. He has unquestionably, if unintentionally, accelerated the process “John Doe” and the insiders behind the 2017 Paradise Papers and 2021 Pandora Papers leaks began by breaching the wall of seemingly impenetrable tax haven secrecy.

Brooke Harrington is a professor of sociology at Dartmouth College and the author of “Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent.”

The Guardian

‘They were sent as cannon fodder’: Siberian governor confronted by relatives of Russian unit

Pjotr Sauer – March 8, 2022

A Russian governor in Siberia has been confronted by angry citizens who blamed him for deploying a local riot police unit to Ukraine to become “cannon fodder”, a video clip circulating online showed.

The footage, first posted by Radio Free Europe (RFE) on Monday, showed a fiery exchange between Sergei Tsivilyov, the governor of the Kemerovo region, and people in the city of Novokuznetsk.

“They lied to everyone, they deceived everyone … Why did you send them there?” one woman asks Tsivilyov, saying that the soldiers thought they were going for military drills in Belarus.

“They didn’t know their objective … They were sent as cannon fodder,” the woman adds.

The governor would not have been responsible for the decision to deploy the unit, which would have been made by the country’s national guard, a separate internal military force directly subordinated to the president, Vladimir Putin.

According to RFE, the confrontation took place on Saturday at the gymnasium of the training base for riot police units, some of whose officers were killed or captured in Ukraine.

As the fighting in Ukraine nears its third week, more and more relatives of killed and captured Russian soldiers have expressed their opposition to the war, saying their loved ones were not told in advance about the country’s plans to invade Ukraine. Videos of captured Russian soldiers issued by the Ukrainians also appear to show that Russian troops were not informed of the invasion until the very end.

Western military experts have raised questions about Russian troops’ morale and preparedness in Ukraine, which could explain why Moscow’s blitzkrieg plan to overwhelm Ukraine and take Kyiv has so far failed.

Russia has revealed very little information about the state of its soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Last week, Russia’s defence ministry said that 498 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine. Ukraine’s military claimed on Sunday that more than 11,000 Russian troops had been killed since the invasion of Ukraine began.

In the video, Tsivilyov defended the invasion, saying that Russia’s actions in Ukraine “shouldn’t be criticised”.

“Look, you can shout and blame everyone right now, but I think that, while a military operation is in process, one shouldn’t make any conclusions,” Tsivilyov said.

Russian officials, as well as state media, have been referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a “war” or “invasion”.

Authorities have also introduced a number of new laws aimed at stifling public opposition to the war.

On Friday, Putin signed into law a bill that introduced jail terms of up to 15 years for fake news about the Russian army, forcing many Russian and international outlets to cease their coverage of the events.

And while the authorities have been successful at getting a large segment of the population behind its war efforts, videos such as the Novokuznetsk footage circulating online suggest the war is deeply unpopular among those who have lost friends and relatives in Ukraine.

The Guardian previously spoke to family members of a Russian sniper captured in Ukraine, who similarly expressed anger and shock about their relative’s involvement in the war.

“Young boys are thrown like cannon fodder, and most importantly for what? For palaces in Gelendzhik?” the close family member of the captured sniper Leonid Paktishev said, referring to the palatial mansion on the Black Sea that Russian independent journalists have said is linked to Putin.

The Guardian – Interview

Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova: ‘You cannot play nice with Putin. He is insane. He might open fire on his own people’

Zoe Williams – March 8, 2022

The Russian artist – who spent two years in a Siberian jail for singing an anti-Putin ‘punk prayer’ – is using NFTs to fight the dictator, raising $7m in five days. At a time like this, she says, only activism will keep you sane

Nadya Tolokonnikova is in a geographically undisclosed location, speaking to me by Zoom, in a Pussy Riot T-shirt, looking purposeful, driven and singleminded. Her feminist protest art has been deadly serious since its inception, when she founded Pussy Riot in 2011. The watching world may have been entertained by its playful notes, the guerrilla gigs in unauthorised places, culminating in the event for which she was prosecuted, in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, when she sang Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.

But the consequences have always been seismic and severe. Tolokonnikova, along with two other members of Pussy Riot, were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism in 2012, separated from their very young children, went on hunger strike, endured unimaginably harsh conditions and were named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.

Tolokonnikova is “nomadic by nature”, she says. “This planet is my home. I’ve always been an anarchist. I’m not really a big fan of borders or nation states.” But beneath those abstracts there exist concrete dangers. She was declared a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin in December, as was the independent news outlet she founded upon her release from prison, Mediazone.

“Putin just signed a law that said you’re going to get 15 years in jail for even discussing the war in Ukraine,” she says matter-of-factly. “You cannot even call it a war, you have to call it a special military operation.” The jeopardy of being a known Russian dissident is greater now than it has been in decades, and nobody understands that more keenly than Tolokonnikova, who was born in 1989, too young to remember Perestroika.

Yet her focus is anything but self-protective. When Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February, she and various collaborators from the world of cryptocurrency launched the Ukraine DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation). It was a 1/1 NFT of the Ukrainian flag, and the group invited people to bid for collective ownership of the image, raising $7.1m in five days.

“We felt, me and my friends in crypto, that we had to react somehow. I’m personally convinced that in situations like this, activism is the only thing that can keep you sane. Just looking at disasters and tragedies and not doing anything about it is really detrimental for the world, but also it slowly destroys you and makes you feel helpless.” The money has already been distributed to the organisation Come Back Alive, which has been mobilising support for the Ukrainian army since 2014 with medical care, ammunition, training and defence analytics.

I was ready to die. If you fight with a dictator, you have to show them that you are ready to fight to the end

Tolokonnikova is devastated by the invasion of Ukraine. “I’m in a panic, I’m crying every day. I don’t think it was in any sense necessary, I don’t think it was in any sense logical. It wasn’t something that had to happen, it’s a disaster that will end thousands of people’s lives. I’m freaking out.” Yet she never had the luxury of complacency about what Putin was capable of. “The global community was extremely complacent, and I see two reasons: hypocrisy, based on greed. People would make statements that they did not support Putin’s politics, and his oppression of the political opposition, and the wars that he started – this isn’t the first war by any means. But at the same time they would continue doing business with him.” Nobody was interested in following the money; asking how the oligarchs coming out of Russia, fetching up in Europe and Miami, had come upon their vast wealth.

“Stupidity,” she continues, bluntly: “this is the second reason. People underestimate how dangerous dictators are. In 2014, we spoke to the UK parliament, we spoke at the Senate in the US, we were asked by a lot of people how they should talk to Putin, how they should frame the conversation, and I always advised that they should be as strict as they could. You cannot play nice with Putin.” This wisdom was won, not so much by her arrest for offending the thin-skinned leader but during her time in prison. “Dictators act a lot like prison wardens. They treat kindness as weakness.”

Both during her sentence and following her release in 2014, Tolokonnikova campaigned in ways that political prisoners throughout history would recognise. First, with a hunger strike. “Starting that, I was pretty much ready to die. If you fight with a dictator, you have to show them that you are ready to fight to the end. I think this is why Ukraine is actually winning: they might lose some cities but they’re willing to fight to the end, and that is not the case for the Russian army.”

She gained support worldwide, and from figures such as Madonna and Hillary Clinton. She began to exchange letters with Slavoj Žižek which were subsequently turned into a book, Comradely Greetings. What she remembers now, though, was the concrete impact on prison conditions. A week into her hunger strike, Putin’s right-hand man on human rights called her personally, in prison, to discuss the brutal conditions she was protesting against: 18 hour days of labour with only one day off every six weeks; very little sleep; horrific violence at the hands of guards and other inmates.

“This was fairly insane. I was the lowest person on the social ladder, and he had to call me.” Later, the prison director and architect of this slave labour system, Yury Kupriyanov, was convicted for it and served a suspended two-year sentence, and the Russian correctional headquarters “had to make a statement. They named me, and said I was right.”

Everything I’m doing is to be a greater pain in the arse to Putin

Tolokonnikova’s sentence left its mark: “I was traumatised by prison. I was barely functional when I got released. I suffered from a really severe depression in 2014. I’m still on medication for depression caused by PTSD.” The daughter from whom she was separated by incarceration is now 14; “she’s a social democrat,” Tolokonnikova says approvingly, if a bit wryly. “She says that in her generation, people want greater equality.”

Her experience hasn’t blunted her activism, which is now concentrated at the frontier of technological possibility. She originally thought cryptocurrencies were just a toy for rich techies but their potential for activists – being independent of central banks and governments, immune to corporate takeover – dawned on her in early 2021, and since that time she has raised: “quite substantial sums for different charitable causes. We raised money for a shelter for victims of domestic violence. We were able to move dozens of women from a really dangerous place in Russia, outside of Russia. We raised money in August of last year for political prisoners in Russia.”

Besides that, today she is helping launch the UnicornDAO, a crypto fund whose mission is to buy artworks from female and LGBTQ+ artists. “It’s not going to be just buying up their works of art; we’re going to be working with them, helping them in various ways to have stable and sustainable careers.” Unicorn’s first purchase was by the Russian-born, New York-based artist Olive Allen.

“I feel like the NFT world is a great way to redistribute money,” Tolokonnikova says, “but we see these old patterns being repeated. Misogyny doesn’t go anywhere, it just migrates over to digital artwork. Women account for only five per cent of all NFT sales. It’s so much more difficult to prove there is value in your words if you happen to be a woman.”

These explorations in crypto can sound mercurial, one minute driving cultural change, the next raising money, the next trying to create democratic agency independent of nation states – and it’s by no means clear what that would look like – but Tolokonnikova’s reading of Russian politics, and what it would take to force change, is entirely practical. It would take “a mass uprising, millions of people coming to the streets and refusing to leave until Putin is gone. That is obviously incredibly dangerous. Putin is insane, so he might open fire at his own people. I definitely understand why everybody is not already on the streets.”

Alongside that, “another force of change may come from Putin’s closet circle. I honestly think Putin is digging his own grave now. The number of oligarchs who are close to him who have publicly supported Ukraine, and are standing against the war, is significant, and that hasn’t happened in 20 years.”

She sees a worthy successor to Putin in opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “Better social programes, and redistribution, that’s all part of his programe. I’ve known him since 2007 – it has been really interesting to witness his platform become more and more social democratic, even though he doesn’t describe himself as that. He doesn’t use labels. I think it’s smart. He doesn’t want to divide people.” And as she recalls her own time in prison, Tolokonnikova urges the world not to forget that Navalny still languishes in jail. Her own work, specifically the UnicornDAO, “is not connected to Putin directly anyhow. But everything I’m doing is to be a greater pain in the arse to Putin, because it’s so personal to me.”

Yahoo! Finance

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ‘is really splitting Russian society,’ expert explains

Michael B. Kelley, Director Editorial – March 7, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin owns the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, one expert explained, and that means that the totalitarian leader will also own what comes next.

“This was a decision that was taken by a single individual in consultation with maybe a half dozen members of his national security council,” Timothy Frye, professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University, told Yahoo Finance (video above). “So there’s very little elite buy-in. And the Russian public has always been skittish about conflict with Ukraine and is perfectly willing to recognize Ukrainian sovereignty. The public opinion is very clear on that question. So what we’ve seen is a great deal of repression within Russia, both of the mass public and a real attempt to silence elite opinion. And that’s a very difficult thing to do in a country with as diverse interest as Russia has.”

‘This invasion is really splitting Russian society’

Frye, author of “Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia,” added that this doesn’t mean that Putin could easily be overthrown — after all, “it’s really difficult to overthrow an autocrat.” Instead, Russia experts are watching to see if significant cracks emerge in support for Putin from elites and the public.

“The information environment of Russia is really still controlled by the Russian state, even as lots of videos are getting through,” Frye explained. “And it’s really unclear what direction the kind of battle of hearts and minds are going to go. When your country is involved in a war, patriotic elements within the country often rise up. So I think this invasion is really splitting Russian society between those who favor a view of fortress Russia versus those who want to bring Russia into the 21st century. And it’s really unclear which side is going to win out.”

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, the West swiftly moved to punish Putin’s regime by freezing Russian assets, cutting off some of the country’s banks from the SWIFT messaging system, sanctioning individual Russian oligarchs, and other measures. Various prominent companies also distanced themselves from Russia. Domestically, thousands of Russians have been arrested for protesting the war.

In terms of the economic pain, Frye noted that “the Russian economy is already at the threat of seizing up. The sanctions on the central bank are really unprecedented. And they’re much greater than I think anyone expected, certainly than Vladimir Putin expected.”

‘Ukraine seems to be in no mood to negotiate’

Asked about what comes next, Frye explained that “one thing that Putin has always been very afraid of domestic instability. So I think the impact of these sanctions and all of the Western policy are less to try to get the economic elites to turn on Putin than just trying to make the country ungovernable. And at some point, that might be one way we could constrain Putin from pushing further into Ukraine and to try to find some negotiated agreement.”

In the meantime, there is a brutal war raging in Ukraine. Russia seems to have failed to meet its objectives thus far and is increasingly bombing civilians. The Ukrainian resistance, meanwhile, appears to be both strong in battle and determined to revolt against any attempt at Russian occupation of the country.

Negotiations between the two sides are ongoing.

“Russia’s ability to occupy the country given the incredible hostility of the Ukrainian population towards Russia… would make a long-term occupation really difficult,” Frye said, later adding: “Ukraine seems to be in no mood to negotiate. They feel like they can wear down the Russian government. And by inflicting costs, they can really make life uncomfortable for Putin.”

Yahoo! News

Ukraine: Russian invasion ‘not going well’ and ‘getting more desperate’, says UK minister

Kate Buck – March 8, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is ‘not going particularly well’ and the Kremlin is ‘getting more desperate’ as Vladimir Putin’s troops feel ‘let down’ by their leaders, a minister has claimed.

Western officials believe Putin had hoped to have Ukraine well under his control within days of launching the invasion, but say poor planning, bad leadership and a fierce line of resistance from the Ukrainian people have stalled the Russian progress.

The US defence office has claimed Russia has deployed nearly all the 150,000 troops who were stationed on the border, but has only “made little progress”.

An unnamed official added the Russians are “frustrated by a stiff Ukrainian resistance as well as their own internal challenges”.

The nation’s largest cities are still under Ukrainian control, but coming under constant Russian bombardment as Putin’s force step-up their campaign of misery.

Speaking to Sky News, UK defense secretary Ben Wallace said: “Well it’s not going particularly well for the Russians, it’s day 13, way off their timetable. 

“On one level sadly there’s lots of casualties, we’ve seen the indiscriminate shelling which has killed numerous civilians.

“We’ve also recognised that probably the biggest casualties so far in the war are Russian military soldiers who have been let down by appalling leaders, appalling leadership and appalling plans, and now you see them literally at large scales dying.”

On Wednesday, Russia admitted for the first time admitted it had suffered heavy losses, saying in a statement 498 of its troops had died.

The UK has said the death toll will be “considerably higher” than figures released by the Kremlin.

Ukrainian officials have claimed over 9,000 Russian soldiers have died. The figure has not been independently verified.

Read more: Putin isn’t insane and won’t use nuclear weapons, says ex-Russian foreign minister

“I think that is something that will be seen in the Kremlin, whether they will admit to each other the failure of their aggressive and illegal invasion of Ukraine,” Wallace added.

A 40-mile-convoy of around 15,000 soldiers has been spotted outside of Kyiv for days now, but has stalled, reportedly due to supply issues.

Wallace added: “We’ve seen the column is still stuck north of Kyiv, there are reports overnight of Ukrainian special forces destroying over 20 Russian helicopters and I think we can see that Russia have a real logistic problem.

Watch: Lviv mayor calls for global help to feed refugees

Mayor of western Ukrainian city pleads for global help to feed refugees

The mayor of Lviv calls for international help because the city in far western Ukraine is struggling to feed and house the thousands of people who have fled there from war-torn regions of the country.

“That affects morale, they’re getting more desperate and you can see them getting more desperate because they’re shelling more and more innocent people, they’re trying even to get out on humanitarian corridors as we saw yesterday

“I think this goes right to the heart of the challenge that Russia has built itself a trap and the international community has united against them and we’re seeing the devastation that it’s leaving behind.”

Russia’s invasion has sparked the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War Two.

The UN’s latest figures have say 2 million refugees have fled their homes and gone into neighbouring countries for safety.

The capital of Kyiv and second-largest city of Kharkiv still remain under the control of the Ukrainians but have come under severe shelling from Russian forces.

International attention has turned to the town of Irpin in recent days, after Putin’s troops shelled humanitarian corridors which had opened up for people to evacuate.

Business Insider

3 Russian billionaires resign from board of $22 billion investment firm LetterOne after it locked out 2 Russian oligarchs over the invasion of Ukraine

Kate Duffy – March 8, 2022

• German Khan, Alexei Kuzmichev, and Andrei Kosogov have left the investment firm LetterOne.
• They weren’t sanctioned but thought stepping down was in the company’s interests, LetterOne said.
• It comes less than a week after sanctioned oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven left the firm.

Three Russian billionaires have resigned from the board of a $22 billion investment firm amid their country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

It comes after London-based LetterOne froze out Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, who are subject to Western sanctions, blocking access to their buildings last week and forbidding them to talk to employees.

German Khan, Alexei Kuzmichev, and Andrei Kosogov — who are not subject to any sanctions — all stepped down from their positions with the company on Monday. 

“None of these three individuals has been sanctioned, but they believe that this is the right thing to do in the long-term interests of LetterOne, its employees, and the many jobs it supports in its portfolio companies,” the firm said in a statement sent to Insider.

Khan, 60, who helped to found LetterOne and is a partner in Alfa Group, said in the statement that he supported the board’s actions and called for an end to the war.

“The majority of LetterOne founders have deep roots in Ukraine, and the destruction of the cities where I spent my childhood and which are home to the graves of our ancestors is heartbreaking,” said Khan, who has a net worth of almost $6.9 billion, according to a Bloomberg estimate.

Kuzmichev, 59, was a cofounder of Alfa-Bank, the biggest private bank in Russia, and has a net worth of about $5.2 billion, according to Bloomberg. Kosogov, 60, is a member of Alfa Group’s board and is valued at $1.2 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates. 

LetterOne also said in Monday’s statement that Fridman and Aven, who left the company’s board on Wednesday, had their shares in the firm “frozen indefinitely” and can’t receive dividends or other financial funds from LetterOne.https://12831157c45b9bf9dbd0be7ad0c2ac7d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Mervyn Davies, the chairman who is now in charge of LetterOne, told the Financial Times that they were locked out of the offices, blocked from accessing documents, and banned from speaking with employees.

LetterOne is set to donate $150 million to help people affected by the war in Ukraine, and shareholders have agreed that all dividends will go toward relief efforts, the company’s statement said.

McDonald’s closes all stores in Russia

Oriana Gonzalez – March 8, 2022

McDonald’s is temporarily closing all stores in Russia over strongman Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the chain announced Tuesday.

State of play: McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company will continue to pay its 62,000 Russian employees, but added that “it’s impossible to predict when we might be able to reopen our restaurants in Russia.”

• Kempczinski said McDonald’s has been experiencing supply chain issues “along with other operational impacts” in Russia.
• He added that the Ronald McDonald House Charities chapter in Russia will continue to operate, adding that the Ukrainian chapter is focused on “partnering with local hospitals and providing humanitarian aid throughout the country.”
• The company has also temporarily closed 100 of its locations in Ukraine and employees are still getting paid, AP reports.

The big picture: Companies and businesses around the world have been pausing their operations in Russia and condemning the ongoing attack.

What they’re saying: “The conflict in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis in Europe has caused unspeakable suffering to innocent people. As a System, we join the world in condemning aggression and violence and praying for peace,” said Kempczinski.

• “[O]ur values mean we cannot ignore the needless human suffering unfolding in Ukraine.”
• “As we move forward, McDonald’s will continue to assess the situation and determine if any additional measures are required.”

Reuters

Residents fleeing town near Kyiv caught in shelling

Carlos Barria and Mehmet Emin Caliskan – March 6, 2022

IRPIN, Ukraine (Reuters) -Ukrainians fleeing the town of Irpin just outside Kyiv were caught in shelling by Russian forces on Sunday and forced to dive for cover, Reuters witnesses said.

Irpin, some 25 km (16 miles) northwest of the capital, has seen intense fighting in recent days. Russia’s military is closing in on the Kyiv, which was home to around 3.4 million people before the invasion sparked an exodus of civilians.

Irpin residents scurried along pavements clutching children, luggage and pets as they made their way to waiting buses and cars that would take them further from the clashes.

Soldiers and fellow residents helped elderly men and women who were falling behind. Some people crouched down when explosions went off nearby, apparently from mortar rounds.

Reuters reporters did not witness casualties in the shelling, but several news outlets said that at least three people were killed – a woman and two children.

The New York Times published a photograph it said was of four members of a family – a woman, a man and two children – lying on the ground in Irpin.

The caption said they were trying to flee when a mortar struck, and that the father, being tended to by Ukrainian soldiers in the image, was the only one still with a pulse.

Reuters could not independently verify what happened.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday it would continue the evacuation of civilians from Irpin after recent shelling of the town and its environs.

The State Emergency Service also said it was setting up tents to provide medical care to all those who needed it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven more than 1.5 million people to flee to neighbouring countries in the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Sunday.

Millions more have been displaced internally, trying to get to the relative safety of western Ukraine.

BARRICADES AND TRENCHES

In Kyiv itself, Ukrainian soldiers bolstered defences by digging trenches, blocking roads and liaising with civil defence units as Russian forces bombarded the surrounding areas.

While the armed forces and civilian volunteers dug in, thousands of people continued to try to flee the city as fears of a full assault mounted.

Russia has concentrated much of its firepower on the south and east of the country since its assault began on Feb. 24, besieging cities including Mariupol and Kharkiv with shelling and air strikes and causing extensive damage and casualties.

Kyiv has been spared the worst of the fighting so far, but intense battles have raged in neighbouring towns and villages and Russia’s defence ministry released footage on Sunday of some of its tracked military vehicles on the move near the capital.

Video provided by Ukraine’s armed forces taken on Saturday in the Kyiv region showed Ukrainian efforts to defend the capital, with piles of sandbags and concrete slabs laid across a main road where Ukrainian soldiers checked passing cars.

A smaller road was blocked by metal “hedgehog” anti-tank barriers, and machine gun positions had been erected. Civilians who have vowed to join the battle to protect Kyiv stored dozens of Molotov cocktails.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” designed to destroy its neighbour’s military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy remains in Ukraine and has called on his people to defend their country.

Kateryna Laskari, a production company executive, left her home city Kyiv soon after the invasion began.

She reached a small village 50 km (31 miles) away where her family has a house, and has stayed there with her three-year-old son, Simon, her pregnant sister, who is due to give birth in two weeks and their parents.

“Of course, I’m frightened as is everybody, but I have so many people I’m responsible for. I’m responsible for my family, I’m responsible for my business,” she told Reuters via Zoom.

“But to tell the truth, I thought I would be even more frightened. Now I feel like a soldier. I feel that I have a lot of energy to just to fight, because I know that we will win.”

(Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Kyiv and Aleksandra Michalska in New YorkWriting by Mike Collett-WhiteEditing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Frances Kerry)

Yahoo! News

NYT photographer captures chilling image of 4 Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian strike

Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – March 7, 2022

The New York Times on Monday published at the top of its front page a chilling photo of four Ukrainian civilians, including two children, who were killed by Russian mortar fire as they were attempting to flee.

According to Lynsey Addario, the New York Times photographer who took the photo, the image shows Ukrainian soldiers trying to save a man, who is lying on the pavement moments after being hit by a mortar while trying to evacuate the town of Irpin, just west of the capital, Kyiv, on Sunday. Three other people — a woman, her teenage son and her daughter — lie dead behind him. The man later died.

Their luggage was left scattered about, along with a “green carrying case for a small dog that was barking,” Addario reported.

“We witnessed the Russian military bracket their mortars directly onto the civilian pedestrian path, where men, women, children, the elderly, ill and handicapped streamed out of Irpin,” Addario added in a post on Instagram. “I’ve witnessed many horrors in the past twenty years of covering war, but the intentional targeting of children and women is pure evil.”

People in Irpin have been using a battered bridge, which had been intentionally blown up by Ukrainian forces to slow the Russian advance, to cross into the relative safety of Kyiv.

According to the Times, only a dozen or so Ukrainian soldiers were in the immediate area of the bridge on Sunday. They were not fighting but instead “helping carry civilians’ luggage and children.”

Irpin Mayor Oleksandr Markushin said that at least eight civilians were killed along the route over the weekend. He said Russian forces were intentionally targeting civilians.

“This is not an army. These are animals,” Markushin said on CNN. “They are killing civilians. They are shelling our city, our residential buildings. They are firing on ambulances. This is just a. Monstrosity. They are animals. They are not people.”

Other photographers in the area captured similar scenes of panicked Ukrainians desperately trying to escape heavy Russian shelling along the evacuation route.

In other cities, Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from making agreed-to evacuations. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the effort.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he was aware of the reports of Russians targeting Ukrainian civilians, and that the United States is monitoring Russians for possible war crimes.

“We’ve seen very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians, which would constitute a war crime,” Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “They’re very credible. And we’re documenting everything.”

Yahoo! News

Russian soldiers shot at British gardeners trying to rescue Ukrainians

Emily Cleary – March 7, 2022

Two landscape gardeners who travelled to Ukraine to help refugees escape to Poland have had to turn back after being shot at by Russian soldiers.

Gary Taylor, 45, and Joe McCarthy, 55, set off last week to rescue people who wanted to escape the crisis in Ukraine but had no transport.

They have completed two “missions” to help people get to safety, taking them across the border to Poland and Romania.

The pair have been sharing some of their journey by livestream and on TikTok clips.

Joe, from Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, and Gary, from Falkirk, emptied out their van, carpeted the back and filled it with sleeping bags and duvets to keep people warm. They have so far raised £18,000 for their mission.

But in a tearful video post on social media on Sunday, Joe’s wife, Fiona, revealed the pair had encountered a Russian convoy.

Fiona said: “Guys, they won’t be back online.

“They’ve had their van raided. They’ve shot the tyres out, two front tyres.

“They’ve taken Joe’s phone, so all they’ve got left is Gary’s phone.

“They’ll definitely not be back online because the TikTok was all on Joe’s phone. I’ll keep you updated as much as I can but please, keep praying for them, thank you.”

In another message later, she was able to report the pair were safe and getting back on the road.

“Some Ukrainians have helped them – they’re at a garage getting new tyres.”

McCarthy said her husband and Taylor had entered the city of Sumy, where they were due to pick up people.

“All the roads were blocked off so they managed to get a police escort in, but they’re now stuck behind a large convoy of army vehicles so it’s going to be a wee while before they actually get to the families they’re picking up and then probably the same trying to get back out again.”

But then later she added: “They’ve had to turn back.

“The Russian army have fired shots at them as a warning and told them to turn back so unfortunately they won’t be able to get to the families.

“I’m afraid they’ve not been able to collect them.

“I think they’re safe-ish for now but there’s troops and troops of Russian army passing by them.

“Please pray for them.”

McCarthy and Taylor had headed to the city of Sumy, in north-eastern Ukraine close to the Russian border, to drive refugees to the Polish border where makeshift camps have been set up to house people before they are relocated.

Sumy has been under attack by Russia since its invasion started last month.

Racheal Diyaolu, a 19-year-old Irish student, was among hundreds of international students in the city.

After days of sheltering from airstrikes and shelling it is believed she finally found safe passage to Poland with McCarthy and Taylor.

Her sister, Christiana, told the BBC that the men had their phones seized during the attack on Sunday before being told to turn back.

“Luckily they were able to find an alternative route into Sumy and stayed there overnight and then continued their mission this morning,” she added.

The UK government has urged any nationals still in Ukraine to leave, and has asked people not to travel to the area for any reason.

Defence minister Ben Wallace and chief of the defence staff Sir Tony Radakin have urged people not to rush towards “the sound of gunfire”.

Radakin said: “We’ve been very clear that it’s unlawful as well as unhelpful for UK military and for the UK population to start going towards Ukraine in that sense.

“Support from the UK, support in whatever way you can. But this isn’t really something that you want to rush to, in terms of the sound of gunfire. This is about sensible support, based in the UK.”

Watch: Destruction in Ukraine’s heavily bombarded Kharkiv