!!Free Ukraine

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014. The invasion became the largest attack on a European country since World War II. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. By June 2022, Russian troops occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory. From the 41 million population in January 2022, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. Extensive environmental damage caused by the war, widely described as an ecocide, contributed to food crises worldwide.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have commited war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets (including strikes on hospitals and on the energy grid); indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas (including with cluser bombs); abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and mistreatment, torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

During the Russo-Ukrainian War Russia forcibly transferred thousands of Ukrainian children to areas under its control, assigned them Russian citizenship, forcibly adopted them into Russian families, and created obstacles for their reunification with their parents and homeland. The United Nations has stated that these deportations constitute war crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for President of Russia Vladimir Putin (who has explicitly supported the forced adoptions, including by enacting legislation to facilitate them) and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement. According to international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, such acts constitute genocide if done with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation or ethnic group. Ukrainian children have been abducted by the Russian state after their parents had been arrested by Russian occupation authorities or killed in the invasion, or after becoming separated from their parents in an active war zone.

Sexual violence in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been committed by Armed Forces of Russia, including the use of mass rape as a weapon of war. According to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the victims of sexual assault by Russian soldiers ranged from 4 years old to over 80 years old.

The United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner issued a report on human rights violations and war crimes in October 2022; in the opening summary section, it stated, “Furthermore, the Commission documented patterns of summary executions, unlawful confinement, torture, ill-treatment, and rape and other sexual violence committed in areas occupied by Russian armed forces across the four provinces on which it focused. People have been detained, some have been unlawfully deported to the Russian Federation, and many are still reported missing. Sexual violence has affected victims of all ages. Victims, including children, were sometimes forced to witness the crimes. Children have become the victims of the full spectrum of violations investigated by the Commission, including indiscriminate attacks, torture and rape, and have suffered the predictable psychological consequences.”

© wikipedia

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©riginal photos Klagenfurt am Woerthersee / Austria 2022