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Kyiv Court Convicts Russian Sergeant Of War Crimes And Orders Life Sentence

Kyiv Court Convicts Russian Sergeant Of War Crimes And Orders Life Sentence

Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) - A Ukrainian court found a young Russian soldier guilty of war crimes Monday for killing a civilian and handed him a life sentence, in the first verdict of its kind since Russia's invasion three months ago.

The judgement came in as President Volodymyr Zelensky took to the virtual stage in Davos, urging political and business elites at the World Economic Forum to end all trade with Russia and keep supplying his country with weapons.

Russian attacks are pummeling eastern Ukraine, but all eyes Monday were on the capital Kyiv, in the landmark trial against 21-year-old Russian serviceman Vadim Shishimarin.

Shishimarin, a shaven-headed sergeant from Siberia, had admitted in court to killing a 62-year-old civilian, Oleksandr Shelipov, in the village of Chupakhivka in northeast Ukraine.

He claimed he shot Shelipov under pressure from another soldier as they tried to retreat and escape back into Russia in a stolen car on February 28, the fourth day of Moscow's invasion.

Shishimarin had apologised and asked Shelipov's widow for forgiveness, adding: "I was nervous about what was going on. I didn't want to kill."

But prosecutors claimed he shot between three and four bullets with the intention of killing the civilian.

"The court has found that Shishimarin is guilty (of war crimes) and sentences him to life imprisonment," Judge Sergiy Agafonov announced on Monday, as the Russian looked on from the glass defense box.

He was also found guilty of premeditated murder, which Agafonov said was "committed with direct intent."

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Shishimarin's lawyer Viktor Ovsyannikov said he will appeal the verdict, calling it "most severe", adding that "you can feel societal pressure" on the decision.

The landmark ruling is expected to be followed by others, with Ukraine opening thousands of war crimes cases since Moscow's invasion.

International institutions are simultaneously investigating abuses allegedly committed by Russian forces in cities like Bucha and Mariupol, which have become emblematic of the destruction and suffering of the three-month-old war.

As the verdict was read out in Kyiv, Zelensky continued his attempts to maintain Western support with a video address at the Davos summit, which this year is dominated by the fall-out of the war -- and from which Russians have been barred.

He highlighted the cost to his people of the war, revealing that 87 people were killed in a Russian attack earlier this month on a military base in northern Ukraine.

Zelensky insisted that tens of thousands of lives would have been saved if Kyiv had received "100 percent of our needs at once back in February", when Russia invaded.

"This is why Ukraine needs all the weapons that we ask (for), not just the ones that have been provided," said Zelensky, flanked by Ukrainian flags and wearing an olive-green T-shirt.

He also called for an oil embargo on Russia, punitive measures against all its banks and the shunning of its IT sector, adding that all foreign companies should leave the country.

'Scorched-Earth Tactics'

Shishimarin's lawyer Viktor Ovsyannikov said he will appeal the verdict, calling it "most severe", adding that "you can feel societal pressure" on the decision.

The landmark ruling is expected to be followed by others, with Ukraine opening thousands of war crimes cases since Moscow's invasion.

International institutions are simultaneously investigating abuses allegedly committed by Russian forces in cities like Bucha and Mariupol, which have become emblematic of the destruction and suffering of the three-month-old war.

After failing in its initial goal of capturing Kyiv, Moscow's forces are now squarely focused on securing and expanding their gains in the Donbas region and on Ukraine's southern coast.

In the eastern city of Severodonetsk, a focus of recent fighting, regional governor Sergiy Gaiday accused Russian forces of "using scorched-earth tactics, deliberately destroying" the city.

Gaiday said Russia was repositioning forces from the Kharkiv region, others involved in Mariupol's siege, pro-Russian separatist militias, and even troops freshly mobilised from Siberia to concentrate their firepower on the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

'Savagery'

More than six million people have fled Ukraine and eight million have been internally displaced since the war broke out, according to the United Nations.

For the civilians left behind near the front, prayer is often the only comfort left.

Southwest of Severodonetsk, in the city of Bakhmut, Maria Mayashlapak scanned the devastation of her home, where a missile imploded her kitchen and cratered her vegetable garden.

"I was reciting my morning prayer for God to keep me from getting hurt," the 82-year-old recalled, as the family's kitten mewed from somewhere in the rubble.

Sunday's bombardment of the Donetsk region killed at least seven civilians and wounded eight others, according to the Ukrainian army.

Shelling and missile strikes also continued to pound Kharkiv in the north, as well as Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia in the south, Ukrainian officials said.

The effects of the war are also being felt far beyond Ukraine, particularly the impact of a Russian blockade that has left one of the world's breadbaskets unable to export its grain.

"It's savagery for one country to have food spoiling like this and for other people to be left poor and hungry," said Dmitriy Matulyak, a farmer near the Black Sea port of Odessa.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been unequivocal on the matter, saying last week that the war "threatens to tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity".

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US To Announce Russia Sanctions, Condemning Putin's Latest Assault On Ukraine

US To Announce Russia Sanctions, Condemning Putin's Latest Assault On Ukraine

Washington (AFP) - The United States said it will impose sanctions on Moscow Tuesday, following an initially cautious response to President Vladimir Putin's order for Russian troops to deploy in two Kremlin-backed separatist areas of Ukraine.

"We plan to announce new sanctions on Russia tomorrow in response to Moscow's decisions and actions today. We are coordinating with allies and partners on that announcement," a White House spokesperson told AFP on Monday.

This came after President Joe Biden had already imposed limited sanctions on the two Russian-backed areas in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region that were earlier recognized as independent by Putin.

The United States and other Western allies are condemning Putin's move as a violation of pro-Western Ukraine's territorial integrity.

But a senior US official earlier declined to characterize whether Putin's order for Russian armed forces to conduct "peacekeeping" there counted as an actual invasion, which would trigger much wider and more severe Western sanctions against Moscow.

"We are going to assess what Russia's done," the official told reporters, stressing that Russian forces have already been deployed covertly in the separatist areas for eight years.

"Russian troops moving into Donbass would not be a new step," he said.

"We'll continue to pursue diplomacy until the tanks roll."

The Kremlin has for weeks denied plans to attack Ukraine, while at the same time building up an enormous force of troops and heavy weaponry on three sides of the country.

In a speech accusing the West of turning Ukraine into an anti-Russian bastion, Putin said he was granting recognition of independence to the self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk enclaves.

Putin then tasked the Russian military with "peacekeeping" in the region, although no detail was given as to what this meant in terms of troop movements.

The United States and its multiple Western allies warn that a full Russian invasion of Ukraine would prompt crippling economic sanctions.

With his initially restrained response, Biden signed an executive order to "prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by US persons to, from, or in the so-called DNR and LNR regions of Ukraine," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

The order will "provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine," Psaki said, adding that the measures are separate from wider Western sanctions ready to go "should Russia further invade Ukraine."

The two self-proclaimed republics already have extremely limited dealings with US citizens.

Making Russia a 'pariah'

US officials continued on Monday to warn that heavy sanctions on Russia could be imposed at any time.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken slammed Russia's recognition of the separatist areas as a sign Putin had no interest in diplomacy.

Blinken said in a statement that recognizing the territories' independence "directly contradicts Russia's claimed commitment to diplomacy, and is a clear attack on Ukraine's sovereignty."

On Friday, the deputy US national security advisor for international economics, Daleep Singh, warned that the full set of sanctions under preparation would turn Russia into an international "pariah."

Following Putin's speech, the White House said that Biden talked by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for 35 minutes to "reaffirm" the US commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty. He also detailed the plan for sanctions.

Biden also spoke for half an hour with two key European allies -- French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, an official said. The three leaders "strongly condemned" Putin's decision and discussed how to coordinate their response.

The White House did not respond immediately to questions about whether there was still any consideration being given to a suggested summit between Biden and Putin.

Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were scheduled to meet this Thursday to discuss the possible summit.

Iran Maneuvers To Win Blame Game If Nuclear Talks Collapse

Iran Maneuvers To Win Blame Game If Nuclear Talks Collapse

By Paul Richter, Tribune Washington Bureau

VIENNA — Iran’s nuclear negotiating team has come to this city hoping to seal a deal on its disputed nuclear program that will finally remove the international sanctions crippling its economy.

But just in case they don’t win that diplomatic victory, they are carefully positioning themselves to come away with a valuable second prize: a win in the ugly blame game that would follow the collapse of negotiations.

Tehran’s team wants to make sure that if its talks with six world powers collapse, many nations would conclude that Iran had been prepared to compromise and the obstacle was the maximalist demands of the United States and its hawkish Israeli and Persian Gulf allies.

The Iranians hope that if many countries come to that view the countries will begin to shed sanctions, allowing Tehran to sell its oil again, and to continue pursuing a nuclear program.

What happens to the sanctions, the world’s great point of leverage on Iran, “depends on who wins the blame game,” said Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official who follows Iran for the Eurasia Group risk consulting firm.

Iran’s last president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, liked to project an image of thunder and fire. He didn’t look reasonable to the world audience, and didn’t much care.

But the smiling team of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif seek to come across as reasonable representatives of a country that deserves more than pariah status.

In the run-up to this fifth round of talks, Iran’s nuclear negotiating team has put considerable effort into convincing the world that they are not the threat to a diplomatic solution to the two-decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

At a news conference last Saturday, Rouhani stressed Iran’s “goodwill and flexibility” and his hopes that a deal could still be wrapped up by the current deadline of July 20.

He seemed to signal that he was prepared to set aside Iran’s longstanding enmity with the United States, saying it might cooperate with the U.S. on the struggle against Sunni extremists in Iraq. Of course, as a responsible world power, any Iranian step would be consistent with “international law,” he emphasized.

Rouhani also argued that the sanctions are unraveling anyway. “Conditions will never go back to the past,” he said, in an apparent effort to convince oil-consuming nations they will soon be able to resume oil purchases.

Foreign Minister Zarif, meanwhile, has been building a case that Iran’s goals in the nuclear negotiations are reasonable and that the West’s are extreme.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed article last week, Zarif wrote that in 2005, he and Rouhani floated a plan to the West that would have allowed an international panel to regulate Iran’s nuclear program based on whether they thought it was peaceful. Instead, the George W. Bush administration demanded a halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment, undermining diplomacy and leading to a huge expansion of the Iranian nuclear program.

“They were mistaking our constructive engagement for weakness,” Zarif wrote.

He argued that “small but powerful constituencies” in the West have been calling for tough action against Iran by saying that the country is only a couple of months from having enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

In fact, Zarif wrote, Iran would still need “several years” of work to complete all the complex processes needed to turn the fuel into a bomb.

He pointed out that 2005 and 2012 National Intelligence Estimates, which represent the U.S. intelligence community consensus, concluded that Iran wasn’t trying to build a bomb.

The Iranian team is hoping that if the talks collapse, the defection of a few non-Western oil-importing nations, such as China, Turkey or India, might begin an accelerating unraveling of the sanctions.

Obama administration officials contend the sanctions have remained strong since the signing of an interim nuclear deal last November that eased some of the penalties on Iran.

Many countries remain wary of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in part because of evidence that Iran for years was secretly expanding the program.

Yet the administration has some vulnerabilities in the public relations battle.

One is that many countries are increasingly skeptical of the U.S.’ heavy use of its powerful economic sanctions, which the White House this spring has imposed on Russia because of the dispute over Ukraine.

Many countries, including some in Europe, see Congress’ use of sanctions as excessive.

A senior administration official, asked in a briefing this week about Iran’s efforts to win over world opinion, may have bolstered its argument by warning that if Tehran didn’t yield in negotiations it would be clobbered by more sanctions legislation.

“If Iran does not feel it can make the choices that are necessary, I have no doubt that Congress will take action,” warned the official, who declined to be identified under administration ground rules.

AFP Photo

Russia Says U.S. Astronauts Could Be Hurt By Ukraine Sanctions

Russia Says U.S. Astronauts Could Be Hurt By Ukraine Sanctions

Moscow (AFP) – Russia warned Tuesday that American astronauts on the International Space Station could be hurt by new U.S.-led sanctions over the escalating crisis in Ukraine, where pro-Moscow militants seized more public buildings in the east.

Washington was resorting to “Iron Curtain” policies from its Cold War-era playbook with the new Western sanctions, which were driving the Ukraine crisis towards “a dead end,” Moscow raged.

A day after the United States and its EU and Japanese allies unveiled fresh punitive measures for what was seen as Russian interference in Ukraine, violence worsened on the ground.

Thousands of pro-Moscow protesters in the city of Lugansk near the Russian border seized control of the regional administrative building, trapping around 200 riot police in the complex’s courtyard. Militants in the city already held the local SBU security services building.

Ukrainian media reported that rebels also seized the town hall in the nearby town of Pervomaisk, adding to more than a dozen sites held by pro-Kremlin insurgents. On Monday, gunmen took control of the town of Kostyantynivka.

There was also no sign of progress in negotiations by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to free seven of its inspectors being held by pro-Kremlin rebels.

The U.S. embassy said the OSCE abductions and a violent attack Monday by pro-Russian militants armed with knives and bats on pro-Kiev demonstrators in the east Ukraine city of Donetsk were acts of “terrorism, pure and simple.”

Moscow reacted with fury to the inclusion in the sanctions of high-tech exports to Russia and threatened reprisals.

“If their aim is to deliver a blow to Russia’s rocket-building sector, then by default, they would be exposing their astronauts on the ISS,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said, according to the Interfax news agency.

“Sanctions are always a boomerang which come back and painfully hit those who launched them,” added Rogozin on a visit to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in March.

The International Space Station is operated jointly by Russia, the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada. Astronauts and cosmonauts depend on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry them between it and Earth, ever since NASA scrapped its space shuttles in 2011.

A Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, admitted in an interview with online newspaper Gazeta.ru that the U.S. curb on high-tech exports was a “blow.”

“This is a revival of a system created in 1949 when Western countries essentially lowered an ‘Iron Curtain’, cutting off supplies of high-tech goods to the USSR and other countries,” he said.

Russia’s foreign ministry also slammed the European Union for “doing Washington’s bidding” as the bloc included General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces and the country’s deputy defense minister, on a list of 15 Russians and Ukrainians targeted by an asset freeze and travel ban.

And it vowed that Japan’s decision to deny visas for 23 Russian nationals “will not be left without a response.”

The EU and Japanese blacklists are part of a G7 sanctions assault started by Washington on Monday with measures announced against seven Russian officials and 17 companies close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Washington and its allies accuse Russia of fomenting and controlling the separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine to prevent the new Western-backed government in Kiev exercising its authority.

The EU’s top foreign policy official, Catherine Ashton, voiced alarm at “the downward spiral of violence and intimidation” in Ukraine.

As fears continued of an imminent Russian invasion, NATO Tuesday said there was no sign tens of thousands of troops on the border were withdrawing despite the Russian defense ministry claiming they had pulled back to barracks.

Ukraine and EU countries dependent on Russian gas, meanwhile, were worried Moscow’s reprisals could hit the vital energy supply.

The U.S. embassy in Ukraine denounced a “savage” attack on Monday by pro-Moscow militants wielding bricks, bats and knives against a rally in the city of Donetsk calling for Ukrainian unity. Fourteen people were wounded, some seriously.

Meanwhile, a mayor in east Ukraine’s biggest city of Kharkiv, Gennady Kernes, critically wounded when shot in the back Monday by an unknown gunman, was flown to Israel for medical treatment.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu repeated assurances that Moscow had no plans to invade in a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Chuck Hagel, the Pentagon said.

Shoigu urged Washington to tone down its rhetoric.

But Hagel called for an end to Russia’s “destabilizing influence inside Ukraine” and warned more pressure would be applied if it continued.

The U.S. defense secretary also asked for Moscow’s help in securing the release of the seven OSCE inspectors held by pro-Russian militants in Slavyansk.

An AFP journalist in Slavyansk said early Tuesday there was still no sign of the captive inspectors leaving the occupied town hall, where they were being kept under armed guard.

Kiev’s soldiers are surrounding the flashpoint town in a bid to prevent reinforcements reaching militants there.

The fresh Western sanctions are a response to Russia’s perceived failure to implement an April 17 deal struck in Geneva to defuse the crisis by disarming militias and having them vacate occupied public buildings.

“Russia has so far failed to implement any part of the Geneva agreement,” said British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who plans to visit Ukraine as well as Moldova and Georgia next week.

Among those targeted by the U.S. sanctions is the president of Rosneft, Russia’s top petroleum company and one of the world’s largest publicly traded oil companies.

The EU said talks with Russia and Ukraine will take place in Warsaw Friday to try to resolve a $3.5-billion gas bill Gazprom calculates Kiev owes. Putin has threatened to cut off the gas flow to Ukraine if it is not quickly paid.

The crisis has accelerated since February, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was forced to flee after months of increasingly bloody mass street protests by pro-Western demonstrators.

Photo via Alexander Astaryev