June 11th, 2022 This image from Maxar Technologies shows a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk, Ukraine, on Oct. 13, 2021. A United Nations report says Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large share of the blame for a deadly assault on a care home for the elderly and disabled. Ukrainian fighters occupied the facility in March and then battled Kremlin-backed rebels while dozens of patients and staff were trapped inside. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) — Two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Russian forces assaulted a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk. Dozens of elderly and disabled patients, many of them bedridden, were trapped inside without water or electricity. The March 11 assault set off a fire that spread throughout the facility, suffocating people who couldn’t move. A small number of patients and staff escaped and fled into a nearby forest, finally getting assistance after walking for 5 kilometers (3 miles). In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack. But a new U.N. report has found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target. At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the assault, but the exact number of people killed remains unknown, according to the United Nations. The report by the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t conclude the Ukrainian soldiers or the Russian troops committed a war crime. But it said the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas. The aftermath of the attack on the Stara Krasnyanka home also provides a window into how both Russia and Ukraine move quickly to set the narrative for how events are unfolding on the ground — even when those events may still be shrouded by the fog of war. For Ukraine, maintaining the upper hand in the fight for hearts and minds helps to ensure the continued flow of billions of dollars in Western military and humanitarian aid. Russia’s frequently indiscriminate shelling of apartment buildings, hospitals, schools and theaters has been the primary cause of the war’s thousands of civilian casualties. Ukraine and its allies, including the United States, have rebuked Moscow for the deaths and injuries and called for those responsible to be brought to justice. But Ukraine also must abide by the international rules of the battlefield. David Crane, a former Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff. “The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.” The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline,” drawing from a variety of sources, have independently documented hundreds of attacks across Ukraine that likely constitute war crimes. The vast majority appear to have been committed by Russia. But a handful, including the destruction of the Stara Krasnyanka care home, indicate Ukrainian fighters are also to blame. The first reports in the media about the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home largely reflected statements issued by Ukrainian officials more than a week after the fighting ended. Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, declared in a March 20 post to his Telegram account that 56 people had been killed “cynically and deliberately” by “Russian occupiers” who “shot at close range from a tank.” The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said in a statement issued the same day that 56 elderly people died due to the “treacherous actions” of the Russian forces and their allies. Neither statement mentioned whether Ukrainian soldiers had entered the home before the fighting began. The Luhansk regional administration, which Haidai leads, did not respond to requests for comment. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office told the AP on Friday that its Luhansk division continues to investigate Russia’s “indiscriminate shelling and forced transfer of persons” from the nursing home. About 50 patients were killed in the attack, the office said, fewer than it stated in March. The prosecutor general’s office did not directly respond to the U.N. report, but said it also is looking into whether Ukrainian troops had been in the home. Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. They have declared two independent “people’s” republics, which were recognized by Russia just before the war began. After the invasion, these separatist fighters came under Russian command. Viktoria Serdyukova, the human rights commissioner for the Luhansk separatist government, said in a March 23 statement that the Ukrainian troops were responsible for casualties at the nursing home. The residents had been taken hostage by Ukrainian “militants” and many of them were “burned alive” in a fire started by the Ukrainians as they were retreating, she said. The U.N. report examined violations of international human rights law that have occurred in Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. The Stara Krasnyanka attack totals just two paragraphs in the 38-page report. Although brief, this short section is the most detailed and independent examination of the incident that’s been made public. The Stara Krasnyanka section is based on eyewitness accounts from staff who survived the attack and information provided by relatives of residents, according to a U.N. official who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is still working to fully document the case, the official said. Among the remaining questions are how many people were killed and who they were. At the beginning of March, according to the U.N. report, “when active hostilities drew nearer to the care house,” its management requested repeatedly that local authorities evacuate the residents. But an evacuation wasn’t possible because Ukrainian forces were believed to have mined the surrounding area and blocked roads, the report said. The home is built on a hill and is near a key highway, which made the location strategically important. On March 7, Ukrainian soldiers entered the nursing home, according to the U.N. Two days later, they “engaged in an exchange of fire” with the Moscow-backed separatists, “although it remains unclear which side opened fire first,” the report said. No staff or residents were injured in this first exchange. On March 11, 71 residents and 15 staff remained in the home with no access to water or electricity. That morning, the Luhansk separatist forces, which the U.N. referred to as “Russian-affiliated armed groups,” attacked with heavy weapons, the report said. “A fire started and spread across the care house, while the fighting was ongoing,” according to the U.N. An unspecified number of patients and staff fled the home and ran into a nearby forest and were eventually met by the separatist fighters, who gave them assistance, according to the U.N. A correspondent for the state-owned Russia-1 news channel gained access to the war-ravaged home after the battle and posted a video to his Telegram account in April that accused the Ukrainian soldiers of using “helpless old people” as human shields. The correspondent, Nikolai Dolgachev, was accompanied into the building by a man identified in the video as a Luhansk separatist soldier who goes by the call sign “Wolf.” The extensive damage to the building, both inside and out, is visible in the video. A body is laying on the floor. The AP verified that the location in the video posted by Dolgachev is the care home by comparing it to other videos and photos of the building. Dolgachev said the Ukrainian troops set up a “machine gun nest” and an anti-tank weapon in the home. In the video, he stops amid the rubble inside the building to rest his hand on the anti-tank weapon, which he incorrectly called a Tor. The Tor is a Russian-made surface-to-air missile. Ian Williams, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reviewed the video and said the weapon is an RK-3 Corsar, a Ukrainian-built portable anti-tank guided missile. While the opposing sides blame each other for the Stara Krasnyanka tragedy, the grim reality is that much of the war in Ukraine is being fought in populated areas, increasing the potential for civilian casualties. Those deaths and injuries become almost inevitable when the civilians are caught in the line of fire. “The Russians are the bad guys (in this conflict). That’s pretty clear,” Crane said. “But everybody is accountable to the law and the laws of armed conflict.” All contents © copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By MARIA GRAZIA MURRU and HANNA ARHIROVA June 14th, 2022 In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters work to extinguish fire at a building damaged by shelling, in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Thursday, July 14, 2022. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP) VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles struck a city in central Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others far from the front lines, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine’s president accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in locations without military value. Officials said Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian ship in the Black Sea damaged a medical clinic, offices, stores and residential buildings in Vinnytsia, a city 268 kilometers (167 miles) southwest of the capital, Kyiv. Vinnytsia region Gov. Serhiy Borzov said Ukrainian air defenses downed two of the four incoming Russian missiles. National Police Chief Ihor Klymenko said only six bodies had been identified so far, while 39 people were still missing. Three children younger than 10 where among the dead. Of the 66 people hospitalized, five remained in critical condition while 34 sustained severe injuries, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. “It was a building of a medical organization. When the first rocket hit it, glass fell from my windows,” said Vinnytsia resident Svitlana Kubas, 74. “And when the second wave came, it was so deafening that my head is still buzzing. It tore out the very outermost door, tore it right through the holes.” Borzov said 36 apartment buildings were damaged and residents have been evacuated. Along with hitting buildings, the missiles ignited a fire that spread to 50 cars in a parking lot, officials said. “These are quite high-precision missiles. ... They knew where they were hitting,” Borzov told the AP. Russia denied targeting civilians. “Russia only strikes at military targets in Ukraine. The strike on Vinnytsia targeted an officers’ residence, where preparations by Ukrainian armed forces were underway,” Evgeny Varganov, a member of Russia’s permanent U.N. mission, said in an address to the chamber. Among the buildings damaged in the strike was the House of Officers, a Soviet-era concert hall. Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-controlled Russian television network RT, said on her messaging app channel that military officials told her a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian “Nazis.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his call for Russia to be declared a state sponsor of terrorism. The strike happened as government officials from about 40 countries met in The Hague, Netherlands, to discuss coordinating investigations and prosecutions of potential war crimescommitted in Ukraine. “No other country in the world represents such a terrorist threat as Russia,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “No other country in the world allows itself every day to use cruise missiles and rocket artillery to destroy cities and ordinary human life.” Zelenskyy said that among those killed was a 4-year-old girl named Liza, whose mother was badly wounded. A video of the little girl, twirling in a lavender dress in a field of lavender, was widely shared on social media. “Today, our hearts are bleeding, and our eyes are full of tears because our family of many thousands has lost one of our own,” the charity Down Syndrome wrote. It said: “They were just on their way from a speech therapy class, and they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Zelenskyy’s wife later posted that she had met this “wonderful girl” while filming a Christmas video with a group of children, who were given oversized ornaments to paint. “The little mischievous girl then managed in a half an hour to paint not only herself, her holiday dress, but also all the other children, me, the cameramen and the director ... Look at her alive, please,” Olena Zelenska wrote in a note accompanying the video. Zelenskyy called for creating a mechanism for confiscating Russian assets around the world and using them to compensate the victims of “Russian terror.” Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky echoed Zelenskyy, calling the missile attack a “war crime” intended to intimidate Ukrainians while the country’s forces hold out in the east. He said several dozen people were detained for questioning on suspicion that the Russian forces had received targeting assistance from someone on the ground. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv issued a security alert late Thursday urging all U.S. citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave immediately. The alert, which appeared to be in response to the Vinnytsia attack, asserted that large gatherings and organized events “may serve as Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including its western regions.” Vinnytsia is one of Ukraine’s largest cities, with a prewar population of 370,000. Thousands of people from eastern Ukraine, where Russia has concentrated its offensive, have fled there since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Kateryna Popova said she saw many injured people lying on the street after the missiles struck. Popova had fled from Kharkiv in March in search of safety in “quiet” Vinnytsia. But the missile attack changed all that. “We did not expect this. Now we feel like we don’t have a home again,” she said. Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the attack mirrors previous ones on residential areas that Moscow has launched “to try to pressure Kyiv to make some concessions.” “Russia has used the same tactics when it hit the Odesa region, Kremenchuk, Chasiv Yar and other areas,” Zhdanov said. “The Kremlin wants to show that it will keep using unconventional methods of war and kill civilians in defiance of Kyiv and the entire international community.” Before the missiles hit Vinnytsia, the president’s office reported the deaths of five civilians and the wounding of eight more in Russian attacks over the past day. One person was wounded when a missile damaged several buildings in the southern city of Mykolaiv early Thursday. A missile attack on Wednesday killed at least five people in the city. Russian forces also continued artillery and missile attacks in eastern Ukraine, primarily in the Donetsk region after overtaking the adjacent Luhansk region. The two regions make up the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking area of steel factories, mines and other industries that powered Ukraine’s economy. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko, meanwhile, urged residents to evacuate as “quickly as possible.” “We are urging civilians to leave the region, where electricity, water and gas are in short supply after the Russian shelling,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. “The fighting is intensifying, and people should stop risking their lives and leave the region.” On the battlefront, Russian and Ukrainian militaries are seeking to replenish their depleted stocks of unmanned aerial vehicles to pinpoint enemy positions and guide artillery strikes. Both sides are looking to procure jamming-resistant, advanced drones that could offer a decisive edge in battle. Ukrainian officials say the demand for such technology is “immense” with crowdfunding efforts underway to raise the necessary cash. In other developments: — Russian-installed officials in southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region announced that they planned to hold an early September referendum on incorporating the region into Russia. Large parts of Zaporizhzhia are under Russian control now, as is most of neighboring Kherson. Kremlin-backed administrations in both areas have declared their intentions to become part of Russia. Separatist leaders in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” have also announced similar plans. — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed into law a bill banning the dissemination of information on Russian companies and individuals who could face international sanctions. The law explicitly bans from internet or media publication — without written permission — any information about transactions made or planned by Russian individuals or legal entities participating in foreign economic activity. It also suspends for three years the obligatory publication of key financial and governance information by major Russian state corporations. All contents © copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By LORI HINNANT, EVGENIY MALOLETKA and VASILISA STEPANENKO October 2, 2022 IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end. Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was. “No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.” The brutal encounter at the end of March was just the start. Andriy Kotsar would be captured and tortured twice more by Russian forces in Izium, and the pain would be even worse. Andriy Kotsar, who was tortured by Russian soldiers, sits at a table after a service at Pishchanskyi church in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) Russian torture in Izium was arbitrary, widespread and absolutely routine for both civilians and soldiers throughout the city, an Associated Press investigation has found. While torture was also evident in Bucha, that devastated Kyiv suburb was only occupied for a month. Izium served as a hub for Russian soldiers for nearly seven months, during which they established torture sites everywhere. Based on accounts of survivors and police, AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town and gained access to five of them. They included a deep sunless pit in a residential compound with dates carved in the brick wall, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine and rotting food, a medical clinic, a police station and a kindergarten. The AP spoke to 15 survivors of Russian torture in the Kharkiv region, as well as two families whose loved ones disappeared into Russian hands. Two of the men were taken repeatedly and abused. One battered, unconscious Ukrainian soldier was displayed to his wife to force her to provide information she simply didn’t have. The AP also confirmed eight men were killed under torture in Russian custody, according to survivors and families. All but one were civilians. At a mass grave site created by the Russians and discovered in the woods of Izium, at least 30 of the 447 bodies recently excavated bore visible marks of torture — bound hands, close gunshot wounds, knife wounds and broken limbs, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office. Those injuries corresponded to the descriptions of the pain inflicted upon the survivors. AP journalists also saw bodies with bound wrists at the mass grave. Amid the trees were hundreds of simple wooden crosses, most marked only with numbers. One said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. At least two more mass graves have been found in the town, all heavily mined, authorities said. Unidentified graves of civilians and Ukrainian soldiers are marked with a cross in a cemetery in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. A physician who treated hundreds of Izium’s injured during the Russian occupation said people regularly arrived at his emergency room with injuries consistent with torture, including gunshots to their hands and feet, broken bones and severe bruising, and burns. None would explain their wounds, he said. “Even if people came to the hospital, silence was the norm,” chief Dr. Yuriy Kuznetsov said. He added that one soldier came in for treatment for hand injuries, clearly from being cuffed, but the man refused to say what happened. Men with links to Ukrainian forces were singled out repeatedly for torture, but any adult man risked getting caught up. Matilda Bogner, the head of the U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine, told the AP they had documented “widespread practices of torture or ill-treatment of civilian detainees” by Russian forces and affiliates. Torture of soldiers was also systemic, she said. Torture in any form during an armed conflict is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, whether of prisoners of war or civilians. “It serves three purposes,” said Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch. “Torture came with questions to coerce information, but it is also to punish and to sow fear. It is to send a chilling message to everyone else.” A Ukrainian soldier's jacket with a national flag is sits in a room at School No. 2 in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. Spoons rest in a bowl as it sits on the floor in a holding cell in the basement of a police station which was used by Russian forces in the recently retaken town of Izium, Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Light shines through a window of a holding cell in the basement of a police station which was used by Russian forces in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. NO SAFE HAVEN AP journalists found Kotsar, 26, hiding in a monastery in Izium, his blond hair tied back neatly in the Orthodox fashion and his beard curling beneath his chin. He had no way to safely contact his loved ones, who thought he was dead. Back in March, after his first round of torture, Kotsar fled to the gold-domed Pishchanskyi church. Russian soldiers were everywhere, and nowhere in Izium was safe. Hiding amid the icons, Kotsar listened to the rumble of Russian armored vehicles outside and contemplated suicide. He had been a soldier for just under a month and had no idea if anyone in his little unit had survived the Russian onslaught. When he emerged from the church a few days later, a Russian patrol caught him. They kept him a week. His captors’ idea of a joke was to shave his legs with a knife, and then debate aloud whether to slice off the limb entirely. “They took, I don’t know what exactly, some iron, maybe glass rods, and burned the skin little by little,” he said. Andriy Kotsar, who was tortured by Russian soldiers, carries buckets with water near Pishchanskyi monastery in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. He knew nothing that could help them. So they set him free again, and again he sought refuge with the monks. He had nowhere else to go. By then, the church and monastery compound had become a shelter for around 100 people, including 40 children. Kotsar took up a version of the monastic life, living with the black-robed brothers, helping them care for the refugees and spending his free hours standing before the gilt icons in contemplation. In the meantime, Izium was transforming into a Russian logistical hub. The town was swarming with troops, and its electricity, gas, water and phone networks were severed. Izium was effectively cut off from the rest of Ukraine. SCREAMS IN THE NIGHT It was also in the spring that the Russians first sought out Mykola Mosyakyn, driving down the rutted dirt roads until they reached the Ukrainian soldier’s fenced cottage. Mosyakyn, 38, had enlisted after the war began, though not in the same unit as Kotsar. They tossed him into a pit with standing water, handcuffed him and hung him by the restraints until his skin went numb. They waited in vain for him to talk, and tried again. “They beat me with sticks. They hit me with their hands, they kicked me, they put out cigarettes on me, they pressed matches on me,” he recounted. “They said, ‘Dance,’ but I did not dance. So they shot my feet.” After three days they dropped him near the hospital with the command: “Tell them you had an accident.” At least two other men from Mosyakyn’s neighborhood, a father and son who are both civilians, were taken at the same time. The father speaks about his two weeks in the basement cell in a whisper, staring at the ground. His adult son refuses to speak about it at all. That family, along with another man who was also tortured in the basement cell on Izium’s east bank, spoke on condition of anonymity. They are terrified the Russians will return. Mosyakyn was captured again by a different Russian unit just a few days later. This time, he found himself in School No. 2, subject to routine beatings along with other Ukrainians. AP journalists found a discarded Ukrainian soldier’s jacket in the same blue cell he described in detail. The school also served as a base and field hospital for Russian soldiers, and at least two Ukrainian civilians held there died. But the soldiers again freed Mosyakyn. To this day, he doesn’t know why. Nor does he understand why they’d release him just to recapture him a few days later and haul him to a crowded garage of a medical clinic near the railroad tracks. More than a dozen other Ukrainians were jailed with him, soldiers and civilians. Two garages were for men, one for women and a bigger one — the only one with a window — for Russian soldiers. Women were held in the garage closest to the soldiers’ quarters. Their screams came at night, according to Mosyakyn and Kotsar, who were both held at the clinic at different times. Ukrainian intelligence officials said they were raped regularly. Mykola Mosyakyn stands in a room of a former medical clinic where Russian forces tortured him in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. Mykola Mosyakyn shows scars on his back after torture by Russian soldiers in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022 For the men, Room 6 was for electrocution. Room 9 was for waterboarding, Mosyakyn said. He described how they covered his face with a cloth bag and poured water from a kettle onto him to mimic the sensation of drowning. They also hooked up his toes to electricity and shocked him with electrodes on his ears. It was here that Mosyakyn watched Russian soldiers drag out the lifeless bodies of two civilians they’d tortured to death, both from Izium’s Gonkharovka neighborhood. Kotsar was taken to the clinic in July and received a slightly different treatment, involving a Soviet-era gas mask and electrodes on his legs. AP journalists also found gas masks at two schools. By the time Kotsar arrived, people had already been there for 12 to 16 days. They told him arms and legs were broken, and people taken out to be shot. He vowed that if he survived, he would never allow himself to be captured again. They released him after a couple of weeks. He craved familiar faces and people who meant him no harm. He returned to the monks. “When I came out, everything was green. It was very, very strange, because there had been absolutely no color,” he said. “Everything was wonderful, so vivid.” Ukrainian servicemen inspect a kindergarten which was used by Russian forces in the recently liberated village of Kapitolivka near Izium, Ukraine, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022. SHALLOW GRAVE In mid-August, the bodies of three men were found in a shallow forested pit on the town’s outskirts. Ivan Shabelnyk left home with a friend on March 23 to collect pine cones so the family could light the samovar and have tea. They never came back. Another man taken with them reluctantly told Shabelnyk’s family about the torture they’d all endured together, first in the basement of a nearby house and then in School No. 2. Then he left town. Their bodies were found in mid-August, in the last days of the occupation, by a man scavenging for firewood. He followed the smell of death to a shallow grave in the forest. Shabelnyk’s hands were shot, his ribs broken, his face unrecognizable. They identified him by the jacket he wore, from the local grain factory where he worked. His grieving mother showed the AP a photo. “He kept this photo with him, of us together when he was a small boy,” said Ludmila Shabelnyk, in tears. “Why did they destroy people like him? I don’t understand. Why has this happened to our country?” His sister, Olha Zaparozhchenko, walked with journalists through the cemetery and looked at his grave. “They tortured civilians at will, like bullies,” she said. “I have only one word: genocide.” The Kharkiv region’s chief prosecutor, Oleksandr Filchakov, told the AP it was too soon to determine how many people were tortured in Izium, but said it easily numbered into the dozens. “Every day, many people call us with information, people who were in the occupied territories,” he said. “Every day, relatives come to us and say their friends, their family, were tortured by Russian soldiers.” Olha Zaparozhchenko stands near the grave of her brother Ivan Shabelnyk, left, in the recently liberated village of Kapitolivka near Izium, Ukraine, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022. Ludmila Shabelnyk shows photographs of her son Ivan Shabelnyk in the recently liberated village of Kapitolivka near Izium, Ukraine, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022. Ludmila Shabelnyk cries while showing photographs of her son Ivan Shabelnyk in the recently liberated village of Kapitolivka near Izium, Ukraine, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022. Damaged and destroyed homes are visible from Russian attacks on the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. MISSING NO MORE After his final escape, Kotsar hid in the monastery for more than a month. Without documents and a phone connection to prove his identity, he was too afraid to leave. Kotsar’s family had no idea what happened to him. They had simply reported him missing, like so many other Ukrainian soldiers caught on the wrong side of the frontline. He spoke with effort to AP journalists, and at one point asked them to turn off the camera so he could compose himself. The AP contacted the Commissioner for Issues of Missing Persons Under Special Circumstances, which confirmed the missing person report and his identity through a photo on file. Then Kotsar’s own unit, which had left Izium in disarray, returned and tracked him down. Kotsar doesn’t know what comes next. Ukrainian officials are still in the process of restoring his identity documents, and without them he can’t go anywhere. He would like psychological treatment to deal with the trauma from repeated torture, and for now he’s staying with the monks. “If it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have survived at all,” he said. “They saved me.” Kotsar’s first call was to the sister of his best friend — the only person in his entire circle of loved ones he was certain was in a safe place. He grinned as the connection went through. “Tell him I’m alive,” he said. “Tell him I’m alive and in one piece.” Holding cells are visible in a basement of a police station that was used by Russian forces to detain and torture Ukrainians in the recently liberated town of Izium, Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. All contents © copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Anne Killen, Holly Scala, and Sarah Kane Genocide Watch staff have published the twenty-second Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream tracks the beginning of ISIS's existence in the early 2000s through current developments in attempts to hold ISIS fighters accountable. ISIS committed all Ten Stages of Genocide at the peak of its strength. This Timestream further examines the global scale on which ISIS recruited fighters and conducted attacks, as well as how the atrocities this terrorist group committed led to a global refugee crisis. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

The leader of a Rohingya Muslim insurgency against Myanmar's security forces said on Friday his group would keep fighting "even if a million die" unless the country's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, took action to protect the religious minority. Attacks on Myanmar border guard posts in October last year by a previously unknown insurgent group ignited the biggest crisis of Suu Kyi's year in power, with more than 75,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh in the ensuing army crackdown. In his first independently conducted media interview, Ata Ullah, who has been identified by analysts and local people as the group's leader, denied links to foreign Islamists and said it was focussed on the rights of the Rohingya, who say they face persecution at the hands of Myanmar's Buddhist majority. "If we don't get our rights, if 1 million, 1.5 million, all Rohingya need to die, we will die," he said, speaking via a video call from an undisclosed location. "We will take our rights. We will fight with the cruel military government." A United Nations report issued last month said Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes against Rohingya during their campaign against the insurgents, which may amount to crimes against humanity. The military has denied the accusations, saying it was engaged in a legitimate counterinsurgency operation. "No one will be above the law," said Suu Kyi's spokesman Zaw Htay, responding to questions from Reuters on Friday about the insurgent leader's comments. "If they attack us violently, we will respond the same way. Nowhere in the world would violent action be tolerated." ETHNIC CLASHES More than a million Rohingya live in northwestern Myanmar's Rakhine State, where they are denied citizenship, freedom of movement and access to services such as healthcare. Serious ethnic clashes between Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists erupted in 2012 in which more than 100 people were killed and some 140,000 were displaced. "In 2012, lots of things happened and they killed us, so we understood at that time, they would not give us our rights," said Ata Ullah. A report by the International Crisis Group in December said the insurgent group, which at first called itself Harakah al-Yaqin, Arabic for "Faith Movement", was formed by Rohingya living in Saudi Arabia after the 2012 violence. It identified Ata Ullah, who appeared in a series of videos claiming responsibility for the Oct. 9 attacks on security forces, as the group's leader. Ata Ullah said decades of resentment at their treatment had prompted hundreds of young Rohingya men to join him after he returned to Rakhine following several years in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. "We can't turn on the lights at night. We can't move from one place to another during the day too. Everywhere checkpoints. That is not the way human beings live," he said. Rohingya refugees Reuters has spoken to in camps in Bangladesh have said that many initially sympathised with the insurgents, but that the violence their campaign has unleashed had cost them support. Some have described how suspected government informers were killed by fighters. "WE SURVIVE BY SELLING COWS" In the earlier videos, Ata Ullah had cited Koranic verse and called for "jihad". Suu Kyi's spokesman, Zaw Htay, said he "urged the international community to see the group's background...they are linked with terrorist organizations from the Middle East". But Ata Ullah denied the group, which issued a statement earlier this week saying it was changing its name to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, had any connections with other militants or received outside support. "We have no groups who help us from behind, whether from here or also abroad...We survive here by selling cows and buffalos," he said. Myanmar's military said last month that what it called a clearance operation in northwestern Rakhine had ended, although the area remains closed to outside observers. Ata Ullah did not respond to several questions regarding the group's future strategy, its current location or how many fighters were left with him. Flanking him as a spoke to Reuters was another man brandishing a machine gun. The Rohingya crisis has posed the biggest challenge to Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi's government, which on Thursday marked its first year in power. Her defenders say there is little she can do, given the constitution gives her no control over the military. "The people are in such trouble, the military is so cruel to many in the Rohingya community, so she should speak out, do something for these people as a Nobel prize winner," said Ata Ullah. "If she tries to do something for us, the military would do something to her government. That's why she will not protect us." __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(c) 2017 Reuters

By MICHAEL BIESECKER and ERIKA KINETZ A neighbor comforts Natalia Vlasenko, whose husband, Pavlo Vlasenko, and grandson, Dmytro Chaplyhin, called Dima, were killed by Russian forces, as she cries in her garden in Bucha, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022. Russian soldiers picked up Dima during a March 4 sweep, accused him of being a spotter helping the Ukrainian military. Asked “What would justice be for you?,” the grandmother of 20-year-old Dima says, “I- I- I can’t even- I don’t know. These scoundrels…” (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ten months into Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, overwhelming evidence shows the Kremlin’s troops have waged total war, with disregard for international laws governing the treatment of civilians and conduct on the battlefield. Ukraine is investigating more than 58,000 potential Russian war crimes — killings, kidnappings, indiscriminate bombings and sexual assaults. Reporting by The Associated Press and “Frontline,” recorded in a public database, has independently verified more than 600 incidents that appear to violate the laws of war. Some of those attacks were massacres that killed dozens or hundreds of civilians and as a totality it could account for thousands of individual war crimes. As Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, told the AP, “Ukraine is a crime scene.” That extensive documentation has run smack into a hard reality, however. While authorities have amassed a staggering amount of evidence — the conflict is among the most documented in human history — they are unlikely to arrest most of those who pulled the trigger or gave the beatings anytime soon, let alone the commanders who gave the orders and political leaders who sanctioned the attacks. The reasons are manifold, experts say. Ukrainian authorities face serious challenges in gathering air-tight evidence in a war zone. And the vast majority of alleged war criminals have evaded capture and are safely behind Russian lines. Even in successful prosecutions, the limits of justice so far are glaring. Take the case of Vadim Shishimarin, a baby-faced 21-year-old tank commander who was the first Russian tried on war crimes charges. He surrendered in March and pleaded guilty in a Kyiv courtroom in May to shooting a 62-year-old Ukrainian civilian in the head. The desire for some combination of justice and vengeance was palpable in that courtroom. “Do you consider yourself a murderer?” a woman shouted at the Russian as he stood bent forward with his head resting against the glass of the cage he was locked in. “What about the man in the coffin?” came another, sharper voice. A third demanded the defense lawyer explain how he could fight for the Russian’s freedom. The young soldier was first sentenced to life in prison, which was reduced to 15 years on appeal. Critics said the initial penalty was unduly harsh, given that he confessed to the crime, said he was following orders and expressed remorse. Ukrainian prosecutors, however, have not yet been able to charge Shishimarin’s commanders or those who oversaw him. Since March, Ukraine has named more than 600 Russians, many of them high-ranking political and military officials, as suspects, including Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu. But, so far, the most powerful have not fallen into Ukrainian custody. “It would be terrible to find a scenario in which, in the end, you convict a few people of war crimes and crimes against humanity who are low-grade or mid-grade military types or paramilitary types, but the top table gets off scot-free,” said Philippe Sands, a prominent British human rights lawyer. Throughout the war Russian leaders have denied accusations of brutality. Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said no civilians were tortured and killed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha despite the meticulous documentation of the atrocities by AP, other journalists, and war crimes investigators there. “Not a single local person has suffered from any violent action,” he said, calling the photos and video of bodies in the streets “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians. Such statements have been easily rebutted by Ukrainian and international authorities, human rights groups and journalists who have meticulously documented Russian barbarity since the Kremlin ordered the unprovoked invasion in February. Part of that effort, the AP and Frontline database called War Crimes Watch Ukraine, offers a contemporaneous catalog of the horrors of war. It is not a comprehensive accounting. AP and Frontline only included incidents that could be verified by photos, videos or firsthand witness accounts. There are hundreds of reported incidents of potential war crimes for which there was not enough publicly available evidence to independently confirm what happened. Still, the resulting database details 10 months of attacks that appear to violate the laws of war, including 93 attacks on schools, 36 where children were killed, and more than 200 direct attacks on civilians, including torture, the kidnapping and killing of civilians, and the desecration of dead bodies. Among Russia’s targets: churches, cultural centers, hospitals, food facilities and electrical infrastructure. The database catalogs how Russia utilized cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons in residential neighborhoods and to attack buildings housing civilians. An AP investigation revealed that Russia’s bombing of a theater in Mariupol, which was being used as a civilian shelter, likely killed more than 600 people. Another showed that in the first 30 days after the invasion, Russian forces struck and damaged 34 medical facilities, suggesting a pattern and intent. “That’s a crime against the laws of war,’ said Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes. “Once somebody’s injured, they’re entitled to medical care. You can’t attack a hospital. That’s the oldest rule we have in international law.” Experts say Russia under President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly ignored the rulesestablished by the Geneva Conventions, a series of treaties that dictate how warring countries should treat each other’s citizens, and the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court and defined specific war crimes and crimes against humanity. “These abuses are not the acts of rogue units; rather, they are part of a deeply disturbing pattern of abuse consistent with what we have seen from Russia’s prior military engagements — in Chechnya, Syria, and Georgia,” said Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice, speaking earlier this month at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. This story is part of an AP/FRONTLINE investigation that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and the documentary “ Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes ” on PBS. Short of a regime-toppling revolution in Moscow, however, it is unlikely Putin and other high-ranking Russians end up in court, whether in Ukraine or the Hague, experts say. And even as a chorus of global leaders have joined Ukrainians in calling for legal action against the architects of this war, there is disagreement about the best way to do it. The International Criminal Court has been investigating potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. But it cannot prosecute the most basic offense, the crime of aggression – the unjust use of military force against another nation — because the Russian Federation, like the United States, never gave it authority to do so. Efforts to plug that loophole by creating a special international tribunal for the crime of aggression in Ukraine have been gaining momentum. Last month, the European Union threw its support behind the idea. Some human rights advocates say a special tribunal would be the smartest way to proceed. Sands, the British human rights lawyer, said prosecuting Russia before such a tribunal would be a “slam dunk.” “You’d need to prove that that war is manifestly in violation of international law,” he added. “That’s pretty straightforward because Mr. Putin has set out the reasons for that war, and it’s blindingly obvious that they don’t meet the requirements of international law.” But Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has opposed the creation of a special tribunal, calling it a “vanity project.” ”We are an international court,” Khan told AP and Frontline in July. “We’ve been accepted, of course, by the Security Councilors as legitimate. They’ve used this court in terms of referrals. And I think we should focus on using this court effectively.” Whatever happens on the international stage, the vast majority of cases will be heard within Ukraine itself. The daunting task of turning Ukraine’s beleaguered prosecutorial service into a bureaucracy capable of building sophisticated war crimes cases falls on Yurii Bielousov. When he was offered the job of leading the war crimes department in the prosecutor general’s office, Bielousov knew it would be tough. Just how tough became clear after Russians pulled out of Bucha last spring, leaving behind a crime scene strewn with the decomposing bodies of more than 450 men, women and children. Bucha was the first complex case picked up by Bielousov’s prosecutors, and it quickly became one of the most important. No one in Ukraine had ever dealt with something of that scale before. “The system was not in collapse, but the system was shocked,” Bielousov said. “OK, OK, let’s go everyone, and just try to do our best.” Ukraine has five different investigative agencies, each assigned legal responsibility for different kinds of crimes. The crimes in Bucha cut across all those categories, tangling the bureaucracy. That has only made building tough cases even harder. Despite the setbacks and hurdles, Bielousov says his prosecutors remain focused on gathering evidence that will stand up in domestic and international courts. He says he is also focused on another goal -- compiling an incontrovertible record of Russia’s savagery that the world cannot ignore. Yulia Truba wants the same thing. Her husband was one of the first men Russian soldiers tortured and killed in Bucha. She said she wants to establish a single, shared truth about what happened to her husband. “Russia won’t recognize this as a crime,” Truba said. “I just want as many people as possible to recognize it was a real murder and he was tortured. For me, this would be justice.” All contents © Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

31 January 2023 By Arsene Kabore and Sam Mednick File photo of Burkina Faso army officers on a patrol in Kaya, capital of Burkina Faso's north-central region, taken on November 20, 2021. © Olympia de Maismont, AFP OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Multiple jihadi attacks across Burkina Faso over several days have resulted in the death of at least 32 people, including soldiers and civilians, government authorities said Tuesday. Burkina Faso’s State Information Agency posted on its Facebook page that a dozen soldiers and a civilian were killed Monday in Falagountou in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region during clashes between the military and jihadis. Another 20 people were killed in two attacks over the weekend in the country’s east-central and western regions. Four people were executed Saturday afternoon when gunmen intercepted their van between Tenkodogo and Ouargaye villages. On Sunday, a passenger mini-bus coming from the western city of Banfora was intercepted by armed men, said Col. Jean Charles dit Yenapono Some, governor of the Cascades region in a statement. Eight women and one man were freed, the rest of the people were abducted and their lifeless bodies were found with bullet holes the following day, he said. Jihadi violence linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Group has ravaged the West African country for years killing thousands and displacing nearly 2 million people. Nearly 5,000 civilians have been killed since 2015, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). The violence has sowed frustration and distrust among the population and led to two coups last year. The new junta leader, Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in September promising to stem the violence but attacks are increasing. Traoré has mobilized tens of thousands of civilian fighters to combat the jihadis alongside the army. But analysts says the civilian fighters are accused of targeting other civilians perceived to be working with the jihadis, which is fueling retaliatory attacks. “The types of mass-atrocities that are occurring were expected, as the conflict was expected to escalate in the coming months due to the increased mobilization of the population through the (volunteer) program and the increasing trend of extrajudicial killings by defence and security forces observed in recent months,” said Heni Nsaibia, senior researcher at ACLED. “With the increase in state violence and state-sanctioned violence, it is not surprising that militant violence is escalating and further fueling cycles of attacks and retaliation,” he said. © copyright 2023 The Associated Press.

By Omar Faruk An aerial view shows the city of Hargeisa from the outskirts of the city, in Somaliland, on September 16, 2021. (AFP) MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — At least 57 people have been confirmed dead in days of clashes between anti-government fighters and Somaliland security forces in the disputed city of Las-Anod after local leaders said they wanted to re-join the federal government of Somalia, a doctor reported Saturday. Abdimajid Hussein Sugulle, the director-general of a public hospital in Las-Anod, told The Associated Press that more than 400 people also were wounded in nearly a week of fighting. Authorities in Somaliland, a region that separated from Somalia three decades ago and seeks recognition as an independent country, announced a unilateral cease-fire on Friday night. But residents said skirmishes continued in and around the eastern city. Somaliland and the Somali state of Puntland have disputed Las-Anod for years, but the city has been under Somaliland control. The Somaliland government accused clan militants of targeting its army facilities. In return, traditional elders accused Somaliland forces of invading the city and said the only way to restore peace was for the troops to leave. The United Nations has said the fighting has displaced more than 80,000 people. Water and electricity have been cut off amid shelling. “Indiscriminate shelling of civilians is unacceptable and must stop,” the U.N. and international partners said in a statement earlier in the week. The Somali Red Crescent Society said the dead included one of its volunteers, who was killed by a stray bullet. © copyright 2023 The Associated Press.

3 March 2023 By Sam Mednick and Michael Biesecker GRAPHIC CONTENT - An uncle of a 16-year-old named Adama watches a video in Burkina Faso, Saturday March 18, 2023, showing a man slamming a rock onto the head of his nephew. Burkina Faso has been wracked by violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that has killed thousands, but some civilians say they are even more afraid of Burkina Faso’s security forces, whom they accuse of extrajudicial killings. The military junta has denied its security forces were involved, but a frame-by-frame analysis by The Associated Press of the 83-second video shows the killings happened inside a military base in the country's north. (AP Photo) It was a walk 16-year-old Adama had done countless times, feeding the cows not far from his grandmother’s house in northern Burkina Faso. But one day in mid-February, the teen didn’t come home. The next time his family saw him, it was in a harrowing cellphone video on social media days after his disappearance. Adama lay alongside six other bloodied boys, their hands bound and most stripped to the waist. They were surrounded by a dozen men, many in military fatigues, some taking video. Sprinting through the frame, one man came stopped and slammed a rock onto Adama’s head. As blood streamed from the wound, the man shooting the video chuckled. “This one ... was still alive,” he said, referring to Adama, whose last name is being withheld by The Associated Press out of concern for his family’s safety. “Good for nothing. You don’t have anything to do but to kill people. We’ll kill you one after another.” Burkina Faso’s military has denied responsibility for the killings, which is a potential war crime under international law. But a frame-by-frame analysis of the 83-second video by the AP and an examination of satellite imagery shows the killings happened inside a military base about 2 kilometers (1 1/4 miles) northwest of Ouahigouya, a regional capital near where Adama lived. From their uniforms and vehicles, AP also determined troops in the video were members of Burkina Faso’s security forces, which until recently received military training and hardware from the United States and European Union. Through exclusive interviews with Adama’s mother and uncle the AP was also able to reconstruct his final hours. For seven years, Burkina Faso has been wracked by violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Frustration at the government’s inability to stem the violence led to two coups last year by military juntas vowing to stamp out the insurgency. Yet little has changed, with Burkina Faso overtaking Afghanistan as the nation with the most deaths globally from extremist violence, according to a report by the Global Terrorism Index. A former French colony, Burkina Faso is a majority Muslim country that was initially spared jihadi violence that began in neighboring Mali 10 years ago. France sent troops into the region to drive back the Islamic militants in 2013. The violence has since swept across the vast semi-arid area of Africa south of the Sahara. Despite the jihadi violence, some civilians say they are more afraid of Burkina Faso’s security forces, who they accuse of extrajudicial killings and the disappearance of untold numbers of others accused of supporting the militants. The killings have only grown under the junta led by Capt. Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in September. Part of the junta’s strategy has been to recruit some 50,000 volunteer fighters to serve alongside the military, but residents say this has only contributed to civilian killings as the volunteers round up anyone they suspect of ties to the extremists. Often those swept up are members of the minority ethnic Fulani, a largely Muslim group who mostly live in the north where fighting has been most intense. On the day that Adama, who was Fulani, disappeared his grandmother searched their village for him. Hours later she learned the truth: Her grandson and a fellow cattle herder the family identified only as Ousseni had been seized by men on motorbikes and taken to a military base. Ousseni, who is not Fulani, told her the security forces briefly questioned him before releasing him. Ousseni said he overheard the troops accuse them of being jihadis. Fearful for his life, Ousseni fled the country soon after speaking to Adama’s grandmother. The video of Adama’s killing began circulating on WhatsApp chat groups around Feb. 14. A few days later, the teen’s body was found on a roadside near the military base where the video was filmed. The AP spoke to members of Adama’s family who fled their homes after he disappeared. Adama’s uncle heard his nephew was abducted by security forces from the boy’s grandmother. Adama’s mother heard separately about her son’s seizure from another relative who saw him grabbed by security forces. Neither Adama’s uncle nor his mother wanted their names used for fear of reprisal. During an interview with the AP, the 40-year-old uncle replayed the video showing his nephew’s lifeless body. “No one can escape death, but it is the way you die that makes a difference. This way of dying is so horrible,” he said adding he recognized his nephew from the blue shorts he was wearing and his body. Nearly 300 civilians have been killed in attacks involving Burkina Faso security forces between October and February, compared to about 100 during the same period a year ago, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The violence has also taken a sharp ethnic turn, with the Fulani, including children, increasingly targeted. “During sweep operations as part of the fight against terrorism, most of the children arrested are Fulani. In general, they are children who tend cattle,” said Daouda Diallo, general secretary of the Collective Against Impunity and Stigmatization of Communities, a local rights group. Using evidence from the video, the AP was able to match the location where it was filmed to a military base northwest of Ouahigouya, near where Adama was reported abducted. Analysis of the soldiers’ uniforms and their vehicles were consistent with those used by Burkina Faso’s ground forces. To aid the fight against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida, the U.S. and EU provided Burkina Faso with tens of millions of dollars in military training and equipment. Two camouflaged pickup trucks shown in the video were Toyota Land Cruiser Series 70s — the same model provided to Burkina Faso by the U.S. and EU. A large troop carrier was a Mercedes-Benz Atego, the kind the U.S. Defense Department delivered to Burkina Faso in 2014. Four security force members wore shirts with the Burkina Faso flag on the left arm. In a statement to the AP, U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel strongly condemned the “horrific violence as portrayed in the video,” adding that allegations of human rights violations must be investigated and “those determined to be responsible held accountable.” Nabila Massrali, an EU spokeswoman, said EU support for Burkina Faso’s security and defense sector has focused on human rights and international humanitarian law and no lethal weapons have been delivered or financed. While the AP cannot verify the exact date the video was recorded, a former Burkinabe government official and a soldier said the boys were killed after an attack by militants on a volunteer fighter outpost on Feb. 13, the day before the video appeared on social media. Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for Burkina Faso’s government, told the AP that militants often disguise themselves as security forces and film their actions in order to blame the military. But conflict experts say militants don’t typically commit atrocities and blame state security forces. Nor do they kill children, for fear of alienating local populations. © copyright 2023 The Associated Press.

By Jovana Gec Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic speaks during a press conference after talks with his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel at the Serbia Palace in Belgrade, Serbia, Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Diaz-Canel is on a two-day official visit to Serbia. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic). BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s president on Thursday accused Kosovo of carrying out “silent ethnic cleansing” of Serbs and said his country will seek a meeting with NATO’s chief and an urgent session of United Nations Security Council to demand their protection. “Things are out of control,” Aleksandar Vucic said. “Serbian people have been cornered.” Vucic said he will urge the meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg next week before requesting the U.N. Security Council session. Serbia could begin unspecified difficult “activities” if the two initiatives produce no results, he warned. “We have no right to allow further pogrom, persecution or ethnic cleansing of our people,” Vucic said. Serbia briefly heightened the combat readiness of its armed forces and threatened a military intervention after tensions recently soared in Kosovo between the ethnic Albanian-dominated government and the Serb minority living in northern Kosovo. Vucic cited recent arrests of Serbs in Kosovo to back his claim of ethnic cleansing by Kosovo authorities, which he described as “planned” and “well-organized.” The latest flare-up in Kosovo came after police-backed ethnic Albanian mayors took office following local elections in April that were boycotted by Serbs who are demanding implementation of an EU-mediated agreement for self-rule. Violence then erupted in May between the Serbs and Kosovo police and NATO-led peacekeepers, injuring dozens. It raised fears of a conflict similar to the one in 1998-99, when more than 10,000 people died, mostly ethnic Albanians. Vucic spoke a day after he met with European Union envoy Miroslav Lajcak, who visited the two countries in an effort to defuse the situation and push forward an EU-mediated dialogue aimed at resolving the dispute. Also this week, the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Luxembourg traveled to Serbia and Kosovo, urging the easing of tensions. The West fears further instability in Europe as the war continues in Ukraine. The EU has requested that new elections be held and that tensions calm down in order to push forward a dialogue on normalization of ties that is the key condition for the two countries to advance in their efforts to join the 27-nation bloc. Just four months ago, Vucic and Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti gave their tacit approval to an EU-sponsored plan to end animosity and help improve their ties in the longer term, but tensions have persisted as the two sides accused each other of fueling them. Vucic described the actions of Kosovo’s government as “what I would call silent ethnic cleansing, where Serbs have no rights to live unless they are loyal to the regime of Kurti.” “Serbia has done all it was asked to do, but there is no de-escalation because (Kosovo’s government) does not want it,” Vucic said. “Serbia is not preparing for war but it is ready to protect the lives of our people.” Any intervention by Serbia in Kosovo could lead to a clash with NATO-led peacekeepers there. NATO deployed peacekeepers in Kosovo after the Western military alliance bombed Serbia in 1999 to stop its brutal crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians. Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, declared independence in 2008, which was been recognized by the United States and most EU nations but not by Serbia, Russia and China. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By The Associated Press Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije, center, speaks with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, left, and Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, July 20, 2023. They talked about the situation in the region and upcoming important meetings between the delegations of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Srpska. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic). SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Top international representatives in Bosnia on Friday warned that a newly-approved law in the Serb-run entity, which makes libel a criminal offense, stands contrary to the Balkan nation's proclaimed European Union path. “Changes to the Criminal Code of Republika Srpska that recriminalize defamation represent an attack on civil liberties characteristic of authoritarian regimes,” said the Office of High Representative, or OHR. “These changes are also a step backward on the path towards EU membership, as it is not in line with the 14 key priorities outlined in the European Commission’s opinion," the statement added. The law was passed in the parliament of Republika Srpska on Thursday, championed by pro-Russian Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik, who has faced U.S. and British sanctions for his separatist policies. It amends the existing criminal law to reintroduce fines of up to 60,000 euros ($64,000) for libel — far beyond what most people in the impoverished Balkan nation can pay. A previous law did not consider libel a criminal offense. Republika Srpska is the name for the Serb half of Bosnia while the other half is run by Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslim, and Croats. The two entities were created in a peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war after more than 100,000 people were killed. In a separate statement late on Thursday, the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the EU Office said they were “dismayed that the Republika Srpska National Assembly today re-criminalized defamation.” “Freedom of expression is a fundamental right and a fundamental European value,” the statement said. “This move contravenes the international human rights commitments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is inconsistent with its European path.” Bosnia is seeking EU entry but the Bosnian Serb separatist drive and inner political bickering have stalled the effort. Bosnian Serb journalists have held numerous protests against the libel amendment. Dodik and his ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats have sought to tighten their hold on power in the Serb-run mini-state. Copyright © 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. assistant secretary-general for Africa says Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s declaration of a countrywide state of emergency and replacement of all governors will affect peace efforts in Darfur — but it’s too soon to assess the impact, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for Africa said Monday. Bintou Keita told the Security Council that “some rebel groups have demonstrated a stiffening of their position” since al-Bashir’s announcement Friday of the yearlong emergency, amid protests calling for his resignation. “The Darfur peace process had come to a standstill — once again — in the context of the ongoing demonstrations against the economic and political conditions in Sudan,” she said. Last July, the Security Council voted to dramatically cut the United Nations-African Union military force in the vast western Darfur region in response to reduced fighting and improved security conditions, with a target of ending the mission on June 30, 2020. The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated Sudanese government of discrimination. The government in Khartoum was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing them on civilian populations — a charge it denies. The conflict has forced close to 2 million people to flee their homes and killed thousands. Facing genocide charges at the International Criminal Court stemming from the Darfur conflict, al-Bashir’s rule has been marred by civil wars and increasing street demonstrations. The latest wave of protests began in December over price hikes. A heavy security crackdown has left scores of protesters dead. U.S. deputy ambassador Jonathan Cohen urged the government “to end the use of violent measures to address these protests and hold all responsible for human rights abuses and violations accountable.” The Trump administration calls for “an inclusive political process toward elections” with guarantees of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, as well as the immediate release of all journalists, opposition leaders, human rights activists and other protesters “who’ve been arbitrarily detained,” he said. The Russian and Sudanese ambassadors objected to Cohen and several other ambassadors raising the state of emergency at a council meeting on the situation in Darfur. In recent years, as the result of a successful government military campaign, the rebellion in Darfur has been reduced to rebel Sudan Liberation Army forces loyal to founder Abdul Wahid Elnur in western and southern Jebel Marra who have refused to join the peace process. Keita said intermittent clashes between government forces and those loyal to Elnur continue, in addition to infighting between two sub-factions of the SLA founder’s fighters. “Reportedly, these factions disagree over their prospects of participation in the peace process, while some of their clashes also seem to indicate competition over scarce resources,” she said. During a recent visit to Sudan and Darfur with other senior U.N. officials, Keita said all internally displaced people they spoke to expressed “deep concern” over the departure of the joint U.N.-AU force known as UNAMID “in the absence of trusted and professional law enforcement agencies.” She said “fear of sexual violence” is also hampering the return of civilians. “It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the exit of UNAMID does not create a vacuum that leads to persistent local-level tensions or new risk factions,” Keita told the council. “The engagement of the government of Sudan will be ever more critical in this context.” She called for additional funding, strengthened local efforts to improve the rule of law and resolve inter-communal tensions and stepped up efforts to ensure human rights and to protect women, children and “vulnerable youth from violence.” Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.