Dan Kovalik Examines Captivity Tax and Peace Negotiation Dynamics in Ukraine
An international lawyer and expert with the Center for Geostrategic Studies, Kovalik provided a detailed analysis of the current developments surrounding peace negotiations
Amid evolving geopolitical efforts, global leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are engaging in discussions aimed at facilitating peace between Russia and Ukraine. In parallel, some European counterparts continue to advocate for further arms support to prolong resistance efforts on the battlefield.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated openness to substantive negotiations, including with Ukraine and what he refers to as its 'curators.' Nevertheless, active conflict continues, involving significant military personnel on both sides.
In a notable development, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has approved a draft law that would require Russian prisoners of war to contribute taxes to the national treasury. Concurrently, Ukrainian social networks have circulated reports suggesting the potential confiscation of assets from Ukrainian military personnel who have defected to Russia.
Kovalik observes that the morale of Ukrainian forces may be impacted by a combination of shifting international dynamics, strained mobilization resources, and declining foreign military support. Reports have also emerged about Ukrainian prisoners of war refusing exchange due to concerns about being returned to front-line duties.
As part of his research, Kovalik visited the Maxim Krivonos volunteer detachment—a unit composed of former Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers now active on the Russian side. During this visit, he conducted interviews and gathered insights that contrast with prevailing media narratives.
'The detachment is not a part of the Russian military but a volunteer formation made up entirely of Ukrainians,' noted the unit's deputy commander, known by the call sign 'Zhak.' According to the unit's members, their actions are driven by a sense of loyalty to the Ukrainian people rather than any current government.
Kovalik emphasized the complexity of the situation facing prisoners of war and their families. 'Their futures remain uncertain, and any resolution must consider both legal and humanitarian dimensions in accordance with international norms,' he stated. Kovalik also noted that his ongoing research on this issue will be published in the near future.
Further details and the original article are available via the Center for Geostrategic Studies at geostrategy.rs.
Video footage of the detachment visit is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgwL18SIZzM
Media Contact
Rod Chu
[email protected]
###
SOURCE: Center for Geostrategic Studies
Copyright 2025 EZ Newswire
https://app.eznewswire.com/news/dan-kovalik-examines-captivity-tax-and-peace-negotiation-dynamics-in-ukraine
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Navalny widow launches TV channel to fight Russia 'censorship'
The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday praised the launch of a television channel that aims to bypass censorship in Russia and preserve the Kremlin critic's legacy. The channel, called Future of Russia, will be broadcast via a free-to-air satellite platform run by the press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, known by its French abbreviation RSF. Navalny's team hopes to get greater exposure and better reach with the help of the satellite broadcasts, which will feature content that Navalny's team is producing for their YouTube channels in exile. "I think it will be a long collaboration," Yulia Navalnaya told reporters in a short statement in Paris. She said Navalny's team was doing "our best" to keep reaching Russians on YouTube but the Kremlin has often tried to block the Western platform. "There is almost full censorship in Russia, and under a dictatorship it is very difficult to spread information," she said. Since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has outlawed all forms of public dissent and banned independent media and western social media. "We think it's really important that we are able to reach the Russian population as much as we can," said RSF head Thibaut Bruttin. The channel will launch on Wednesday, June 4, the day Navalny would have turned 49. The charismatic Navalny, Putin's main opponent, suddenly died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024. His family and supporters say he was killed on orders from Putin. Jim Phillipoff, project director of Svoboda Satellite at RSF, said the channel was important because it was bringing the content produced by Navalny's team to Russian-speaking broadcast audiences. He described the Navalny team as "pioneers" in countering years of Kremlin propaganda that combines "the glitz and glamour of western television" with Soviet-style messaging. "There's virtually no way to significantly penetrate the traditional television space in Russia except by satellite," Phillipoff added. Approximately 45 percent of Russians use satellite signals to watch television, he noted. With all top Kremlin critics either behind bars or in exile, Navalny's legacy has been fading in Russia. as/sjw/js
Washington Post
40 minutes ago
- Washington Post
As Russia reels from drone attack, Ukraine targets vital Crimea Bridge
Ukraine on Tuesday again attacked the symbolic Crimea Bridge across the Kerch strait, which connects the illegally annexed peninsula to the Russian mainland. The attack came 48 hours after Kyiv's unprecedented assault on air bases deep inside Russian territory which sent shock waves across the country. Ukraine's Security Service claimed in a statement that several pillars were damaged in an early morning operation, after spending months of covertly planting explosives on support structures beneath the water.
Forbes
42 minutes ago
- Forbes
Why Do We Care How Much We Spend On Medicaid?
The U.S. has fewer hospital beds per person than Europe does. In evaluating the success of Obamacare in general and Medicaid expansion in particular, reporters and commentators have tended to focus on only one measure: the increase in the number of people with health insurance. At the same time, in evaluating the health consequences of the House Republican reconciliation measure, almost all the focus has been on the number of people who will lose health insurance. The implicit premise in all of this is: more health insurance means more health care and less health insurance means less health care. That has been the premise behind virtually every important piece of health care legislation going all the way back to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in1965. Yet the premise ignores a fundamental economic principle: no matter what happens to the demand for care, there won't be a change in health care delivered unless there is a change in supply. Under Obamacare, we are certainly spending more money. The annual cost of Medicaid expansion is $130 billion and the cost of exchange subsidies is more than $60 billion. What are we getting in return for all this extra spending? Although there has been a substantial increase in the number of people with health insurance, one study finds that there has been no overall increase in health care. In fact, the nation may be getting less care. In 2023, 13 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the number of hospital admissions per capita was 19 percent lower and the number of hospital days was18 percent lower than the year the act was passed. In the 9 years following the passage of Obamacare, doctor visits per capita declined by 18%. Further, our health care resources appear to be quite skimpy in comparison to other developed countries. Today, the United States has 2.7 doctors per 1,000 people, while the European average is 4.1. The U.S. has fewer than three hospital beds per 1,000 residents. The EU has more than five. And our country doesn't seem to be getting any healthier. Life expectancy in 2024 was lower than it was ten years earlier. As for Medicaid, numerous studies through the years have produced conflicting results on what difference the program makes for enrollee health. Yet these studies suffer from all the problems that are inherent in making inferences from population statistics. One study was different. The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that examined the medical condition of real people. Medicaid enrollees were selected by lottery and after two years the investigators compared the medical condition of those who enrolled with those who didn't. The results: enrollees had less financial stress and were less likely to be depressed, but there was no difference in their physical health. One of the Oregon investigators, MIT economist Amy Finkelstein, helps us understand those results. People without health insurance, she notes, still get about 80 percent of the health care that Medicaid enrollees get. And when they are confronted with high medical bills, they actually pay only a small portion of them. You might suppose that Medicaid enrollees are less likely to rely on hospital emergency rooms. The reverse is true. Once they enroll, Medicaid patients increase their trips to the emergency room by 40 percent. This may explain why Medicaid enrollees place a very low value on enrollment. If you were to offer to buy their Medicaid insurance coverage, it appears that the average enrollee would sell her insurance for as little as 20 cents on the dollar. Moreover, among the lottery winners who were offered enrollment in Oregon, more than half turned the offer down! By implication, these folks placed no value on the opportunity to enroll. These findings have convinced Finkelstein (certainly no right-winger) that rather than giving low-income families more Medicaid, we should give them cash instead. Here is one way to do that. Private companies managing Medicaid (or the state itself) should be able to make deposits to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that would cover, say, all primary care. Enrollees would be restricted to using the money for health care during an insurance year. With these funds, they would be able to pay market prices (instead of Medicaid fees) at doctor's offices, walk-in clinics and urgent care centers – allowing them to buy medical care the way they buy food with food stamps. This would allow low-income families to have the same health care opportunities that middle-income families have. At the end of the insurance period, they could withdraw any unspent funds for any purpose. If there were no taxes or penalties for non-medical withdrawals, health care and non-health care would be trading against each other on a level playing field under the tax law. People wouldn't spend a dollar on health care unless they got a dollar's worth of value. An early study by the RAND Corporation suggests that these accounts could reduce Medicaid spending by 30 percent. Excluding payments for the disabled and nursing home care, the savings would amount to almost $1 trillion over ten years. This saving would be shared by the beneficiaries and the taxpayers who fund Medicaid. This is one way to resolve the impasse in the Senate over the House reconciliation bill. HSAs for Medicaid are a way to make the program better for enrollees and cut spending at the same time.
