'We will not look away' — Belgian PM visits Bucha
Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever, Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot, and Defense Minister Theo Francken, arrived in Kyiv on April 8, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The delegation also visited Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv which became a symbol of Russian war crimes after mass graves were uncovered in April 2022 following its liberation by Ukrainian troops.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has documented over 1,400 civilian killings in the Bucha District, including 637 in Bucha itself. Among the victims were 37 children. Many were executed, their bodies left on the streets or buried in mass graves.
Prevot said on his social media that their visit is "more than a symbolic gesture."
"Today, we honor the victims. We stand with the survivors. And we reaffirm this: Belgium stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. Justice must prevail. And we will not look away," Prevot said in a post on social media.
The Kremlin has long-used Bucha in state propaganda, denying the extensively documented crimes committed by Russian forces.
Ukraine marked the third anniversary of the Bucha tragedy on March 31, with European parliamentary leaders visiting the suburb.
"The brutality of March 2022 is not hearsay," Prevot said. "It is fact. Documented by satellite images, forensic experts, survivors' testimonies, and the tireless work of the UN, ICC, and NGOs.
"And yet, Russia still tries to deny it, spinning lies, peddling disinformation, calling Bucha a hoax. But no lie can erase the truth written in blood," he added.
"Bucha is not an isolated case. From Mariupol to Izium, from Kramatorsk to Kherson, the pattern is the same: terror, torture, mass killings. These are not tragic mistakes of war. They are war crimes. Systematic. Calculated. Deliberate."
Read also: Trump 'not happy' with Russian bombing of Ukraine, says he 'doesn't know what's happening there'
We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Vox
an hour ago
- Vox
Trump is frustrated by his own success on immigration
is a senior correspondent at Vox. He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine. The primary cause of this unrest has been less visible, but no less disorderly or disruptive. Behind the tensions in LA lies a radical escalation in the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. To accelerate deportations, top White House adviser Stephen Miller instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in late May to dispense with norms and legal niceties that had previously constrained its activities, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Since then, the agency has deprioritized the removal of immigrants implicated in crimes, opting instead to target undocumented workers at random. It has stopped drafting lists of immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and started arresting day laborers at businesses like Home Depot and 7-Eleven en masse, ensnaring some US citizens in the process. One such raid ignited the LA protests. Under Joe Biden, ICE had generally refrained from raiding schools, churches, and hospitals. Now it is reportedly arresting new mothers in maternity wards and then denying them their right to legal counsel. Most alarmingly, some ICE agents have allegedly embraced violent and unconstitutional tactics, according to the Journal's report. A union organizer for Washington farmworkers was driving his wife to her job at a tulip farm, when ICE agents stopped him, smashed in his car windows, and pulled him from the vehicle, all without showing badges or identification. A Russian man with a pending asylum case was reporting for his scheduled check-in at an ICE office, when a team of agents arrested him and then allegedly beat him. And ICE has not merely been targeting undocumented immigrants, but also those who exercise their First Amendment rights on the undocumented immigrants' behalf. In Irvine, California, ICE sent a 'phalanx of military vehicles' into an Orange County suburb to arrest a man who had allegedly posted fliers warning neighbors that ICE was in their area. The Trump administration's decision to greenlight such tactics might seem like an act of desperation — unable to stem the tide of undocumented immigration by conventional means, the White House is resorting to radical ones. But the opposite may be closer to the truth: The Trump administration is escalating its war on migration because it is winning that conflict. Unfortunately, the fruits of Donald Trump's victory appear to be weaker economic growth and more social unrest. Related The LA protests reveal what actually unites the Trump right Trump's bid to deter immigration has been wildly successful Trump campaigned on a promise to end the Biden-era surge in unauthorized immigration and restore order at the border. He has largely done so. Border crossings were already slowing during Biden's final year in office, after his administration tightened rules around asylum last summer. But inflows have plunged even further under Trump. Through belligerent rhetoric and restrictionist policies, the president has successfully deterred both legal and illegal migration into the United States. Over the past two months, America witnessed the largest decline in its foreign-born workforce since the pandemic in 2020. This contraction was driven partly by a collapse in unauthorized border crossings. Between January 2022 and June 2024, US Customs and Border Protection encountered an average of 200,000 people per month at America's Southwest border. According to an analysis of government data from Deutsche Bank, that figure has fallen to just 12,000 people per month since Trump's inauguration. How Trump's success on immigration is fueling his radicalism Yet the Trump administration has found little satisfaction in this success. And for a simple reason: The slowdown in border crossings has made it more difficult for the president to exceed Biden's deportation numbers. When border control was encountering 200,000 migrants each month, it was easy for the government to rack up high deportation totals. Such new arrivals possessed fewer legal protections than longtime US residents and were already in the government's custody. Although many qualified for the asylum process, border control could swiftly expel those who did not. Trump's success in deterring border crossings has therefore reduced the pace of deportations. Headlines earlier this year spotlighted the fact that Trump was deporting immigrants at a slower rate than Biden. Shortly after Trump took office, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy posted on X, 'In the first week, Trump removed 7,300 people. On average, Biden was removing 15,000 a week…These guys are terrible at everything.' Such unfavorable comparisons apparently displeased Trump. The Wall Street Journal suggests that it was Trump's failure to exceed 'the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year' that led Stephen Miller to give ICE its new, draconian marching orders. Unable to generate flashy deportation statistics by turning away new arrivals at the border, the administration has opted to ramp up enforcement against law-abiding, long-time US residents throughout the country — and to do so in a violent and seemingly lawless manner. Trump's handling of immigration has been economically and socially destructive (but politically popular) If Trump's success at deterring immigration has brought him little contentment, it has brought his country little discernible benefit. The slowdown in new arrivals is hurting the US economy. Compared to native-born workers, immigrants are more willing to relocate to US communities that have labor shortages, or to enter industries suffering from chronic shortfalls of workers, such as construction, food processing, and childcare. The mass entrance of migrants into the US during the Biden administration therefore helped to mitigate supply chain disruptions and reduce inflationary pressures in key sectors. This immigration surge was also immensely beneficial for economic growth and the national debt. America has an aging population. As a result, we need immigrants to sustain the growth of our workforce and shore up funding for Medicare and Social Security. Partly for these reasons, the Biden-era surge in immigration increased America's projected economic growth over the coming decade by upwards of $8.9 trillion, while reducing its expected federal deficits by $900 billion, according to an analysis from the Dallas Federal Reserve. Trump's successful deterrence of immigration threatens to reverse these gains, slowing growth and exacerbating labor shortages in construction, agriculture, and other key industries. According to Deutsche Bank, the collapse of immigration under Trump 'represents a far more sustained negative supply shock for the economy than tariffs.' Although immigration restriction is bad for the economy, many have argued that it's beneficial for political stability and social peace. After all, large surges of immigration tend to induce nativist backlashes. And Biden's failure to avert a historically large jump in migration plausibly helped Trump return to the White House. For the moment, however, the collapse in border crossings appears to be increasing social tension and political unrest. The migration slowdown has translated into lower deportation figures, which has led the administration to embrace radical enforcement tactics, which have predictably sown mass protest and clashes between civilians and agents of the state. We are therefore getting all the economic harms of immigration restriction, without its theoretical benefits for social harmony.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Oman to host US-Iran nuclear talks on Sunday
Oman said Thursday it would host a sixth round of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran over the weekend, amid escalating tensions between the long-time foes and reports of an imminent Israeli attack on Iran. Despite reporting progress in earlier rounds, Tehran and Washington have sharply disagreed over Iran's uranium enrichment in recent weeks, with Tehran threatening to target US military bases in the region in the event that the talks fail and conflict erupts. Tensions reached a fever pitch this week as Washington ordered the evacuation of personnel from the Middle East and US media reported that Israel appeared to be preparing an attack on Iran. Oman's Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi nonetheless confirmed in a post on X on Thursday that the "6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday". Iran meanwhile vowed to build a new uranium enrichment facility and "increase signficantly" its production after the UN nuclear watchdog passed a resolution condemning Tehran's "non-compliance". The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks since April to hammer out a new nuclear deal, replacing a 2015 accord that President Donald Trump abandoned during his first term in office. Trump appeared to shift his previously optimistic tone this week, saying he was "less confident" a deal could be reached, and on Wednesday ordered US personnel to be moved from the potentially "dangerous" Middle East. - 'Suffer more losses' - Israel has repeatedly warned that it could attack Iranian nuclear sites, vowing to stop its arch foe from acquiring an atomic bomb, which Tehran has consistently denied it was seeking. The US president says he has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off from striking Iran's nuclear facilities to give the talks a chance, but has increasingly signalled that he is losing patience. Iran however warned it would respond to any attack. "All its (US) bases are within our reach, we have access to them, and without hesitation we will target all of them in the host countries," Iran's Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said in response to US threats of military action if the talks fail. "God willing, things won't reach that point, and the talks will succeed," the minister said, adding that the US side "will suffer more losses" if it came to conflict. A US official had earlier said that staff levels at the embassy in Iraq were being reduced over security concerns, while there were reports that personnel were also being moved from Kuwait and Bahrain. An Iraqi security official said it was "not complete evacuation" and the US was taking precautionary measures in case of the failure of talks. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Manama said the mission "has not changed its staffing posture and remains fully operational". - 'Strategic mistake' - The latest developments come amid a diplomatic standoff over Iran's uranium enrichment, which Tehran has defended as a "non-negotiable" right while Washington has called it a "red line". Iran currently enriches uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67-percent limit set in the 2015 deal and close though still short of the 90 percent needed for a nuclear warhead. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in major state policies, has recently said enrichment is "key" to Iran's nuclear programme and that the United States "cannot have a say" on the issue. On May 31, after the fifth round of talks, Iran said it had received "elements" of a US proposal for a nuclear deal, with Araghchi later saying the text contained "ambiguities". Iran has said it will present a counter-proposal to the latest draft from Washington, which it had criticised for failing to offer relief from sanctions -- a key demand for Tehran, which has been reeling under their weight for years. On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors adopted a resolution drafted by the US, Britain, France and Germany, condemning Iran's "non-compliance" with its nuclear obligations. In response, Iran's foreign ministry and atomic agency said orders had been issued "to launch a new enrichment centre in a secure location". The agency added that uranium enrichment would "increase significantly". The resolution could lay the groundwork for European countries to invoke the "snapback" mechanism under the 2015 nuclear deal, reinstating UN sanctions in response to Iranian non-compliance -- an option that expires in October. bur-mz/jsa
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Zelenskyy considers Serbian president's visit important, as he witnessed war firsthand
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that the first visit of his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vučić to Ukraine is important because he has seen the war firsthand. Source: Zelenskyy on X (Twitter), as reported by European Pravda Details: On the evening of Wednesday 11 June, Zelenskyy spoke about his conversation with Vučić, who visited Odesa and attended the Ukraine-Southeast Europe Summit. "This is the [Serbian] President's first visit to Ukraine, and it is truly important to be here in Ukraine and witness the war firsthand," the Ukrainian leader said. Zelenskyy and Vučić discussed mutual support on the path to the European Union, bilateral cooperation and Ukraine's recovery. Quote from Zelenskyy: "I thank [Vučić] for the initiative to help with the recovery efforts and to assume patronage over the reconstruction of several Ukrainian settlements. This is a truly effective form of cooperation, and we look forward to positive results." Background: Notably, the participants of the Ukraine-Southeast Europe Summit have signed a declaration in which they condemn Russia's war against Ukraine "in the strongest possible terms" and call on the international community "to maintain and further strengthen sanctions against the Russian Federation". Meanwhile, Vučić was the only participant in the event who did not sign it. Commenting on this, Vučić said that in this way he "did not betray Russia". Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
