Russia continues attacks on Kharkiv as US halts some shipments of weapons to Ukraine
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News24
34 minutes ago
- News24
Russia subjecting Ukrainian civilians to 'sexual torture': UN experts
UN experts accuse Russia of 'sexual torture' as part of a systematic policy of intimidation in occupied Ukraine. Ten civilians faced electric shocks, sexualised assaults, mock executions, and beatings under Russian occupation. Experts urge Russia to address accusations, prevent sexual torture, and release a detained female victim. Russia is using 'sexual torture' against civilians as part of a 'deliberate and systematic policy' of intimidation in areas of Ukraine seized in Moscow's invasion, United Nations experts said on Thursday. The experts, who are mandated by the Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the UN, said they had sent Russia a dossier detailing 10 cases of Ukrainian civilians tortured while under Russian occupation. All were administered 'repeated electric shocks, including to the genitals' by the Russians, who also beat, kicked, blindfolded and acted out mock drownings and executions on their captives, the experts' statement said. 'These separate allegations, capturing the experiences of four women and six men, are truly grisly,' said Alice Jill Edwards, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture, warning that they were 'only a small snapshot of a wider, well-documented pattern'. 'These were all highly-sexualised assaults which included rapes, threats of rape, and other depraved conduct,' Edwards said. The rapporteur added: It is becoming clearer that the Russian Federation's deliberate and systematic policy of torture in Ukraine involves sexualised torture and other sexualised cruelty, including against the civilian population. 'The Russian Federation is using torture to intimidate, instil fear and control civilians in occupied territory of Ukraine.' The experts urged the Russian government to explain both the specific allegations detailed in the dossier and what it was doing to prevent sexual torture within the ranks. One of the female victims remains detained inside Russia, the experts added, calling for her immediate release.
Wall Street Journal
3 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
Ukrainian Suspected of Leading Nord Stream Sabotage Arrested in Italy
A former Ukrainian military officer suspected of leading a team that sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 was detained in Italy on Wednesday under an international arrest warrant issued by German prosecutors, according to investigators and people familiar with the case. The officer, identified by German police as Serhii K., allegedly headed a team of two soldiers and four civilian divers covertly recruited by a special Ukrainian military unit to lay explosives that damaged the undersea pipelines, investigators said.
New York Times
4 hours ago
- New York Times
Suspect Is Arrested in Sabotage of Pipelines Between Russia and Germany
Italian police have arrested a Ukrainian national who German investigators believe coordinated the undersea bombing in 2022 of two gas pipelines that directly linked Russia to Germany, the German authorities said on Thursday. It was the first arrest in the act of sabotage that occurred as the war in Ukraine raged, a technically sophisticated attack that had initially stumped investigators and led to much speculation about who had carried it out. Western investigators and intelligence officials later concluded that the attack was carried out by a pro-Ukrainian group. 'The federal prosecutor's office has achieved a very impressive investigative success: It has identified and arrested a suspected mastermind behind the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines,' Stefanie Hubig, Germany's justice minister, said in a statement. The man, whom German prosecutors only identified as Serhii K. in accordance with strict privacy rules, was arrested early Thursday by Italian officers in Misano Adriatico, a small seaside resort on Italy's east coast. The prosecutors said the suspect was a Ukrainian national. It's likely to take some time before the suspect is extradited to Germany, where he would face a German judge, an indictment and ultimately a trial, according to Ines Peterson, the spokeswoman for Germany's federal prosecutor's office. Prosecutors said they believed that the arrested man coordinated the bombing, which was carried out by a crew of divers who planted explosives on two sets of undersea pipelines, known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. The crew chartered a sailboat in Rostock, a German port city on the Baltic Sea, by using a shell company and fake identity papers and boating licenses, prosecutors said. On Sept. 26, 2022, a patrol noticed a concentration of bubbles that turned out to have resulted from the massive underground explosions that damaged three of the four pipes. The pipelines were not operational at the time of the explosion. Germany had refused to use the recently completed Nord Stream 2 in the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, fearing that Moscow would use it to exert its influence over Western Europe. Russia had cut off gas flowing through Nord Stream 1, a move European officials believed was made to punish Europe for its opposition to the war in Ukraine. The explosions promoted widespread speculation about who was behind the attack, with many blaming Russia, Poland or even the United States. It took investigators months to conclude that the crew behind the attack was working for Ukraine, which had the most to gain by ensuring that Russia could not easily export gas to Europe. The Ukrainian government has denied that it ordered or coordinated the attack. The arrest on Wednesday came more than a year after German prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for another Ukrainian man in the case. That suspect left Poland before the police could arrest him.
