Latest news with #OleksandraMatviichuk
Sky News
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians lost in hellish archipelago of Russian jails
In all the horrors of this war, the plight of thousands of civilians abducted by Russia is one of the worst, but is in danger of being overlooked. Their fate is not mentioned for instance in Donald Trump's peace plan currently being wrestled over, let alone any demands they are released by Russia. But their plight is truly horrific. Ukraine has identified almost 16,000 names of people lost in a gulag of 180 prisons in Russian-held Ukraine and in Russia itself, as far away as Siberia. It is a war crime to take civilians hostage during a conflict but that has not deterred Vladimir Putin's regime. Worse, there is abundant evidence they are being tortured, sexually abused and killed in custody. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian human rights lawyer, said: "I interviewed hundreds of people who survived Russian captivity, men and women, mostly civilians, and they told me how they were beaten, raped, smashed into wooden boxes. "Their fingers were cut, their nails were torn away, their nails were drilled. There were electrical shocks through their genitalia. One woman told me how her eye was dug out with a spoon." When the Russians took territory north of Kyiv at the start of their illegal invasion, they came for the men, among them Dmytro Khilyuk. Apart from a short letter sent from captivity a few months later, his elderly parents have not seen him since. 'I just can't take it anymore' "We're old and we're sick," his mother Halyna, bedridden after a stroke, told us. "We've been without our only child for four years now, not knowing anything, where he is, how he is." She wept as she told us of the agony of living with the uncertainty about their son. "I just can't take it anymore. Why is my child suffering like this? It's been four years. All we get are endless talks, talks, and more talks. And nothing changes. I could die any day… and never see my child again." Khilyuk has lost half his weight and most of his teeth A year ago a fellow prisoner who had shared a cell with Mr Khilyuk was released. He said Mr Khilyuk had lost half his weight and most of his teeth. Fellow journalist and friend of Mr Khilyuk, Stas Kozluk, told us he was worried about his state of mind. "We just can't imagine what can happen with the mind of a human being that's captured and spends three years in that condition. To be honest, I don't know how to help him. And that's the most terrifying thing," he said. Russia releases no information Ukrainian authorities can only piece together information about the abducted civilians. Mr Kozluk told us those who've been detained learn the phone numbers and names of relatives of others they are held with. Those who are released pass on what information they can. Russia releases no information about those civilians it is holding illegally, against the rules of war. 'The world doesn't understand' Thousands of innocent civilians are lost in a hellish archipelago of Russian jails notorious for their evil regime of abuse. And the world, says Oleksandra Matviichuk, is in danger of forgetting about them. "I think the world doesn't understand, first, the cruelty and unhuman conditions in which Ukrainians are held in Russian captivity," she says. "Second, they don't understand that Russia detained not just military, but civilians. And according to the Geneva Convention, they have to be released immediately without any exchanges, without any conditions."
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Calls for Russia's frozen assets held in Belgium to be used in rebuilding Ukraine
The boxy glass and steel tower at a traffic-clogged junction on King Albert II Boulevard hardly stands out among the other buildings in the business district of north Brussels, the Belgian capital's answer to Manhattan or La Défense in Paris. But unlike its neighbours, the institution housed in this bland postmodern building opposite a branch of Domino's Pizza is caught up in a geopolitical maelstrom. It is Euroclear, a little-known body that houses most of the Russian state's frozen assets and now finds itself in the middle of a debate about international justice. Amid uncertainty about Donald Trump's commitment to Ukraine, calls are growing to confiscate Russian central bank assets that were frozen after the full-scale invasion. Euroclear holds €183bn of Russian sovereign funds out of an estimated €300bn immobilised in western countries. In March, about 130 Nobel laureates, including the peace prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk, called on western governments to release the €300bn to rebuild Ukraine and compensate war victims. 'This might require new regulations and laws, which, given the undeniable emergency and gross violations of international law, are appropriate and must be amended,' stated the letter, which was signed by some of the world's leading economists, scientists and writers. Under EU law, profits from the Russian funds are used to aid Ukraine, and the next amounts will be revealed when Euroclear announces quarterly results on Wednesday. But the windfall profits – an estimated €2.5bn-€3bn a year – are modest when set against the €506bn that Ukraine needs for reconstruction over the next decade. (Since that estimate was published by the World Bank in February, Russia's deadly missile strikes have continued to wreak a devastating toll.) The EU's most senior diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has backed the idea of using the assets, as have the foreign ministers of Poland and Lithuania. 'Putin has already written off the €300bn assets, he does not expect to get them back. But he also doesn't think we have the fortitude to take hold of them either. So far, we have proven him right,' said Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, last June. But for Belgium's prime minister, Bart De Wever, confiscating the assets would be 'an act of war'. Johan Van Overtveldt, a former Belgian finance minister who is De Wever's political ally, said outright seizure of the assets would be 'really playing with fire for the rest of the financial and economic system'. 'Endangering the normal functioning of Euroclear would be a huge problem for the entire European economy, if not for the world economy,' he said. Euroclear, a Belgian-based international institution, fears it could be sued by the Russian government, while Belgian officials worry that confiscation would trigger a cascade of withdrawals. The end-point of that could even be the collapse of Euroclear, which would be a massive problem for the indebted Belgian government. Belgium holds a 13% stake in Euroclear and funds its war aid to Ukraine – including €1bn announced in April – from corporate tax take on the profits of the Russian frozen funds. France, which has an 11% stake in Euroclear, is also worried about seizing the assets. Van Overtveld has another idea: instead of confiscation , he proposes using the assets as collateral to set up 'more elaborate finance' for Ukraine. 'It is complex, but it's doable, and it does not lead to the same kind of legal issues that you would have if you go for outright seizure.' Euroclear emphasises its neutrality. 'It is not our role as a neutral financial institution to decide what to do with those [Russian] assets,' said head of communications, Pascal Brabant. 'It will be necessary that any agreement avoids undermining confidence in international financial markets by safeguarding the legal order and legal certainty which underpin global economies.' Often described as a bank for banks, Euroclear traces its roots to the late 1960s, when it grew out of the Brussels office of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, which later became JP Morgan. At a time when financial transactions were speeding up, Euroclear enabled the electronic exchange of cash and securities (a stock, a bond or some other instrument to raise capital), rather than moving around piles of paper. Today, Euroclear handles a mind-boggling amount of money – every four weeks it claims to process transactions equivalent to global GDP, or €1.3 quadrillion (meaning 1.3 plus 14 zeros) a year. None of this is held in cash. But Euroclear is security conscious. At its headquarters a pair of security cameras are trained on every corner. Euroclear's agreement with the Russian government dates back to October 2012. A few months earlier Vladimir Putin had secured a third term in office and cracked down brutally on opposition forces that had mounted unprecedented protests against his rule, but Russia's integration into the global economy was marching on. At the time Russian banks were looking for connections to western investors. 'Probably all Russian brokers, banks, and even the Russian state held funds through Euroclear,' said Roeland Moeyersons, a business lawyer based in Brussels. Moeyersons has some Russian clients whose assets or savings are blocked at Euroclear despite the individuals not being sanctioned. His typical client is a millionaire, who fulfils 'all the cliches', he said. 'They have a house in Switzerland, one in Russia, a flat in Monaco, Marbella, London or Dubai, and now they are confronted by the fact that a couple of millions of their investments are frozen.' According to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, Euroclear holds €70bn in private Russian assets, beyond the €183bn sovereign funds at the centre of the confiscation debate. On behalf of his clients, Moeyersons is calling on Belgium's treasury to release their assets. While he represents a few Russian billionaires who are challenging their designation on the EU sanctions list, most of his clients are people 'who made a small fortune running a legitimate business' and had their assets frozen 'as collateral damage of the EU sanctions,' he said. Meanwhile, the debate on the frozen sovereign billions continues. On Tuesday Sweden's minister for finance, Elisabeth Svantesson, said she supported using the assets and giving Kyiv the right to decide how to spend them. 'Of course we need to remain united among our countries, but we are pushing for using them [the frozen funds] in other ways, not only the windfall but also the assets,' she said. Svantesson was speaking alongside Torbjörn Becker, director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, who said transferring the frozen assets to Ukraine would allow Kyiv to buy more weapons and bring economic stability. 'If we were to send the whole amount of these frozen assets to Ukraine they would have predictable long-term financing at the level that matters,' he said. 'We should definitely consider transferring all of the frozen assets to Ukraine sooner, rather than later. This is not less important now with [Donald] Trump in the White House.'
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Calls for Russia's frozen assets held in Belgium to be used in rebuilding Ukraine
The boxy glass and steel tower at a traffic-clogged junction on King Albert II Boulevard hardly stands out among the other buildings in the business district of north Brussels, the Belgian capital's answer to Manhattan or La Défense in Paris. But unlike its neighbours, the institution housed in this bland postmodern building opposite a branch of Domino's Pizza is caught up in a geopolitical maelstrom. It is Euroclear, a little-known body that houses most of the Russian state's frozen assets and now finds itself in the middle of a debate about international justice. Amid uncertainty about Donald Trump's commitment to Ukraine, calls are growing to confiscate Russian central bank assets that were frozen after the full-scale invasion. Euroclear holds €183bn of Russian sovereign funds out of an estimated €300bn immobilised in western countries. In March, about 130 Nobel laureates, including the peace prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk, called on western governments to release the €300bn to rebuild Ukraine and compensate war victims. 'This might require new regulations and laws, which, given the undeniable emergency and gross violations of international law, are appropriate and must be amended,' stated the letter, which was signed by some of the world's leading economists, scientists and writers. Under EU law, profits from the Russian funds are used to aid Ukraine, and the next amounts will be revealed when Euroclear announces quarterly results on Wednesday. But the windfall profits – an estimated €2.5bn-€3bn a year – are modest when set against the €506bn that Ukraine needs for reconstruction over the next decade. (Since that estimate was published by the World Bank in February, Russia's deadly missile strikes have continued to wreak a devastating toll.) The EU's most senior diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has backed the idea of using the assets, as have the foreign ministers of Poland and Lithuania. 'Putin has already written off the €300bn assets, he does not expect to get them back. But he also doesn't think we have the fortitude to take hold of them either. So far, we have proven him right,' said Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, last June. But for Belgium's prime minister, Bart De Wever, confiscating the assets would be 'an act of war'. Johan Van Overtveldt, a former Belgian finance minister who is De Wever's political ally, said outright seizure of the assets would be 'really playing with fire for the rest of the financial and economic system'. 'Endangering the normal functioning of Euroclear would be a huge problem for the entire European economy, if not for the world economy,' he said. Euroclear, a Belgian-based international institution, fears it could be sued by the Russian government, while Belgian officials worry that confiscation would trigger a cascade of withdrawals. The end-point of that could even be the collapse of Euroclear, which would be a massive problem for the indebted Belgian government. Belgium holds a 13% stake in Euroclear and funds its war aid to Ukraine – including €1bn announced in April – from corporate tax take on the profits of the Russian frozen funds. France, which has an 11% stake in Euroclear, is also worried about seizing the assets. Van Overtveld has another idea: instead of confiscation , he proposes using the assets as collateral to set up 'more elaborate finance' for Ukraine. 'It is complex, but it's doable, and it does not lead to the same kind of legal issues that you would have if you go for outright seizure.' Euroclear emphasises its neutrality. 'It is not our role as a neutral financial institution to decide what to do with those [Russian] assets,' said head of communications, Pascal Brabant. 'It will be necessary that any agreement avoids undermining confidence in international financial markets by safeguarding the legal order and legal certainty which underpin global economies.' Often described as a bank for banks, Euroclear traces its roots to the late 1960s, when it grew out of the Brussels office of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, which later became JP Morgan. At a time when financial transactions were speeding up, Euroclear enabled the electronic exchange of cash and securities (a stock, a bond or some other instrument to raise capital), rather than moving around piles of paper. Today, Euroclear handles a mind-boggling amount of money – every four weeks it claims to process transactions equivalent to global GDP, or €1.3 quadrillion (meaning 1.3 plus 14 zeros) a year. None of this is held in cash. But Euroclear is security conscious. At its headquarters a pair of security cameras are trained on every corner. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Euroclear's agreement with the Russian government dates back to October 2012. A few months earlier Vladimir Putin had secured a third term in office and cracked down brutally on opposition forces that had mounted unprecedented protests against his rule, but Russia's integration into the global economy was marching on. At the time Russian banks were looking for connections to western investors. 'Probably all Russian brokers, banks, and even the Russian state held funds through Euroclear,' said Roeland Moeyersons, a business lawyer based in Brussels. Moeyersons has some Russian clients whose assets or savings are blocked at Euroclear despite the individuals not being sanctioned. His typical client is a millionaire, who fulfils 'all the cliches', he said. 'They have a house in Switzerland, one in Russia, a flat in Monaco, Marbella, London or Dubai, and now they are confronted by the fact that a couple of millions of their investments are frozen.' According to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, Euroclear holds €70bn in private Russian assets, beyond the €183bn sovereign funds at the centre of the confiscation debate. On behalf of his clients, Moeyersons is calling on Belgium's treasury to release their assets. While he represents a few Russian billionaires who are challenging their designation on the EU sanctions list, most of his clients are people 'who made a small fortune running a legitimate business' and had their assets frozen 'as collateral damage of the EU sanctions,' he said. Meanwhile, the debate on the frozen sovereign billions continues. On Tuesday Sweden's minister for finance, Elisabeth Svantesson, said she supported using the assets and giving Kyiv the right to decide how to spend them. 'Of course we need to remain united among our countries, but we are pushing for using them [the frozen funds] in other ways, not only the windfall but also the assets,' she said. Svantesson was speaking alongside Torbjörn Becker, director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, who said transferring the frozen assets to Ukraine would allow Kyiv to buy more weapons and bring economic stability. 'If we were to send the whole amount of these frozen assets to Ukraine they would have predictable long-term financing at the level that matters,' he said. 'We should definitely consider transferring all of the frozen assets to Ukraine sooner, rather than later. This is not less important now with [Donald] Trump in the White House.'
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Release of Ukrainian prisoners in Russia key to any peace deal, rights groups say
Ukrainian and Russian civil society leaders have called for the unconditional release of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being held in Russian captivity, pushing for world leaders to make it a central part of any peace deal. Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties, which won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, said most of the discussion on ending the conflict, led by Donald Trump's administration, focused solely on territories and potential security guarantees. 'It's a huge problem that we lose the human dimension in this political process. Only with solving the human dimension can we find a path to sustainable peace,' she said. On Tuesday, the Guardian and its reporting partners launched the Viktoriia project, an investigation into the death of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna in Russian custody, as well as a report on the systemic torture and mistreatment of thousands of civilian detainees seized by Russian occupying forces. The European Commission on Wednesday condemned the killing, with its spokesperson Anitta Hipper saying it showed life under occupation 'remains a constant threat to Ukrainians'. Jan Braathu, the media freedom representative for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said he was 'appalled' by the evidence emerging in Roshchyna's case. A preliminary autopsy suggests she was tortured before she died, and her brain and other body parts were removed in order to conceal the cause of death. In a statement, Braathu said her treatment was a breach of international law, including the Geneva conventions and the UN conventions against torture – to which Russia is a signatory. 'I condemn these grave abuses by the Russian Federation,' he said. The Ukrainian parliament's commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said that as of April 2024 the number of people registered as having disappeared stood at 16,000, but that calculating an exact total was impossible. Those detained are often socially and politically active people Russia fears may resist occupation, as well as former military personnel or Ukrainian government officials. Some are simply in the wrong place in the wrong time and are pulled into a nightmare of torture and mistreatment. Prisoners are often held incommunicado, without charge or access to legal support, and are not allowed to send and receive letters. Their fate is one of the lesser-reported aspects of Russia's war on Ukraine. The Guardian and its reporting partners, in a collaboration led by the French newsroom Forbidden Stories, have gathered testimonies from former detainees at one of the most notorious holding facilities, Taganrog pre-trial detention facility No 2. They show civilians and prisoners of war are being subjected to severe food rationing, with little or no medical care, and that torture including electric shocks, physical and sexual violence and waterboarding is meted out by Russian guards. 'When you hear about the conditions and the torture, there is a clear understanding that some of these people have no chance to be alive by the time the political process has ended,' said Matviichuk. Trump met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the sidelines of the pope's funeral in Rome on Saturday, while his envoy, Steve Witkoff, met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday. Trump claimed Russia and Ukraine were 'very close to a deal' and has said he wants the two sides to meet soon. A draft of the supposed US peace plan, published last week by Reuters, covers territory, economic issues and security guarantees, but says nothing about prisoners. Karyna Malakhova-Diachuk, the co-founder of an organisation that brings together the families of civilian detainees, said she was hoping that the freeing of these prisoners would come before a deal on territories and other elements that the US wants to nail down on the way to a lasting peace. 'First, there should be an agreement to bring all the people home, and only after that they should start other negotiations. Otherwise everything will stay frozen on this issue,' she said. During the first year of the war, civilians were frequently included in prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine but it is now rare. Malakhova-Diachuk's organisation comprises relatives of 380 detainees, and she said there had been no releases for more than a year of those linked to the group. The emotional toll on relatives was hard to express, she said, adding that the horror stories to emerge from Russian prisons made the waiting and uncertainty all the more painful. 'You see the PoWs return and they tell these horrific stories of torture and injuries and the things that happen there and there is just nothing you can do.' A minority have been charged and given long prison terms for 'terrorism' and other crimes, which could present further obstacles if Russia claims they are convicted criminals and so cannot be part of a deal. Mykhailo Podolyak, a Zelenskyy aide, said that civilian detainees, along with prisoners of war and the Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia, would be a key part of Ukraine's demands in any peace deal. He added that even those who had been given prison terms in Russia should be freed as part of a peace deal. 'These courts have no legal weight for us. We don't consider these people to be convicted of anything. And we will do everything for our citizens to be returned to Ukraine,' he said. The human dimension has been absent from most of the western countries' public messaging around the push for a peace deal, with the focus instead on territories and security guarantees. 'We've heard nothing at all from Trump. We are knocking on different doors of different governments,' said Oleg Orlov, head of the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, which was also awarded the 2022 Nobel peace prize. Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties are two of about 50 Ukrainian and Russian organisations that have created a campaign called People First, which calls for the freeing of all prisoners of war, civilian detainees and Ukrainian children taken to Russia, at an early stage in the peace process. While the all-for-all exchange of prisoners of war is a normal part of the end of military hostilities, the mechanism to free civilians is less clear. 'Russia should let them go without any conditions, but it will be very hard to achieve this,' said Orlov. He said one solution could be for Ukraine to free citizens it had arrested on charges of collaboration with Russian occupying forces and offer them passage to Russia. 'You can't swap civilians, but there could be a possibility of a simultaneous freeing of these people with detained Ukrainian civilians,' he said.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Return of Russian-abducted Ukrainian children must be linchpin in US peace talks
Imagine being a child watching in terror as your country is invaded, seeing bombs obliterate your town and wondering if your father fighting on the frontlines is even still alive. Then imagine being kidnapped by that invading army, taken to a hostile country where you are not allowed to speak your own language and told every day that your parents have abandoned you and your country soon will be wiped off the map. For the approximately 20,000 Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russian forces, this nightmare is their reality. As the United States continues talks with Moscow and Kyiv to end the war in Ukraine, negotiators must prioritize the return of these innocent lives. While Russia's kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian children has been occurring ever since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in May 2014, the numbers of these missing children have grown dramatically following the full-scale invasion in 2022. Notwithstanding Russia's claims that these are 'evacuations' for 'humanitarian reasons,' Moscow's actual intent behind the abductions is as clear as it is sinister — to erase Ukrainian identity. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a famous Ukrainian human rights lawyer and winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, asserts that reprogramming children to 'reject their native language and culture is a genocidal tactic aimed at erasing a people by destroying its future.' And that is exactly what Russia is attempting to do by sending the kidnapped Ukrainian children to 're-education' camps, where Russian operatives attempt to brainwash the children into forgetting or giving up their Ukrainian roots. One teenager who was abducted and later returned to Ukraine recalled being forced to sing the Russian anthem every morning or be confined in a small cell. His captors repeatedly told him that Ukraine would soon cease to exist and replaced his Ukrainian birth certificate with a Russian version. In some instances, older Ukrainian children at the camps have been forced to undergo Russian military training so they can later 'be sent to fight against fellow Ukrainians.' Russia has also put numerous Ukrainian children up for foster care or adoption on a Russian federal adoption website. According to the Dutch government, which has been working to identify the missing children and return them to Ukraine, Russia is utilizing Crimea as a 'hub' for the illegal movement of Ukrainian citizens, including children. Once the children are abducted from the occupied regions, they are taken to Crimea, then often deported to Russia. Last December, Ukraine demanded that Russia terminate its colossal kidnapping campaign, but so far Moscow has not complied and instead denies any forcible transfer of Ukrainian children. Ukraine needs help from allied nations to place pressure on the Russian regime, and the U.S. is the best candidate to do this. Fortunately, the U.S. government made one step in the right direction when it restored the database of a project at Yale University that had been tracking Russia's systematic deportations and adoptions of Ukrainian children. The project contributed to several criminal cases, including the International Criminal Court's indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin. And according to the Yale Daily News, the evidence compiled by the Yale Humanitarian Lab researchers 'could lead to additional charges against Russian President Vladimir Putin; Maria Lvova-Belova, presidential commissioner for children's rights; and other officials involved.' While the project will not be restored at Yale because of the nearly complete halt to foreign aid, the data will be transferred to other parties, likely the International Criminal Court and Europol. This data is vital for achieving the return of all Russia-abducted Ukrainian children and prosecuting those involved in this war crime, so it is essential for the administration to ensure it is safely transferred to another entity. To pursue complete justice, the United States needs to ensure the prosecution of those involved in these war crimes and demand the return of all deported Ukrainian children to their families. One prosecution-related step the U.S. could take would be to sanction the individuals who have been behind the abductions. Ensuring the safe return of these kidnapped children is one of the few issues related to Ukraine that still enjoys bipartisan support. Both U.S. parties must continue to put aside other differences for the sake of saving these innocent Ukrainian children from Russian hands. These children cannot be forgotten, especially as the war might be drawing to a close. If the return of all Ukrainian children is not included in the final deal garnered between Russia and Ukraine, then their return would likely never occur. Their return must be the priority of every lawmaker and politician involved in the negotiations. Alexis Mrachek is senior program manager of the Human Rights & Freedom Program at the McCain Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
