Partisan Hacks and Russian Rapists

Rape, while a particularly egregious and henious crime, is and has always been a feature of warfare. Women and girls face the threat of sexual assault and rape in peacetime, in every town and city in the world, surrounded by well-funtioning policing and legal institutional structures. All too often in wartime, these civilian structures are among the first things to breakdown; making people vulnerable to all kinds of danger, violence, and violations. … More Partisan Hacks and Russian Rapists

Serious Questions about Bucha

One does not have to be ‘pro-Russian’ or a ‘Putin apologist’ to ask these questions. Bucha is a story about ordinary human beings caught up in an awful situation. Journalism should be about seeking the truth and serving people in a healthy and informed democracy. What we know for certain is that hundreds of people have been deliberately targeted and ruthlessly and mercilessly murdered by a state actor. What we do not know is which state actor perpetrated this despicable crime … More Serious Questions about Bucha

The Bucha Massacre

Pictures published on Podoliak’s social media pages and in newspapers across the country confirmed these apocalyptic scenes of savage brutality. People with their hands tied behind their backs executed against walls, bodies laying on the public streets all over the town of Bucha, limbs poking from what look to be mass graves. Charred remains draped over the twisted wreckage of shot-out and burnt-out vehicles and machinery, hands with nail polish, and bloodied faces with multiple gunshot wounds. … More The Bucha Massacre

The Horror of Ukrainian Nationalism

There is nowhere else in the world where ideological Nazis enjoy the legal and political protection Nazis in Ukraine do. In January 2018 the Kyiv city municipal council signed an agreement with the ultra-nationalist C14 group, allowing them to form a ‘municipal guard’ — an auxiliary police force — to work with the Ukrainian national police, and twenty one other towns and cities have relationships like this with the far-right. … More The Horror of Ukrainian Nationalism

Why Ukraine’s Nazis are Different

Ukrainian Nazis, however, are fairly unique in the fact that they have both a historical link and a political line of succession to the Nazism of the Third Reich, to the Schutzstaffel (the SS), and to the Nazi extermination camps. The Nazism of the Svobado Party, the Azov battalion, and many of the other Nazi groupings in Ukraine is a fossilised and authentic Third Reich Nazism. … More Why Ukraine’s Nazis are Different