Interesting! I had to look up what it was.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1528576711209766914?s=20&t=ZEqf84Og1EYuJBxhbRj24w
33 (of course) gallery images
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/79926/elden-ring-set-in-lands-between-seamless-and-dynamic-fantasy-realm/index.html
This guy found connections of Business Insider on the attacks of David Portnoy & Elon and the stock market
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1527491436005957633?s=20&t=ZEqf84Og1EYuJBxhbRj24w
https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1527492644234235904?s=20&t=ZEqf84Og1EYuJBxhbRj24w
Mollie’s right not one good comment.Ted Cruz showed his arrogance, what a stupid tweet. RINO’s get revealed by defending bad decisions and saying they are good.
https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1528555489822396417?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
Anons you should read all the comments on Cruz’s twitter faux Pas, it will do your heart good!America is waking up by the stupid stuff Rino’s say
https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/1528549769630691328?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
It’s happening quickly, no “we support Ukraine” bullshit, very little of it. Even the lefties are starting to understand how they are manipulated. Now that would be a welcome awakening.
Its not what they expect from Cruz its how they were betrayed by 40 GOP senators,40of them betrayed America, only 11 stood against the $40 billion. I’m pretty sure Hawley doesnt know how bad he damaged himself. GOP should have had 42 vote against it.
This is actually a good thing, conservatives,because of this one vote will now support true America 1st nominees. Trusting the cretins that have been in congress forever is not an option any longer.
When GOP sides with Bidan, then there is no difference in their politics. In the past they didnt get criticized for opposing what Trump was doing and requested, but they easily caved to Bidan. Can you imagine how much more Trump would have accomplished if the whole GOP was on our side.
I’d say this is a major marker in the demise of the current government structure, it must be destroyed to be rebuilt and these assholes are making it easier by waking up all in the country
John Hardwood, (HRC sychofant) journalist, trying to make shit into a yummy hamburger, “you will own nothing and be happy with it”. These people are delusional
https://twitter.com/TimMurtaugh/status/1528565389814378496?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
Mollie’s interpretation of Ted Cruz’s propaganda. Kek
https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1528557377989005312?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
Monica gets one thing right!
https://twitter.com/MonicaCrowley/status/1528074971985092609?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
WAPO smears Fossil Fuel book writer but wont mention Durham in Sussmann trial
https://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1508823379171704833?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
A lot of journalists that were right about Russia hoax, shows how right they were.
Five Trump-Russia 'Collusion' Corrections We Need From the Media Now – Just for Starters
Aaron Maté
Five years after the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded collection of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories known as the Steele dossier was published by BuzzFeed, news outlets that amplified its false allegations have suffered major losses of credibility. The recent indictment of the dossier's main source, Igor Danchenko, for allegedly lying to the FBI, has catalyzed a new reckoning.
In response to what the news site Axios has called "one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history," the Washington Post has re-edited at least a dozen stories related to Steele. For two of those, the Post removed entire sections, changed headlines, and added lengthy editor's notes.
Twitter/@thamburger
But the Post's response also exhibits the limits of the media's Steele-induced self-examination. First, the reporters bylined on those two articles, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, and their editors have declined to explain how and why they were so egregiously misled. Nor have they revealed the names of the anonymous sources responsible for deceiving them and the public over months and years.
Perhaps more important, the Post, like other publications, has so far limited its Russiagate reckoning to work directly involving Steele – and only after a federal indictment forced its hand. But the Steele dossier has been widely discredited since at least April 2019, when Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents were unable to find evidence in support of any of its claims.
The dossier was also only one aspect of the Trump-Russia misinformation fed to the public. Even when not advancing Steele's most lurid allegations, the nation's most prominent news outlets nonetheless furthered his underlying narrative of a Trump-Russia conspiracy and a Kremlin-compromised White House.
Along the way, some journalists won their profession's highest distinction for this flawed coverage. While co-bylining stories that the Post has all but retracted, Helderman and Hamburger also share a now increasingly awkward honor along with more than a dozen other colleagues at the Post and New York Times: a Pulitzer Prize. In 2018, the Pulitzer awards committee honored the two papers for 20 articles it described as "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration."
Although neither newspaper has given any indication that it is returning the Pulitzer, the public record has long made clear that many of those stories – most of which had nothing to do with Steele – include falsehoods and distortions requiring significant corrections. Far from showing "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage," the Post's and the Times' reporting has the same problem as the Steele document that these same outlets are now distancing themselves from: a reliance on anonymous, deceptive, and almost certainly partisan sources for claims that proved to be false.
Many other prestigious outlets published a barrage of similarly flawed articles. These include the report by Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy that the Mueller team obtained evidence that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had visited Prague in 2016; Jane Mayer's fawning March 2018 profile of Steele in the New Yorker; the report by Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier of BuzzFeed that President Trump instructed Cohen to lie to Congress – explicitly denied by Mueller at the time; and Luke Harding of The Guardian's bizarre and evidence-free allegation that Julian Assange and Paul Manafort met in London's Ecuadorian embassy.
McClatchy and BuzzFeed have added editors' notes to their stories but have not retracted them.
In this article, RealClearInvestigations has collected five instances of stories containing false or misleading claims, and thereby due for retraction or correction, that were either among the Post and Times' Pulitzer-winning entries, or other work of reporters who shared that prize. Significantly, this analysis is not based on newly discovered information, but documents and other material long in the public domain. Remarkably, some of the material that should spark corrections has instead been held up by the Post and Times as vindication of their work….
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/24/five_trump-russia_collusion_corrections_we_need_from_the_media_now_-_just_for_starters_804205.html
Hmmm..Huber retweeting posts he wrote in Nov. 2021, he has a CA document attachedwonder if there is something to find in this?
https://twitter.com/JohnWHuber/status/1462145147987279875?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
This proves Business Insider is the dark money publication to destroy powerful people.they pull it out when all other fake news have failed.
This twitter handle is mouthpiece for failing left, PaulaT1962🌲🌎🌲
@PaulaT1962
#BusinessInsiderUltraFakeNews
https://twitter.com/PaulaT1962/status/1527987474093551617?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
https://twitter.com/PaulaT1962/status/1527987474093551617?s=20&t=NTcqrVsqdFHBusvzu-_oug
Whatever Happens To The ‘Disinformation’ Board, The Feds Are Spying
A long line of suppressed disclosures has shown that the federal government is indeed spying on Americans, and Congress still hasn’t done anything about it.
Facing an increasing backlash against the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governing Board (DGB), Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas promised it would not monitorAmericans. It was not enough. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was forced to put the DGB on “pause,” and its director, Nina Jankowicz, resigned under public pressure.
Now DHS says it is “reviewing” the board while “continuing” its “critical work…to address disinformation.”
No matter what happens with the board, it is hard to take Mayorkas’s promise not to monitor Americans seriously. Several recent cases of the federal government spying on Americans as well as DHS’s own actions were certain to make people skeptical.
For example, in February of this year, DHS issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin, a memo prioritizing “false or misleading narratives” as a top domestic security threat. The bulletin states that “there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.”
This bulletin clearly referenced Americans inside our borders. Also, unlike with the DGB, DHS made no promise to not monitor Americans’ speech. (My organization, the Center to Advance Security in America, submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests for records regarding the NTAS bulletin and the DGB.)
Don’t forget Carter Page, either. Page was an advisor to the Donald Trump 2016 campaign. In 2016-17 the government investigated him on suspicion of being an intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. A later inspector general’s report identified “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the application for a warrant to surveil Page. A Department of Justice attorney was convicted of falsifying a document that led to a Page warrant.
Also recall the James Clapper spying scandal. Clapper, the director of national intelligence under President Obama, responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly,” when asked at a Senate hearing if the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans without a specific warrant. About three months after making that claim, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed Clapper’s answer was untruthful, as the NSA was in fact collecting in bulk domestic call records, along with various internet communications.
There is also the CIA spying scandal. Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are privy to classified information, have warned about the existence of a secret bulk collection program that the CIA has operated “outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection,” and without oversight by the courts or Congress.
The secret program appears related to bulk data swept up by the CIA in terrorism operations, including information on Americans, according to a heavily blacked-out report from a CIA oversight board that was declassified at the urging of the two senators.
Then there is Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland’s infamous school board memo. The memo directed the FBI to involve itself in local school board meetings under the auspices of anti-terrorism statutes due to supposed threats and violence directed against board members.
However, concerns that the FBI and DOJ were actually targeting the speech of parents were heightened, when, on October 14, 2021, another memo, released by the U.S. attorney in Montana, directed law enforcement to “contact the FBI” if a parent calls a member of a school board simply “with intent to annoy.” He claimed that “may serve as a basis for a prosecution” under federal law.
Garland and the Biden Department of Justice and FBI were forced to disavow the latter memo, since it appeared to directly target simple and non-threatening speech. During testimony, Garland assured Congress the memo would not be used to target parents for policy disagreements….
As if to pour fuel on this fire, the woman DHS chose to lead the DGB was proven to be a proud and vocal proponent of censorship. Jankowicz has a history of attaching the “disinformation” label to speech she doesn’t like, regardless of its veracity.
With a record like this, would you trust Mayorkas’s promise that the DGB won’t monitor the speech of the American people? Neither would I.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/23/no-matter-what-happens-to-bidens-disinformation-board-the-feds-are-spying-on-americans/
Calling out Louis Mensch to prove there’s “no hoax” is an act of desperation by MSM
https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1528578723536150528?s=20&t=RX-6c1H2wbUJRfRZLQkWjA
Pardon if posted before, but this is great
https://twitter.com/PatrickMcNiff/status/1528538298167152640?s=20&t=RX-6c1H2wbUJRfRZLQkWjA
Anytime Fauci is called out the world knows its another hoax!
Fuck Fauci
https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1528535778669780993?s=20&t=RX-6c1H2wbUJRfRZLQkWjA
Here’s Where The Special Counsel Criminal Case Stands
Part 1 of 3
Today starts week two in United States v. Sussmann, Special Counsel John Durham’s false statement case against Michael Sussmann. According to the grand jury indictment, Sussmann lied to former FBI General Counsel James Baker when he told Baker he was not acting on behalf of any client when he provided Baker with data supposedly establishing an Alfa Bank-Trump connection, when in fact Sussmann represented both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe.
After a brief interlude on Friday to accommodate the vacation schedule for a defense witness, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, on Monday jurors will hear again from the government in its case-in-chief. Here’s what happened last week to prepare you for the week ahead.
A Tale of Two Themes
Prosecutors and the defense team began last week by framing their overriding themes for the jury during opening statements.
“Privilege” served as prosecutors’ one-word refrain as they introduced the case to the D.C. federal jury. “The evidence will show that this is a case about privilege: the privilege of a well-connected D.C. lawyer with access to the highest levels of the FBI; the privilege of a lawyer who thought that he could lie to the FBI without consequences; the privilege of a lawyer who thought that for the powerful the normal rules didn’t apply, that he could use the FBI as a political tool,” government attorney Brittain Shaw told jurors.
The privileged D.C. lawyer and defendant Sussmann executed the plan to politicize the FBI with “a look, a leak, and a lie,” according to the special counsel. The “look” consisted of researchers scouring internet traffic to establish a potential tie between Trump and Russia. The “leak” came after, when Sussmann and tech executive Joffe “leaked the Alfa Bank allegations to a reporter at The New York Times with the hope and expectation that he would run a story about it.”
Then came the lie, the special counsel explained, telling the jury: “You will see that when the reporter didn’t publish this story right away, the defendant and others decided to bring this information to the FBI and to create a sense of urgency, to also tell the FBI that a major news organization was running a story within days. That’s when the defendant requested the meeting with the FBI general counsel and told him that he was not doing this for any client.”
Lawyers for Sussmann told a completely different tale, with the defense’s theme focused on “credentials and concern”—Sussmann’s credentials as “a serious national security and cyber security lawyer” and his genuine concern for national security.
Sussmann spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor before entering private practice and, even then, Sussmann retained a top-secret clearance, the defense team stressed. Likewise, Sussmann’s client, Joffe, came well-credentialed—an “Internet executive who was the world’s leading cyber expert, the world’s leading expert on DNS data, who was an FBI confidential informant, who had relationships up and down the government.”
Thus, when Joffe approached Sussmann with suspicious data, Sussmann took the concern seriously—more so, his lawyers argued, because at the time stories of a Trump-Russia connection were swirling. That is why Sussmann approached his friend Baker with the Alfa Bank data—to assist his former colleague and to warn the FBI of a news report that was about to hit the wires.
Nothing else makes sense, Sussmann’s attorneys stressed, telling the jurors to ask themselves, “What would Michael Sussmann gain by lying to Mr. Baker? Nothing. What would he lose? Everything. He’d lose his credibility, his relationship with Baker, his security clearance, his livelihood. For what?” In short, “the government’s theory doesn’t make sense,” the defense told the jury.
What The Government Must Prove
On Tuesday, the trial began in earnest when the government began calling its witnesses. The court, however, first provided the jury with a few preliminary instructions, telling jurors:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/23/heres-a-play-by-play-of-the-special-counsel-criminal-case-heading-into-week-two/
Here’s Where The Special Counsel Criminal Case Stands
Part 2 of 3
The defendant, Michael Sussmann, is being tried on a single criminal charge: that he willfully and knowingly made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement or representation in a matter before the Federal Bureau of Investigation; namely, that Mr. Sussman stated to the general counsel of the FBI that he was not acting on behalf of any client in conveying particular allegations, when, in fact, he was acting on behalf of two specific clients, namely Rodney Joffe and the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Mr. Sussman has pled not guilty to that charge.
While following the close of evidence the judge will provide detailed instructions about the facts the government must establish beyond a reasonable doubt for the jury to convict Sussmann, the court’s overview highlighted the necessary elements prosecutors must prove. Specifically, prosecutors must prove that Sussmann “knowingly” made a “false statement” that was “material” to the “FBI’s operations.”
To establish that the defendant made a false statement, the government must show both that Sussmann told Baker during their September 19, 2016, meeting that he was not representing a client and that Sussmann was in fact representing a client, either Joffe or the Clinton campaign or both. Last week, prosecutors presented strong evidence to establish both facts.
Facts On the Prosecution’s Side
First, Baker testified that he was “100 percent confident” that Sussmann had claimed during their September 19, 2016, meeting that he was not there “on behalf of any particular client.” Baker also told the jury that the evening before, in requesting the meeting via text, Sussmann wrote, “I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company. [W]ant to help the Bureau.” Prosecutors also admitted a copy of the text into evidence, allowing jurors to see the damning message themselves.
Baker also testified that after meeting with Sussmann he spoke with Bill Priestap, who at the time served as the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, and Trisha Anderson, then the FBI’s deputy general counsel, telling them about his discussion with Sussmann.
Later today, Priestap and Anderson are scheduled to testify about notes they took at the time, with Priestap’s notes indicating Baker had said Sussmann was “not doing this for any client.” Anderson’s notes similarly showed Baker relaying that Sussmann had said: “No specific client.”
Last week, prosecutors also presented testimony and other evidence to show that while claiming he was not representing a “specific client,” in fact Sussmann was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and Joffe. In questioning Marc Elias, who served as the lead Perkins Coie lawyer for the Clinton campaign, prosecutors elicitedtestimony that Elias had hired the investigative firm Fusion GPS to assist in opposition research against Trump. Elias later told jurors that he first learned of the supposed Alfa Bank-Trump secret communication channel from Sussmann.
Prosecutors further culled from their questioning of Elias a detailed explanation of billing records that showed Sussmann reporting time spent on a “confidential project” to the Clinton campaign around the time of Sussmann’s meeting with Baker. Elias also testified that to his knowledge, the Alfa Bank connection was the only project related to the Clinton campaign on which Sussmann was working at the time.
Moreover, while Elias claimed it was not in the Clinton campaign’s best interest for Sussmann to have provided the Alfa Bank “intel” to the FBI, Elias acknowledged that lawyers working for the Clinton campaign held great discretion in representing the 2016 candidate. Another prosecution witness, Deborah Fine, who served as “one of several deputy general counsels” for the Clinton campaign, likewise confirmedFusion GPS, with whom Sussmann worked on the Alfa Bank hoax, had broad discretion to accomplish specific tasks.
Hillary Clinton Approved the Alfa Bank Operation
In addition to Elias and Fine, the special counsel also called to the stand Laura Seago, who during the 2016 campaign had worked for Fusion GPS. Seago testified about her work related to the opposition research undertaken on behalf of the Clinton campaign and specifically of a meeting she attended with Elias, Sussmann, and Joffe at which the Alfa Bank allegations were first discussed. Seago further told the jury that she understood the “Alfa Bank work was related to the broader project for Perkins Coie and the Democratic entity.”…
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/23/heres-a-play-by-play-of-the-special-counsel-criminal-case-heading-into-week-two/
Part 3 of 4
Under questioning from prosecutors, both Elias and Mook confirmed the campaign pushed the Alfa Bank story to the press. Mook went one step further, testifying that Hillary Clinton had personally “agreed to” the decision to peddle the allegations of a secret communication channel between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank to the media.
While much of the testimony to date has focused on the Clinton campaign and its involvement in pushing the Alfa Bank data, prosecutors also highlighted Joffe’s role to bolster the argument that when Sussmann met with Baker, he was also representing Joffe. Steve DeJong, an employee at the then-Joffe-connected tech giant Neustar, told the jury that Joffe had directed him to pull “DNS” data related to Trump and his associates.
Next week, when prosecutors call Georgia Tech researcher Dave Dagon to the stand, Joffe’s role in the Alfa Bank hoax will likely be further exposed. Dagon worked with Joffe and served as Fusion GPS’s press liaison to explain the complicated data.
What the Special Counsel Must Also Prove
Even if this testimony, and that set for next week, establishes that Sussmann represented the Clinton campaign and Joffe and thus lied to Baker, the special counsel must still prove the lie was “material.” To be material, the lie must be “capable of influencing a decision” of the government actor.
In questioning Baker, prosecutors elicited testimony to further the case that Sussmann’s lie mattered, with the former FBI general counsel stating “he would not have taken the private meeting with Sussmann if he knew Sussmann was working on behalf of the Clinton team.” Baker also told the jury he had “vouched for” Sussmann in passing on the Alfa Bank information, while treating Sussmann as a sensitive confidential human source and protecting his identity from other agents.
Prosecutors also elicited testimony from FBI Special Agent Scott Hellman to help build the case that Sussmann’s lie was material. Hellman, an expert in DNS data, testified that the Alfa Bank data did not support the conclusion of the whitepapers, calling the methodology used “questionable.” Hellman further explained that in assessing the data, knowing whether it came from someone with “a political affiliation or motivation” would affect the initial steps of an investigation.
On this latter point, Hellman told the jury he met roadblocks when trying to determine the origins of the data. “I do remember I was frustrated at not being able to ID who had provided these thumb drives to Mr. Baker. He was not willing to tell me,” Hellman testified last week. When coupled with Baker’s testimony that he would not have withheld Sussmann’s name had he known Sussmann was representing a client, prosecutors have already presented sufficient evidence of materiality, but more is likely to come this week.
If Sussmann Lied, Was It On Purpose?
That leaves the final element of proof, concerning Sussmann’s state of mind. Section 1001, which criminalizes false statements, requires that the defendant intentionally or knowingly make the false statement. In submitting proposed jury instructions to the court, the government and Sussmann agreed that jurors should be instructed that “an act is done knowingly if it is done purposely and voluntarily, as opposed to mistakenly or accidentally,” and that “an act is done willfully if it is done with an intention to do something the law forbids, that is, with a bad purpose to disobey the law.”
To prove Sussmann acted with the requisite intent, the special counsel will need to rely on circumstantial evidence presented to the jury, the strongest of which will be Sussmann’s billing records that show he billed his time related to Alfa Bank to the Clinton campaign. Prosecutors also presented testimony from two former CIA employees to bolster the conclusion that Sussmann knowingly lied to Baker.
The first CIA agent to testify, Mark Chadason, explained that in attempting to score a meeting with the CIA, Sussmann claimed he had a client who “was an engineer with a number of patents, and is most likely a contractor to the [intelligence community].” Conversely, when Sussmann met with another CIA agent, identified only as “Kevin P.,” Sussmann said “he was not there for a client.”
This week the government will likely admit as additional evidence of Sussmann’s state of mind his congressional testimony from 2017. During that congressional hearing, when asked about his meeting with Baker, “Sussmann testified he passed the information along on behalf of a client, who is a cybersecurity expert.” While Sussmann did not name Joffe as the client, the description matches the tech expert, and the other evidence of Sussmann’s representation of Joffe related to the Alfa Bank matter provides strong support to the claim that Sussmann knowingly lied to Baker….
4 of 4
The Defense Seeks to Confuse the Jury
Seeing the strength in this circumstantial evidence of Sussmann’s state of mind, his legal team is pushing for a “good faith defense” instruction which, while appropriate in some circumstances, appears proffered to confuse the jury. Specifically, Sussmann seeks an instruction stating, “the defendant’s conduct is not willful if it was the result of a good faith understanding that he was acting within the requirements of the law,” and that “this is so even if the statement is, in fact, erroneous.”
The court has yet to rule on whether to provide Sussmann’s proposed instruction on a “good faith” defense, but if presiding Judge Christopher Cooper accedes to the request, the defense will be able to misdirect the jury from the relevant facts of the case to its theme that Sussmann had a “genuine national security concern” about the Alfa Bank data and believed he had an obligation to share the information with the FBI.
But Sussmann is not on trial for sharing the data with the FBI. He’s on trial for lying to Baker when he did so. A good faith belief in the validity of the data is irrelevant to the question of whether Sussmann knowingly made a false statement to Baker on September 19, 2016. Under these circumstances, providing the requested instruction to the jury would only confuse the issue.
It will likely be at least another week, however, before the court resolves the jury instruction issues. In the meantime, the special counsel resumes today with its case-in-chief.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/23/heres-a-play-by-play-of-the-special-counsel-criminal-case-heading-into-week-two/
Military and NG???perverting the military was always their goal
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1528729028206657537?s=20&t=WsZP0UWttppWHwcEYwGpyA
23 May, 2022 13:07
HomeRussia & FSU
Russia comments on exchange of Azovstal POWs
Swapping Azov fighters for Ukraine opposition leader Medvedchuk out of the question, Kremlin says
Prisoner exchanges are the purview of the military, so any possible requests to swap Ukrainian captives from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol for Russian POWs would go through the defense ministry, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
And when asked by journalists about jailed Ukrainian politician and opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, he reiterated that Russia had no intention of doing a swap, despite the politician’s request to do so.
“Medvedchuk is a Ukrainian citizen who has nothing to do with Russia and is not military,”Peskov told the media. Ukrainian soldiers and members of theNeo-Nazi Azov National Guard unit “are a different category” he added.
Medvedchuk led the biggest opposition faction in the Ukrainian parliament before the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky launched a crackdown on opposition forces in the country. The man is currently in the custody of the SBU, Ukraine’s domestic security agency.
On Monday, the SBU released footage of Medvedchuk apparently incriminating former President Petro Poroshenko and his government in the partial privatization of a fuel pipeline that goes from Russia and Belarus to Ukraine and westward to the EU. Zelensky ordered the nationalization of the Ukrainian stretch in February.
The politician also accused the former president of asking him to organize illegal supplies of coal from the breakaway eastern regions of Donbass. The politician’s attorney said the video was “a public relations stunt” by the SBU.
Medvedchuk has a reputation of having extensive ties to Russia. Critics claim he was part of a fifth column helping Moscow, while he said he was the victim of political persecution by Zelensky.
After reporting the capture of Medvedchuk, the SBU released a video, in which he asked to be exchanged for “the defenders and residents of Mariupol.”
He was referring to Ukrainian troops that were at the time blockaded in Azovstal, a heavily fortified steelworks in the port city, which was otherwise controlled by Russian troops. Ukrainian forces surrendered last week, with Moscow reportedly capturing almost 2,500 people, including members of the controversial nationalist Azov battalion.
Ukrainian officials described the surrender as an “evacuation” and claimed the fighters would be exchanged for Russian POWs detained by Ukraine. They implied Kiev had agreed an exchange deal with Moscow before Zelensky ordered the troops to lay down arms.
Russia did not confirm the Ukrainian claim, while some Russian officials said the Azov fighters should be prosecuted for alleged war crimes.
https://www.rt.com/russia/555953-azovstal-prisoners-exchange-medvedchuk/
23 May, 2022 13:46
HomeRussia & FSU
Moscow appeals to Red Cross for help
Russia’s ombudsman has asked the organization to facilitate a visit to servicemen captured by Ukraine
Russia’s human rights ombudsman asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to help in arranging a visit to servicemen held captive by Ukrainian forces amid Moscow’s military offensive.
In a Telegram post published on Monday, Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova noted that the ICRC had often served as “the last resort” for the relatives of prisoners of war in the past, as it was the only authority which could provide some information about their loved ones. However, according to the ombudsman,neither the Russian government nor the soldiers’ relatives have so far received any information about POWs held in Ukraine.
“Therefore, I once again turned to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr. Peter Maurer, with a request to provide information about Russian prisoners of war and help me or my representatives visit them. I really hope that my other appeal will not go unnoticed,” Moskalkova wrote.
She saidMoscow is unaware of the psychological and physical condition of the Russian servicemen. It is also unclear whether they are getting medical assistance or if the provisions of the Geneva Convention are being observed by the Ukrainian side.
“It would be very bitter to realize that such a respected organization as the ICRC had forgotten about the universal principles of humanism, and, like many other international structures, is guided by double standards in relation to our prisoners,” the ombudsman said.
She also claimed that, when it comes to the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, Russia is complying with all international requirements. Moskalkova said she visited one of the Black Sea Fleet units in early April “to make sure that the Ukrainian prisoners are provided with everything necessary and their rights, protected by the Geneva Convention, are fully respected.”
“They said that they are provided with three hot meals a day, medical care, they have a TV, books and newspapers. According to them, they did not expect such a human attitude towards themselves,” Moskalkova claimed.
Her remarks came as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed that the exchange of prisoners of war “is being carried out constantly in one form or another.”
Since the beginning of the Russian military attack on Ukraine, Moscow and Kiev have constantly accused each other of violence towards prisoners. In an interview with RT earlier this month, the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin said a number of allegations relating to the torture of Russian POWs by Ukrainian forces were being investigated.
His remarks followed a statement by the Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova, who accused the Russian “occupiers” and “racists” of torturing Ukrainian soldiers captured in Mariupol. According to Denisova, the Ukrainians were “threatened with murder, beaten and humiliated,” as well as being deprived of water and medical assistance.
https://www.rt.com/russia/555965-russia-prisoners-cross-red/