Freedom of Information

[DaffyVina]

About 2,000 cars leave besieged Mariupol

We've been reporting about the situation in the besieged city of Mariupol, and we now hear that some 2,000 cars have been able to leave along a humanitarian evacuation route, according to the city authorities.

A further 2,000 are waiting to leave, the city council says.

On Monday, about 160 cars managed to leave the city, in what seemed to be the first successful evacuation of residents after multiple failed attempts.

[DaffyVina]

14:14 -BREAKING
Russian TV journalist protester in court on trial

The Russian state TV employee who staged an anti-war protest on a live news programme last night is currently on trial at Moscow's Ostankino Court.

Marina Ovsyannikova is being charged with "organising an unauthorised public event," an administrative charge which could result in a fine of up to 30,000 roubles (£200), community service or up to 10 days in jail.

It suggests that the journalist is not being charged under Moscow's new law on "spreading false information about Russia's armed forces".

Earlier we reported that Ovsyannikova's lawyers were unable to locate her, but a photo circulating on social media appears to show her in court with a lawyer:

16:14 -BREAKING
Russian journalist fined after TV protest

The Russian TV journalist who burst on to a live news programme to protest against the war in Ukraine has been fined 30,000 roubles (about £213 at the current rate) for "organising an unsanctioned mass event".

A court found Marina Ovsyannikova guilty of flouting protest legislation, the RIA news agency reported.

Independent website Meduza says she was fined for the video address she had recorded before the protest, not for the protest itself.


16:49
Russian TV journalist resigns
A prominent journalist working for a Kremlin-controlled TV station has resigned in the wake of the on-screen protest by Channel One journalist Marina Ovsyannikova.

Vadim Glusker, NTV's Brussels correspondent, has been confirmed to have resigned by the state news agency RIA Novosti.

NTV told RIA Novosti that Glusker stopped working for it "in early March" and that his decision was "to do with health reasons". NTV is Russia's third most popular TV station and is owned by gas giant Gazprom and is firmly pro-Kremlin.

There are also reports that Zhanna Agalakova, Channel One's correspondent in Paris, has resigned - but these have not been confirmed.

Earlier, we brought you reports that a news presenter from NTV had resigned and left the country.


Marina Ovsyannikova: Russian journalist fined after TV protest
Published30 minutes ago

Media caption, Watch: Anti-war demonstrator disrupts Russia's state TV news

A Russian journalist has been fined and released after she protested against the war in Ukraine on a live TV news programme and made an anti-war video.

Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at state-controlled Channel 1, was detained after she ran on to the set on Monday holding a sign saying "no war".

She also released a video calling the war in Ukraine a crime and urging Russians to protest against it.

The 30,000 rouble (£214, $280) fine relates to her video message.

She had pleaded not guilty to the charge of organising an unauthorised public event.

In the video, she called on the Russian people to protest against the war, saying only they have the power to "stop all this madness".

"Don't be afraid of anything. They can't imprison us all," she said.

It is not clear if she will face separate charges relating to her protest on live TV, and there had been fears she would be prosecuted under a more serious, new criminal law that bans calling Russia's military action in Ukraine an "invasion" or spreading "fake news" about the conflict.

After the court hearing Ms Ovsyannikova told reporters that she had been questioned for over 14 hours without being given legal help or the opportunity to contact her loved ones.

Lawyers were unable to locate Ms Ovsyannikova for several hours after she was detained on Monday evening.

Her whereabouts were unknown until an image circulated on Russian media showing Ms Ovsyannikova in court with lawyer Anton Gashinsky.

Photo: Anton Gashinsky and Marina Ovsyannikova -IMAGE SOURCE,'VLAGER' TELEGRAM CHANNEL
Image caption, Marina Ovsyannikova appeared in court on Tuesday with lawyer Anton Gashinsky

'They are lying to you'
Images of Ms Ovsyannikova's protest were quickly shared across the world after she ran on to the set of one of Russia's most-watched news programmes, Vremya, holding a sign reading "No war, stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here."

She could also be heard repeating the words "no war, stop the war".

The placard was clearly visible for a few seconds before the programme cut away from the live broadcast to a pre-recorded report.

Before the incident she recorded a video in which she said she was ashamed to work for what she called Kremlin propaganda.

"I'm ashamed that I allowed myself to tell lies from the television screen. Ashamed that I allowed Russians to be turned into zombies," she explained. "We just silently watched this inhumane regime."

Marina Ovsyannikova -IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
Image caption, Ms Ovsyannikova recorded a video saying she was ashamed of telling "lies from the television screen"

Ms Ovsyannikova, who said her father was Ukrainian, said the whole world had turned against Russia.
"The next 10 generations won't be able to clean themselves from the shame of this fratricidal war."

Ms Ovsyannikova's colleagues at Channel 1 were reportedly surprised by her actions.

One told the Faridaily blog - run by former BBC Russian Service journalist Farida Rustamova - that Ms Ovsyannikova, who has two children, had never discussed politics, but spoke "mostly about children, dogs and the house".

From the moment her identity became known, Ms Ovsyannikova received dozens of comments on her Facebook page in Ukrainian, Russian and English, thanking her for her actions.

Ukraine's President Zelensky also praised her for "telling the truth".

French President Emmanuel Macron said France would launch an effort to offer her protection, either at the embassy or through asylum, and said he would discuss it in his next conversation with President Putin.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called her actions an act of "hooliganism".

Russian television news has long been controlled by the Kremlin and independent viewpoints are rare on all the major channels.

State-controlled Russian media refer to the war as a "special military operation" and paint Ukraine as the aggressor, describing Ukraine's elected government as neo-Nazis.

[DaffyVina]

16:20 BREAKING
Hospital staff and patients in Mariupol taken hostage - deputy mayor
Hugo Bachega -BBC News, Lviv

Mariupol's deputy mayor Sergei Orlov has been speaking to the BBC about the news just in that Russian troops have taken staff and patients of Mariupol hospital as hostages.

"We received information that the Russian army captured our biggest hospital... and they're using our patients and doctors like hostages," he said.

"We can confirm this information and also the governor of Donetsk region has confirmed this information. We received information that there are 400 people there."

16:56
'We can't leave' says hospital employee in Mariupol
Days after a deadly attack on a maternity hospital in Ukraine's southern port city of Mariupol, the city's biggest hospital has been captured and 400 patients and staff are being treated like hostages, officials say.

Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko says the regional intensive care hospital, on the western outskirts of Mariupol, was all but destroyed the other day but staff continued to treat patients in the basement.

He has quoted one hospital employee as saying: "The Russians forced 400 people from neighbouring houses to come to our hospital. We can't leave."

Photo of Mariupol intensive care hospital - Copyright: Donetsk regional governor
Image caption: The Donetsk regional governor said this was what the hospital looked like before it was "practically destroyed"

Authorities say at least 2,400 civilians have already been killed since Russia's bombardment of the city began. Many of Mariupol's residents are trying to survive in underground shelters.

One human rights group accuses Russian soldiers of threatening to shoot anyone who leaves the hospital, and anyone who has tried to get out has been shot and wounded.

[DaffyVina]

Russian TV protester says it was her own decision
Carrie Davies -BBC Moscow Correspondent

Still image of MARINA OVSYANNIKOVA -Copyright: MARINA OVSYANNIKOVA

Marina Ovsyannikova, the state TV employee who staged an anti-war protest during a live bulletin last night in Moscow, has been fined 30,000 roubles (£213).

She was charged with an administrative offence under Russia’s protest laws. It was because of the video she released calling for others to demonstrate against what the Kremlin calls it’ "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Speaking outside the court, Ovsyannikova said: “It was my anti-war decision. I made this decision by myself because I don’t like Russia starting this invasion. It was really terrible.

“I want to thank everyone for their support, friends and colleagues. It has been very hard few days in my life. I spent two days without sleep. I was being questioned for over 14 hours.”

She accused the authorities of initially denying her legal help. Her lawyers also said in court that despite asking for a lawyer to be present, she was not given access to one for several hours.

“They didn’t allow me to get in touch with close ones and relatives. They didn’t not allow any legal help. I was in a hard condition,” said Ovsyannikova.

She asked to be allowed to rest before commenting further and said again that it was her decision alone to stage her protest.

[DaffyVina]

How Putin’s regime stifled anti-war protests in Russia
Sasha de Vogel- Opinion Piece for the Guardian Newspaper (10/3/22)
Sasha de Vogel is a post-doctoral fellow at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University

The Russian anti-war movement is disjointed at the moment, but it could yet make an impact

A woman is detained in Moscow after a protest against the war, 6 March 2022. Photograph: Konstantin Zavrazhin/Getty Images


Over the last fortnight, Russians have risked fines, prison terms of up to 15 years, physical abuse and more to express the belief that their country’s invasion of Ukraine is not in their name. At time of writing, 13,789 protesters have been detained since 24 February. An observer scrolling Twitter or watching the detainee count ratchet up might think that the anti-war movement could threaten Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But the reality on the ground looks different: the anti-war movement is small, weak and faces serious obstacles.

While the number of detentions is striking, it should not be confused with high turnout, because the detention rate is likely much higher than in normal conditions. Photos suggest that in many cities, the number of people at demonstrations is a few dozen or few hundred at most, with turnouts in Moscow and St Petersburg probably in the thousands.

When it comes to protest, size matters. A larger protest is generally safer to attend, as the individual risk of repression usually drops as the turnout climbs. But size is also essential to achieve visibility, which communicates a message to the public. Protests could play an important role in communicating opposition and even information about the war to the Russian public. But given the extraordinary increase in media censorship, the sudden eradication of independent media, the throttling of key social networking sites, and extensive use of propaganda, these protests are more visible to audiences in the west than to the Russian public at large.

The protests are also far too small to disrupt the status quo – another key measure of a protest’s effectiveness. An oft-cited statistic from Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan suggests that non-violent movements are most likely to be successful when 3.5% of the population joins the protests. For Russia, that number is around 5 million people. Even if turnout in Moscow reaches the hundreds of thousands, there is little reason to believe that Putin, an isolated autocrat whose legacy now hangs on this war, will submit to their demands.

Why aren’t these protests larger?

Although many Russians are against the war, others are barely aware of it. Most Russians receive their news from state media, which is under strict instruction to refer to Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation”; using the terms war, attack or invasion is now a crime. Though it is difficult to estimate what share of Russians believe the state line, misinformation and propaganda are incredibly widespread.

The political opposition has been decimated in the last few years and is unable to coordinate an anti-war effort. Following the January 2021 protests in support of Alexey Navalny, his organisations were declared extremist and functionally eliminated. Other opposition political parties with national reach, such as Yabloko, are exceedingly unlikely to chance severe penalties for organising illegal protests, or expose their followers to repression.

For individual activists, the landscape is also bleak. Many oppositionists are in self-imposed exile, and lack both the social media reach and the moral authority to call for protest. Those in Russia are rapidly repressed, such as human rights activist Marina Litvinovich, who was arrested on the day of the invasion, a few hours after she posted about protesting. The repressive landscape is changing rapidly, with new consequences for speaking out introduced seemingly on a daily basis, and many potential protesters have already begun leaving the country.

As a result, there is no “anti-war movement” as such in Russia. The protests happening across the country have no coordinating body. Many have been planned through personal networks and social media posts. In some cases, opponents of the war have simply travelled to their nearest city centre in the hope of finding like-minded citizens. Many protests are single-person pickets.

Although the Russian anti-war movement is not currently looking likely to change the course of the war, that does not mean it will have no effect. Repression often leads to innovation in protest and new leaders and organisers may emerge. For instance, soldiers’ mothers, a group with a long history of political activism in Russia, may organise against the mistreatment of troops.

As the consequences of sanctions are felt across society, more Russians may oppose the war. Demonstrations against specific economic grievances such as wage arrears, inflation and declining pensions have been common under Putin. Yet Russians also exhibit a tendency to put their heads down when the economy sours, as they did during the economic downturn that followed the 2014 seizure of Crimea.

Even if anti-war protests remain small, they prove to the world that Putin does not represent the will of all Russians.

[DaffyVina]

Ordinary Russians did not want this war, but Putin is trying to make us all complicit
Dmitry Glukhovsky - Opinion article published in the guardian newspaper 14/3/22

Dmitry Glukhovsky is a Russian author and journalist. This article was translated by Catherine Mullier and Eugenia Ellanskaya


Putin tells lie after lie to justify the horror he has unleashed, and to convince Russians this war is being waged for their survival

Russian tanks on a street in Mariupol, Ukraine, 11 March, 2022. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Why did the Kremlin tell us to call this war a special operation? Because no one in Russia wanted war. Everyone was afraid of war. War is real people leaving their homes and returning in zinc coffins. It’s smoking ruins where flourishing cities once stood. It’s ever-present fear. It’s poverty, starvation, collective insanity.

This war was not wanted by the ordinary people who are going to pay for it. Nor by the businesses that will collapse as a result, nor the so-called elites who will be cut off from the world and deprived of their usual feeding troughs. Since the war began, normal life ended for everyone in Russia, and life under martial law began.

Vladimir Putin personally declared the war in Ukraine. For an hour, across every TV channel, he tried to explain why war was essential – because Ukraine is a non-state that in principle does not deserve to exist. The invasion was founded on Putin’s personal hatred. He wanted the glory that he hoped a war would crown him with. He was counting on a Blitzkrieg: on the day the war began, TV stations ecstatically promised Kyiv’s capture by noon.

But Putin was not prepared to take responsibility for this alone. And so, before the invasion began, he assembled the Russian security council – everyone who might later be able to say “I didn’t know” – and presented them with the facts. He smeared everyone who might have attempted to separately broker agreements that would avoid this descent into war. It isn’t me, Putin told the world. It’s us – everyone who is truly at Russia’s helm. The west has no one to negotiate with here. So if a case is one day heard in The Hague about the war in Ukraine, its defendants will be an entire group. Each person in this group surely keeps this prospect in mind.

They, too, were frightened by this responsibility. It’s all there in the February video of the security council session gathered at the Kremlin. Apparently, they hadn’t even been told in advance of Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine.

And in order to alleviate their fear, Putin then decided to smear responsibility for the war across his entire regime. The state Duma deputies and Federation Council members were also called in and presented with the facts. And resting on the theatrical consensus of the security council, the deputies and senators had to publicly support Putin. Russian MPs have been drilled to vote unanimously for whatever atrocious bill Putin may send them for approval.

Even so, they only gave their consent to use the Russian army in Donetsk and Luhansk. But our tanks did not go to Donetsk. They went to Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Kherson. A week later it became clear that instead of a Blitzkrieg against mythical Nazi battalions, the country was facing a major war against the entire Ukrainian army and the country’s people. The Russian armed forces, for some bizarre reason branded with the Roman letter Z, got stuck in the mud. Our death toll has climbed into the hundreds. Our artillery started firing blindly, destroying Ukrainian housing blocks. When Russian forces bombed a maternity and children’s hospital, it became clear that we might be talking about war crimes.

Putin’s regime is now attempting to make its crimes into those of the entire Russian people. To make us complicit. To brand the forehead of every Russian with the letter Z. Putin needs to do this in order to shift responsibility away from his regime and towards ordinary people; to convince the west that Russia is not destroying peace in Europe simply because of the whims of a group of madmen, but because of the will of all of Russia. He needs to convince Russian people that this war is being waged in the name of their survival.

The regime is staging propaganda events to drum up popular support. It has organised administrative auto races under the Z flag through 80 Russian regions. Terminally ill children from a Kazan hospice have been arranged in a Z pattern against white snow and photographed from above. New explanations have been offered for the bloodshed: Ukraine had chemical or bacteriological weapons; it wanted to build an atom bomb; it wanted to attack first. At any price, by whatever lie, Putin must prove this slaughter makes sense, that the people and not just the Kremlin needed this war.

But Russians must remember that by supporting the Z we are supporting the bombing and shelling of peaceful Ukrainian cities. We are supporting the destruction of hundreds of schools and driving millions of people from their homes. We are supporting the sundering of fraternal ties between families and our two countries for ever. We are supporting Russia’s profound isolation, its inevitable weakening and its transformation into a colony for China’s raw materials. Those who believe this propaganda must remember that the rest of the world now sees Russians as invaders. Before too long, they will see us as war criminals. And this will become a part of our history for ever. We are all being smeared – smeared with the blood of peaceful Ukrainians and our conscripts, who were sent into hell “for training exercises”.

This is not our war, and we must remember that. We must talk about that. We cannot let them speak for us.

[DaffyVina]

Russia-Ukraine live news: Al Jazeera


Red Cross evacuates civilians from Sumy
Photo: Civilians are being evacuated from the besieged city of Sumy. [Handout/ICRC] (Restricted Use)
By Mersiha Gadzo, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, Zaheena Rasheed and Federica Marsi
Published On 14 Mar 2022

Updated: 27 minutes ago

Russian anti-war TV protester Marina Ovsyannikova was fined and released following a court hearing.

The prime ministers of Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia have arrived in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

A strike on a housing block in Kyiv has killed at least four people, mayor says.

Mayor of capital announces 36-hour curfew.

Talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials have resumed, according to a Ukrainian negotiator.

The Red Cross says more than 100 buses carrying several thousand civilians have left the besieged city of Sumy.

Canada, the US and the EU have adopted new sanctions against Russia.

A Ukrainian journalist and a US cameraman have been killed near Kyiv.

[DaffyVina]

Ukraine tells IAEA Russia preventing it from answering Chernobyl questions
Al Jazeera

The Ukrainian nuclear regulator has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it is unable to provide information on radioactive waste facilities at Chernobyl due to Russian control of the site.

“The regulator said for the first time today that information it received regarding Chornobyl was ‘controlled by the Russian military forces’ and therefore it could not ‘always provide detailed answers to all’ of the IAEA’s questions,” the IAEA said in a statement, adding that was also the case at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

[DaffyVina]

Over 600 buildings destroyed in Ukrainian city of Kharkiv: Mayor
Live reporting Al Jazeera

More than 600 buildings have been destroyed in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city in the east of the country, since the start of Russia’s invasion, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

“Schools, nurseries, hospitals, clinics have been destroyed. The Russian army is constantly shelling (us) from the ground and the air,” he said in a televised interview.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Lviv, said Russian forces were “razing whole residential districts to the ground” in Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million from which many residents have now fled.

Photo: Firefighters extinguish an apartment house after a Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv. [Pavel Dorogoy/AP]


Turkish FM to hold ceasefire talks in Russia, Ukraine
Live reporting Al Jazeera

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will fly to Russia and Ukraine this week as Ankara facilitates ceasefire talks between the two warring sides, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

“We are sending our foreign minister to Russia today. He will hold talks in Moscow tomorrow. He will travel to Ukraine on Thursday,” Erdogan told journalists after a cabinet meeting.

“[Cavusoglu] will continue our efforts to achieve a ceasefire and peace through talks with both sides.”

Russia quits Council of Europe rights watchdog
Russia has quit the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog based in Strasbourg, pre-empting possible expulsion over its invasion of Ukraine.

Pyotr Tolstoy, head of the Russian delegation at the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly, said on his Telegram channel that he had handed over a letter from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announcing Moscow’s decision.

The Council of Europe had suspended Russia’s membership on February 25, a day after it invaded Ukraine. On Monday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal had urged the Council to expel Russia.

[DaffyVina]

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (WHO), UNICEF‘s Catherine Russell, UNFPA’s Natalia Kanem call for an immediate cessation of all attacks on health care in Ukraine.

The horrific attacks on healthcare in Ukraine are killing and causing serious injuries to patients and health workers, destroying vital health infrastructure and forcing thousands to forgo accessing health services despite catastrophic needs.
To attack the most vulnerable – babies, children, pregnant women, and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives – is an act of unconscionable cruelty.

Since the start of the war, 31 attacks on health care have been documented via the WHO’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care. In 24 incidents health care facilities were damaged or destroyed, while in 5 cases ambulances were damaged or destroyed. These attacks have led to at least 12 deaths and 34 injuries, and affected access to and availability of essential health services.
The health system in Ukraine is clearly under significant strain, and its collapse would be a catastrophe. Every effort must be made to prevent this from happening.

Humanitarian partners health workers must be able to safely maintain and strengthen essential health service delivery, incl. immunization against COVID-19 and polio, and the supply of life-saving medicines for civilians across Ukraine as well as to refugees.
It is critical that humanitarian actors have safe and unimpeded access to reach ALL civilians in need wherever they may be.

UNICEF, UNFPA and WHO are working with partners to scale up life-saving services and support to meet urgent health needs.

Health care and services should be protected from all acts of violence and obstruction. For the sake of health workers, and for all people in Ukraine who need access to the lifesaving services they provide, attacks on all health care and other civilian infrastructure must stop.

Finally, we call for an immediate ceasefire, which includes unhindered access so that people in need can access humanitarian assistance. A peaceful resolution to end the war in Ukraine is possible.