Day 418 of the Invasion of Ukraine: Putin’s Chef personally ordered the Execution of at least 20 Ukrainian POWs
Ukraine | April 17, 2023, Monday // 12:00| views
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Day 418 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:
- A critic of the Kremlin was sentenced to 25 years in prison
- Wagner mercs admitted: Prigozhin personally ordered the execution of at least 20 Ukrainian prisoners of war
- Heavy fighting continues for Bakhmut
- Ten military men sentenced to prison in Iran for shooting down a Ukrainian passenger plane
- Christo Grozev: They are preparing a provocation for Alexei Navalny in prison
- Slovakia delivered the promised 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine
A critic of the Kremlin was sentenced to 25 years in prison
The Moscow City Court has sentenced Russian journalist, social activist and publicist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment on charges of treason, spreading false information about the Russian army and leading an undesirable organization. The information is from TASS.
"V. Kara-Murza is sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony with a strict regime and a fine of 400,000 rubles, a ban on journalistic activity for a period of 7 years and restriction of freedom for six months after release from the colony", reads the text of the sentence, read by judge Sergey Podoprigorov.
The defense intends to appeal the verdict, lawyer Maria Eismont announced. "We believe that a number of serious procedural violations were committed during the examination of this case, which is why we will appeal the sentence," she said.
According to the court's decision, Kara-Murza was found guilty of "treason", publicly disseminating false information about the use of the Russian armed forces and carrying out the activities of a foreign or international non-governmental organization, in respect of which a decision was made to declare its activity as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation.
According to the indictment, during a speech in the lower house of the legislature of the American state of Arizona, the publicist falsely accused the Russian army of using prohibited means and methods to wage war in Ukraine.
The other charge against him is for an organized conference on October 27, 2021 in support of political prisoners at the Sakharov Center in Moscow (recognized in Russia as a foreign agent).
According to the investigation, the conference was paid for by the non-governmental organization Free Russia Foundation, also recognized as an undesirable organization in Russia. The specifics of the charge under the article of treason are not disclosed. The accused pleaded not guilty to any of the charges.
A week ago, Kara-Murza said: "I sign every word I said". In front of the court, he said that he was proud of the accusation, which was published on the Telegram channel of the journalist Alexey Venediktov.
"I have not been able to sufficiently convince my countrymen and politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current Kremlin regime poses to Russia and to the world," Kara-Murza said.
The Western-educated journalist was a close associate of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015. "I am proud of the fact that Boris Nemtsov introduced me to politics. And I hope he is not ashamed of me," says Kara-Murza.
Wagner mercs admitted: Prigozhin personally ordered the execution of at least 20 Ukrainian prisoners of war
The founder of PMC "Wagner" Yevgeny Prigozhin personally ordered his fighters to execute at least 20 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
This was told by the founder of the Gulagu.net project, Vladimir Osechkin, speaking about it on April 14 on the air of "Фейгин. Live".
"On Monday, we will present a very important piece of evidence from one of the now former commanders of the Wagner PMC unit, who directly says that such brutal methods of repression were not just allowed, but were carried out on the direct orders of Yevgeny Prigozhin and (the first commander of PMC ‘Wagner’) Dmitry Utkin", says Osechkin, quoted by Gordonua.com
He specified that Prigozhin had ordered the execution of at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers.
"What's more, the militants were ordered to record all this action on a mobile phone, send it to their internal chat, so that they could partially use it in their Z-posts to intimidate the fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
On the other hand, there was another tactical task, a very cynical one: to do everything possible to make Ukraine refuse to fulfill the requirements of the Geneva Convention, so that the Ukrainians would harden and sink to the level of Prigozhin, Utkin and their mercenaries. The goal - to instill at least a little fear in the souls of PMC Wagner fighters," adds the founder of Gulagu.net.
Osechkin added that such intimidation is also due to the fact that in the last seven to nine months, a large number of mercenaries from PMC "Wagner" have switched to the side of VSU, took advantage of the "Save Life" program or other opportunities to surrender.
Heavy fighting continues for Bakhmut
Heavy fighting continues between Ukrainian and Russian troops in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. At the same time, Russia's most powerful mercenary group, Wagner, returned at least 100 Ukrainian prisoners of war back to Ukraine to mark the Orthodox Easter. This is clear from a video published by the group's founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Fighters of the "Wagner" mercenary company are advancing in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the Russian Ministry of Defense claims. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that the enemy unsuccessfully attacked the towns of Ivanovske and Khromov near Bakhmut.
Russian troops are covering the city from the east, north and south and have been trying to completely surround it for weeks. According to the Ukrainian command, another epicenter of the fighting in the last 24 hours was Marinka - a town on the western outskirts of the Russian-occupied Donetsk. Here, as well as in the area of Lyman and Avdiivka, the occupiers were repelled.
The head of Wagner's Russian mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has hinted that it is best to end the war in Ukraine. In a message published on Friday and which attracted a lot of media attention over the weekend, Prigozhin, 61, said "the ideal option would be to announce the end of the special military operation and to announce that Russia has achieved all its objectives". In a sense, we have indeed achieved them, he points out.
In an interview with a Spanish newspaper, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said he could not name the exact number of losses Ukrainian forces suffered after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, but hinted that it was less than the number of people killed in the earthquakes in Turkey.
According to Turkish authorities, more than 50,000 people died in the devastating earthquakes in February in southeastern Turkey. Currently, Ukraine has not provided information on the number of its fighters killed and killed.
Ten military men sentenced to prison in Iran for shooting down a Ukrainian passenger plane
In Iran, 10 military personnel were sentenced to prison for their role in the January 8, 2020 incident in which a Ukrainian passenger plane was shot down by air defenses near Tehran, AFP reported.
All 176 people on board, most of them citizens of Iran and Canada, died in the accident, which happened shortly after the plane took off.
The most severe sentence - 10 years of imprisonment - was given to the commander of the missile battery, which, according to the judges, fired two missiles at the plane without receiving an order to do so from the higher command. His subordinates received between 1 and 3 years in prison.
The tragic incident of January 2020 occurred at a particularly tense moment in the standoff between the United States and Iran, when an Iranian general was killed by a US drone, and in response, Tehran launched a wave of ballistic missiles at a US military base in Iraq.
Relatives of those killed in the plane are still demanding financial compensation from the Iranian government. At the beginning of last year, a court in Canada ordered that the families of 6 of the victims to be paid 80 million dollars.
Special units of the Ukrainian military intelligence fly on the American Black Hawk
The special units of Ukrainian military intelligence use the American Black Hawk in their operations, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine officially admitted for the first time. The information that at least one "Black Hawk" is in service with the Ukrainian intelligence commandos appeared as early as the end of February, but there was no official confirmation.
At least one combat vehicle was supplied by a US-based company that supplies retrofitted Black Hawks to the US military. Earlier this year, a machine appeared in a photo next to a Mi-24 after returning from another flight of military intelligence special forces.
Now, in a communiqué, the GUR says that on one of the directions of the front, training was held for the special units of the service to interact with the Black Hawk multi-purpose helicopter. The Ukrainian special forces have practiced the landing of combat groups on the battlefield, evacuation and landing with ropes, as well as night flights.
⚡️The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense has officially confirmed that it has an American Black Hawk helicopter is in its arsenal. pic.twitter.com/AsCQElp6ws
— FLASH (@Flash_news_ua) April 16, 2023
According to GUR, the fighting machine significantly surpasses the Soviet analogues Mi-8 and Mi-24 in practically all basic characteristics.
The message quoted one of the pilots as saying that the Ukrainian crews mastered the Black Hawk in a matter of hours. "With the experience of operating the Mi-8 and M-24, we flew the Black Hawk on the first day as soon as we got it. They just sat in it and flew," says the pilot.
As noted by the Ukrainians, the Black Hawk is many times more maneuverable than the Mi-8, it is much better in handling and wins the duel in the speed of horizontal flight. Also, the helicopter is able to spend about three hours in continuous flight, easily covering a distance of more than 600 kilometers.
"This type of helicopter is designed to launch guided and unguided Hellfire missiles, and is also designed to support infantry and transport various cargoes. It takes 3-4 seconds to unload a group of 12 fighters and evacuate another helicopter from the battlefield,” the Defense Intelligence Agency reports.
Christo Grozev: They are preparing a provocation for Alexei Navalny in prison
A provocation is being prepared against Alexei Navalny in the form of a fight with his cellmate. This is an old trick used by the KGB and FSB to deal with their enemies.
This was stated by the investigative journalist Christo Grozev, author of the Oscar-winning documentary about the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader with Novichok, on Nova TV. He specified that a person from the prison administration alerted Navalny's lawyers about this.
For more than 860 days, Alexei Navalny has been in prison, his condition is deteriorating periodically and there are alarming signals. During most of this time he has been held absolutely unlawfully and unconstitutionally in solitary confinement. During all these months, we have seen several different attempts to artificially worsen his health, Grozev also said.
According to him, under Navalny, they always put a prisoner infected with some infectious disease into the cell, hoping that he will also get infected.
Grozev added that in recent weeks there has been a deterioration in the health of the Russian opposition figure, who has lost more than 10 kg.
“There are very severe stomach pains that cannot be diagnosed. The local medical office refuses to give him the results of the tests and explain to him what is happening to him. Let's not forget that he was recently poisoned with Novichok", the journalist recalled.
Slovakia delivered the promised 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine
Slovakia has handed over all 13 MiG-29 fighter jets it promised to Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense in Bratislava said, as quoted by Reuters.
In March, Slovakia joined Poland and, like Poland, promised to help Ukraine repel the Russian army by providing it with its aircraft of this type. In March, Bratislava sent the first four fighter jets to Kyiv.
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