A national security expert said: Putin is tactical and creating a pretext for war! – Topky.sk

Donbass is a territory in eastern Ukraine that is partly controlled by Russian separatists backed by Moscow, CNN. At a press conference on Tuesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said “According to Russian estimates, what is happening in Donbas today is a manifestation of genocide.” Scholz later explained to reporters that Putin had used the word in a bad context. However, he achieved what he wanted, because the public began to deal with it and he continued his rhetoric.

It relies on Rwanda and Srebrenica

Putin has repeatedly spoken about what he considers to be a violation of the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, and said that he was willing to intervene militarily to protect Russian rights. He seems to base his theory of “responsibly protecting the population” on the situation in Rwanda, where more than 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed in a hundred days in 1994, or on the Srebrenica genocide (1995, more than 7,000 mostly Muslim men and boys).

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Source: Profimedia

“The appeal to the genocide is a reflection of Russia’s false claim that its neighbor Georgia committed genocide against civilians in a breakaway part of South Ossetia in August 2008.” states Hodge. During this brief conflict, Russia launched a massive military invasion that went deep into the Georgian hinterland. Such a scenario worries the West in the case of Ukraine as well.

Unreasonable shelling?

The Committee of Inquiry, Russia’s highest law enforcement agency, took Putin a step further on Wednesday, announcing the launch of an investigation into alleged evidence Putin called “unwarranted shelling” of civilians by Ukrainian forces in the Donbas area. According to him, this has been going on since 2014. The Committee of Inquiry has stated that it has initiated criminal proceedings under Article 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation concerning the improper treatment of civilians and the use of prohibited means and methods in armed conflict.

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Soldiers in Ukraine
Source: SITA / AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky

The inquiry committee’s statement reiterated Putin’s speech on genocide and made it clear: “The intention to exterminate the people of Donbas is obvious. The Russian investigation has recorded hundreds of such cases, which qualify as evidence of the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare.” It is clear why the Kremlin wants to change the subject. For example, in 2015, the shelling in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which is the fault of separatists from Donbas supported by Russia, claimed the lives of at least thirty people.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Donbas in 2014, the United Nations estimates that thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded in the fighting. However, the outcome of the investigation appears to be a clearly political step, regardless of the veracity of the allegations. “And then there is the annoying question of the legal status of the separatist regions of Donbas. Russia has never recognized the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPRK) and the People’s Republic of Luhansk (LHR) in Donbas as sovereign and independent states, even though they have issued Russian passports to the people living there. , “ explained the CNN rapporteur.

Minsk agreement

Earlier this week, Russian lawmakers called on Putin to recognize the republics in Donbas as independent. This also creates a potential situation where Russia could declare the need to respond to Ukraine’s “aggression” against these regions. “Would such a scenario take place? Recognition of the DNR and LNR would actually sink the Minsk Agreement, a package of measures that the Kremlin has so far said is the only way to resolve the Ukrainian crisis,” adds Hodge at the end.