Political prisoners in Russia
Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian air force pilot who was fighting in the east with the volunteer Aidar Battalion when she was abducted on Ukrainian territory by pro-Russian forces in June 2014 and taken to Russia, was on a hunger strike at the beginning of 2015. She had begun this protest against her illegal imprisonment on December 13, 2014, and continued it for 83 days. Ms. Savchenko was charged by Russian authorities with complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists and, remarkably, with illegally crossing the border – never mind that she was kidnapped with a sack over her head. She faces a sentence of up to 25 years in prison if found guilty.
In April, Ms. Savchenko’s mother launched a global campaign to free her daughter. Maria Savchenko, 78, told the Associated Press that Nadiya is a political prisoner and that Russian prosecutors have showed “no evidence” that her daughter provided guidance for a mortar attack that killed two Russian state TV journalists at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine, as Moscow claims. Mrs. Savchenko launched her global campaign in Germany, where she pleaded for help from lawmakers and wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel. New York was her second stop. She was traveling with her daughter’s Russian lawyer, Mark Feygin.
Among the political prisoners being held in Russia during 2015 were Nadiya Savchenko and Oleh Sentsov.
On December 18, Ms. Savchenko, 34, started a second hunger strike, vowing to continue until the end of what is clearly a politically motivated trial, at which time she would go on a “dry” hunger strike, refusing both food and water.
Another political prisoner being held in Russia was Oleh Sentsov, a filmmaker from Crimea who opposed Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. Mr. Sentsov and three other Ukrainian citizens were arrested in May on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in the Crimean cities of Symferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. At his trial in Rostov-on-Don, which started on July 21, Mr. Sentsov, who denied all the charges, said, “I don’t consider this court a court at all, so you can consider whatever you want.” In his final statement, he said: “A court of occupiers by definition cannot be just.”
The court founded him guilty on August 25 and handed down a sentence of 20 years in a maximum-security prison. His co-defendant, Oleksander Kolchenko, received a sentence of 10 years. Earlier, two others arrested with Messrs. Sentsov and Kolchenko on the trumped-up charges, Oleksiy Chyrniy and Hennadiy Afanasyev, were each sentenced to seven years in prison. When asked by the judge if the ruling was clear to them, Messrs. Sentsov and Kolchenko sang the Ukrainian national anthem and chanted “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”
Amnesty International likened the proceedings in the Sentsov-Kolchenko case to the Soviet “trials” of the Stalin-era and called them “fatally flawed.” On November 24 the Russian Supreme Court upheld the verdicts in the Sentsov-Kolchenko trial. Among those speaking out in support of Mr. Sentsov, who is an internationally known film director, were prominent members of the European Film Academy.
Sanctions against Russia
Sanctions on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine continued to be extended and ramped up during 2015. The European Union’s Foreign Ministers Council voted on January 29 to recommend extending Crimea-related sanctions until September and imposing new economic sanctions. The day before, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted to extend sanctions restricting Russian activity in the organization until the end of April. The consideration of new sanctions was prompted by the January 24 terrorist attack by pro-Russian forces on a residential neighborhood of Mariupol, where 31 residents were killed and more than 100 were injured. The attack was condemned by PACE and the EU Foreign Ministers Council, which both cited the direct responsibility of the Russian government.
Sanctions were widened by the U.S. and the EU in September on dozens of Russian and Ukrainian individuals and entities with connections to Crimea’s annexation and the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine. In an announcement published in the U.S. Federal Register on September 2, the U.S. administration said it was adding 29 people to its sanctions list. Some of those added had ties to Kremlin-linked insiders and companies who were previously sanctioned, including Gennady Timchenko, a wealthy oil trader believed to be close to President Putin. A total of 33 companies or other entities were cited, including subsidiaries of state-owned oil giant Rosneft and the company that manufactures Kalashnikov assault rifles. The European Union, meanwhile, said it would extend the freezing of assets and visa bans for 150 Russians and Ukrainian separatists, along with 37 companies and entities either located in Crimea or having ties to separatist units in eastern Ukraine.
At the end of 2015, the United States added another three dozen people and companies to its sanctions list. The European Union on December 18 agreed that it would extend economic sanctions against Russia for another six months over its role in the war in Ukraine.
Fighting continues despite ceasefire
A second attempt at a ceasefire in Ukraine’s east was brokered on February 12 in Minsk by the heads of state of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine after Western leaders warned it was the last chance to avoid an escalation in violence in the Donbas war, particularly with the U.S. leadership considering providing lethal arms. The Minsk II ceasefire agreement – signed by the representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian governments, the “separatist” forces and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (collectively known as the Trilateral Contact Group) – consisted of 13 points, including a establishing a ceasefire as of midnight February 15, removing all foreign armies from Ukrainian territory and withdrawing heavy weaponry from what was in effect a newly created buffer zone.
The new agreement emerged after a week of negotiations involving the leaders of what’s known as the “Normandy format” countries: French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Merkel, Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Poroshenko. Western and Ukrainians leaders hailed the new agreement as a critical step towards de-escalating the war. “It’s not a complex solution and of course not a breakthrough, but Minsk II can be a step that can remove us from the spiral of military escalation towards a political impulse after weeks of violence,” said German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
At the same time, much skepticism surrounded its prospects – even in the short term – particularly since many of the agreement’s points were repeated from the first agreement, which was never upheld by the Russian-backed forces. The Weekly editorialized: “It remains to be seen whether Minsk II will be any better than Minsk I. Should we expect this ceasefire to work, when the previous one failed so abysmally? The devil is in the details and, most importantly, hinges on the willingness of the aggressor to cease and desist.”
Analyst Vladimir Socor, writing for Eurasia Daily Monitor, pointed out that, “At no point does the agreement acknowledge Russia’s role as a party to the conflict, or the presence of Russian weaponry and military personnel on Ukraine’s territory.” Furthermore, he noted, “The Minsk II agreement’s military and security clauses leave Ukraine in a position of even greater vulnerability; while the political clauses threaten (more directly than Minsk I) to insert Russia through its proxies into Ukraine’s constitutional processes.”
And still the fighting continued.
Ukraine’s armed forces suffered a major military defeat on February 18 when President Poroshenko announced their retreat from the key railroad hub of Debaltseve, about 47 miles northeast of Donetsk, after the fiercest battle of the Donbas war so far that raged since mid-January. Rather than adhering to the February 12 ceasefire, the Russian-backed forces threw all their resources at the battle and slaughtered Ukrainian soldiers as they retreated, news reports said, citing eyewitnesses.
On May 12, the long-awaited report by Boris Nemtsov on Russia’s involvement in the war in Ukraine – titled “Putin. War.” – was released in Moscow by colleagues of the murdered Russian opposition leader. The report documented the deaths of 220 Russian soldiers in the fighting in Ukraine’s east – a number that surely represents merely the tip of the iceberg. It was prepared by Mr. Nemtsov’s allies, who pieced together information he left behind, even though Russian authorities had seized his computer hard drives and documents, and despite the fact that many sources were not willing to speak with them after Mr. Nemtsov was killed – some say precisely because of his work on this topic. The report noted that Russia had spent at least $1 billion on the war in Ukraine during its first 10 months, and it documented the use of Russian state funds to pay Russian citizens to fight in Ukraine.
The report showed how “the Russian government provided active political, economic, personnel and also direct military support to the separatists.” It noted the types of Russian military hardware used by the so-called separatists in eastern Ukraine and said Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed by these “separatists” with a Buk missile system. In addition, it detailed how the Russian government paid off families of Russian soldiers killed in the war to ensure their silence. Yet another interesting finding: Russian personnel were compelled to resign from the Russian military before being deployed to Ukraine, thus making possible the deniability of the presence of Russian forces.
Opposition activist Ilya Yashin said at the May 12 press conference at which the 64-page report was released: “We want to tell people the truth about what is happening in Russia, about what is happening in eastern Ukraine. We want to catch Putin in his lies. We want to tell people that the president of Russia – a man who controls nuclear weapons and leads an enormous country – is lying to the Russian people and to the entire world.”
The war in Ukraine’s east continued throughout the year, despite the Minsk II ceasefire. Significant escalation was reported in mid-August when Russian-backed terrorists intensified attacks on towns in the Donetsk region where Ukrainian military forces were based. Intense battles were reported at the same time near the government-held city of Mariupol; they were focused on a strategic highway that connects Mariupol with Donetsk.
Speaking on September 27 at the United Nations summit on development, President Poroshenko said the conflict in Ukraine’s east was costing the country $5 million a day – money that could better be spent on development. He added that the war with Russian-backed militants had made Ukraine lose about one-fifth of its economic potential and that the insurgency in the east had led to “the emergence of a new form of poverty, sudden or unexpected poverty” for tens of thousands of people.
Meeting at a summit in Paris on October 2, Russia and Ukraine reached verbal agreements towards resolving the war in the Donbas, including withdrawing armaments from the conflict line beginning on October 4 and canceling illegal elections planned that were to be held in the next few weeks. The meeting, which also involved the leaders of Germany and France, also set a basic framework for fulfilling the Minsk accords – though without any revealed dates – that is based on granting immunity and amnesty to the Russian-backed terrorists and allowing them to run in elections next year under a special law to be drafted. Ongoing disagreements were apparent after the talks. President Poroshenko and his advisors vowed not to allow the elections to occur until Russian soldiers leave Ukraine and Ukrainian control of the border is restored. Yet French President Hollande said elections should occur before these conditions were met, with monitoring performed exclusively by the OSCE.