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Friday, April 22, 2022

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RSN: FOCUS: Russian Troops Use Rape as 'an Instrument of War' in Ukraine, Rights Groups Allege

22 April 22

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FOCUS: Russian Troops Use Rape as 'an Instrument of War' in Ukraine, Rights Groups Allege
Tara John, Oleksandra Ochman and Sandi Sidhu, CNN
Except: "When Russian troops invaded Ukraine and began closing in on its capital, Kyiv, Andrii Dereko begged his 22-year-old stepdaughter Karina Yershova to leave the suburb where she lived."

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine and began closing in on its capital, Kyiv, Andrii Dereko begged his 22-year-old stepdaughter Karina Yershova to leave the suburb where she lived.

But Yershova insisted she wanted to remain in Bucha, telling him: “Don’t talk nonsense, everything will be fine – there will be no war,” he said.

With her tattoos and long brown hair, Yershova stood out in a crowd, her stepfather said, adding that despite living with rheumatoid arthritis, she had a fiercely independent spirit: “She herself decided how to live.”

Yershova worked at a sushi restaurant in Bucha, and hoped to earn her university degree in the future, Dereko said: “She wanted to develop herself.”

As Russian soldiers surrounded Bucha in early March, Yershova hid in an apartment with two other friends. On one of the last occasions Dereko and his wife, Olena, heard from Yershova, she told them she had left the apartment to get food from a nearby supermarket.

“We did not think that Russians would reach such a point that they would shoot civilians,” he said. “We all hoped that at least they would not touch women and children – but the opposite happened.”

When weeks went by without a word from Yershova, the family became desperate for news. Her mother left a message on Facebook begging anyone who knew what had happened to her to get in touch.

She was told by friends that images of a dead woman with similar tattoos to Yershova’s – which included a rose on her forearm – had been posted on a Telegram group set up by a detective in Bucha who was trying to identify hundreds of bodies found in the town after Russian troops withdrew from the area two weeks ago.

Dereko says the images, seen by CNN, show his stepdaughter’s mutilated body. Police told the family she had been killed by Russian soldiers.

It looked like she was tortured or put up a fight, he said. “They mutilated her. They shot her in the leg, and then gave her a tourniquet to stop her bleeding. And then they shot her in the temple.”

Dereko also believes Yershova was sexually abused by Russian troops. “The [police] investigator hinted” that she had been raped, he said.

CNN has not been able to independently verify this claim. Officers who oversaw the case declined to comment to CNN due to the ongoing investigation. CNN has reached out to Kyiv prosecutors for comment.

The Dereko family’s agonizing wait for answers reflects the rising anxiety amid reports of wartime rape in the country.

Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have been sexually abusing women, children and men since the invasion began, using rape and other sexual offenses as weapons of war.

Human rights groups and Ukrainian psychologists who CNN spoke to say they have been working around the clock to deal with a growing number of sexual abuse cases allegedly involving Russian soldiers.

A report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), released on April 13, found violations of international humanitarian law by Russian forces in Ukraine, noting that “reports indicate instances of conflict-related gender-based violence, such as rape, sexual violence or sexual harassment.”

“Russian soldiers are doing everything they can to show their dominance, and rape is also a tool here,” said psychologist Vasylisa Levchenko, who founded a service that provides free counselling for Ukrainians suffering from war-related trauma.

Levchenko says her network, called Psy.For.Peace, has spoken to roughly 50 women from the Kyiv region who say they were sexually assaulted by Russian soldiers. She told CNN the group is dealing with cases including a 15-year-old and her mother who were sexually abused by pro-Russian Chechen soldiers, and the gang rape of another woman by seven soldiers – while Ukrainian detainees were forced to watch.

CNN has been unable to independently verify the account.

“The weapon [rape] is a demonstration of complete contempt for the [Ukrainian] people,” Levchenko said, adding that it is one which has an impact far beyond the victims of individual attacks: “There are people who feel guilty for not being able to do anything, guilty for surviving, for watching a person dying in front of them.”

Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians since the war began – a claim disproven by numerous attacks that have been verified by CNN and other news organizations. CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.

Breaking morale

Alyona Krivulyak, who heads up a national hotline at La Strada-Ukraine – a group that campaigns against gender-based violence – told CNN that the hotline has received nine accounts of rape from around the country, the majority of them gang rapes of women.

“Rape is an instrument of war against the civilian population – an instrument of destruction of the Ukrainian nation,” she said.

Psychologist Alexandra Kvitko, who works on a hotline for trauma victims run by Ukraine’s ombudsman with the support of UNICEF, said she has heard dozens of accounts of conflict-related sexual violence.

“This amount of sexual violence, this kind of brutality has never happened before,” she told CNN.

In the five years she has been practicing, Kvitko said she had only dealt with 10 cases of sexual assault before the invasion. “Now, in a few weeks of work I have 50 cases, and these are not only women – these are children and boys and men,” she said.

Rape is being used to break the morale of Ukrainians, she said, “to stop people from resisting.”

Kvitko said that when one client ran out into the street to stop soldiers from raping her 19-year-old sister, “a military man came up, grabbed her and said: ‘No! Look! Tell everyone that this will happen to every Nazi whore.’”

Any such act of conflict-related sexual violence – rape, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy – is considered a war crime and a breach of international human rights laws, said Charu Lata Hogg, the founder of human rights organization the All Survivors Project, which researches conflict-related sexual violence against men.

“Whether that is triggered within the context of a patriarchal and militarized masculinity, or whether it is exerted as a specific aim of warfare or whether it happens because people find a population at their mercy and therefore decide to inflict further harm,” it is still a war crime, Lata Hogg told CNN.

But even as Ukrainian and international prosecutors from the International Criminal Court (ICC) collect evidence of Russian war crimes, many sexual abuse victims are not yet ready to speak to officials about their ordeal, Levchenko said.

“All our psychologists must provide women with the contacts of the prosecutor’s office so that when they are ready, women can seek legal assistance,” psychologist Levchenko said, adding that none of her clients has so far reached out to Ukrainian prosecutors.

Levchenko said many of the victims – women, men and children – need time to heal before speaking to the authorities.

On Friday Andrii Niebytov, the head of Kyiv’s police force, said his officers had only confirmed one suspected rape case so far in the region. “We have [heard] such reports from outsiders, but when we talk to women, they refuse to confirm or deny such information,” he said.

Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Why maskless travel could be here to stay

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BY KATHRYN A. WOLFE

With help from Aubree Eliza Weaver

A passenger wears a mask while sitting on a plane. | Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

UN-COVERED — This week, the CEO of United Airlines said the quiet part out loud: Mask mandates on planes won’t be coming back.

“I think it’s very unlikely that a mask mandate requirement is going to come back any time in the foreseeable future,” Scott Kirby said in an interview Thursday on NBC News.

And he’s probably right.

Earlier this week, a Florida judge appointed by former President Donald Trump tossed out the federal mandate that requires people to cover their faces on planes and other kinds of public transportation. Even though later in the week the DOJ announced they would be appealing the ruling, soon after the Florida decision, the Transportation Security Administration announced that it wouldn’t be enforcing it, at least for the moment.

The airline industry pounced, ordering its workforce en masse to stop making people wear masks. And that’s probably how it will be going forward, thanks to industry pressure and the creep of pre-2020 normalcy — no matter what happens with the Justice Department’s pending appeal of the decision.

For one thing, it’s going to be tough to put that genie back into the bottle. And the U.S. airline industry doesn’t want it put back — the industry has been pressing for months to get rid of the mask mandate on board planes, arguing that it makes no sense for it to continue as Covid restrictions wane across the country.

Many flight attendants cheered the court decision, happy to be out from under worrying that telling someone to wear a mask will mean a punch in the face. The Federal Aviation Administration’s statistics suggest that a strong majority — some 70 percent of incidents reported this year — of unruly passenger behavior is triggered by mask issues, even if it escalates from there.

The wind was already blowing this way long before the suit was tossed. The biggest wink-wink on this score may have been the CDC’s latest decision to extend the mandate. Instead of extending it for a month, as the agency has done for some time now, it decided to only extend it for two weeks, to give the agency time to see how the newest variant was affecting hospitalization and death figures.

There are still concerns about safety, though, especially with a new Omicron variant spreading rapidly. And one of the ways infectious diseases spread far and wide is through travel. So the decision becomes whether vaccines and other precautions are robust enough to remove the mandate, in hopes that it will mean air crew will be less likely to have to bean an angry passenger with a coffee pot, have their teeth knocked down their throat or endure a host of other horrible behavior that’s been inflicted upon them.

Airlines are likely hoping the return to something closer to normal will begin to lure back business travel, as well. Though passenger volumes are beginning to surge with the arrival of warmer weather, it’s mostly been people jetting away for that Disneyland vacation they’ve been putting off since 2020. Business travelers, who are less sensitive to costs and more eager to pay for perks, have been much slower to return. The industry is banking on calming Covid fears by pointing to the robust filtration systems installed on modern airliners, which some studies have shown can filter out virus particles. However, other studies have come to different conclusions, and no matter how supercharged a plane’s filter is for airborne particles, it’s not going to help much if someone in the rows adjacent to you spews particles your way.

Americans aren’t sold yet, though. A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll published Wednesday shows most of those surveyed prefer to keep requiring masks for a little while longer — some 59 percent supported extending it through May 3.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at kwolfe@politico.com, or on Twitter at @kathrynwolfe.

JOIN US ON 4/29 FOR A WOMEN RULE DISCUSSION ON WOMEN IN TECH : Women, particularly women of color and women from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, have historically been locked out of the tech world. But this new tech revolution could be an opportunity for women to get in on the ground floor of a new chapter. Join POLITICO for an in-depth panel discussion on the future of women in tech and how to make sure women are both participating in this fast-moving era and have access to all it offers. REGISTER HERE.

WHAT'D I MISS?

A video of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaking during a press conference. | POLITICO

— McCarthy’s speaker dreams could be in jeopardy over Trump comments: Newly released audio showing that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wanted Donald Trump to resign in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection has prompted allies of the former president to question whether McCarthy is fit for the top job in the House. While the GOP leader is still seen as the overwhelming favorite to be speaker in 2023, given Republicans’ likelihood of taking back the House, it could endanger McCarthy’s chances to win over a necessary block of pro-Trump Republicans — particularly if Trump comes out against McCarthy’s speakership bid.

— Madison Cawthorn photos reveal him wearing women’s lingerie in public setting: Photographs obtained by POLITICO appear to show Madison Cawthorn, the embattled Republican congressman from North Carolina who recently accused his GOP colleagues of inviting him to orgies, wearing lingerie in what appears to be a party setting . After the story was published, Cawthorn tweeted that the photos were taken of him during a game on a cruise before he was elected to Congress. “I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me? They’re running out of things to throw at me... Share your most embarrassing vacay pics in the replies.”

— Jan. 6 panel gets inconsistent testimony on key Trump family conversation: The Jan. 6 committee has received apparently inconsistent testimony from key witnesses on a notable point : just how much effort it took Ivanka Trump to persuade her father to criticize the attack. Three months ago, the panel sent a letter to Ivanka Trump asking her to voluntarily cooperate with its investigators. Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said investigators wanted to ask her about former President Donald Trump’s behavior as the attack unfolded. The letter homed in on White House staffers’ efforts to get Trump to speak out against the unfolding violence.

— Voting rights groups sue Florida over new congressional map: Several voting rights and civil rights organizations as well as a Democratic-aligned redistricting group today sued over Florida’s new congressional map that hands significant gains to Republicans and dismantles the North Florida seat now held by a Black Democrat. The League of Women Voters of Florida, which successfully challenged Florida’s last round of maps passed a decade ago, filed the lawsuit in circuit court in Leon County, along with other organizations such as Black Voters Matters and Florida Rising, as well as 12 voters living across the state.

— Vance surge remakes Ohio Senate race: More than $5 million in new donations have poured into a pro-Vance super PAC — just weeks earlier, it had spent nearly all of its available funds . Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” has taken the lead in polling for the first time since entering the crowded Republican primary in July. The catalytic effect of Trump’s endorsement in Ohio helps explain why Republican candidates across the nation have gone to such extreme lengths to win his favor this election cycle. It’s a reminder of his hold on the party base, and of the prospect that he could still shake up Senate GOP primaries in Arizona, Missouri and New Hampshire — all states where he has yet to issue an endorsement — and Alabama, where Trump rescinded his earlier endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks.

AROUND THE NATION

UPSTATE’S DOWNTURN — Aubree Eliza Weaver emails us from Syracuse, N.Y.:

This morning, the CDC updated its Covid Community Levels map to mark 40 counties across the U.S. as “high” risk, urging their residents to take added precautions like resume wearing masks indoors. Of those 40 counties, 23 are in New York, and all 23 are in the Upstate region, including my hometown, Syracuse. Last week, the recommendations applied to 10 Upstate counties. The week before, three.

The majority of the country is still safely in the green, and easing back into pre-pandemic activities and socialization, while Upstate seems to be progressing backwards.

What makes that pill even harder to swallow is the way so many of my fellow Orange approach masking, vaxxing and socially distanced relaxing. Even when mask requirements were in full effect, it was never surprising to walk into a drugstore or Wegmans and see just as many folks wandering without masks as those donning their KN95s. But now, even in a spike, those masked seem to be farther and fewer between. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve recently entered a building, only to be greeted by staff with the friendly reminder: “Oh, you don’t need to wear that here.”

As of April 20, there were approximately 392 cases per 100,000 residents in Onondaga County — surpassed by only two other counties in New York State, Oswego and Oneida, both of which directly neighbor us. Onondaga was also recently reported to be the first county in New York hit with a new, more contagious strain of the omicron variant, BA2.12.

It’s both fascinating and alarming to live in an area where Covid is once again on the rise and making headlines, as nationally, other news is outpacing the nearly two years of a constant pandemic news cycle. This week alone, the following stories have topped local news sites: “Gov. Hochul visits Syracuse to discuss uptick in Covid-19 cases,” “Covid hospitalizations in Onondaga County nearly double in three weeks,” “ Syracuse University to require masks during classes, some events as Covid cases rise.”

While so many of my friends outside of the state are planning for summer adventures, anticipating a further decline in cases, I know at least three close friends and their families in the area who have tested positive this month alone — none of whom know each other or contracted Covid from the same place.

DON'T MISS ANYTHING FROM THE 2022 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is excited to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage and insights from the 25th annual Global Conference. This year's event, May 1-4, brings together more than 3,000 of the world’s most influential leaders, including 700+ speakers representing more than 80 countries. "Celebrating the Power of Connection" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect influencers with the resources to change the world with leading experts and thinkers whose insight and creativity can implement that change. Whether you're attending in person or following along from somewhere else in the world, keep up with this year's conference with POLITICO’s special edition “Global Insider” so you don't miss a beat. Subscribe today.

ASK THE AUDIENCE

Nightly asked you: Have you traveled on a plane, train or bus this week, and if so, tell us about the masking environment? Did you feel comfortable traveling? Here are some of your lightly edited responses.

“I commute to work by bus every day. I am also one who trusts and believes science and doctors and I have been wearing a mask, distancing, getting vaxxed and boosted and doing everything else the CDC recommends. I will likely continue to wear a mask when riding as it seems to be protecting me not just from the coronavirus, but colds and flu as well. Compared to the sacrifices others are making (Ukraine come to mind?) in the world, putting a small piece of cloth over my nose and mouth doesn’t really seem like such a big deal.” — Dave Etienne, marketing director, Cincinnati

“I flew out of Oakland and was so excited not to wear a mask. But people looked at me like I had three heads. I would say that 95 percent of passengers wore masks. I’m vaccinated with two boosters, but this is the Bay Area. Got a lot of dirty looks!” — Jeff Burns, commercial mortgage banker, Danville, Calif.

“With about only 30 percent of fellow passengers and no airplane staff wearing masks on a return trip from New Orleans to Chicago, our family will be canceling our reservations for YMCA of the Rockies this June. Too risky for fully vaxxed grandparents.” — Thom Clarke, retired, Chicago

“I traveled on D.C.’s Metro system this week, Monday-Wednesday. The environment was unchanged from before the mandate repeal. Most people were still masked. A few were not, but no more than before! I felt as comfortable as before, which is to say, not terribly comfortable.” — Susan Ryan, law librarian, Silver Spring, Md.

“About 30 percent of the travelers in the airports (Wichita, DFW, and Houston George Bush) and on my planes were wearing masks. About half of the workers were. I was wearing a high quality mask, as was my adult son who was traveling with me. I was uncomfortable but not overly concerned.” — Bruce Tannahill, attorney, Wichita, Kan.

“I traveled via commuter rail into Boston on Tuesday of this week and took it again Thursday. On Tuesday, masking was required, Thursday it wasn’t, but I will be keeping my mask on. The ridership is still much lower than it was pre-pandemic so it is always possible to keep a full space between myself and the other passengers, so between the space and the masking I felt very comfortable.” — Emily Norton, nonprofit director, Newton, Mass.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

25 percent

The decrease in Covid hospitalizations in Philadelphia in recent days, according to the acting health commissioner. Philadelphia is ending its indoor mask mandate, city health officials said , abruptly reversing course just days after people in the city had to start wearing masks again amid a sharp increase in infections.

PARTING WORDS

Chippendales dancer Miguel Rivera prepares for a virtual Zoom party from his home in Las Vegas. Rivera is one of a few Chippendale dancers doing virtual shows while the live show is shut down due to the coronavirus. | John Locher/AP Photo

FROM HEART-THROBBY TO LOBBY — Chippendales, the famed male dancer troupe, has turned to K Street to help it tap into a potential new round of federal pandemic aid, Caitlin Oprysko reports. The iconic franchise, known for commanding the attention of bachelorette parties lined across the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, retained the services of white shoe law and lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig to lobby on a pandemic-era program designed to help concert halls, movie theaters and others in the live events industry, according to a disclosure filed this week.

Lobbying records show it’s the first time Chippendales has retained federal lobbyists. And it’s further evidence that the pandemic has pushed businesses of all stripes — and sartorial reputations — to turn to the government for a lifeline amid difficult economic times.

As the world shut down in the spring of 2020, the closures hit the live events industry especially hard, and the Chippendales, like any other business, had to adapt to the new normal after canceling its “Get Naughty” Tour and Vegas performances.

The show’s performers began posting quarantine workout tutorials on social media, donning their signature uniform of only bow ties, cuffs and shorts. A few weeks later, Chippendales debuted Chippendales@Home, half-hour virtual stripteases performed over Zoom, Facetime or Google Hangouts — though the company offered free virtual performances to health care workers, first responders, and ticket holders to a since-canceled show.

Chippendales dancers have since returned to the stage. And shows this spring, hosted by “Jersey Shore” star Vinny Guadagnino, have packed the dancers’ showroom once again, according to local news reports.

But their lobbying hire comes as lawmakers on the Hill weigh one final round of Covid assistance for small businesses that would, in the case of entertainment venues, include additional money for venues and extend the date by which grant recipients could incur reimbursable expenses. The Chippendales did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

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