Ukraine: Daily Briefing – April 4, 2018, 6 PM Kyiv time

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported at 12:30 PM Kyiv time that in the last 24 hours, no Ukrainian soldiers were killed and one Ukrainian soldier was wounded in action. In the last 24 hours, Russian-terrorist forces opened fire on Ukrainian positions on the Luhansk and Donetsk sectors of the front 24 times in total.

To watch Lt. Gen. McMaster’s remarks,  please click on image above

Outgoing US National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster spoke at the Atlantic Council on April 3. McMaster stated, “Since the denial-of-service attacks on Estonia in 2007 and the invasion of Georgia in 2008, Russia has used old and new forms of aggression to undermine our open societies and the foundations of international peace and stability.  […]

            Russia employs sophisticated strategies deliberately designed to achieve objectives while falling below the target state’s threshold for a military response.  Tactics include infiltrating social media, spreading propaganda, weaponizing information, and using other forms of subversion and espionage.

            So for too long some nations have looked the other way in the face of these threats.  Russia brazenly and implausibly denies its actions.  And we have failed to impose sufficient costs.
The Kremlin’s confidence is growing as its agents conduct their sustained campaigns to undermine our confidence in ourselves and in one another.  […]
Russian aggression is strengthening our resolve and our confidence.  We might all help Mr. Putin understand his grave error.  […]
So we are acting, but we must recognize the need for all of us to do more to respond to and deter Russian aggression, especially in four critical areas.
First, we must compete across all arenas to counter so-called hybrid warfare, this new form of Soviet-era active measures and maskirovka.  We must reform and integrate our military, political, economic, law enforcement, and informational instruments of power to deter and defeat threats to our sovereignty.
Second, we must catalyze change.  We must invest in our cyber infrastructure to ensure that we protect our data […]
Third, we must all cooperate to share responsibility in these and other security efforts. […] Our mutual security requires everyone to contribute.
Finally, we must realize that all of our actions depend on preserving our strategic confidence, our will to advance our values and defend our way of life.  […]

            The victory of free societies is not predestined […] There’s nothing inevitable about the course of human events and history.  And there is no arc of history, there is no so-called end of history, that will ensure our success. […]
And today the survival of our free and open societies and our way of life continues to depend on our confidence in our values, on our pride in our heritage, and on our will to defend our freedom.”

A full transcript of Lt. Gen. McMaster’s remarks is available here

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) reported, “Russia is deliberately creating an atmosphere of fear and aggression in occupied Crimea with Ukraine and Ukrainians pitched as ‘the enemy’.  This is the main conclusion of a monitoring assessment of Russian and Crimean media undertaken by the Crimean Human Rights Group and Human Rights Information Centre.

            Since Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea have been recognized (by the International Criminal Court) as an international armed conflict, it is legitimate to consider  such deliberate incitement to hatred to be one of Russia’s weapons of war.

            Although other groups, such as LGBT people were also targeted, the hate speech was primarily directed against Ukrainians in general – both as a people and as a political community, against Crimean Tatars, Muslims, migrants, as well as Euromaidan activists.  Its effect was exacerbated by the overall absence of free and independent media in occupied Crimea.

            The authors monitored the evening news broadcasts on the main Russian TV channels available in occupied Crimea (Rossiya 1; NTV; and Pyervy Kanal) during the Spring of 2014 (soon after Russia’s annexation) and in the Spring of 2017.  They also analysed the content of websites of Crimean media and the ‘official’ occupation authority websites from March to October 2014 and from January to July 2017.

            Iryna Sedova, one of the authors, stresses that this is deliberate policy by the occupation regime.  By creating an atmosphere of hatred and fear in Crimea, they hope to ensure that nobody dares speak out in support of Ukraine, and to further push Crimeans to join the Russian army. As reported,   Russia’s imposition of conscription and militarization on occupied territory, including education, pushing military service, are in flagrant breach of international law and essentially constitute a war crime.

            By constantly inciting hatred towards Ukrainians as a whole, towards Crimean Tatars or Muslims, the Russian occupiers are creating an atmosphere in which crimes against members of these groups are inevitable.  Sedova notes that such incitement was one of the factors leading to the genocide in Rwanda. […]

            Such hate speech also makes it easier for Russia to try to justify its repression against the above-mentioned groups.

The full report from KHPG is available here