C T Online Desk: Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday promised victory over Russia as his country celebrated its first Defenders Day public holiday since the start of Moscow’s invasion almost eight months ago.
‘On October 14, we express our gratitude to everyone who fought for Ukraine in the past. And to everyone who is fighting for it now. To all who won then. And to everyone who will definitely win now,’ Zelensky said in a video address to mark the occasion.
Zelensky laid a wreath with the yellow and blue colours of the Ukrainian flag in front of a memorial in the capital Kyiv, dedicated to soldiers killed on the frontlines since 2014, when fighting broke out with Russia-backed separatists in the east.
Zelensky said that by ‘defeating’ Russia ‘we will respond to all enemies who encroached on Ukraine’.
‘This will be a victory for all our people,’ he said.
‘The world stands with us. More than ever in our history’ he added, referring to the unprecedented support from Western capitals.
Defenders Day was established in 2014 to replace a previous February 23 holiday of Soviet origin that is still celebrated in Russia.
Meanwhile, rapes and sexual assaults attributed to Moscow’s forces in Ukraine are part of a Russian ‘military strategy’ and a ‘deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims’, UN envoy Pramila Patten said in an interview.
‘All the indications are there,’ the UN special representative on sexual violence said on Thursday, when asked if rape was being used as a weapon of war in Ukraine.
‘When women are held for days and raped, when you start to rape little boys and men, when you see a series of genital mutilations, when you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,’ she said.
‘And when the victims report what was said during the rapes, it is clearly a deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims.’
The United Nations has verified ‘more than a hundred cases’ of rape or sexual assaults in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February, Patten said, referring to a UN report released in late September.
The report ‘confirmed crimes against humanity committed by the Russian forces, and according to gathered testimonies, the age of the victims of sexual violence ranges from four to 82-years-old,’ she said.
The victims are mostly women and girls, but also men and boys, she added.
But ‘reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg,’ she added.
‘It’s very difficult to have reliable statistics during an active conflict, and the numbers will never reflect reality, because sexual violence is a silent crime’ that is largely underreported, she said.
However, the Red Cross called on Friday for ‘immediate and unimpeded access’ to thousands of prisoners of war is has so far been unable to visit in the Ukraine conflict.
‘We share the frustration regarding our lack of access to all prisoners of war held in the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine,’ Ewan Watson, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told reporters in Geneva.
He did not say how many PoWs have been taken since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, but lamented that his organisation so far had been unable to access thousands of them.
Under the Geneva Conventions, all parties to international armed conflicts are required to grant the ICRC ‘immediate access to all PoWs, and the right to visit them wherever they are held,’ Watson pointed out.
He refused to go into details about whether one side or the other in the conflict was being more cooperative in terms of granting access.
‘We have been able to visit hundreds of PoWs on both sides, but there are thousands more who we have not been able to see, and we are concerned about their fate,’ he said.
He said the ICRC teams had yet to access the prison in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka in eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a July bombing strike which each side blamed on the other.
‘We want to stress that our teams are ready on the ground, and have been ready for months, to visit the Olenivka or any other location where PoWs are held,’ Watson said.
Russia has claimed that Ukraine carried out a strike on its own captured fighters at Olenivka, while Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of covering up a deliberate massacre.
The United Nations has since warned of dire sanitary conditions for those remaining in the facility, with many PoWs reportedly suffering from infectious diseases, including hepatitis A and tuberculosis.
Watson said the ICRC was eager to visit but had to wait until it was granted authorisation and security guarantees to ensure Red Cross teams are not in danger.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he does not plan more ‘massive’ strikes against Ukraine ‘for now’ and that the Kremlin’s aim was not to ‘destroy’ the pro-Western country.
‘There is no need now for massive strikes. There are other tasks. For now. And then it will be clear,’ Putin told reporters following a summit of ex-Soviet nations in Kazakhstan. ‘We do not set ourselves the task of destroying Ukraine.’
