Ukrainian soldiers go AWOL in France – AFP
Dozens of Ukrainian soldiers have deserted from an elite brigade while training in France, AFP reported on Monday, citing a French army official.
The 155th Mechanized Brigade was meant to be a flagship Ukrainian unit, trained and equipped by France. Named ‘Anne of Kiev’ after the daughter of a medieval prince, Yaroslav the Wise, who married French King Henry I, the unit was personally inspected by French President Emmanuel Macron in northeast France in October.
Around 2,300 of the soldiers have been trained in France, and 2,200 more in Ukraine.
Without disclosing the number of deserters, the official who spoke to AFP claimed they “remain very marginal given the volume of people who have undergone training.”
“They were in French barracks, they had the right to go out,” the official said, adding that the soldiers were subjected to a disciplinary regime “imposed by the Ukrainian command.” The official stressed that France had no authority to arrest the deserters.
“Yes, there are problems, we are aware of them,” Mikahil Drapaty, the recently appointed commander of Ukraine’s Land Forces, told AFP news agency.
According to AFP, most of the soldiers arriving in France were conscripts with no combat experience and were accompanied by 300 Ukrainian supervisors.
Popular Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov reported earlier this month that “dozens” of soldiers had deserted the brigade in France, and 1,700 more went AWOL while serving in Ukraine.
According to Butusov, the brigade’s senior commanders have “either been fired or are in the process of being fired.”
Commenting on Butusov’s report, Drapaty told AFP that “a number of the facts that were presented did take place,” but “perhaps not on the scale and scope that was presented.”
The brigade admitted having problems with personnel, and released an appeal on social media for its lost recruits to report back to base. “We understand that the reasons which have forced you to go AWOL may have been different,” the unit said in a statement on Facebook on Monday. “Return to the team. We are waiting for you.”
Tatyana Sapyan, spokeswoman for Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, told Interfax-Ukraine that the authorities are investigating the brigade for desertion and abuse of power.
Last week, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced that the MOD will conduct a “comprehensive analysis” of the Land Forces Command and implement “reforms in management and personnel policies.”
The Ukrainian Army has been struggling with personnel shortages and low morale on the front line, with soldiers, journalists and military bloggers increasingly criticizing the government.
Ukraine has already lost most of a generation of young men, and now appears to be working on the next generation. NATO must be so proud!
Since February 24, 2022, approximately 40 million border crossings from Ukraine to other countries were recorded as of December 2024. Most of the refugees fled to Poland. More than 6.2 million refugees from Ukraine were recorded in Europe as of December 16, 2024.
German couple confess to killing Ukrainian migrants
for baby
A German couple have confessed to murdering two female Ukrainian migrants and stealing the younger victim’s baby. A court heard how the killers posed as volunteers who could help the Ukrainians with translation, in a ploy to abduct the newborn infant.
The two defendants, identified as 43-year-old ‘Marco’ and his 45-year-old wife ‘Ina’, appeared in court in the southern city of Mannheim on Tuesday, where they admitted to killing a 27-year-old Ukrainian and her 51-year-old mother last March.
In an earlier hearing, prosecutors described how the victims were living in accommodation for Ukrainian asylum seekers in the town of Wiesloch when they met the couple, who had offered their services on a Telegram group, Deutsche Welle reported.
When the 27-year-old gave birth to a baby in February, they allegedly began hatching a plan to kill her and take the infant.
The couple took the two Ukrainian women to a restaurant in early March and slipped sedatives into their drinks, prosecutors said. They allegedly drove the older woman to a lake where the man beat her to death, then took the younger woman to a dam where she was killed in the same manner, before the man set her body on fire.
The young woman’s remains were found within hours, while police divers discovered the older woman’s body several weeks later. The baby was taken from the couple unharmed and the two suspects were taken into custody.
Speaking in court on Tuesday via his lawyers, the man said that he and his wife already have four children and were willing to kill to have another baby of their own, after enduring multiple miscarriages and failed fertility treatments.
”I regret everything I have done,” the man said in his statement. “We really wanted to have a daughter together, that was my wife’s most fervent wish.”
“I committed these crimes with my husband,” the woman said in her statement. “I made a big mistake that weighs heavily on me. Little Mia is without a mother and my children no longer have a mother either,” she said, referring to the infant by name.
The couple are accused of two counts of joint murder and one count of child abduction. Mannheim District Court has scheduled nine days of hearings until the end of February. The child now lives with her aunt in Ukraine.
UK special forces had ‘golden pass’
to get away with murder – officer
British SAS operatives were given a “golden pass allowing them to get away with murder” in Afghanistan, a former UK Special Forces officer has told a government inquest. Other witnesses described routine executions of unarmed civilians by British forces.
The officer’s statement was given behind closed doors to the UK’s Independent Inquiry Relating to Afghanistan earlier this year (more likely last year), and included in a trove of documents published by the inquiry on Tuesday.
The former officer raised concerns about the killing of unarmed civilians in 2011, claiming that the SAS was covering these crimes up. The officer said that higher-ups within UK Special Forces – which comprises the Special Air Service (SAS), the Special Boat Service (SBS), and four other clandestine branches of the British military – had no interest in investigating the killings, and that SAS operatives had essentially been handed a “golden pass allowing them to get away with murder.”
The Afghanistan Inquiry is probing night raids carried out by British special forces between 2010 and 2013, when the alleged killings took place.
A junior officer told the inquest that “all fighting age males” were killed in these raids, regardless of whether they were armed or not. SAS personnel sometimes carried weapons to drop beside dead bodies after the killings in order to make them appear as combatants.
Prisoners were sometimes executed after they had been restrained, the witness recounted. “In one case, it was mentioned a pillow was put over the head of an individual before being killed with a pistol,” the document noted.
The inquiry is investigating the killings of at least 80 prisoners.
”I suppose what shocked me most wasn’t the execution of potential members of the Taliban, which was of course wrong and illegal, but it was more the age and the methods and, you know, the details of things like pillows,” the officer said, noting that some of the victims were “100%” aged 16 or younger.
The officer said that he was afraid for his own safety after testifying.
”Basically, there appears to be a culture there of ‘shut up, don't question’,” another officer told the inquiry.
Claims of war crimes committed by British special forces in Afghanistan have surfaced before, with BBC Panorama, the Sunday Times, and other outlets claiming that civilians were routinely killed on night raids. In one case, the American military reportedly had video footage of one massacre, but mysteriously lost the footage when pressed by a British court.
Mysterious, eh?
Late last year, the BBC reported that one of the UK’s most senior generals had withheld from the latest inquiry evidence of soldiers executing handcuffed detainees in Afghanistan.
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