Iryna Danilovich disappeared while returning from work in April 2022. It would be two weeks before Russian authorities admitted she was in their custody. The human rights activist and nurse was detained in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, accused of illegal possession of explosives and sentenced to seven years in prison. In her trial, Danilovich testified that she was tortured during her detention. <\/p>\n
She has since been deported to a notoriously cruel women\u2019s penal colony in Zelenokumsk, southern Russia. She suffers from constant headaches and her health continues to deteriorate \u2013 yet she is not allowed to sit or lie down during the day, according to human rights monitoring group Zmina. <\/p>\n
Ukraine has always called its areas under Russian control \u201ctemporarily occupied territories,\u201d insisting it will eventually regain control over them. But that hope is being crushed now. This week, US President Donald Trump suggested it was \u201cunlikely\u201d Ukraine would get back much of its occupied land in the peace negotiations he intends to hold with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Danilovich\u2019s case \u2013 and she is just one of thousands Kyiv says are detained in Russia \u2013 shows what is at stake for Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s comment came after he held a 90-minute phone call with Putin on Wednesday, and it sparked panic across the country, where few believe Putin would negotiate in good faith. <\/p>\n
Yuliya Kazdobina, a foreign policy expert at Ukrainian Prism, a think tank, said she doesn\u2019t believe the Russian leader wants peace. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe already had so many years of negotiations with the Russian side,\u201d she said. Russia has a history of striking and violating agreements with Ukraine going back decades. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees from the United States, United Kingdom and Russia that they would respect Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In 2015, after illegally annexing Crimea and sparking the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Moscow signed a ceasefire agreement only to then repeatedly violate it and then launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine seven years later. <\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to the Trump-Putin call by saying his country would not accept a peace deal struck between the US and Russia without Kyiv\u2019s involvement. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs an independent country we simply cannot accept any agreements without us. And I articulate this very clearly to our partners. We will not accept any bilateral negotiations on Ukraine without us,\u201d Zelensky said, adding that the fact that Trump spoke to Putin first was \u201cnot pleasant.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe may be left without the currently temporarily occupied territories, without parts of the Kherson region, Zaporizhzhia region and the long-suffering Crimea,\u201d he said. \u201cWe must take back what is rightfully ours.\u201d <\/p>\n
Russian forces currently occupy nearly 20% of Ukraine\u2019s territory, up from the roughly 7% it controlled before launching its unprovoked full-scale invasion nearly three years ago. <\/p>\n
According to Ukrainian officials, some 6 million people, including 1 million children, live under Russian occupation, in what the United Nations has described as a \u201cbleak human rights situation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Crimea has been under Russian control since Moscow illegally annexed it in 2014. Since then, Russia has imposed a brutal and repressive regime, stomping out any sign of opposition. <\/p>\n
Maksym Vishchyk, a lawyer at Global Rights Compliance, a non-profit that advises the Ukrainian authorities on investigating and prosecuting international crimes, said Moscow has repeated the same pattern across other occupied territories. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Crimea has been kind of their playbook. Policies and patterns and tactics (Russia) applied in Crimea were then applied as well in other occupied territories. So, we see essentially the same patterns in all occupied territories, both since 2014 and since 2022.\u201d <\/p>\n
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has repeatedly reported the myriad human rights violations committed by Russia in occupied Ukraine \u2013 from unlawful detentions to sexual abuse to forcing people to accept Russian citizenship and sending their children to Russian schools and training programs. <\/p>\n
Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven how many victims this war has already had, and to end it on someone else\u2019s conditions\u2026 then why did these (Ukrainian soldiers) die and why did they defend these territories?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Soldiers fighting on the frontlines were likewise skeptical that negotiations between Trump and Putin could yield a result that would be palatable to many Ukrainians. <\/p>\n
Volodymyr Sablyn, a battalion commander in the 66th mechanized brigade, who is fighting near Lyman in the east of the country, said that having Russia take over some of Ukraine\u2019s territory could have dangerous consequences. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt will set a precedent and show Russia that they can attack any country, take its territory and make it theirs with impunity in the future,\u201d he said, adding that Russia could soon turn their focus on other smaller countries in its vicinity. <\/p>\n
Putin has repeatedly made his goals clear: He wants to gain control over the entirety of Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But many in Ukraine are worried that even if he initially agrees to a ceasefire, he will ultimately instigate further fighting to achieve his endgame. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo one and nothing will stop Putin from attacking us again and occupying another region or several more. If Europe and America don\u2019t help us, then making peace now will most likely lead to war in a few years,\u201d Sablyn said. <\/p>\n
Dariya Tarasova-Markina contributed to this report.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iryna Danilovich disappeared while returning from work in April 2022. It would be two weeks before Russian authorities admitted she was in their custody. The human rights activist and nurse was detained in the Russian-occupied…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}