Such advance notification would certainly have saved the drone, but only because Russia would have been able to ensure that it did not get caught red-handed, bringing a military convoy, together with a surface-to-air missile system into Ukraine.

Roman Manekin has disappeared soon after criticizing the Kremlin-backed leader of the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ and initiating a petition against fake elections scheduled for 11 November.

Donbas residents have made it quite clear to the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine [SMM] that “this is not their conflict, and they don’t understand why it is continuing”.

Having a car or wealthy relatives can get you abducted in the Russian proxy ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [‘LPR’] and held hostage.  In some cases, the ‘LPR ministry of state security’ claim that their victim was a Ukrainian SBU [Security Service] ‘agent’.  Often, however, the person just disappears

A drone used by the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission in Donbas was ‘lost’ during the early hours of 27 October, soon after being jammed as it reported movement of a Russian convoy of trucks and of a surface-to air missile system in non-government-controlled area

Putin has claimed that the killing at Kerch Technical College of 21 people, most teenagers, was the result of ‘globalization’. It is a convenient line for him to take, but one rejected by those who have long warned of the dangers of rampant militarization and glorification of war in Russian-occupied Crimea

Russia has now decided that the killing of 18 teenagers and teachers in Kerch was multiple homicide, after officials and the media first claimed that Ukraine was behind the ’terrorism’ or that the believed killer “looked like a Tatar”.

Should the International Criminal Court at the Hague still be in any doubt as to Russia’s direct role in the conflict in Donbas, it need only read the reports of the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission since August this year.  Russian military trucks and other vehicles have been spotted at least four times travelling by night on dirt roads with no official border crossings to or from the Ukrainian-Russian border.

So much for Moscow’s claim that the events in Donbas are a ‘civil war’ in Ukraine that Russia is not a party to.  On 10 October the Russian state news agency TASS reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide Vladislav Surkov had met, in Moscow, with the current leader of the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DPR] and “promised an increase in salaries in DPR”

 If, as Ukrainian military experts suspect, a much-touted Russian ‘Anti-sniper’ system is being used, this would provide further evidence of Russia’s direct role in the military conflict in Donbas, while also pointing to failings in the current international ban on the use of such weapons, and exclusions to that ban

Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group offers the readers the report on the results of study of the consequences of the armed conflict for civilian population and civilian objects on the territory, where in 2014–2015 there were hostilities, and along the demarcation line between the occupied territories and the territories controlled by the government.

There is no reason for the Russian KamAZ trucks spotted by an OSCE Special Monitoring Mission drone to travel by night through Donetsk oblast dirt roads away from any border crossing unless they have a lot to hide

A Ukrainian held hostage since late 2017 has been shown on Russian TV ‘confessing’ to a Ukrainian Security Service plot to kill Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic killed three weeks ago .

The new legislative initiative is doubtless linked with the amount of proof of Russia’s direct part in the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 and of its military involvement in Ukraine and Syria, revealed by soldiers on their social media pages

There can be no good reason for Russian military trucks to be travelling to and from militant-controlled Donbas by dirt roads at night, avoiding official border crossings, unless they have something to hide.  It was precisely such behaviour that an OSCE drone recorded late in the evening on 7 August, with the considerable footage showing that the trucks were travelling in both directions.

The implementers of Joseph Stalin’s Terror more often than not ended up arrested themselves and executed.  Times have changed in the Russian-controlled self-styled ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [LPR], though only, it would seem, because they don’t necessarily shoot you when you change from ‘comrade’ to ‘enemy of the republic’ overnight. 

Among the many Ukrainians for whom Russia’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup seems a bitter mockery are the families of Ukrainian soldiers held prisoner by the Russian-backed militants in Donbas

Why would armed militants prevent OSCE observers from viewing a ‘humanitarian load’ from the Russian Federation if it contained, as asserted, children’s food and rescue equipment?  Ukrainian and many western analysts have long assumed that Russia’s so-called ‘humanitarian convoys’ are carrying a much more lethal load, with this the most credible explanation for the behaviour around the seventy-fifth convoy reported by monitors

For the purposes of both one current case before the UN International Court of Justice and future cases at the International Criminal Court, the Joint Investigation Team’s conclusions could not have been of greater significance.

Two Ukrainian human rights groups have compiled an important report documenting crimes committed by militants of the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DPR], as well as evidence of the deployment of Russian military personnel in Donbas during 2014 and 2015