It is not the fighters with machine guns, nor other methods to falsify the results, that make it imperative that the West refuses to recognize Putin’s supposed ‘re-election, but the fact that the farce is taking place on occupied territory

Prominent Ukrainian human rights defender, journalist and prisoner of war, Maksym Butkevych could not have committed the ‘crimes’ Russia claimed, yet this was of no concern to Russia’s supreme court

Few will fail to 'vote for Putin' when there's a fighter with a machine gun accompanying the 'ballot box', but the Russians are also using other methods, as well as exploiting children for 'election' propaganda

While the pretext is new, Hennadiy Osmak is one of an ever-growing number of Ukrainian journalists abducted on territory under Russian occupation

Dmytro Yevhan is the latest of around 300 Ukrainian prisoners of war whom Russia has tortured into ‘confessing’ to the crimes the Russian invaders themselves were committing

The International Criminal Court’ has issued two more arrest warrants for the moment over Moscow’s almost unconcealed attempt to cause maximum suffering to Ukraine’s civilian population

Russia’s savage torture and murder of Crimean Tatar Hero of Ukraine Reshat Ametov was just the beginning, with the number of civilian hostages now huge, and the use of torture widespread and systematic

Russia is using other ‘courts’ to pass secret ‘spying’ sentences against Ukrainian civilians abducted, tortured and illegally taken from Ukrainian territory

Illya Hibeskul was imprisoned for almost a year after the FSB decided to concoct charges against the young Ukrainian who had refused Russian citizenship

The number of such killings has increased dramatically since November, with such undoubted war crimes impossible without the support of Russia’s military echelons

Both collaborators and high-ranking Russian officials have dropped any pretence about both their treatment of, and future plans for eliminating Ukrainians living on and opposing Russia’s illegal occupation of their Ukrainian territory

Both Mykola Petrovsky and Serhiy Kotov were seized by the Russian invaders back in March 2022, held incommunicado and tortured for many months before Russia came up with insane ‘spying’ charges

10 years on, Russia is using demography as well as indoctrination to rewrite the facts about its invasion of Crimea, with the same methods used on all illegally occupied Ukrainian territory

As with the killing of over 50 prisoners of war at Olenivka in July 2022, it seems likely that such videos and news of the horrific treachery at Avdiivka are quite deliberately made public

It is unclear whether the Russians hope that the two separate videos from near Avdiivka and Vesele will demoralize Ukraine’s defenders or whether they simply like boasting of their barbaric war crimes

Yevhen Pryshliak and his friend, Artem Baranov, a 32-year-old lawyer, were seized by the Russians in occupied Nova Kakhovka on 12 August 2022, with Russia refusing to even say where they are held

The Russian occupiers destroyed hundreds of religious buildings and kidnapped, tortured, killed, and wounded dozens of priests... This was discussed at a press conference on the Russian occupier’s war crimes against Ukrainian religious communities and clergy.

Father Stepan Podolchak from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine had refused to betray his oath and his congregation by transferring affiliation to the Moscow patriarchate

The report by Human Rights Watch and Truth Hounds is particularly important given Russia’s attempts to conceal the evidence of its crimes, and to try to blame Ukrainian defenders for such crimes

For all its secrecy about the ‘spying’ charges it laid against Serhiy Tsyhipa, Russia is scarcely trying to conceal that he was targeted for his patriotism and opposition to Russia’s invasion