Criticism of Ukraine war spreads on Russian social media as loved ones die

Published

2 years ago

February 21, 2023

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Online posts condemning the loss of Russian soldiers and criticising the Ukraine war are being published on one of Russia’s most popular social media sites, despite the country’s tough stance on dissent.

The posts are written in Russian and appear to come from the accounts of real Russian citizens on VKontakte (VK), a platform similar to Facebook.

“This f****** war took another person dear to me… Well, for what!!??,” wrote one angry young woman mourning her late partner.

Breaking the silence: Scenes from Russia’s home front

She also posted a photo of the two of them with wide smiles for the camera and with her sitting in his lap. Her arm is draped over his shoulders and he is cuddling her close.

Others post similar messages.

Another grieving woman wrote: “Now you will be an eternally young twenty-two-year-old boy with sparkling blue eyes and a bright smile [but] this damn war has wiped your face off the earth.”

One user called for the war to end, branding it a “meat grinder” in an apparent reference to the large number of lives it has claimed. Another wrote: “These men died a terrible death.”

These comments were posted on pages set up to memorialise the men who have died fighting in Ukraine.

But Sky News also found a number of similar posts on community pages. Previous discussions on these local pages focused on the weather, crime rates and road repairs but now include messages paying tribute to soldiers who died.

One such recent post reported the deaths of six men from Vologda, a city in northwest Russia.

“Stop the war!!!!!,” reads one brazen comment underneath it. Another argues “why shouldn’t the Armed Forces of Ukraine defend their house when it was attacked?” on the same post.

These people are taking a risk by posting publicly as VK is monitored for comments that are not allowed.

Users know this, with some of the community pages on VK pointing readers to their encrypted Telegram channels. One such page wrote: “Only there we publish uncensored news that are not available on VK.”

Other users also play a role in shutting down these types of critical comments. Some will argue against the angry posts and threaten to report the comments to the moderators. These users will often also attack the person who posted the anti-war message by insulting them, for example calling them “scum”.

These negative comments are scattered among other posts, the overwhelming majority of which praise the dead men. The late soldiers are lauded as war heroes and users send condolences to the loved ones of those who lost their lives.

“Thanks to such soldiers, the country can sleep peacefully,” is one typical post.

Praise for Russia’s actions in Ukraine is widespread on VK as well as on other platforms.

TikTok is hugely popular and videos glorifying Russia, Putin and the war are clocking up millions of views.

One clip showing a segment of a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin put to uplifting music has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. In it, he tells a huge crowd that Russia will win against Ukraine.

Another clip, viewed more than 2.1 million times, is an animation showing Russia expanding to take over the entirety of Ukraine. It is posted with a caption that this is what would happen if Russia unleashed its full force on the country.

The war began almost one year ago, with Russia suffering heavy losses. Around 200,000 Russian troops have been injured or killed during the Ukraine war, according to US estimates. Moscow says its losses are much lower.

The war has brought with it new censorship laws in Russia, including a ban on the word “war”. The fighting in Ukraine is referred to as a “special military operation”.

This censorship has teeth. Earlier this month, Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years, becoming the first journalist imprisoned under the new censorship laws. Her trial had been triggered by a negative social media comment she posted about the war.

OVD-Info monitors human rights in Russia and reports that at least 440 people have been recorded as “suspects and convicts in anti-war criminal cases” and that more than 19,000 people have been detained at anti-war protests since 24 February 2022, according to its website.

Sky News has decided not to share the names of those posting critical messages in this article over safety concerns.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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World

At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

Published

3 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.

A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.

They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.

Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.

The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.

The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.

All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.

Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.

It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.

The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.

World

COP29: UN climate summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, warn leading figures

Published

5 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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COP29: UN climate summits 'no longer fit for purpose', warn leading figures

UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.

An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.

The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.

“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”

The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.

It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.

Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.

This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.

Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.

While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.

COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.

Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.

In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.

“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.

Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.

“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.

“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”

Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.

Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.

“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.

“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.

“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”

COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.

Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.

World

Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners

Published

21 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to 'smoke out' thousands of illegal miners

A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.

The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.

Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.

It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.

The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.

Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.

A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.

Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.

In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.

Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.

Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.