🧵See the nickname on that door? This is the door in the basement of local school in Yahidne, Chernihiv region, Ukraine. 300+ locals were kept there by Russian soldiers in inhuman conditions for 26 days. This tag allowed me to find the woman who left it and she told me her story.
They were kept in this basement from March 4rd till March 31rd. See the names right and left of the "calendar"? On the right are those who died in the basement itself, on the left – those who were killed by Russians or died "upstairs" during the shelling.
Evgeniya is the name of the woman. By the time Russians came in she lived in Yahidne with her family, including grandfather who recently had a stroke and was unable to move. They all survived, but 10 people in the basement died from hunger, lack of fresh air and medications.
Nearly all Russian soldiers who kept them in the basement were from Tuva, republic in south-central Siberia, one of the poorest and least-developed regions of Russia. Ukrainian authorities claim they collected evidence to charge at least 9 of them.
Some of them have recent posts on VK like nothing happened (archive.ph/c0cZJ). None of them replied to my messages: why keep 300 civilians together? They all had their own houses with basements, where they used to hide from shelling before.
Russian soldiers provided their prisoners with the minimum amounts of food and water. The first elderly man in the basement died a week after it all started. "He just didn’t wake up when we tried to give him some food", – says Valeriya.
Soldiers didn't allow to bury all the bodies immediately after the death. They only allowed to bring them to this boiler room, giving their clearance when at least 5 bodies were "accumulated" there.
When Russians had to retreat from Chernihiv, many of those kept in this "basement of death" were able to walk out for the first tome in 26 days – just to find their houses destroyed and totally looted.
Now the whole family is in Germany. They want to return, but Yahidne is still being shelled. They lost almost everything but saved their lives. I know It’s on the brink of ethical for me, but if you want to help them – PayPal leralepekha03@gmail.com.
And please read full story here (use google translate). Things like that should never happen again. svoboda.org/a/podval-smert…
Story continues: two of the guys accused by UA prosecutor's office in atrocities in Yahidne are already dead, as I was told by the wife of Nazyty Mongush. She confirmed her husband was there too, but he is alive.
She rejects accusations on behalf of her husband: "They fed them [civilians in Yahidne]. Our husbands won’t hurt a fly. My husband cried when he saw how they have to live: shops were closed, he helped one guy to find the diapers for his son".
She says some guys from the list never have been to Yahidne. "Probably Ukraine got this list when their car was bombed".
There’s one more interesting detail: Russian command also investigated the case of Yahidne, but found that soldiers are not guilty.
After this fruitful conversation she deleted some of her messages and closed her VK, as well as did her husband, and said she will report me to FSB ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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1/5 An important P.S. to my Valdai thread. This clearly demonstrates that any piece agreements with Putin’s Russia don’t cost the paper they're written on. One day he will simply fabricate a pretext to breach any agreement without hesitation, regardless how absurd it will look.
2/5 The '91 drones targeting Putin’s residence' stunt was a way to pressure Ukraine (I really hope – and want to believe – this was not coordinated between the U.S. and Russia). Not a big deal by itself, but a reminder that Russian false-flag ops or psyops like this are common.
3/5 With a peace agreement, you can buy a year or less of breathing space. In 1938–1939, it was barely several months for Czechoslovakia – time that Britain bought through Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
A @Planet satellite image of Novorossiysk taken today shows the aftermath of the Ukrainian underwater drone attack on a Russian Kilo-class submarine. Still hard to conduct a precise BDA, but at least we can see that the explosion occurred approximately 20 m from the vessel.
A still, high-resolution @Planet satellite image of the port of Novorossiysk showing damage from a Ukrainian submersible drone, taken today, Dec. 16, at 8:18 a.m. local time.
@planet Interestingly, back in 2021, Russia used this exact pier to place specially trained dolphins, which were later moved to Sevastopol. Good for them! (Although these dolphins are trained specifically to prevent attacks like the ones carried out by Ukraine.)
⚛️🇹🇷🧵Next year, Turkey’s 1st nuclear power plant, Akkuyu – built by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom – is finally set to go live after years of delays and scandals. Among its staff, we found a former GRU psyops officer. Our new investigation with @pustota exposes the full story 🔽
Meet Maxim Balabanov, who served for nearly 10 years, until 2017, in military unit 03126 in Leningrad Oblast – a SUPsO (psyops) unit of the Leningrad Military District.
He also listed as one of his addresses the location of another GRU unit, 20697 (St. Petersburg). As was discovered back in 2023, unit 20697 is another GRU psyops unit, whose officers pretended to act as politologysts and experts in their 'civic' life. ms.detector.media/internet/post/…
1/3 Finally, our investigation, together with @pustota, revealing several participants of the recent far-right and fascist organizations forum in St. Petersburg who did not want to be identified – including Hamburg Bürgerschaft MP Robert Risch from the AfD svoboda.org/a/rossiyskaya-…
2/3 Special thanks to @MackjackMaier for quickly revealing Risch’s identity, and kudos to the Belgian nationalists of 'Nation,' who accidentally shared his unblurred photo.
🧵/ link in the last post. Have you ever wanted to know where the infamous Russian 'Rubicon' drone center is based – and who commands it? Thanks to my colleagues @pustota, @legal0ve, and open sources (including Russian Tsar-Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov), we now know.
First of all, 'Rubicon' is not technically a military unit; it isn’t associated with any, has no publicly known registered entity, and its head’s name has never been disclosed.
Luckily, I found two letters of gratitude that 'Rubicon' sent to the Bratskoye Serdtse ('Brotherly Heart') charity, which is run by former members of the FSB and SVR. In them, you can see the surname and initials of Rubicon’s commander – S.V. Budnikov. фонд-братское-сердце.рф/upload/iblock/…
1/5 One of the Geran-2/Shahed-136 drones downed in Kyiv today had a catapult mount supplied by Chinese company less than 2 months ago, on 23rd of May. 46 days earlier, on April 9-11, the company, Suzhou Ecod Precision Manufacturing, took part in the St. Petersburg Technical fair.
3/5 Suzhou Ecod Precision Manufacturing was one of only two Chinese companies that took part in the St. Petersburg fair. The other one, Suzhou Hongyishan, specializes on 'standard and non-standard industrial parts, pneumatic and hydraulic components'. Neither of the 2 sanctioned.