On the Ground in Ukraine and Beyond

Published May 3, 2022, 4:00 AM

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine stretching into its third month, the Ukrainian people continue to valiantly fight for their right to sovereignty and democracy. Our guests today join Alec to discuss the situation on the ground in Ukraine and how they are working to ensure the stories of the Ukrainian people reach the world. Bryce Wilson is an Australian freelance photojournalist whose work has focused on the war and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine’s east since 2015. He shares his experiences embedding with the Ukrainian special forces unit and reporting from the first days of the invasion. Ida Sawyer is the director of Human Rights Watch's Crisis and Conflict division, which investigates and reports on human rights abuses happening around the world. Sawyer shares the organization’s findings of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in Ukraine.

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. On the February two thousand two, while the world watched on in horror and disbelief, Russian forces invaded the independent nation of Ukraine. While Ukrainian forces continue to fight for democracy, their right to sovereignty, and the soul of their country. My guests today are working to ensure their stories are told. Ida Sawyer is the director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch. The organization is currently on the ground documenting alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Sawyer shared with us some of their devastating findings and what the organization plans to do with these reports. But first I'm talking with Australian photojournalist Bryce Wilson. Wilson has documented the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine since two thousand fifteen. He was the first Australian journalist to embed with the Ukrainian Special Forces covering the conflict in the don Bass region. His work has been featured on ABC Australia, The Daily Mail and Sky News, and despite his resistance to social media, Wilson's Instagram and Twitter feed provided a gripping account of the front lines of the Russian invasion. That's crazy. I can't believe that Russia has declared war in Ukraine. As soon as the declaration, Oh, that's a missile. That's a missile. That's a missile. Bryce Wilson joined me at five am Australian time, after returning home for a well deserved break from reporting in Ukraine. I wanted to know how he found his way to conflict photo journalism. I found photography through a hobby, so initially I did do quite general work like that, like did some food photography, did photographs of my friends, made portraits. The war in Ukraine was in Australian television a lot because Australians were killed when Flight MH seventeen was shut down and the news coverage sort of stopped around the war. And then I realized that with the skills and the equipment that I had, I could probably do my own photojournalism. And that's when I went to Ukraine the first time. In Who Sent You There? I was freelancing, so I had just lost a job and I used my redundancy payout to fund my work in Ukraine that first time, and maybe naively. I contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and they told me that even freelance media could embed with the military so long as I leaded some forms and had body armor and everything. So yeah, in about I went to Ukraine for the first time with my gear and the cash REMI redundancy pay out and just figured out how to do journalism. And ever since then, that was kind of the catalyst for why I returned, because the relationships that I had made with people there from my first experiences in many ways stuck with me and they're still the same people. I'm still in touch with a lot of the people I met during that in bed and they've all helped me with my work as it has continued. So I'm assuming that that you had no formal training in terms of photojournalism or journalism from my radio and it is he's shaking his head no, with a sly smile in his face. So no formal training in photojournalism, the answer is no, correct. Yeah, even education wise, my background was in writing, and professionally I was working in different creative services agencies. Like I had all these fundamental little skills that were a bigger part of doing multimedia production work, but no formal training in journalism or anything related to that. So the embedded was your first real assignment of something that's would be a precursor of the work you've been doing, and you're there, what was going on in that you were chronicling. So the assignment that I had sent myself on that was my first practical experience doing journalism, and it was very much a thing of lean in the field because the place where I was sent was a small town very close to the Donetsk airport, which is just on the fringe of one of the occupied capital cities in the east, where there is now a major escalation seemingly imminent. I just say that because after the Russian military's goals Kiev region and throughout Ukraine have evolved a little bit. They're now focusing on the eastern part of Ukraine and they're talking about that being the primary objective. So it seems to me very likely that there will be a major escalation of the war in that area, specifically, not just in Kiev and western Ukraine. And so back then a war has been going on in Ukraine for eight years. The Russian military annexed Crimea and then was directly involved in in essentially fomenting a separatist uprising in some parts of the country. Small groups of people that wanted to break away from Ukraine, very small groups of people, received military support, funding as well as espionage level stuff from the Russian military and government, and they broke off two parts of eastern Ukraine called the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic. Those territories actually occupied a lot of eastern Ukraine, and then from the Ukrainian military and a lot of those were volunteers, pushed the so called People's Republic's military forces very close to the border with Russia, and then the Russian military launched an incursion, sent their military over the border from Russia into Ukraine to fight the Ukrainian military. Since then, a number of somewhat effective ceasefires have been implemented called the Mintsk Agreements, and those Minsk agreements largely froze the front line and conflict in place where it was before this current invasion started. So when I went there in for the first time, there were still significant fighting every day. So the Russia said them doing little out of town tryouts. If you would have been doing a lot of little rehearsals for this big invasion for quite a while now, correct. Yeah, it's a really great way to put it. And I think the thing that separates now versus previously the Russian military, for example, when they shot down Flight MH seventeen, there was a whole bunch of shadow play and trickery around. You know, it wasn't us, it was people that had our hardware. We're not actually in the dom bus. It's people that found our tanks. There was this joke that they were miners and they found all this equipment stored underground. There was all this proof that heavily implicated the Russian military as having been in the east of Ukraine, but they wouldn't really play into the uncertainty of it all. And it was almost a proxy war where the Russian military was directly involved in on the ground, but they hid behind the idea that it was separatists doing this, the rebels. Yes, and they blamed it on separatists and your rebels in Dulansk and Donetsk, correct, because you were there for both of those, correct incursions, and and so, but there were no direct Soviet troops on the ground, tanks and weaponry or were there there were so Russian military hardware and soldiers were present at some of the largest battles in the bus in the early days of the war, and because the Ukrainian military counter offensive to recapture the occupied territories was so effective, the so called separatist forces were pushed very close to the Russian border, and that's when the Russian military started launching artillery strikes from across the Russian border into Ukraine. They sent their military forces in to fight the Ukrainian military actively, and the battles where the Russian military participated then was some of the most bloody in the history of the war at that point. And in one battle, for example, called illa Weis, a large percentage of the Ukrainian armed forces were encircled and during a breakout humanitarian corridor which was offered by the Russian military, a large convoy of Ukrainian military personnel left and then the Russian military bombarded that convoy with artillery and indirect fire and it killed potentially up to a thousand people. During these don Bass battles that you covered in six seven years ago were atrocities playing then when you hear reports about what's going on in Ukraine now? Does it match what you saw years ago? I mean as a matter of what level, because I saw atrocious things I saw still it's very surreal to me because the scenes and events I'm seeing now did take place seven years ago. I saw destroyed neighborhoods, maimed bodies, missing legs, civilians, homes are destroyed, civilians killed by the war. I saw mass graves, not on the same scale, but graves where the local separatist forces in that area had just dumped people. Civilians from the nearby area dumped their own dead personnel when they left. A lot of the events that we're seeing now did take place then, It's just the scale now, I think, because of that same reason that the Russian forces were not their quote unquote, there was a lot more subterfuge, whereas now that it's all out in the open and not in the shadows, everything has been ramped up and scaled up significantly. So therefore, I'm assuming you you weren't surprised at all when things took the turn they took this year. It was heading in that direction, correct. I felt like in the days before the invasion was announced, I was already out in the don Bus reporting on infrastructure damage in don Bus, which had been a big focus of my word, And I was given information from contacts within the security services setting very clear dates when they expected that the invasion would take place, and I will say that they were very accurate. The dates that they provided turned out to be correct retroactively, and the invasion was actually moved by the Russian military and government, and the dates I was given are initially were spot on accurate. And then I have friends that were serving in the military and they were telling me to We're being told we can't leave the base. We're being told that we should prepare that the invasion is likely to start tomorrow. So a couple of days out I knew pretty definitively that it was happening. But weeks beforehand, I was there to report on the escalation that was already taken place, because in the days and weeks leading up to the invasion, there was fighting in the Dumbus like I'd never experienced before, the severity of artillery, the damage to homes, cease, five violations, civilians being killed, like it all objectively increased exponentially in the like two weeks before the war started. When you show up there to don Buss again a few years later, that you know the lay of the land obviously, you know the territory, you know where to go to be safe for their place, like where does Bryce Wilson sleep? Who's paying the bill? When you go on these freelance projects, you have to fund this yourself. We did somebody pay for it. I had some offers to help with funding, but I didn't align with the organization's ethically. They were sort of towing almost this pro Russian media viewpoint, which was very concerning for me. But for all intents and purposes, all of my work since I started has been funded by myself. This was the first time that I've had any moderate commercial success for my work, But making money from doing it had never been a big priority to me. Like again, maybe naively, I thought there was like a paragon sort of value in journalism and the value of it to society, and that was the main motivator for me. So if I'm doing an assignment in somewhere like don Bus, I would stay in a city or a town very close to the front line, and then each day we would drive out to the areas where we needed to go to do reporting. But even thirty or forty kilometers away from the front line, life is relatively normal. In the evenings, I would go to a bar with some of my colleagues and we would eat a pizza for dinner and maybe have a beer or something like this. Like it's very surreal because in Key of for example, before the current invasion, people would live very normally and you could almost fault them for that, like forgetting there was a war seven hundred kilometers away. But people even thirty kilometers away from the front line would forget there was a war at times, and that was very strange. Why do you think that is a sense something peculiar to them? I mean, even in the United States, someone said to me that nine eleven will eventually take its place alongside Pearl Harbor. It will become a very distant memory and Americans will forget this almost inconceivable event that happened here in New York and two one. But there's nothing peculiar to the Ukrainian nature that makes them want to carry on with life as they live it. Where is there some where is there something unique about them you've found? I mean, there are lots of things that are unique about Ukrainian people. One example I can give I was working in a village which had just been struck by artillery. A person's home was completely destroyed, their neighbors homes were destroyed. They were quite literally pulling the bodies of their neighbors out of homes around them. And I with my colleagues we hadn't eaten that day, and they just made us food in the destroyed ruins of their homes while they themselves were struggling. I've never experienced hospitality on that level before, and I don't know if anyone would help people in that instance, but we were just strange people, media personalities. There was me and two people who just came to them and they fed us out of the kindness of their own hearts. And I think that, to me was probably one of the most unique experiences I had during my assignment. I don't know how people live so close to the front line and kind of forget about the war, but I think it is because primarily the war had been going on for eight years at this point. It's part of the everyday fabric of life in some areas. Almost esthetically too, there's a whole culture around the conflict in Eastern Ukraine lives people go from checkpoints from one side of the contact line to the other every day. Like there's whole micro society and culture and experience of life solely because of the war that had been going on for eight years at that point. I also think that where you have extended conflicts like Vietnam and so forth, that people decide, this is my opinion, they make a decision to carry on with life as they know it because you know it could be over tomorrow. You know, you can live in fear, or you can try to normalize things to the best of your ability and try to you know, raise your children and grow your food or obviously I'm talking about Southeast Asia now. But one thing I'm wondering, what would you say is your understanding of what percentage what fraction is it a significant fraction of people who want to reunify with Russia. What percentage of the Ukrainian people are Russian sympathizers from your experience. In my experience, even in the East, I met very few people that truly wanted that unification. There's a lot of information around why the separatist republics exist, What are their motivators, what is the true support numbers? And to the best of my knowledge, even earlier in the war, like in the days before the separatists sort of uprisings happened, it was single percentage figures and low single percentage figures. And as time has gone on the eastern areas there's been a mass exodus of people into government controlled territories. And now I believe that a significant percentage of people that have received Russian passports and there's a whole I guess, absorption of that region into Russia effectively. But in my experience from west to east of the country, north to south, like pre and during the war, I never met anybody that truly supported this sentiment that like we in Ukraine want to be a part of Russia. It's not to say that they don't exist. I talked with people that had more pro Russian ideologies, but I never met someone our right, Is it just about tradition? What is it about Russia let alone? What is it about Putin that they want to align themselves with that government in that country? I think yes. So many people in those areas might have had memories of when the Soviet Union was a bigger part of their lives and economically, especially in the dom bast During the height of the USSR and the history of the Soviet Empire, the Dombas was a major economical center. It's where a lot of the mining infrastructure is. There was a lot of science and metallurgical studies and stuff that took place out there. People in those areas lived pretty good lives at the height of the USSR. Some people I talked to were or One of the guys was a driver that I worked with. He was a former marine in the Russian military. He deployed to Afghanistan. His memories and experiences of life are completely different than someone is living on their pench and struggling. I met another person who lived in Donetsk during sort of more economically affluent times, and they shared similar things, like all they knew was under Ukrainian control, that the area had fallen into disrepair and things like this, and they, I guess associated that their lives were better when Russia was in control of that area. When you started out and you had to teach yourself the business of photojournalism, especially an a war torn country, what was some of the most important things you had to learn upfront, And what do you wish you knew? What do you wish you do knew then that you know now? What have you learned about the job? I wish when I started I had better language skills, because for the first couple of times I went there, I didn't speak any local languages, and when I would come back home, I was taking Russian language classes and practicing through the internet and everything too. And I wish I'd have started that process sooner, because even an extra year, an extra eighteen months of practice probably would have been hugely beneficial to my work and skills. And I think to one thing I realized is doing this sort of work like it does have a toll. It takes a toll on you. And for me, it's this realization when you witness life and these events, that it changes your whole perception of even your reality back home. And that's what you can't undo. For me, at least filters or affects the filter or the lens through which you see your life. And after I went there and have worked there, changed a lot of the things that I think about life, philosophically, practically, professionally, socially like it. It made me a much different person. Now you do some of your reporting, or you post some of your stuff on social media. Correct, that's correct. I'd used Twitter primarily for my work, and then during the early days of the invasion I was live streaming updates to people on Instagram. How has that changed the way you work? I mean, having that immediacy and posting your own stuff. Do you find that beneficial? When the invasion started in the city I was in. Within seconds or minutes of putt into Claring war, they were already dropping bombs very close to my house, and I recognized that the war had started, and I put my body armor on and started live streaming. So from literally the earliest minutes of the war, I was live streaming to tens of thousands of people on Instagram, and that in and of itself is such a fundamental change to the way that people consume news and media. Like I didn't need to go on television to inform and share news with people. I was literally from the palm of my hand, from my iPhone, streaming to people all around the world. And at one moment, Russian cruise missile flew no more than fifty meters above my head and I was live streaming that and showing people that in real time, and then that clip went viral, as people say, and it was almost like a defining moment of the first day of the invasion, like the footage of that event. But I went from being someone who was very fundamentally antisocial media, like I used it as little as possible, two a large percentage of my work being attributed to social media. So it's been for me a very It's like a contradiction in terms of how I want to conduct myself. But social media and the new Internet and new media has changed my life in a big way. Photojournalist Bryce Wilson. If you'd like more insight into the history of the Russia Ukraine crisis, check out my interview with New York Times correspondent and Putin biographer Stephen Lee Meyer. His book, The News Are The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin chronicles the ascent of the Russian president. Putin only one of the vote, and you know, it wasn't a slam dunk. And since then Putin made sure that the ways the elections are managed, um, there's no uncertainty in the voting. He stripped them of the competitive uncertainty that makes them truly democratic, either in terms of who can run and then the actual voting itself, because transitions in Russia have never gone well. Even during the Empire, it was always tumultuous. Here more of my conversation with author Stephen Lee Myers that Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Bryce Wilson tells us why the Ukrainian forces are some of the best and most experienced in the world. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. Photo journalist Bryce Wilson spent the last few months in Ukraine reporting on the Russian invasion. His breath taking first person live streams show the world what it feels like to be on the front lines. I wanted to know if the balance of power is affected by the Ukrainian forces preparedness or the Russian forces lack thereof. It's definitely both. The Russian military is critically underperforming in every facet, logistically, war fighting, the equipment itself, maintenance. There are so many facets as to why the Russian military performance has been what it is. But the Ukrainian armed forces too in the dumbas tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian military personnel have done deployment in the active war zone. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, in my opinion, are probably the most contemporarily experienced military in the world. They are trained extensively over the last eight years. They're motivated to defend their homes. They're equipped like there are so many variables that go into why they've been so effective. But I do believe that people overestimated the Russian military capabilities and underestimated the Ukrainian military's capabilities. Did the citizens of Ukraine. Were they surprised that the Russians invader They weren't surprised. I think people were absolutely surprised that people I speak to from the east to the west. Even leading up to the invasion, people were still convinced it's not going to happen. It's you know, this is just fear mongering. And I think in many ways people were conditioned because of the eight years of war. They didn't understand how to view the threat objectively or in context. Even when the invasion came on the morning there were bombs falling in the city and Chromatosk, where I was, and I was talking to people who were casually going to work. Still they were saying, like, well, I've got to go to my job, like I have a duty. I won't stop working until like I'm told to. Essentially, So, I think up until the very the last moment, people were convinced that wasn't going to happen. And even when the war did happen, people were still leaving evacuation essentially until there were bombs landing at the end of their street. Like, I don't think anybody took the threat or the risks seriously, and I don't know why. As I described the war and dumbus, it was a shadow play that was subterfusion trickery. The Russian military is there, but they're not saying they're there. There's a huge difference between a proxy war like that and an active, full scale, multifront invasion of an independent nation. But even myself, professionally and personally, I couldn't imagine that it was going to happen. Just the scale of something like that is so history changing. To send tens of thousands of guys rolling across the border with tanks and planes and fighter jets, bombers, naval support, just the whole thing that just the scale I think boggles the mind. But what do you think the Russians want? Do they want to just destroy things? Is putting someone who just wants to have a military conquest and then leave and there's no political aftermath. What's his goal? What does he want? Well, me, personally, I just see this as a continuation of Russian hostilities towards Ukraine and the concept of Ukrainian independence. This has been perpetuated for centuries historically the occupying power in the area of Russia. They have forcefully starved millions of people. During the whole Lotimore, there were political persecutions against people in Ukraine. The Ukrainian language was essentially forbidden. This to me, one element of it is just a continuation of this anti Ukrainian sentiment in the context of them existing as an independent state, because even in recent days there have been comments from Russian political leaders where they have essentially said, we think it's even offensive that the idea of Ukraine even exists, like it's just another part of Russia. So I think the military goal in the early days really was to capture Kiev, and I think that the Russian military and their analysts expected that the Ukrainian military and government would just capitulate very quickly and turnover. That hasn't happened now and now I think the goal is to show through capturing the east and the south of the country that it wasn't in vain. Essentially, the Russian military could level the whole country, and in some places I went to whole villages and cities are just destroyed by bombing and people volunteers. I would go there and help reconstruct this place. It's a country I love, My friends are there. I would be involved. I'm sure tens of thousands of people from around the world will go and help. Yes, yes they will. Ultimately, this is just an attempt to intimidate the concept of Ukraine being an independent nation. And whatever their objectives were, if it was to force the capitulation of the country, I don't think it will happen. Based on the current trend. How do you think this is going to end? I'm not sure. My my gut feeling around how the conflict would continue or end was always that there would be a major escalation of fighting in the East because it's territory that Russia had previously attempted to take, whether directly or indirectly. I believe that the war fighting there could potentially continue for years, as it already has. I don't expect that Kiev will be occupied. I don't expect that the majority of Ukraine will be occupied, but I think areas where the Russian border in Ukrainian border exists, there will be ongoing fighting for months potentially, And I think really it's a matter of time before the sanctions and also economic situation in Russia begins to become a bit of a problem. But I don't expect that the Ukrainian military or its people will lose their will to continue fighting. And when stuff like the mosque for being sunk happens, it's a huge morale boost for people. So I think it's just a matter of time before there are concessions and maybe the peace talks continue. But I do suspect that fighting in the East will continue for months or years. Do you think that having any effect on the Russians. I'm not really sure the machinations of it all. I just know on the ground, because I have people in my close personal life who have relationships with people in Russia, that it's making a difference. This is affecting the way people live their lives, and I would assume, maybe naively, that when the average persons lie starts being affected, that's when they actually get involved with sort of pushing for change. Now, of course, one of the quickest ways you can engender supporting the American people. They talk about war crimes and talk about you know, gases and so forth. Either you under are you under the impression that the Russians are actually committing war crimes over there? Yes, it's my opinion based on things that I saw, witnessed read, have had reported to me that the Russian military is conducting war crimes in those areas. I saw people who were executed while they were bound. I've had reports independently verified to me by multiple organizations of just agrees your sexual assault, often on some children. I've also heard reports that people are being forcibly taken and sexually assaulted. And I did read a report that someone had been taken from one of the previously occupied parts of Kiev and then dumped at the border after they've basically been raped by the military. Looting has been taken place, and there was a story of a Russian soldier stealing a MacBook and he took the armor plate out of his vest and put the MacBook in there to hide it, and he ended up being shot, and the MacBook is actually why he was killed. If he was wearing his armor, he probably would have survived the bullet. So there's like mass war crimes going on in the previously occupied areas, and I hate to think what's happening in places where there's not so much media coverage, because the mass influx of journalists into those previously occupied areas is why they discovered so many atrocities. What's your evaluation of Zelenski and what do you see in country? What do people there? Does he enjoy the reputation that he has here in the United States, and how do people feel about him over there. I was at Zelenski's inauguration many years ago, and it's very surreal for me to have seen this huge narrative of his director quite literally a character, because he has an acting background and he's a very interesting person. But he, in my opinion, will be remembered in the same vein as famous Ukrainian poets, people who were invested in the idea of Ukraine's independence, like Zelensky, in my opinion, is a hero through his leadership, and if Ukraine falls, it means his family are affected to it means he's at risk. He was at risk of being assassinated many times. He's not running away, he's not leaving. He's doing what I think many Ukrainian people identify with, and that's sticking up for his country. And I think that's why many Ukrainians are very proud of him, and it shows that the people stand with him and they identify with what he is doing. Are you going to go back, Yes, I'm sure that my work in Ukraine will continue indefinitely. Like my goal, I don't want to be a war journalists specific clear, my work and interest is Ukraine. The experiences I've had there and the things I've learned have changed me a lot, and I really appreciate even when I have opportunities like this to share with people, because I think, as you said, this war brought a lot of attention to Ukraine, but things have been going on there for eight years and twenty years before that and thirty years before that, and I think it's such a diverse and rich part of the world and rich region, and I'm still discovering things and I hope I'll be able to continue sharing that with people. Well, listen, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I'm really grateful for the opportunity. Thank you photo journalist Bryce Wilson. If you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep it to yourself, Tell a friend and follow here's the thing on the I Heart radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, i'd A Sawyer of Human Rights Watch discusses the documentation of Russia's human rights abuses in Ukraine. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. When the recent atrocities in Bucha were reported, it became clear that these events were violations of the international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. Ida Sawyer is the director of the Crisis and Conflict Division for Human Rights Watch. Sawyer spent eight years on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo covering human rights abuses and supervised teams in Syria and Yemen. Ida Sawyer told me about the primary objective of her organization. Human Rights Watch where an international non governmental human rights organization. So we work in over ninety countries around the world, and we document human rights abuses, so that's attacks on civilians, laws of war violations during armed conflicts, women's rights violations, children's rights, refugees rights issues, and we go out we collect the facts. We have over five hundred staff working around the world. We speak to victims and witnesses and others, try to figure out what happened, and then we publish our findings in reports and other documents, videos, and then we push for for justice, so we push for those most responsible for the abuses to be held to account, and then we also push for policy changes to to end the abuses that we've documented. What do areas of the world that have chronic human rights issues? What do those areas of the world. Is there something that they have in common? Is it a lockdown on the media and dictatorial control of the country. Do you find human rights abuses flourish in places like that more readily? Yes, definitely. I mean there are they're different kinds of chronic human rights abuses in different regions, but I think in in countries where you have more authoritarian governments, where you don't have freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and there's crackdowns on political opposition, leaders, journalist activists. That's where we see some of the worst abuses, and that can sometimes be related to abuses linked to access to healthcare, education, and those sorts of human rights as well. For most people, when the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, when Putin and Zelinski look like they're going to go to another level. You know, many Americans, and this is very common in America, they sit there like, yeah, what's Russia's beef with the Ukraine? You know, I mean, like, what's there? It's all new information for them, and so for you, did you know this was coming? Yeah, I mean we were definitely watching it closely. In our Ukraine team we have we have a researcher working full time on Ukraine and our broader Europe and Central Asia team have been working on on the conflict in Ukraine since two thousand fourteen. And since I've started being focusing so closely on this, every Ukrainian you talked to reminds, you know, the war didn't start in February. This has been going on, So it's definitely something that we were aware of. And then by late last year earlier this year, it seemed more and more likely that it would really escalate. You're hearing some pretty ugly horrible stories about abuses there and that Putin and the Russians are war criminals and they're doing all kinds of horrible things. Your organization, you have people on the ground there in Ukrainei ass m. Yes, we don't, and the report to you that they see this themselves, they have first hand knowledge of these things themselves. Correct. Yes, yes, So that's what our teams are doing, and that's really trying to understand the context for the violations that are reported. So, for example, there's been so much attention on Bucha. So that's the area just north of Kiev that the Russian forces retreated from and that's allowed Ukrainian authorities to retake control. Journalists and others now have access, and we're seeing just horrific images of the trail of violence that the Russian forces left behind, Bodies strewn along the streets, reports of mass graves and and just all of this violence and destruction. But what our team there is doing is trying to understand Okay, yes many people died, but how did they die and what were the circumstances and does this amount to war crimes? How did they die? And what were the circumstances. So our team is they're documenting now and it's it's clear that the Russian forces occupied this area from around March fourth until March thirty one, and there wasn't one single massacre, but there were a series of many different incidents, lots of summary executions as well as other cases of targeted killings and indiscriminate attacks on civilians. So what we've seen is Russian forces going door to door, interrogating the men and then sometimes dragging them out and either shooting them on their yard in front of their house, or in some cases taking them to a detention center that they had set up, and then later their families would find that they've been killed, sometimes with a bullet to the head, and their bodies lying on the street or behind different buildings. We've also seen just indiscriminate attacks, sometimes if people who were sheltering in their basements came out to look for food, or in one case a man went out on his balcony to smoke a cigarette and he was shot in the neck. So that's sort of just violence at indiscriminate violence against civilians. And then when when you say indiscriminate I mean, I appreciate that much of it is indiscriminate or also in addition, are there some instances where the Russians have sympathizers there or they have people who out of fear, are providing them with information and saying ten seventeen Main Street, down the block there, ten seventeen leon Ede bregion of boulevard, head down there, and that guy is part of a cell, and that guy is part of the troublemakers. Are a lot of people getting ratted out there, So there are a lot of people capitulating and helping the Russians to identify these people to send shock ways of terror throughout the communities that they're in. So what we've seen in Buscha, it's not clear that they're targeting any members of particular selves. What they say is that they're quote hunting Nazis and they're definitely looking for weapons in people's houses and anyone with potential connections to the territorial defense forces. But many of the cases that we've documented it doesn't appear that the individuals who were who were targeted had any links to military groups or or otherwise. But we have heard cases in other areas that the Russian forces have occupied of specific targeted attacks against, for example, journalists and activists and others who they might deem to be a particular threat to them. So when you go there, what possible hope do you have of changing the situation in a place with someone who is as unilateral as Putin is? I mean Putin is rolling those I mean the Russian army is a kick ass army. They got it all. They got all the bombs and planes, that's whether that's what they spend their money on. They don't feed their people, they don't take care of their people. What hope do you have of possibly negotiating with Putin? How do you feel about that? Do you think there's any hope that this is going to end? I think there is hope, And I think that what we've seen in other in other cases is that it can often take time, but that if there is enough pressure and if the documentation is there, you can see people being brought to justice. And I think something that's really surprised me, and I've never experienced this and other conflicts that I've worked on, is just how quickly the international community mobilized and the International Criminal Board launched an investigation right away. The United Nations Human Rights Council launched a commission of inquiry. There's been all of this pressure and and Prudent hasn't felt to this pressure before, so it might take time, but I think that there is a possibility that we could see see justice, but we have to keep pushing forward. And I think it's important also to remember that the types of crimes that we're seeing and we're documenting in Ukraine now, they're very similar to crimes that our team documented in Syria several years ago committed by Russian forces. Some of these same commanders were involved, and they got away with it, and they were never held to account, and that impunity has helped facilitate has allowed to continue with these same sorts of abuses that we're seeing now in Ukraine. So I really hope, you know, with all of this mobilization, that we're seeing, this pressure, these investigations that have started, that will actually finally see some justice this time. Do you have any hope that the Russians will get kicked out of the Security Council. I think we're a long way from that, but they were just voted out of the Human Rights Council so I think that sends an initial important signal that they really have no place They're given this the horrific crimes that are being committed now, at the very least in terms of appearances. I have a lot of faith in the United Nations and I hope that they do kick them out of the Security Council. As you said, it's a it's a long shot, but I think that we need to We need to have people come to the table who recognize that war itself is obsolete. That precisely what the Russians are doing now is obsolete. You can't go in there and completely level a whole country, rely on Western count used to come in and clean up the mess. And I feel like someone's got to be able to negotiate with them and start a global introduction of an idea that war itself as a war crime. Forget about there's things you can't do during war. You can't do war, you know. I mean, how do we make war itself obsolete? Now? Um, do you think that sanctions work? I think they can work here. I think it's also a question of are they being implemented? So are you are we actually looking for all of the resources that these individuals have and making sure they're being seized. There's a question of network sanctions, so not just the individuals, but those in the companies that are connected to them but hidden a bit, making sure they're targeted as well. There's this muscle you developed very keenly to look at what people do to abuse political power. Has it effective when you come home as Human Rights Watch ever brought a case against an American government, Yes, definitely. So we have our US program is actually our biggest country program. So we do a lot of work here in the US. And so I was in New York before moving back to d C and worked in on a lot of the police violence and abuse during the George Floyd protests, and we did we did a big project on the crackdown in mod Haven and the South Bronx and just documented how the police, the NYPD kettled protesters there and then just used complete unprovoked violence, beating up, cracking down on these protesters um and really worked with other groups to push for push for some accountability. We also did work around voting rights during the last elections, and then we also look at the conduct of US forces internationally and strikes on civilian target for example, and pushing for for accountability, reparations and that type of thing. So we we definitely do work on the US And yes, definitely big focus. You've dedicated your life to this incredibly difficult work. You know, it's it's ugly. You learn the realities of a lot of horrible things that have been happening to people. What keeps you wanting to do this work? Yeah, I mean I think it is we do hear a lot of just really horrible stories about the worst of humanity, but we also I feel like people want their story to be told. They want people to know what they what they experienced, what they suffered. So we do play an important role in giving giving their stories a voice. And then it's also when we do have successes, so when we finally see justice, um and and like it's it's seeing that that we can make make a difference. What is victory for Human Rights Watch? What is justice? Yeah? So I think one of one of the big victories we had was with Bosco and Tegonda. So he was a warlord from an armed group backed by neighboring Rwanda, and we had documented his crimes for over a decade. Mass large scale massacres, mass rapes, sexual violence, he himself had raped women who were held under under their control, recruitment of children, just a lidany of abuses that we documented, and eventually the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him and he was transferred to the Hague and put on trial and later convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. So I think he is in prison, Yeah, in the Hague. He's in prison in the Netherlands, yes, But what sentence was he given? So thirty years? He was sentenced to thirty years for war crimes or human rights abuses in the Hague. This guy, Wow, that's that's that's amazing. To get a guy like that, who's real, who a real kingpin, a guy who was a lot of murder and death and blood on his hands and has destroyed the lives of countless people. To see that guy get locked up in prisoner must have been very, very satisfying. Well, as you're another spot in the world, is Ida Sawyer headed somewhere? You don't have to say, But do you have another location you want to go to next? Well? I am probably heading to Ukraine next week. So keeping the focus there for yeah, well listen. Thank you so much for joining us, and if you do head over there, please be careful. Thank you so much. My thanks to Ida Sawyer and Bryce Wilson. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you buy iHeart Radio

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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