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Ukrainian security services intercepted a phone call between a Russian soldier and his wife.
The woman can be heard in the call granting permission to her husband to rape Ukrainian women, RFE/RL reported.
There are a growing number of allegations from Ukrainian women of rape by Russian soldiers.
Ukrainian security services intercepted a phone call between a Russian soldier and his wife in which she can be heard granting him permission to rape Ukrainian women, according to an investigation by RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (RFE/RL).
The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) said they intercepted the call between the couple in their twenties earlier this month in the Kherson region of Ukraine, RFE/RL reported.
In an excerpt of the call, released by the SSU and analyzed by RFE/RL, a woman can be heard giving her husband the go-ahead to commit a war crime.
She can be heard saying: "You go there, rape Ukrainian women, and don't tell me anything. Understood?"
Later on in the conversation, she can then be heard laughing before the man — a Russian soldier — asks her for her explicit permission to rape women.
"Yes, I allow it," the woman replies, per the audio excerpt. "Just use contraception!" says the mother of one.
RFE/RL identified the participants in the call by linking social media accounts to telephone numbers provided by the SSU. The soldier denied he was the person on the call but according to RFE/RL, both his and his wife's voices matched those heard in the audio recordings, said RFE/RL.
The soldier has not been accused of rape, and no charges have been filed against the couple, RFE/RL said.
When the wife was contacted by an RFE/RL reporter, she said her husband had been wounded and was in a hospital in the Sevastopol, Crimea, the port home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet. She would not answer any other questions, RFE/RL said.
The media outlet noted that the couple, who moved to annexed Crimea in 2018, may have been joking during the call, but it comes amid a flurry of allegations by Ukrainian women that they have been raped.
About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha, according to the Ukrainian ombudswoman for human rights, per BBC News.
A 31-year-old woman in Malaya Rohan, a village in the Kharkiv region, said she was raped at gunpoint multiple times by a soldier who entered the school where her family was sheltering, according to the international NGO Human Rights Watch.
Another woman, aged 33, told The Times that she was raped after Russian soldiers killed her husband.
Kira Rudyk, a Ukrainian MP, told CBS News that rape is "happening systematically" in areas being occupied by the Russian.
British men are reportedly offering female refugees – who have fled their homes in Ukraine – a place to stay in exchange for sex.
The UN has estimated that more then 10 million refugees have left the country following Russian invasion, with those seeking refuge in the UK being required to find a place to stay through the government's Homes for Ukraine scheme. As part of the scheme, British hosts must connect with Ukrainian refugees themselves which, according to The Times, has forced thousands of people to resort to unregulated Facebook groups to link up.
Sadly, not all of the hosts using such platforms are doing so with good intentions, with an undercover investigation carried out by The Times revealing that British men are asking female refugees to share a bed, have sex in exchange for their stay and in some cases, get married for sponsorship into the UK.
As part of their investigation, a reporter from The Times posed as 22-year-old Natalya from Kyiv who was "bombarded with inappropriate and sexually suggestive messages from men seeking relationships" within minutes of posting on the largest Facebook group for UK hosts.
"I have a large bed. We could sleep together," read one message, with someone else sending a voice note that said: "I am ready to help you and maybe you can help me also." In another message, a 47-year-old man asked Natalya if she was single, before repeatedly proposing that they marry. "I [will] marry with you," the man said, according to the report. "Don’t worry. I am not [a] sex maniac. I am not that kind of m[a]n."
Another man said that he wouldn't offer a home to anyone who wouldn't engage in a sexual relationship. "What if I never want to be physical?" Natalya asked, to which the man reportedly said he was "not offering sponsorship to a person unwilling to have sex" although he said this would be "with the consent of both." The 43-year-old man claimed to have "passed all the safe checks" to be a member of the refugee-host matching group on Facebook.
Out of the 75 private messages that the reporter posing as Natalya received across two days, 41 were from single men who lived alone.
As part of the scheme, those applying to be a sponsor have to pass a Police National Computer check, and once a refugee is matched with a host, a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check is required.
But is this really enough to ensure that those seeking refuge are kept safe? Refugee charity Refugee Action doesn't think so. "What we have is a government-run scheme that is leaving women at risk of sexual exploitation," said Louise Calvey, the head of services and safeguarding at Refugee Action, in response to The Times' investigation.
"Criminal record checks do not pick up sexual predators who have no criminal record, allowing them to register and pass checks to sponsor a refugee in their home," Calvey added. "If the scheme continues in this manner we have no doubt that some refugees may be placed into very dangerous situations by the Homes for Ukraine scheme."
Paul Street and other respectable North American leftists are fixated on the role of “fascism” in Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. Yes, Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian, right-wing, nationalist but liberal North American leaders have in fact invaded far more sovereign nations.
In 1999 one of Canada’s least fascistic prime ministers, Jean Chretien, and his uber liberal foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days. Another Liberal prime minister, Paul Martin, dispatched troops to occupy Afghanistan and overthrow Haiti’s elected government. Stephen Harper bombed Libya with unanimous support in the House of Commons (Green leader Elizabeth May dissented in a second vote). He also bombed Syria/Iraq.
Was Martin or Harper a fascist? How about the supposedly leftist NDP MPs who backed a number of these wars?
The most fascistic recent US president was comparatively restrained in his international violence. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump’s climate, nuclear, Palestine, Venezuela, China, etc. policies he didn’t start any major wars. Other fascistic leaders such as Augusto Pinochet were not particularly violent outside of their country. At the same time many liberal leaders (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, etc.) have been warmongers.
Blaming Russia’s invasion on fascism shuts down rational discussion. It’s a way of saying Vladimir Putin is pure evil. Rather than interrogate Russian fascism, a US writer would do better to look at the Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership signed September 1. As Noam Chomsky recently pointed out, “the statement was another purposeful exercise in poking the bear in the eye” and “a constructive program would be about the opposite of” it.
NATO expansion and deployments across Eastern Europe, as well as Washington ripping up arms control measures and stationing belligerent weapons systems in former Warsaw Pact nations, and the 2014 North America backed regime change that led to an eight-year war help make sense of Russia’s invasion. In response to these provocative measures, a highly militaristic country with a long imperial history, invaded its neighbour. Putin’s actions are brutal and a flagrant violation of international law but not wildly irrational.
Street is correct in criticizing a small number of left voices, who religiously treat their interpretation of Vladimir Lenin’s 1916 Imperialism — The Highest Stage of Capitalism, as a sort of word of god on the subject, and refuse to call Russia’s war imperialistic. If sending 100,000 troops to attack your neighbour, which has not sent any troops or missiles your way, is not a form of imperialism then the word has little meaning.
Still, North American activists should focus on their governments’ escalation and the world’s leading purveyor of violence. Additionally, a multi polar world is desirable. But not through wars that drive 10 million from their homes. On both moral and strategic grounds, we have to condemn policies so clearly antithetical to peace, sovereignty and international law.
There is an element of the Russia-is-not-imperialist logic that takes a highly theoretical, even semantic, form. The idea is that only leading capitalist nations can be “imperialist”. Yet with one of the lower GDP’s in the world, Rwanda has been an imperialist bully towards its neighbour for a quarter century. In 1996 Rwandan forces marched 1,500 km to topple the regime in Kinshasa and then re-invaded after the Congolese government it installed expelled Rwandan troops. This led to an eight-country war between 1998 and 2003, which left millions dead. Since then, Rwanda and its proxies have repeatedly invaded eastern Congo. Rwanda has become a major exporter of Coltan and some other minerals that are barely extracted in its territory. The US, Canada and others have, of course, assisted the Rwandan elite’s pillaging of Congolese resources but that doesn’t change the fact that large numbers of Congolese consider their neighbour an imperial bully.
As in the Congo, the views of Ukrainians matter. With the exception of the Donbas and maybe other small pockets of the country the vast majority of Ukrainians seem to oppose Russia’s invasion.
North American policy towards Russia is exceptionally belligerent, but Russian violence in Ukraine is appalling.
To be successful, leftists must exist in the real world, not in the “how many angels can fit on the tip of a needle” clerical debates of some self-described Marxist-Leninists.
UNITE THE PEOPLES AGAINST ALL THE IMPERIALISTS AND THEIR WARS!
UPHOLD THE WORLD PEOPLE’S WAR AGAINST THE IMPERIALIST WORLD WAR!
“Could there be a world war? Yes there could; the conditions for it will be there as long as we don’t sweep away its root. The superpowers prepare for the war and make great plans, this is obvious, but we think that we communists and revolutionaries, the masses, the people, the men and women who cannot consent to such inequality in the world, have to aim to focus our attention not on the war between the superpowers, because that will not bring our liberation, it will be a war of plunder for a new redivision of the world. The world war of the powers is for hegemony, nothing more.”
(Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, 1988)
"People all over the world are now discussing whether or not a third world war will break out. On this question, too, we must be mentally prepared and do some analysis. We stand firmly for peace and against war. But if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against it; second, we are not afraid of it. The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp with a combined population of 900 million. If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse."
(Chairman Mao Tse-tung - On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People)
"The foreign policy of the proletariat is alliance with the revolutionaries of the advanced countries and with all the oppressed nations against all and any imperialists."
(V.I. Lenin)
Together with the international proletariat and the communists and revolutionaries of the world, the Peru People’s Movement, generated organ of the Communist Party of Peru for the work abroad, condemns and crushes the aggression of Russian imperialism against Ukraine. We emphasize that this is an unjust war against an oppressed country, waged by the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie as part of the new redivision of the world between the Yankee, Russian and Chinese imperialist superpowers and with the complicity of the other imperialist powers, and one more step towards a new imperialist world war for world hegemony. The present situation was provoked principally by the military encirclement of Russia by Yankee imperialism, the biggest exploiter and aggressor on world level, which in its desperation to maintain itself as hegemonic superpower aims for a greater imperialist war and tries to mobilize its imperialist allies and the masses to serve this plan. We call the proletarian forces in all the countries, oppressed and imperialist, to mobilize the broad masses of the people against all the imperialists and all their wars; against the three superpowers and the other imperialist powers, that now once again want to use the masses of the people as cannon fodder and make them accomplices in their genocidal wars.
The imperialist states use their dictatorship and their mass media to provoke fear and force the masses to take sides between the superpowers, and they count on the help of all kinds of reactionaries, fascists, liberals and revisionists to do it. The Yankee and German imperialists have promoted and armed the Nazi fascists in Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe since World War II to today, first to combat socialism and then against their Russian imperialist rival, and Russian imperialism use fascist groups with the same purpose. All the imperialist also count on the support of revisionist parties, that behind false slogans of “socialism” or even “anti-imperialism” subject to one or another superpower and/or power and serve their plans. Today we see revisionists who join the Yankee imperialists and the European powers spreading the hoax of a supposed “defense of democracy” against the “authoritarians”, and others who take position for the Russian and Chinese imperialists, peddling their hoax of the “multipolar world” and trying to utilize the peoples’ justified hatred of Yankee imperialism to mobilize the masses in the imperialist redivision. It is once again confirmed how abandoning Marxism and rejecting the revolutionary road are inevitably connected to social-chauvinism: when they no longer want or believe in the masses or the proletarian revolution, the only thing left for the revisionists is to serve one or another imperialist superpower or power.
The collusion between the imperialists is expressed in how they spread the myth that the contradiction today in the world is that between “democracy and dictatorship” or “liberalism and traditionalism”, to hide the real principal contradictions: between imperialism and the oppressed peoples, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and between the imperialists for the booty and for world hegemony. In spite of their rivalry and political differences, the Yankee, Russian and Chinese imperialists and all the other powers all defend the rotten and dying imperialist order of exploitation and oppression, and in their current general and final crisis they are willing to unleash an immense slaughter of billions to serve their dark and impossible dream of rescuing their system. The reactionarization and the tendency towards fascism are general for the whole imperialist system and are being carried out by all the imperialist states in different ways.
Even now when their conflict is intensifying, they continue to collude against the proletariat and the peoples of the world, using the nuclear blackmail to frighten and pacify the masses. We reaffirm ourselves in what Chairman Gonzalo said: “We cannot accept the sinister ideas that today raise the nuclear weapons and all the sophisticated weapons they show, nor can we accept that they use them as blackmail to paralyze us. The reactionaries of the world have often talked about decisive and definitive weapons, of the disappearance of the human species, but it has always been to quiet, to contain, to maintain their old dominance.”
We reaffirm ourselves in the international proletariat’s firm support to the national liberation movement of the oppressed nations against imperialism, and in the right of all the nations to their national independence and sovereignty. Likewise, we reaffirm ourselves in what comrade Stalin said, that “this does not mean, of course, that the proletariat must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism, and not to strengthen and preserve it.” That is to say that the proletariat must not support, but unmask and combat, movements or governments in the oppressed countries that behind “nationalist” slogans serve one or another imperialist superpower or power. The present Zelensky regime in Ukraine is a puppet regime set up by the Yankee and German imperialists, a reactionary regime that has sold out the country to foreign exploiters, and that has to be crushed and swept away – along with the Russian, Yankee and German imperialists – by the people of Ukraine.
In the whole world it is confirmed more and more that the proletariat is the only class capable of consistently and decidedly leading the struggle for national liberation and against the imperialist war. Therefore, the need to constitute or reconstitute the Communist Parties in each country is even more urgent today. To be able to organize and arm the masses against the imperialist war, they have to be militarized Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties, built to prepare, initiate and develop the people’s war, uniting with the peoples of all the countries in arms to crush and sweep away imperialism from the face of the Earth with the world people’s war, which is the answer to an imperialist world war, as Chairman Gonzalo established:
“That is why we think that the issue is to focus our attention, our efforts, our passion, our will, on developing people's war, because from that will certainly come the emancipation of the people and the proletariat, the definitive and true emancipation. We think that a worldwide people's war is the answer to an imperialist world war. We think that the point is to prepare it, and we conceive of it as follows: we who are already waging people's war should develop it more; those who have not initiated it should start developing it; and in this way we will demolish imperialist domination, the domination of reaction. And we will wipe them off the face of the earth.”
RUSSIAN, YANKEE AND ALL THE OTHER IMPERIALISTS, OUT OF UKRAINE!
PEOPLE’S WAR AGAINST THE IMPERIALIST WARS!
UNITE THE PEOPLES AGAINST ALL THE IMPERIALISTS!
Peru People’s Movement
March 2022
