An excerpt:
A few days later, in government-controlled Mariupol, a colleague and I listen to another man, a small-scale trader, tell about his experience in the MGB’s basement prison in Novoazovsk, a small town in DNR-controlled territory. He spent five and half months there in late 2015 early 2016, on suspicion of collaborating with the Security Service of Ukraine.
For three of those months his captors had him cuffed to a water pipe, so he could only sit, crouch, curl up on the floor, or crawl a short distance. His interrogators beat him, hung him up in an extremely painful position, tortured him with electric shocks, and starved him. It was the indignity of being chained “like an animal, a wild beast” for months that seems to have shaken him at least as much as the extreme physical suffering. “How can they do this?” he queries, “How can they do this to their fellow human? I want these people punished.”
During the two and a half years that Ukraine has been wracked by war, Human Rights Watch interviewed scores of victims of arbitrary detentions and torture by Russia-backed separatistsand repeatedly raised these issues with DNR and LNR de-facto authorities. So far, none of these victims has seen justice.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
Kyiv Says Russia Has At Least 5,000 Troops In Eastern Ukraine
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has said Russia has between 5,000 and 7,500 regular military troops inside Ukrainian territory, not counting the annexed Ukrainian region of Crimea.
Deputy Defense Minister Ihor Dolhov told journalists in Kyiv on November 29 that Russia has 23,000 troops in Crimea, including about 9,000 along the administrative line between Crimea and mainland Ukraine.
In addition, he said, Russia has some 55,000 troops stationed very near its border with Ukraine.
Moscow has repeatedly denied having a military presence in Ukraine, other than Crimea, which Russia forcibly annexed in 2014.
Kyiv and Western governments assert that Moscow is providing military, economic, and political support to separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Earlier this month, the International Criminal Court ruled that the conflict in eastern Ukraine is an "international armed conflict" between Russia and Ukraine.
The conflict there has left some 9,600 people dead since it broke out in early 2014, according to the UN. (RIA Novosti, Interfax)
Here's a video report that will be of interest to Ukraine watchers even though it's not directly related to the current crisis in the country:
Massive Chernobyl Shield Moves Into Place
A huge structure built to confine the radiation from the exploded Chernobyl nuclear reactor has been slotted into place in Ukraine. The world's largest land-based moving building -- 275 meters wide,108 meters tall, weighing 31,000 tons -- slid into position over hydraulic tracks on November 29. (EBRD/Novaka via AP)
