The Chinese Communist Party says more military officers and members of the defense industry are under investigation for corruption.
The post China Launches Another High-Ranking Military Purge appeared first on Breitbart.
Fighters of the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Azov" struck more than 100 Russian trains carrying fuel and other supplies for occupying forces, the corps reported on social media on 28 October. The strikes disabled locomotives, fuel tank cars, and other equipment, the statement said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on 16 October that seizing all of Donetsk Oblast remains one of Russia's main tasks. Azov notes that these strikes help "destroy" Russia's offensive capabilities.
Azov emphasizes that neither mobile fire groups nor electronic warfare systems can protect Russian logistics routes.
"The enemy is doing its utmost to create an image of successfully capturing settlements, but is unable to protect key railway stations through which the fuel supply chain runs toward the front," Azov said.
The rail hubs hit had carried Russian military trains to the fighting in Donbas and southern Ukraine, Defense Express reported on 29 October. The count of more than 100 trains covers Azov's operations over the past four months, the outlet said.
The mass of any diesel locomotive exceeds 100 tons, yet the Ukrainian military struck these large Russian targets using small UAVs, the outlet also notes.
Donations and the work of the Come Back Alive foundation contributed to the operation's results, Azov said. In particular, the foundation provided the military with 440 Starlink Mini terminals, the corps added.
War on Credit: Over 100 Trains Hit
— First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) October 28, 2026
The enemy is doing all it can to create the image of successfully capturing settlements, yet it cannot protect the key railway stations through which its fuel supply chain toward the front runs. Neither mobile fire groups nor electronic warfare… pic.twitter.com/QpqEQHyxvp
On 2 July, the Azov Corps announced Operation Hell and released the first footage of strikes on Russian railway equipment. The video shows a strike on a diesel locomotive that was likely used by Russian forces for military logistics.
Operation "Inferno." Coming soon.
— First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) July 2, 2026
This wasn't just about our distaste for old Soviet cartoons. Demilitarization is the priority. Decommunization's just a bonus.
So what's happening in the video? This isn't a random hit — it's part of a carefully planned operation by First Corps… pic.twitter.com/feNc72isUk
The corps said the strike was part of a carefully planned operation and promised details soon.
A year ago, Ukraine’s 125th heavy mechanized brigade was written off as beyond saving, manned at 17% with not a single tank, gun, or drone crew to its name. A year on, the brigade says it now ranks first among the army’s heavy brigades and that 1,500 soldiers who had gone absent without leave have returned to serve.
The 125th, part of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, drew the comparison as it summed up its first year under new command. It comes as Ukraine struggles with a force-wide shortage of soldiers and leans on the Third Army Corps, the formation the 125th now fights under, for its counterattacks around Lyman.
In the unit’s telling, the collapse was never the whole story.
“We were told the brigade couldn’t be saved. But they didn’t account for the main thing, people,” the brigade recalls.
By its own count, manning has risen 430% over the year, and its main units now stand at 95-100%. The crews that grew fastest were the ones flying drones: the number of aerial-reconnaissance teams is up 1200%, FPV crews 950%, heavy-bomber crews 1400%, and fixed-wing drone crews 600%.
The brigade also built units of uncrewed ground vehicles from scratch and stood up its own training, air defense, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and medical structures.
Now, it is among the most effective brigades for destroying Russians, mining, artillery, air defense, ground robots, and reconnaissance, and for three months running it has placed first among the army’s heavy mechanized brigades on those combined measures.
The starting point was close to empty. At the beginning of the reform, the brigade had almost no combat equipment, its commander, Volodymyr Fokin, told ArmyInform in June.
“For the whole brigade we had two pickups and one minibus,” he said.
In the first six months, he added, the brigade replaced about 90% of its commanders in key posts and stood up a tank battalion, a drone battalion and a ground-robotics company.
Today it fields American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, German Leopard tanks and artillery of various calibers.
A captain with the callsign “Skamer” told ArmyFM in July that the new equipment came with new ways of running the brigade, with more authority given to commanders who had real combat experience.
Peter Rhee is a Navy trauma surgeon who served 24 years in the US military. He operated in several active war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
Peter Rhee speaks to Business Insider about treating bullet wounds, battlefield trauma surgery conditions, AI-powered medical technology, and military medical training
He also discusses his role treating Rep. Gabby Giffords after she was shot in an attempted assassination in 2011 in Arizona.
He is the author of "Trauma Red: The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America's Cities."
Os fãs que vão acompanhar as próximas apresentações do BTS em São Paulo precisam ficar atentos às mudanças no entorno do Estádio do Morumbis. Depois de reunir aproximadamente 85 mil pessoas na primeira noite da turnê “BTS World Tour: Arirang”, na quarta-feira (28), o grupo retorna ao palco nesta sexta-feira (30) e no sábado (31).
A estreia brasileira foi marcada por grande movimentação nos arredores do estádio e filas extensas. O impacto também foi sentido no transporte público: a Linha 4-Amarela, administrada pela Motiva, transportou 816.815 passageiros na quarta-feira. Foi o maior volume diário registrado pela linha desde o início da pandemia, superando o recorde anterior, de 788.616 usuários, contabilizado em 4 de março de 2026. O aumento foi de 3,6%.
Diante da movimentação, a principal orientação para quem vai aos próximos espetáculos é utilizar o metrô e chegar ao estádio com algumas horas de antecedência. Na primeira apresentação, espectadores relataram dificuldades para encontrar lugar nas arquibancadas e nas cadeiras.
O que esperar das próximas apresentações
O repertório da estreia trouxe algumas surpresas. Os sete integrantes apresentaram músicas especiais escolhidas para o público brasileiro: “Black Swan”, que soma 617 milhões de visualizações no YouTube, e “Silver Spoon”, cujo vídeo de ensaio de coreografia, o chamado Dance Practice, ultrapassa 262 milhões de visualizações.
A expectativa é que as duas próximas noites tenham outras faixas nesse bloco especial, embora o grupo já tenha repetido músicas extras em apresentações anteriores da turnê.
Uma mudança também chamou a atenção dos fãs durante a execução de “Idol”. Em outros shows, os integrantes costumavam descer do palco e circular pela parte inferior do estádio para ficar mais perto do público. Na apresentação brasileira, a música foi cantada inteiramente no palco. A tendência é que esse formato seja mantido nas próximas datas.
Horários e informações dos shows
Ruas terão bloqueios no entorno do estádio
A Live Nation, responsável pela organização dos três shows, realizará uma operação para impedir a circulação de pessoas sem ingresso nas áreas próximas ao Morumbis. A medida será executada em conjunto com a Polícia Militar e outros órgãos de segurança e trânsito da capital paulista.
Também participam da ação a Prefeitura de São Paulo, a Companhia de Engenharia de Tráfego (CET) e a Associação de Moradores Local (AME Morumbi).
As interdições estão previstas para os seguintes cruzamentos:
A passagem pelos pontos de bloqueio será permitida apenas a moradores previamente cadastrados e pessoas que apresentarem ingresso para o espetáculo. A conferência será realizada nos acessos 1, 2, 6, 7 e 9, a partir das 8h da manhã em cada dia de apresentação.
Metrô é a principal recomendação
Com as restrições de circulação e as mudanças no trânsito, a orientação é priorizar o transporte público, especialmente a Linha 4-Amarela. A Estação São Paulo-Morumbi será o principal ponto de chegada para quem vai ao estádio.
O deslocamento de carro particular ou por aplicativos pode ser prejudicado pelas interdições nas vias próximas ao local. Por isso, planejar o trajeto com antecedência pode ajudar a evitar atrasos.
Os fãs também podem consultar a provável lista de músicas dos shows e as orientações sobre objetos permitidos e proibidos dentro do estádio antes de sair de casa.
The post BTS em São Paulo: veja horários, bloqueios e dicas para os próximos shows no Morumbis appeared first on Diário da Manhã - O Jornal do leitor Inteligente.
The Pentagon is treating a string of freezer malfunctions at U.S. military base commissaries in late August as a suspected cyberattack, according to four officials familiar with the matter. Investigators are working with officials in France where a widespread cyberattack on supermarket freezers caused millions of dollars worth of damage.
The post Pentagon Investigates Military Base Freezer Failures as Cyberattack appeared first on Breitbart.
Federal Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who was presiding over the trial of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in the United States, died Wednesday at the age of 92, according to The New York Times. It is not immediately clear who will replace Hellerstein in the high-profile case, which is scheduled to begin on June 14.
© Jane Rosenberg (AP)
Sgt. Collin Mackall/US Army
The US Army wants to streamline how it trains new soldiers and places them into roles, part of a larger push to cut bureaucratic delays that can leave recruits waiting months for training and create logjams down the line.
Service leaders want to cut the time soldiers spend waiting between recruitment, training, and assignments, while also ensuring specialties are consistently filled by personnel who are prepared for and interested in the jobs.
At the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, DC, earlier this month, leaders from Army Human Resources Command discussed how they're modernizing personnel management to get soldiers trained into the jobs where they're needed faster.
The data-driven approaches are aimed at connecting what have long been separate processes to better match soldiers to specific locations and jobs based on the Army's needs and scheduling.
Part of the challenge for the service is getting "hundreds of disparate systems" to talk to each other, said Lt. Gen. Charles Lombardo, who's overseeing the effort.
The Army is tackling that problem through a broader technology overhaul touching systems spanning from personnel management to battlefield operations. The Army has described its wider human-resources overhaul as an effort to replace fragmented, paper-based processes with a unified data environment. It says that the effort is intended to improve forecasting, resource management, and real-time personnel services.
For training, Army leaders want better scheduling with an approach they're calling People Supply Chain Management.
Rather than handling enlistment, basic training, and advanced training as separate events, the service is examining how to better coordinate these processes to reduce downtime and fill empty training seats.
The Army announced the initiative last year, saying it recruits, trains, and assigns tens of thousands of people annually across more than 200 specialties. Some of the Army's most in-demand technical specialties, such as military intelligence and air defense, are top of mind because they have more specialized recruiting and training requirements. Without synchronization, bottlenecks can leave recruits waiting months for training or leave too many soldiers in particular job fields.
With this approach, if two dates are available for advanced training, the system would route soldiers graduating from basic training to the class that best fits their schedule or redirect soldiers to fill seats that open up if someone can no longer attend.
It's still early days for the program, and it remains to be seen whether the new approach can meaningfully reduce wait times, fill more training seats, and get qualified soldiers into units faster.
The service also hopes overhauls will improve assignments for families with members requiring special medical care or specific childcare by matching them with bases that have the necessary services and providers.The aim is to account for those needs before assigning soldiers to duty stations, rather than after a job match has been made.
An Indonesian taxi driver who went looking for work abroad ended up in Russia's army and died in his first battle in Ukraine, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) said. Russian recruiters found him through a job application, and he reached the front in Donetsk Oblast within weeks of signing. HUR calls him one more foreigner drawn into Russia's war through deception.
Russia's war against Ukraine consumes men faster than the Kremlin is ready to replace them through another mobilization at home, so it keeps hiring abroad. Ukraine has identified nearly 46,000 foreigners who signed with Russia's army since 2022. On 26 October, a UN commission found “compelling evidence” that Russia trafficked men from 29 countries into its forces.
Taufiq Muhammad, born in 1978 in Sorong, Indonesia, drove a taxi in Jakarta and had once worked in the US. Russian recruiters found him through a résumé he had sent out while looking for work, the agency said. He probably believed promises of “easy money” and traveled to Moscow. HUR sees his case as part of a pattern.
“In fact, he became yet another victim of Russia's scheme of recruiting foreigners for the criminal war through deception,” HUR said.
Muhammad signed a one-year contract with Russia's army in Korolyov, near Moscow, on 19 April 2026. HUR called that term typical for foreigners Russia uses as “disposable” infantry. Russia made him a machine gunner and gave him only a week and a half at a training center near Voronezh, Army Inform reported, citing HUR.
Russia moved him to occupied Ukraine in early May. He died almost at once, in his first battle. Russian troops were trying to advance from the village of Zelena Dolyna toward Novoselivka and Drobysheve in Donetsk Oblast, Militarnyi reported.
Russia's recruiters have been working in Indonesia for months. In August, Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service said it held documents on at least eight Indonesians recruited into Russia's army.
Another Indonesian, Rendi Apriyanto, 30, was reportedly killed in September, his family learned from an Indonesian fighting for Russia. Rendi had told his family he was recruited for logistics work, The Jakarta Post reported.
HUR has traced the same fast track before. In January, it identified a Filipino recruit killed in a Donetsk Oblast assault after one week of training. A Nigerian, 34, died in Kharkiv Oblast after a similar week of training, HUR said in May.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has counted at least 2,982 Africans recruited into Russia's army, and 486 of them have died. Ahead of a Russia–Africa summit on 28–29 October, Moscow plans military and port-access deals with a string of African states, HUR said. The deals would help expand the campaign of Russia's Africa Corps, the Defense Ministry-controlled force on the continent, Army Inform reported, citing HUR.
Each recruit Ukraine identifies gives his home government a documented case to act on. Jakarta has said citizens shown to have been deceived will get its protection, while those who enlisted by choice could lose their citizenship.
Russian authorities committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said in a report to the UN General Assembly on 26 October.
International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, issued in June 2024, already covered alleged crimes linked to Russia’s 2022–2023 strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The UN commission’s new report reaches into last winter, 2025–2026, and the cumulative toll since 2022, documenting what the attacks did to civilians living through outages in freezing temperatures.
“As the cold season approaches, the attacks have intensified once again, raising serious concerns about the threats to civilians’ lives and health,” commission chair Erik Møse said.
The commission said Russian commanders knew that heating facilities in large cities were indispensable to civilians, particularly during winter. Russian authorities also made official declarations about further attacks and referred to a plan to carry them out, it said. It found that Russian authorities intentionally directed attacks against civilian objects, constituting war crimes.
The commission also concluded that the attacks were carried out under a state policy aimed at depriving civilians of electricity and other essential energy-dependent services and causing suffering. It classified these acts as crimes against humanity in the form of “other inhumane acts.”
Last winter, temperatures fell to minus 21°C as millions of Ukrainians endured prolonged disruptions to heating, electricity, water, and gas, the commission said.
The commission relied on the accounts of 255 people from Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, and Zhytomyr Oblasts, alongside officials, doctors, and nongovernmental organizations.
Older people and those with limited mobility were particularly affected. Fear of becoming trapped in elevators during blackouts prevented some residents from reaching shelters during air raid alerts. They remained in unheated homes, sometimes without access to life-support equipment.
A 53-year-old Kyiv resident told investigators he tried to stay awake at night because he feared he might not wake up if he fell asleep in the cold.
Meanwhile, school closures disrupted children’s education, and children fell ill in unheated homes, the report said.
Russia’s UN mission said Moscow did not recognize the commission’s mandate and dismissed its findings as “falsified data,” the Associated Press reported.
The commission also examined Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine. It said it could not investigate their impact fully because Russia denied access and did not respond to its requests.
The same report found “compelling evidence” that Russian authorities trafficked men from 29 countries into the Russian armed forces through deception and coercion.
Recruitment agents arranged visas and travel, presenting themselves as legitimate businesses. After arriving in Russia, the men were forced to sign military contracts in Russian and were sent to the front, where many were killed or went missing, the commission said.
Alain Nogues/Corbis via Getty Images
The US military may lead the world in budget size and in the ambitions of its warfare technology, but there is one measure by which it is outsized by other nations.
Using data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies' 2026 Military Balance report, Business Insider ranked the top 25 countries by the size of their active armed forces during 2025 and listed their defense budgets that same year.
Active-duty force size is a tally of a country's uniformed troops: airmen, soldiers, sailors, special operators, and Marines.
Armies, in particular, depend on size to gain and occupy ground during armed conflicts.
Militaries can also be a tool of domestic repression. North Korea, for example, is one of the world's most repressive states, led by a dictator who has repeatedly threatened neighboring South Korea — and it also has one of the world's largest militaries.
The number of active-duty military personnel is far from the only factor that matters when comparing military power between countries, but it reflects latent power.
"Numbers have value, but there's a lot more to military capability," Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC-based foreign policy and national security think tank, told Business Insider.
IISS, a London-headquartered think tank, counts active armed forces, reservists, and paramilitaries as separate categories in its analysis, showing a fuller picture of each nation's manpower.
Some countries have significantly more reservists than others — Vietnam has the largest number in the world, estimated at 5 million — but the quality and longevity of their expertise can vary between systems.
"When you look at some countries' reserve numbers, you're often looking at people who haven't trained in 10 or 20 years," Cancian said. "It gives you a big number, but their military value is questionable."
Even when accounting for all of a military's manpower, personnel is only one of the factors that can qualify a nation's military strength, which also includes equipment and readiness.
There's also the role of technologies in global warfare, the size and sophistication of air forces and naval fleets, amphibious capabilities for landing assault forces, command-and-control systems, and nuclear forces, all of which shape military power.
Still, comparing global manpower offers insight into how countries prioritize military power.
See how the world's largest militaries stack up in terms of active troop numbers.
Khalil Dawood/Xinhua via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 193,000
Defense budget: $12.7 billion
ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 196,000
Defense budget: $7.5 billion
Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 204,000
Defense budget: $70 billion
STR/JIJI Press/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 247,000
Defense budget: $58.9 billion
YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 257,000
Defense budget: $72.5 billion
Pushpa Kumara/Anadolu via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 260,000
Defense budget: $1.4 billion
RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 285,000
Defense budget: $8.3 billion
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 301,000
Defense budget: $11.4 billion
credit should read STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 302,000
Defense budget: Not reported
Samir Jordamovic/Anadolu via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 355,000
Defense budget: $21.5 billion
MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 361,000
Defense budget: $5.8 billion
Fabio Teixeira/Anadolu via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 375,000
Defense budget: $24.2 billion
Claudio Pramana/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 434,000
Defense budget: $15 billion
KEROLOS SALAH/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 439,000
Defense budget: $2.3 billion
NHAC NGUYEN/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 450,000
Defense budget: $8.4 billion
Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 450,000
Defense budget: $43.8 billion
AMANUEL SILESHI/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 503,000
Defense budget: $484 million
ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 610,000
Defense budget: $6.1 billion
Rizwan TABASSUM / AFP
Active armed forces: 660,000
Defense budget: $10 billion
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Active armed forces: 677,000
Defense budget: $44.4 billion
NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 1,264,000
Defense budget: $161.2 billion
Alain Nogues/Corbis via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 1,280,000
Defense budget: Not reported
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Active armed forces: 1,340,000
Defense budget: $921 billion
Vishal Bhatnagar/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 1,501,000
Defense budget: $78.3 billion
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Active armed forces: 2,035,000
Defense budget: $251.3 billion
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kenya are seeking the return of citizens drawn into Russia’s war, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU) said on 25 October. According to relatives and officials the agency cites, many of the men had gone to Russia for work, only to be tricked or forced into its army.
Russia fills its ranks partly with foreigners. In April, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) said the Russian Defense Ministry plans to enlist at least 18,500 of them in 2026. Foreign recruits let the Kremlin put off hard choices about another mobilization at home, the Atlantic Council argued in May. Home governments have pushed back before, among them Ghana in August. The new statements show the limit of that pushback. Once a man is serving in Russia’s army, his government has to ask Russia to let him go.
Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev addressed the problem at a parliamentary committee on 13 October, answering lawmakers’ questions. He said Kyrgyz citizens in Russia are forced to sign contracts at military enlistment offices or in pretrial detention centers. If warned in time, diplomats try to stop the men from reaching the front.
Kazakhstan is negotiating with Russia over citizens in the combat zone. Its Foreign Ministry said on 7 October that it was checking each hotline request. Once the checks are complete, the ministry said, it will send the compiled list to the Russian side.
SZRU separately cited unnamed relatives of one Kazakh worker. After he complained about working conditions, they said, he and other men were taken to an enlistment office and forced to sign contracts.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, who also handles foreign affairs, gave lawmakers a count on 8 October. “The Ministry has records of 354 Kenyan nationals involved in the Russian-Ukraine crisis,” he told them. Families who petitioned Parliament dispute that number and put their own count at 841, Kenya’s The Star reported.
Ukraine holds five Kenyans captured while fighting for Russia, and Nairobi has already appealed to Kyiv over them. The government told Parliament it wants them treated as people who may have been trafficked abroad.
For Kenyans still serving in Russia’s army, the way out runs through Russian officers. Moscow informed Nairobi that unit commanders will consider requests to end military contracts case by case, the same government response said.
© Lena Mucha for The New York Times
The strange historical dispute between Poland and Ukraine, in which Polish officials keep making demands upon Ukraine, seems unwilling to die down. Most recently, on October 20 the L’viv oblast (regional) council announced plans to honor the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its military leader, Roman Shukhevych. The council declared 2027 as the Year of the UPA, the Year of Shukhevych and the Year of Oleh Olzhych, a Ukrainian poet and political activist. In response, the Polish charge d’affaires in Kyiv, Piotr Lukasiewicz, responded by stating that “glorifying the UPA and criminal figures runs counter to European values and the strategic and neighborly relations between Ukraine and Poland.” Similar statements were then echoed by other Polish officials, including ministers. Are the Poles right about it being the Ukrainians who are running afoul of European values? And are Poles right to think that they have the right and the authority to police whom in history Ukraine chooses to memorialize? I would suggest that the answer to both questions is no.
Sovereign equality is a fundamental principle in international law that asserts that all states are equal, regardless of their size or power. The equality of states is a fundamental constitutional principle that governs how the European Union functions. As a general proposition, it is, thus, contrary to European values for Poland or Polish officials to assume that Poland has some sort a special right to dictate to Ukraine whom it may or may not memorialize, as one can presume that Poland would vigorously reject Ukraine’s or anyone else’s attempt to tell Poland which historical figures it may or may not memorialize based on that outside country’s views of the demerits of Poland’s various heroes.
But given the spirit behind the set of values that developed after the horrors of World War II and after the Western European countries finally lost all of their colonies by the 1960s, there are certain actions by Ukraine or any European country that could merit criticism or even condemnation. For example, it is incontestable that in the summer of 1943 the UPA, which was newly formed in Volyn, attacked Polish villages and there killed civilian men, women and children in the tens of thousands. It is also incontestable that according to most definitions, that massacre was a war crime. With respect to these events, what actions by contemporary Ukrainians could merit condemnation? There are two. First, if any Ukrainian official or political figure or public intellectual or organization were to deny that this massacre took place, he/she/they/it would clearly merit condemnation. Have any current or recent Ukrainian officials or other spokespersons denied the occurrence of the Volyn massacre? The answer is no.
Second, if any Ukrainian official or political figure or public intellectual or organization were to admit that the Volyn massacre took place but nevertheless deny that it was a war crime or actually condone it on the basis of some one or another historical Ukrainian grievance against the Poles, that would, in accord with contemporary European values, merit condemnation. Have any current or recent Ukrainian officials or other spokespersons denied that the massacres of Poles were a war crime or maintain that for some reason these massacres were to be viewed approvingly? The answer, once again, is no.
So why do Polish officials still complain? They complain because in effect they want to assert that they have the right more generally to be the ones to define Ukraine’s historical past. As the great British historian of Poland Norman Davies has pointed out, this is absurd. About 4% or 5% of the soldiers in UPA participated in the Volyn killings, and in fact most of the members of UPA joined after 1943. UPA is memorialized in Ukraine because of the extraordinary heroism of many, but certainly not all, of its members in the Ukrainian anti-colonial struggle against the Poles, the Germans and the Soviets that extended into the 1950s against the Soviets. The Poles seem to think that, ignoring what UPA did against the Germans and for much longer against the Soviets, and regardless how large or how small was the percentage of the UPA that was involved in the 1943 massacre, it is what happened to the Poles who were massacred that is more important than all else and it must be that which defines who and what UPA was. The Poles are of course entitled to view the UPA however they choose, but they insist on more. They insist on having the right to dictate to Ukrainians how to view the UPA.
There is another major problem with Polish complaints about Ukrainian memorialization. It is the problem of moral standing. The Polish minority in Volyn, about at most 16% in the interwar period, represented the nation that had militarily conquered and then occupied Volyn and other parts of western Ukraine. Ukrainians constituted between 65% and 70% of Volyn’s population. Some among the Polish minority were the descendants of the Polish lords and their administrators who had colonized Ukraine in the 15th – 17th centuries when Ukrainians were enserfed, a form of slavery that continued into the 19th century. In the interwar period between World War I and II, the Polish minority maintained its political, economic, educational and cultural domination of the Ukrainian majority. And, during World War II, the Polish government in exile in London continued to insist that Poland had the right to include Volyn in Poland and thus to continue to maintain dominion over the Ukrainian majority living there. None of this obscures what was a war crime, but given the Polish history of domination and exploitation of Ukrainians, it does call into serious question whether today’s Poles as putative representatives of the historical Polish nation should today have moral standing to make complaints against Ukrainians.
Lastly, killing civilians is killing civilians. It is a war crime. As has been well documented, during World War II various Polish units, including units of the Polish Home Army, which army is widely venerated and memorialized in Poland, attacked Ukrainian villages and killed civilian men, women and children. Those killings are often waived off as supposedly “retaliatory” attacks, but that is nonsense. The villages that were attacked were not even in Volyn but were simply Ukrainian. So if today’s Poles think that they have a right to make grievance claims on historical memory relating to events multiple generations ago, then they must also accept the burdens of accepting grievance claims against them. To put it in legal terminology, as regards history, it’s not as if Poles had clean hands.
In light of all of the above considerations, and with the exceptions discussed above, contemporary Polish officials do not have the right to routinely keep injecting themselves into Ukrainian decisions to memorialize historical figures that, for Ukrainians, were predecessors of Ukraine’s current efforts to fight off yet another attempt to subjugate it.
Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky is a retired federal prosecutor and a former U.S. diplomat who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy.
Recent midlife upgrades to China’s older surface combatants highlight an ongoing debate over whether preserving naval fleet mass provides an operational edge over purely qualitative technological modernization in naval warfare. This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has carried out an extensive midlife refit of its […]
The post China bets refitted destroyers can hold line in US numbers race appeared first on Asia Times.
© Marie Eriel Hobro for The New York Times
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