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As millions of Russians go to the polls for regional elections that wrap up on Sept. 10, there is little doubt that President Vladimir Putins party, United Russia, will win the vast majority of contests. But the tightly controlled vote will still be interpreted as a test of confidence for the beleaguered strongman, who in late June survived the biggest challenge to his 23 years in power during the Wagner rebellion.

Pressure has been building up on the Kremlin since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has upended the Russian economy, not to mention causing the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers. U.S. officials have estimated that Russias military casualties are approaching 300,000. The war in Ukraine is also increasingly coming home to Russia, including Moscow, with at least 190 suspected drone attacks hitting the country and Russian-occupied Crimea.

In recent years, and especially following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the countrys remaining opposition figures have largely been cowed, exiled, or jailed. Critical media have packed up or been shut down by the Kremlin, and human rights organizations have been disbanded.

There likely wont be the surprises seen in the last round of local elections, in 2018, that saw United Russia lose four gubernatorial races. Even so, the vote remain an important moment for both Putin, who is hoping to shore up his legitimacy within Russia, and for Russias opposition, which is hoping to retain their last toeholds in Russian politics.

The Kremlin is very worried about the outcome of these elections, says Regina Smyth, a professor at Indiana University whose research focuses on Russia.

Below, what to know about the vote.

The elections will take place in about half of Russia, plus the four occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia as well as Russian-annexed Crimea. Over 4,000 contests are being held for a range of positions including governors, mayors, and deputies to the State Duma, the lower house of Russias parliament.

Voters gather to cast their ballots in a street near their apartment building during local elections in Donetsk, the capital of Russian-occupied Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine, on Sept. 6.

AP

Since Putin became President in 2000, he has increasingly stacked the electoral odds in his favor. Election rules have been changed. Increasingly stringent rules for registering candidates mean that many opposition figures are disqualified from even running for office. The opposition maintains that voter fraud is widespread. Freedom House downgraded Russias rating from Partly Free to Not Free in 2004, a ranking the country has held continuously since then.

The Kremlin will be hoping that Russians who still have faith in the election will learn from the elections that even when you give people a choice, Putin still wins, says Smyth.

Elections are very important for the regimes legitimacy, but any scandals around it, and any thoughts that things are wrong harm this legitimacy, says Stanislav Andreichuk, the co-chair of Golos, an independent Russian vote-monitoring organization that the Kremlin has designated as a foreign agent." On Sept. 8, the first day of voting in Russia, Golos documented over 600 reports of voting irregularities, including vote buying, threats of violence, and blocking people from voting.

While the invasion of Ukraine has dramatically reshaped Russia over the past 18 months, it has rarely been mentioned explicitly on the campaign trail. It is everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Voters walk toward members of an electoral commission to receive their ballots at a polling station during local elections held by the Russian-installed authorities in Donetsk, on Sept. 8.

Alexander ErmochenkoReuters

The Kremlins party, United Russia, has advised its candidates to stop talking about the war," says Smyth. She notes that several Kremlin-backed candidates who have closely tied themselves to Russias war efforts have toned down their war rhetoric. For example, Vitaly Khotsenko, the former Prime Minister of the Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk who is running as an incumbent for the governorship of Omsk, has largely exchanged extolling the war for talking about education and other local issues.

But experts say that when the war is inextricably tied to some of Russias biggest problems, it is hard to avoid altogether. According to Andras Toth-Czifra, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, veterans issues have been one of the few ways in which the war comes up explicitly.

In a country where you cannot call a war a war, its difficult to talk about it in a political campaign, says Toth-Czifra.

Andreichuk says that politicians who support the war have little to gain by talking about the countrys most divisive issue, while anti-war politicians must avoid voicing their opposition too obviously.

A few pockets of resistance may prevent Putins United Russia from winning a clean sweep in the elections.

The most competitive contest is likely to be for the governorship of Khakassia, a remote Siberian region known for its sweeping steppes and many lakes. Here, the incumbent Communist Partys Valentin Konovalov may win reelection after his Kremlin-backed opponent, Sergei Sokol, dropped out of the race. Sokol announced on Telegram that he was too ill to stand. But Russias opposition largely believes he stood little chance against Konovalov. He was scared to lose the campaign, says Andreichuk.

This shows that there are definite limits to even the Kremlins power in Russia today, says Smyth, especially in regions such as Khakassia that have long been a site of protest.

Yabloko, a long-standing liberal opposition party, is running 216 candidates under the slogan For Peace! across a range of offices. Nikolay Rybakov, Yablokos chairman, said in a statement to TIME that, There are several dozen parties in Russia that support the policies of President Putin. And there is only one partyYablokowhich opposes his policies. During this election cycle, Yablokos candidates have been threatened with violence, had their offices searched by the authorities, and had election materials seized.

Andreichuk, the co-chair of Golos, says that Yabloko candidates rarely go as far as criticizing Russias war effort directly to avoid running afoul of Russias laws about discrediting the military. Such statements would risk up to five years of imprisonment. But running on a pro-peace platform is absolutely incredible for todays Russia, he says.

Russias opposition has encouraged independent-minded Russians to vote for any party but United Russia. Alena Popova, a Russian opposition politician in exile and currently a Public Policy Fellow at the Wilson Center, says, I refuse to use the word election because we have a dictatorship. Even so, she says it is crucial for Russians to vote: Maybe in a few years we will have real elections, but we need to have this habit to vote."

The elections in the occupied areas of Ukraine and in Russian-annexed Crimea are taking place as many of Russias ordinary voting procedures have been suspended and the Kremlins candidates are running virtually unopposed. These areas remain the site of intense fighting as Ukraine seeks to break through Russias defenses.

The Ukrainian government and its Western allies have strongly denounced the elections as illegitimate. Even Russias supporters understand that these are sham elections, and they will not be accepted by any democratic country, says Kira Rudik, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Ukraine has used drones to drop leaflets over occupied towns telling people to refrain from voting. The elections are held to prove to Russian people that Russia will not give up on these territories, says Rudik, who is also leader of the political party Golos, which is unrelated to the election-monitoring group of the same name.

People are forced to go to the voting booth, they are forced to vote, and no matter what happens Russia will still produce an overwhelming victory for Putin, says Rudik. She has a simple message for Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories: Do whatever is needed to save your life and those of your loved ones. Buy yourself time until the Ukrainian army comes and liberates you.

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Russian flag displayed on a laptop screen and binary code code displayed on a screen are seen in this multiple exposure illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on Feb. 16, 2022. NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Russian flag displayed on a laptop screen and binary code code displayed on a screen are seen in this multiple exposure illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on Feb. 16, 2022.

KYIV, Ukraine In the first days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion into Ukraine, Illia Vitiuk and his colleagues feared the worst: the fall of Kyiv.

Vitiuk, the head of the cyber department at Ukraine's top counterintelligence agency, had already been battling Russian hackers and spies for years. Inspired by James Bond films and a life of adventure, he says he'd been studying all his life for this kind of work.

But on Feb. 24, 2022, members of that agency Ukraine's Security Service, or the SBU took on another role: physically hauling important servers and technical infrastructure away from Kyiv to protect it from Russian invaders.

"Just imagine what happened here on the morning of February 24," he said during an interview with NPR at the SBU's headquarters in Kyiv. "Missiles hit Kyiv, and people were running away from here. We tried to contact some of the ministries and critical infrastructure. And sometimes there were answers like, 'The system administrator is gone because his family is in Bucha and he needs to take them from Bucha,' " he recalled.

"There was the risk of Kyiv to be surrounded," Vitiuk continued. "So we needed to take the most important databases and hardware and relocate it from Kyiv. And so we literally helped to do this with rifles."

The so-called "cyber war" experts foretold in Ukraine may not have come to pass: Despite Russia's best efforts, its hackers were unable to single handedly destroy Ukraine's digital infrastructure in the early days of the war.

However, Ukraine's defenders have been under a near constant barrage of cyberattacks, almost 3,000 this year so far, according to Vitiuk.

Coupled with missiles and drone strikes, those operations have allowed Russia to weaken Ukraine's infrastructure, most concerningly the power grid, as well as steal sensitive information that supports their military campaigns. Vitiuk and his team are constantly investigating and responding to Russian state hackers, and they believe they serve as a "shield to the whole Democratic world," by sharing what they learn with their allies, Vitiuk said.

During a rare exclusive interview with NPR in Kyiv, Vitiuk spoke about the impact of Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine for the last decade, what it's been like defending Ukraine's critical infrastructure during the war and his plans for after the war ends.

Ukraine's counterintelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine, divorced from its Soviet predecessor, the KGB, in the fall of 1991.

Illia Vitiuk, the head of the cyber department at Ukraine's top counterintelligence agency. Ukrainian Security Service hide caption

Illia Vitiuk, the head of the cyber department at Ukraine's top counterintelligence agency.

The historical building where the SBU has its headquarters today in Kyiv is not far from the Golden Gate monument of Kyiv, which marked the city's boundaries in the 11th century. It's also a building previously used by the KGB, whose officers remained a part of the SBU for years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine's President Volodymr Zelenskyy took the step of removing several top SBU officials from office at the beginning of the war, in part due to those long standing connections to Russia. Some of the mistrust and suspicion remains today, creating divisions between Ukraine's government and its private sector.

However, Vitiuk and his colleagues are working hard to distance themselves from that past.

"We do believe we've filled [this building] with our energy as a Democratic Special Service," he told NPR. "So we don't think a lot about the probably bad things that were happening here before 1990."

The SBU's cyber department was created in 2012, "two years before the war with Russia," said Vitiuk, referring to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Since then, Russia has pummeled Ukraine with a series of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.

It started in 2014 with "banal DDOS attacks," said Vitiuk, referring to denial of service attacks that involve flooding a server with traffic to knock it offline. (Vitiuk says the SBU doesn't count DDOS attacks anymore as cyberattacks in its official statistics.) Then, by 2015, Russia knocked out the power grid, cutting off electricity for millions of Ukrainians for several hours. Russia started trying to target additional civil infrastructure, including train control systems, in 2016, Vitiuk recalled. And then in 2017 Russia launched a virus disguised as a ransomware attack that ultimately infected computers around the world and cost companies billions to recover from, called NotPetya.

"Our focus shifted to Russia because we needed to protect ourselves, and not from a ransomware group, but from real specialists and people focused on damaging our infrastructure, the real professionals with budgets, with laboratories, and research institutes," said Vitiuk.

Starting around December of 2021, there was a major buildup of Russian cyber activity that made many in Ukraine's private sector fearful the invasion was imminent. Some were concerned enough to flee, move their families out of Ukraine, or report their suspicions to the government.

Around that same time, representatives from the U.S. Cyber Command took a trip to Kyiv and helped to inspect elements of Ukraine's critical infrastructure "that we thought would be the focus of attacks," said Vitiuk. "And it happened just like that." Vitiuk said they also provided hardware and software the government is still using today to defend its networks.

In January and February, Russia started deploying some of its tools, targeting about 70 state owned facilities in Ukraine with wiper attacks and taking down dozens of official websites. Russia claimed to have infiltrated Diia, a digital application used by Ukrainians to store official documents, make use of state services and other activities. And then in February, they targeted the financial sector to make people believe that they couldn't get access to their money in the event of an emergency.

Vitiuk said it seemed as if Russian hackers were "testing something, and maybe they are preparing themselves for something big." However, it was still unclear that activity would be the precursor to a physical invasion. "Of course, we had doubts of whether that massive invasion will happen," he said.

That all changed the night before the invasion began. "We started to react to cyberattacks on February 23rd," Vitiuk recalled. "And then we switched," he said, to fighting "the psychological campaign they launched."

Some of those attacks included one that temporarily knocked out ViaSat, the satellite communications system the Ukrainian military was using at the time. When that failed to prevent Ukraine's Armed Forces from communicating, Vitiuk said Moscow summoned "all the special services and the so-called hacktivist groups" to create chaos in cyberspace and in the information space. He said they targeted infrastructure, "especially mass media," communications providers, and "websites of local administrators and ministries."

"Since the very beginning, we clearly see that they really thought there would be a blitzkrieg. ... They tried to use all the aces in their sleeves during the first days," said Vitiuk.

However, for Ukraine, the main challenge in those early days was coordinating with cybersecurity experts at other government agencies and critical infrastructure organizations, many of whom were in serious physical danger, Vitiuk recalls. That's when SBU began hauling critical servers from Kyiv with rifles.

A view of damaged radar arrays and other equipment, at the Ukrainian military facility outside Mariupol, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022. Sergei Grits/AP hide caption

A view of damaged radar arrays and other equipment, at the Ukrainian military facility outside Mariupol, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022.

When asked whether these early attacks had long-term impacts, Vitiuk said that only a couple systems were damaged, and only some data was stolen. "None of the critical systems were damaged," he said. "We were working 24/7. ... We managed to cope with that rather fast," he said.

But it wasn't for lack of trying, he continued.

"Russian hackers are one of the best in the world. But it's because our cybersecurity is so strong because of these experiences since 2014," Vitiuk said.

Following Russia's failure to immediately overtake Ukraine, Vitiuk said SBU observed Russian hackers switch tactics, primarily toward intelligence gathering and disrupting the power grid.

"Since the summer, they understood this war is going to last longer, and they need to switch to something more serious," he said.

During a cybersecurity conference in Lviv in early August, a representative from Ukraine's governmental Computer Emergency Response Team spoke about Russian hackers increasingly targeting healthcare and insurance providers in recent months, for example, to gather confidential medical information for the purposes of blackmail or targeting individual Ukrainians.

There has also been a serious effort by Russia to infiltrate Ukraine's military operational planning systems, including a platform called Delta. The SBU recently published a detailed report about Russian military intelligence officers camping out on the front lines to steal Android tablets used by Ukrainian officers, in order to break into Delta and gather information about Ukrainian intelligence gathering and the military's use of Starlink, a portable communications device developed by Elon Musk's company SpaceX. By learning about the device's configurations with Starlink, Russia can locate some of those devices and better target its missile strikes.

While Vitiuk said the SBU was successful in preventing Russia's full access to Delta and similar programs, he said they managed to gather some information. Beyond this specific operation, he said Russians are constantly using surveillance drones, human sources, and more to specifically target these systems.

It's an ongoing challenge to protect frontline troops' digital footprints. While some units employ technical cybersecurity experts, others don't have the same resources. As a result, technology like physical tokens for two-factor authentication have become more popular with soldiers, sources in Ukraine revealed.

Meanwhile, Vitiuk's team is also focused on investigating how Russia is bypassing sanctions, in particular to outsource the delivery of weapons components. He says they've tracked some of Russia's networks and been able to disrupt some of those supply chains.

Meanwhile, on the civilian side, Russia has been heavily focused on disrupting and damaging Ukraine's power grid. Starting in October, Vitiuk said, this became a priority for Moscow. He told NPR there were between 30 to 40 "very serious attacks on our power" in the last year.

When cyberattacks fail to take out electricity, missile strikes have gotten the job done. Then, Ukrainians are forced to turn to generators to keep the power going, and devices like Starlink to keep these devices connected, creating more opportunities for Russia to target vulnerabilities.

Currently, the SBU and other Ukrainian cybersecurity officials are working with the Prosecutor General's Office to build an unprecedented legal case against Russian military hackers from the GRU, a group called Sandworm, for their attacks on the power grid. SBU is not only a counterintelligence agency but a law enforcement agency, similar to the American FBI, Vitiuk explained.

"We do believe that attacks on our civil infrastructure should be considered a war crime," said Vitiuk, echoing sentiments made by Ukrainian officials like Viktor Zhora, one of Vitiuk's counterparts at the Ukrainian State Special Communications and Information Protection Service.

"This is very important, and there should be a new methodology to understand casualties when we speak about cyberattacks," said Vitiuk. "Because nobody's shooting, but there could be casualties nonetheless ... people in hospitals without electricity, somebody can die."

The goal is to bring the case to the International Criminal Court after the war.

In Ukraine during the war, nearly everyone is volunteering, raising money or working directly with the government to support the war effort.

That includes technical experts. For one, the IT community in Ukraine is providing its expertise and services. Many individuals are serving as official part-time advisors for government agencies.

Meanwhile, plenty of others are volunteering in a more offensive capacity.

Perhaps the most prominent is the IT Army, which has been officially supported by Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation from the beginning of the war. That group is focused on primarily developing software and tools for average citizens to launch denial of service attacks against Russian targets, though the group has also developed digital bots for the government to crowdsource intelligence, and occasionally passes on intelligence to government partners, according to a representative of the group.

There's also groups like the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, Hackyourmom a project started by Ukrainian cybersecurity entrepreneur Mykyta Knysh and Inform Napalm, a website that works with some of the hacktivist outfits to investigate leaked data and expose Russian hackers by name.

General view of a residential building after it was damaged following a Russian shelling attack as Russian forces continue their full-scale invasion of Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

General view of a residential building after it was damaged following a Russian shelling attack as Russian forces continue their full-scale invasion of Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022.

Some of these groups claim their activities publicly, while others operate more covertly.

Some cybersecurity experts have argued that the attacks launched by volunteers, which sometimes appear random and don't often achieve long term effects, may cause more harm than good to covert operations. Expert cyber operators might be leveraging their access inside a system only to have their cover blown by an amateur hacker. Additionally, there's concern that these civilians could be considered armed combatants through launching these attacks, though the Russian military has not hesitated to attack civilian targets without cause.

Vitiuk argues that everyone volunteering their skills is valuable in some capacity, despite these concerns.

"This is like our cyber territorial defense," he said. "It's our job to monitor and understand these cyber volunteers, and to some extent, to direct them or give them advice on where to be more effective."

Those volunteers include former convicted cybercriminals, Vitiuk said.

"There was literally a line of people standing at the Security Service of Ukraine, calling, text messaging, etc., and asking, how can we help? What should we do?" Vitiuk said. "There were a number of even convicted criminals, cyber criminals that came and said ... now it's over. And we are focused on protecting our state. So tell us what to do and where to go."

Vitiuk said the SBU penetrated ransomware groups and recruited members from various different countries, which helped them later penetrate "some of the Russian ransomware groups working for special services." The SBU has also been able to recruit Russian sources, some of them still inside the country, Vitiuk says.

There's an awareness on SBU's part of concerns that officially working with cybercriminals or average citizens launching cyberattacks could create problems in the future. While there's no appetite to press charges against Ukrainians launching cyberattacks against Russia within Ukraine, that could change in the future if those people act outside wartime, or make use of their newfound skills to turn to cybercrime after the war. Keeping those people close is all the more important because of those concerns, Vitiuk says.

"It's very important to make these people work for the benefit of our country and not go back or switch to some bad activities some of them used to do before," he said.

Their contributions have been significant, he said.

In one example, the private sector helped develop a bot in a Telegram channel that allowed normal people to upload photos, videos, and geolocation data about Russian military activity. In the early days of the war, Vitiuk said, people were sharing information about columns of Russian troops, which the SBU would verify through human sources. Then, they passed the information straight to the military.

"And it was very important because we didn't have a sufficient number of shells," Vitiuk said. "It was very important to strike with precision. And this bot helped a lot."

When asked about the ongoing Russian threat in cyberspace, Vitiuk said he expected Russian attacks to continue at about the same rate as the previous year, particularly going into another harsh winter.

While attacks might get more sophisticated, it would be challenging for Russia to increase the rate of attacks, he explained, because the number of skilled professionals available is limited. "In order to increase something you need to have more people," he said.

Vitiuk said SBU is focused on preparing for the winter, working with the Ministry of Energy and other experts to do what they can to further protect the power grid based on lessons learned last year.

Meanwhile, Vitiuk responded to fears that Russia might launch massive cyberattacks against Western companies for their support of Ukraine. Those same limited resources that prevent doubling efforts against Ukraine will also limit Russia's ability and focus on targets abroad, he argues.

"I think they don't have enough potential to do that. They are too focused on Ukraine," he said.

Vitiuk acknowledges that despite all the success Ukraine has had defending against Russian cyberattacks, it needs help continuing to bolster all its critical infrastructure. That need is especially acute in local governments where resources are fewer, and within the growing military technology industry in Ukraine, he says.

During a recent cybersecurity conference in Estonia, he made a call to action that cybersecurity companies visit Ukraine and help assess its needs, from technical infrastructure to hardware and software. He wants those companies to donate those goods and services directly.

One reason Vitiuk is recommending this course of action is an awareness of the lingering concern for corruption in Ukrainethat donated funds might be misused or stolen.

"We don't need money. We want the system to be as transparent as possible," he said.

Since he made that appeal to global companies, Vitiuk says there have been a number of meetings with Ukrainian government agencies, who have all voted in favor to create a working group to support international cooperation and assistance in cybersecurity.

"We are working on it and we hope that it will start as soon as possible."

Before taking the helm at SBU's cyber department, Vitiuk worked for a time as a professional athlete specializing in mixed martial arts, a sport, he tells NPR, that is "very popular in post Soviet countries."

While he doesn't have a lot of free time during the war, he occupies most of it with "training," he says. He doesn't smoke or drink, so fitness has become his primary stress reliever. He used to love going skydiving, he reveals, before the war "closed the skies."

Vitiuk believes that Putin's decision to invade Ukraine was extremely risky, and will ultimately prove to be a mistake, he says.

"I am not interested actually in Moscow, what they see and what they think," Vitiuk said. "I'm interested in our victory and I hope it will come as soon as possible."

"For us, for the military, this is our time. This is the time we were created for. And we feel that we are needed, that we are effective," he continued. "But we understand that while we are needed and while we are effective, somebody is dying. Somebody is grieving. So let it be over as soon as possible."

But even after the war, it's unlikely the need for Vitiuk's cybersecurity expertise will wane.

"New doctrines will be written and adopted according to what has happened here in Ukraine, according to our experience," said Vitiuk. "And probably that is something we will do after our victory."

Kateryna Malofieieva contributed to this story.

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Meet the man leading the front-line effort in Ukraine's cyber war with ... - NPR

Tomorrow morning (8 September), the Security Council will convene for a briefing on the situation inUkraine. Albania and the US, the co-penholders on political issues in Ukraine, requested the meeting to discuss the regional and municipal elections that Russia is organising in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine. Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas Miroslav Jena* is expected to brief. Ukraine is expected to participate under rule 37 of the Councils provisional rules of procedure.

Background

The elections that are the focus of tomorrows meeting are being held in the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions, in which Russia conducted referendums between 23 and 27 September 2022. On 30 September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed these four regions. In a speech delivered that morning, Putin said that [p]eople living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever. Citing Article 1 of the UN Charter, which outlines the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, he emphasised that the decision to annex the four occupied regions in Ukraine was an inherent right of the peoplebased on our historical affinity.

Western countries and the UN strongly condemned Russias referendums and annexation. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres delivered a strong retort to Moscow during a 29 September 2022press briefing. Noting that Russias annexation has no legal value and that it flouts the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, Guterres stressed that Moscows escalation deserves to be condemned[and] must not be accepted.

Russias decision to conduct referendums in the four regions in Ukraine prompted Albania and the US to request a Security Council meeting, held on 27 September 2022, to discuss what they considered to be an escalation of the conflict. On 30 September 2022, Albania and the US tabled a draft Security Council resolution on the matter. The draft text condemned Russias referendums, noting that they had not been authorised by Kyiv, and declared that any actions taken by Russia on the basis of the referendums, including annexation of its occupied regions in Ukraine, have no validity. In this regard, the draft resolution called on all member states to not recognise any change to the status of the regions. The draft resolution failed to be adopted because of a Russian veto. It received ten votes in favour, one against (Russia) and four abstentions (Brazil, China, Gabon, and India). (For more information, see our26 September 2022 and 30 September 2022 Whats in Bluestories.)

The UN General Assembly subsequently resumed its 11th Emergency Special Session (ESS) on Ukraine, following a request submitted by Albania and Ukraine. During the ESS, which took place between 10 and 12 October 2022, the General Assembly adopted resolution A/ES-11/L.5, which condemned Russia for organising illegal so-called referendums in the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions, while calling on all member states to reject their validity and not to recognise any change to the status of the four regions. The resolution, which was prepared by the EU, received 143 votes in favour, five against (Belarus, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Russia, and Syria), and 35 abstentions. Ten member states did not vote.

On 31 August, Russian-installed authorities initiated regional and municipal elections in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions. According to media reports, early voting is set to conclude today (7 September) in certain areas, while other regions will continue voting over the weekend, with polls expected to close on Sunday (10 September).

Tomorrows Meeting

At tomorrows meeting, Jena is likely to reiterate the UNs position on the referendums held by Russian authorities nearly one year ago. During the Councils 27 September 2022 meeting, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo asserted that the referendums cannot be called a genuine expression of the popular will, adding that unilateral actions aiming to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the attempted acquisition by force by one State of another States territory, while claiming to represent the will of the people, cannot be regarded as legal under international law.

Jena is also expected to provide an update on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. She may condemn the frequent Russian attacks on Ukraines civilian infrastructure. On 3 and 4 September, attacks on port facilities and grain infrastructure along the Danube River in the Odesa region resulted in civilian injuries and damage to agricultural assets. Denise Brown, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, condemned these attacks in a statement on 3 September.

More recently, on 6 September, a Russian missile struck an outdoor market in Kostiantynivka, a town in the eastern Donetsk region in Ukraine, leading to 49 civilian casualties, including 17 deaths. This attack coincided with an unannounced two-day visit to Kyiv by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during which he pledged new aid for Ukraine exceeding $1 billion.

Several Council members are expected to condemn Russia for holding elections in the four regions under its occupation. These members view the elections as a deceptive manoeuvre by Moscow aimed at strengthening its control over territories it unlawfully seized in 2022 and a further bid to undermine Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity. On 4 September, Leendert Verbeek, President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, criticised Russias decision to organise the elections, which he described as a flagrant violation of international law that only creates an illusion of democracy but clearly violates the right of citizens to participate in the conduct of local public affairs.

Several members may point out that Russian forces do not fully control any of the four regions where the voting is taking place. Given that the vote is taking place amid active armed conflict, some members may argue that it is unreasonable to assume that populations in areas in conflict can freely express their will. Furthermore, considering that the vote deviates from Ukraines legal and constitutional framework, some Council members may urge Russia, which they perceive as the occupying power, to uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law to respect Ukrainian laws in the administration of occupied territories.

Some Council members are likely to refer to the conference room paper issued by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Ukraine. Released on 29 August, this document provides a comprehensive overview of the evidence collected and evaluated by the COI, as presented in its March 2023 report to the UN Human Rights Council (A/HRC/52/62). Among other things, the paper concludes that the holding of the so-called referendumswas in violation of international humanitarian law, noting that the commission documented instances of coercion, threats, unlawful confinement and forcible transfers of local officials and public service employees, including school personnel, to force them to cooperate.

Russia is expected to portray the elections in the four regions as a legitimate democratic procedure, and to imply that they adhere to international electoral standards. It may also condemn attacks allegedly carried out by Ukrainian troops on 7 September, which wounded members of a local election commission in the town of Volnovakha in the eastern Donetsk region, according to the local electoral commission.

Tomorrows meeting will be the first of several on Ukraine scheduled for this month. On 12 September, the Council will convene at Russias request for a meeting under the Threats to international peace and security agenda item to discuss the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine and other factors negatively affecting the prospects for resolving the crisis in Ukraine and around it. On 20 September, Albania is expected to hold a high-level open debate on Upholding the purposes and principles of the UN Charter through effective multilateralism: maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine. This meeting, which will be held during the General Assemblys high-level segment, is one of the signature events of Albanias Council presidency. On 26 September, at Russias request, the Council will hold a meeting to mark the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

___________________________________________________________

Post-script (8 September, 10:15 am):A previous version of this story indicated that Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary is expected to brief. The story was amended to reflect that Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas Miroslav Jena eventually briefed at the meeting.

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Ukraine: Briefing : What's In Blue - Security Council Report

Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, Philippe Ptain: The names of famous traitors and enemy collaborators resonate through history. Now their ranks are being replenished amid the Russia-Ukraine war, even if few names have yet become infamous outside Ukraine.

Since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraines history as an independent nation has seen plenty of betrayal and treason. From the start, Russian leaders who resented Ukraines break with Moscow found willing helpers in their efforts to subvert the Ukrainian state and infiltrate its national security institutions.

But who were the Ukrainians who turned against their country? Some believed in the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people, the Kremlins centuries-old imperial narrative that found willing adherents among the colonized, just as powerful past empires found new adherents among their conquered peoples. Other Ukrainians admired Russian President Vladimir Putin, his authoritarian policies, and Russias economic successes in the first decade of his rule. Ukraines first two decades of post-Soviet existence were often so dysfunctional that some Ukrainians yearned for a heavy hand and believed in the benefit of a political and economic alliance with Moscow.

From these unpatriotic but not illegal beliefs, some Ukrainians crossed the line to actively support Russian attempts to destroy Ukraine. Some went onto the Kremlins payroll as spies, spymasters, informants, or agents of influence. Many of todays collaborators in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine are former politicians from Ukraines pro-Russian Party of Regions, which rapidly lost support after the first Russian invasion in 2014 and was finally banned by Kyiv in February. Other Ukrainians supporting Russias destruction of their country have been linked to Putins closest Ukrainian ally, the U.S.-sanctioned oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who now lives in Russia but has been on the front-line of Kremlin influence operations in Ukraine since the early 2000s.

Some of Russias supporters are Ukrainian journalists who found well-paying jobs at pro-Russian media, which were often better financed by the Russian state and Kremlin-linked oligarchs than the struggling Ukrainian outlets where the journalists previously worked. That road took some of them to prominent positions as propagandists in Russia, where they now spew genocidal hate against their own people.

Still others are local and regional administrators in the occupied areas who have redirected their skills to the new regime. Finally, a more complicated issue of treason revolves around those Ukrainians in the occupied areas who have been conscriptedoften coercivelyinto Russian and Russian-controlled military units to fight against their fellow citizens.

Defining treason can be treacherousafter all, the word traitor is often used as a cudgel against political opponents or anyone deemed unpatriotic. But the notion should be obvious in a country fighting a total war for its very existence: Someone who intentionally harms their own countrys security, especially in times of war, by aiding or collaborating with the enemy. Ukrainian lawlast modified shortly after the start of Russias 2022 invasiondefines state treason expansively as intentional actions by a citizen to the detriment of Ukraines sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, and state, economic, or information security. It further defines it as joining the side of the enemy at a time of armed conflict and includes espionage as well as assistance to subversive activities. Prescribed sentences for treason start at 12 yearsand more during wartime.

Numbers are hard to come by. In July 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that more than 650 Ukrainian security officials were under investigation for suspected treason, including 60 collaborators working for the Russians in the occupied territories. Another source is the Ukrainian nongovernmental organization Chesno, which cooperates with Ukraines National Anti-Corruption Bureau to compile a list of alleged traitors. As of now, Chesnos list contains more than 1,200 names of Ukrainians, but the organization doesnt always apply a legal standard. The list includes people who have loudly condemned Russias 2022 invasion but equivocated about its 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donbas. Where does political opinion end and punishable treason start? Not only Ukrainians are grappling with that question.

In truth, many of Ukraines traitors gradually and imperceptibly drifted to the other side of barricade. Some were, in fact, the product of the failure of Ukraines first leaders, mainly former Communist Party apparatchiks and so-called red directors, to create a compelling national narrative, let alone a well-governed state on the Central European or Baltic model.

Others started on their path to treason under the influence of pervasive Russian imperial propaganda in Ukraine, communicated through influential television programs and news shows, the proliferation of Russian press and books, and visiting Russian musicians and artists, whose influence was allowed to seep into the country unchecked.

Still others were alienated from their newly independent homeland through the siren song of Soviet nostalgia, which was exploited by the Kremlin and its allies in Ukraine to stymie the emergence of a unified and consolidated Ukrainian nation.

Because their work is so public, journalists are instructive examples of how these gradual shifts took place. Diana Panchenko used to work for the Ukrainian nationalist newspaper Gazeta po Ukrainske and TRK Kyiv, a television channel. But in 2015, Panchenko joined NewsOne, a new TV channel later owned by Medvedchuk. She then gradually drifted toward apologia for the Russian annexation of Crimea and amplified the alleged grievances of the Russian-directed so-called separatists in eastern Ukraine.

When Zelensky shut down Russia-linked broadcasters in 2021, including NewsOne, Panchenko waged a fervent campaign to accuse the government of censorship and defend Medvedchuk. After Russias 2022 invasion, Panchehnko became a YouTube star reporting from the Russian-occupied territories. From there, she has regularly produced manipulative documentaries justifying Russias war as an effort to supposedly protect the beleaguered residents of Ukraines Donbas region. Now based in Moscow, she claims that it was not Russia that obliterated the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, but the Ukrainian government and Mariupols defenders. She has become a modern version of Mildred Gillarsan American also known as Axis Sally who disseminated Nazi propaganda to English-language audiences by radio from Berlin and was later convicted of treason in the United States.

Another Ukrainian Axis Sally is Yulia Vityazeva, a prominent propagandist who has warned her fellow Ukrainians that the entire country awaits the same fate as that of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of civilians are estimated to have died under a hail of Russian bombs, rockets, and artillery. Vityazeva was a minor local reporter when she left her native Odesa for Russia in 2015, shortly after the first Russian invasion. She was quickly integrated into the Kremlins propaganda team by Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russias most notorious television propagandists, a supporter of Ukraines merciless destruction, and an advocate of Russian missile strikes against the West. While bashing Ukraine remains her bread and butter, Vityazeva has recently focused attention on Kazakhstan, denouncing it for not supporting Moscows war.

Some Ukrainian journalists are now cheerleading the killing of their fellow citizens. Vladimir Kornilov, a longtime Russian agent of influence, is now an almost daily guest on Russias prime-time talk shows. From these podiums, he regularly calls for Russia to be more merciless against Ukraine. In an interview on July 20, he said about Ukraine: As long as this nest of vipers exists and until we destroy it, it will generate wild ideas about acts of terrorism and sabotage.

A substantial number of traitors come from the coterie of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed in the 2013-14 Maidan Revolution and escaped to Russia. Several former members of parliament from Yanukovychs Party of Regions stand out for the venom of their commentaries. Oleh Tsaryov and Ihor Markov, for example, are frequent guests on the most widely viewed Russian prime-time programs. Tsaryov advocates the total conquest and integration of Ukraine into Russia, while Markov is best known for his fawning appraisals of Putin, whose actions Markov attributes with an epochal significance in the rebirth of the Russian Empire to its previous historical boundaries.

But the largest cohort of traitors is made up of Ukrainian collaborators in Russian-occupied Ukraine. The first generation of these turncoats became officials in Crimea and eastern Donbas, seized by Russia in 2014. Many of these collaborators came from criminal groups or were active in martial arts clubs supported with Kremlin cash.

Among the post-2022 collaborators, few were open supporters of the Kremlin or likely anticipated they would become traitors. We cant know their true motives, but it is likely that the majority of these collaborators probably concluded shortly after the invasion began that power had shifted and simply adapted to the new rulers. The best known of this fresh crop is probably Volodymyr Saldo, a former mayor of Kherson. When Russian troops occupied that city, Saldo backed the invaders, who made him acting governor of the Russian-occupied portions of the Kherson region. Recently, Saldo urged Ukrainian soldiers to surrenderspeaking in his native Ukrainian even as the occupiers he now represents are implementing a policy to eliminate the Ukrainian language and identity.

Medvedchuk, whose Ukrainian business and media empire fueled the rise of several prominent Ukrainian turncoats, has descended into obscurity in his Russian exile. After he was exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war in April 2022, shortly after his initial arrest in Kyiv on charges of treason, Medvedchuk gave a handful of interviews. Today he is a media nonentity, disdained by much of the Russian establishment as a political failure for not delivering Ukraine to the Kremlin. For years, he was the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars from sweetheart Russian energy contracts, but he failed to build a powerful pro-Kremlin party in Ukraine even as he fed Putin false narratives about Ukrainians supposedly pro-Russian inclinations.

As the former Ukrainian president ousted by the Ukrainian parliament in the wake of the Maidan revolution, Yanukovych might have the greatest claim to be the voice of the Ukrainian opposition. Yet apart from the early days after his flight from Kyiv in 2014, Putin never deployed him as the leader of a Kremlin-aligned Ukrainian government-in-exile.

Similarly, after the 2022 invasion, Russia never sought to create anything resembling a so-called national liberation committee, a method familiar from Soviet times to prepare foreign countries for Kremlin control. Nor is there evidence of any Kremlin effort to lay the propaganda groundwork for installing a pro-Moscow government in Kyiv, despite Western intelligence reports that Russia was seeking such a scenario. All these actions indicate that Putins aim was never to control the Ukrainian state with his puppets but to destroy it altogether.

In Russias ongoing war, the traitors with the greatest impact are those infiltrating Kyivs security services. Of these spies and spymasters exposed so far, the most prominent are Andriy Klyuyev, Yanukovychs former chief of staff, and Vladimir Sivkovich, a former deputy head of the Ukrainian National Security Council, both of whom fled to Russia in 2014.

Their network has allegedly had major successes in placing agents inside Ukraines security services, some of whom helped sabotage Ukraines defense in the early phases of Russias 2022 invasion. Ukraine has identified and arrested several of these agents, including some who are believed to have given Kyiv wrong information about Russian movements and shared intelligence with Moscow that allowed Russia to quickly capture large swaths of southern Ukraine.

Ukraines traitors have played a serious role in infiltrating state structures, assisting Russia in its administration of occupied territories, and serving in Russian and Russian-controlled military units. Another important impact of these turncoats is on Russians and gullible Westerners, who see Ukrainians mouthing Kremlin narratives about Ukrainians supposedly being ruled by a Nazi cabal and yearning to be united with Russia brethren in a unitary state.

The opposite, of course, is true: Since 2014 and especially 2022, Ukraine has seen the consolidation of near total support for a sovereign, independent Ukrainian state and national identity free from Russian domination. Today, traitors and pro-Russian propagandists evoke scorn and revulsion for becoming one of the enemys instruments of war. This revulsion also drives the Ukrainian governments and civil societys ongoing efforts to document acts of treason, even by Ukrainians who have escaped abroad, in the expectation that justice will eventually be served.

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Ukraine's Traitors Have a Long and Sordid History - Foreign Policy

The West Van philanthropist is trying to get ahead of a looming crisis in the animal world in Ukraine.

Daniel Fine is fixing the dogs of war.

The retired West Vancouver tech executive and founder of the Ukraine War Animals Relief Fund is recently back from his fifth trip to the war-torn country, trying desperately to get ahead of a looming crisis in the animal world.

Right from the time of Russias invasion, Fine felt compelled to go help the four-leggeds. He quickly wound up volunteering at a shelter on the Polish border, walking rescue dogs for 18 hours a day. It was in speaking with volunteers on the ground there that he was clued into the bigger picture.

Ukrainians are a pet-loving people but, eight million residentsbecame refugees in 2022. Fine said estimates are one million animals were abandoned and left to go stray, the vast majority of them not spayed or neutered. Without outside intervention, the population of feral dogs and cats is going to explode.

If you do the math on it, and weve had some data scientists take a look at it, the numbers are a little bit unbelievable. Its going to leave about 124 million pets in five years, Fine said. What Im trying to do is vaccinate, sterilize and microchip as many of these animals as fast as I can. And weve done, today, just about 7,750 of them.

When the war does end, there will be no choice but to begin culling stray animals, which Fine cant bear the thought of.

With gunfire and shelling in earshot, Fine has had to deal with the logistics of securing vaccines and veterinary supplies, kibble, and volunteers to catch dogs and bring them to vets assisting in the effort.

Its a nightmare, he said with a laugh.

With so many humanitarian crises in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, Fine said he often feels he has to defend his efforts to help animals.

There are dozens of non-profits and NGOs with much deeper pockets mobilized to help refugees, but almost nothing available for dogs and cats, he notes. And the way Fine sees it, humans domesticated dogs thousands of years ago for our own benefit, which puts certain obligations on us today.

We owe them something, he said. Now its our turn to help.

Fine said he met one woman in Ukraine who spent six months hiding in a basement, coming outside only to fetch food from her gardenand to help take care of nine stray dogs. For some, that existencemay be hard to fathom, but Fine gets it. Caring for animals is a window into the human spirit.

She felt hopeless. But the animals are even more hopeless. They cant even help themselves. Giving that help to them gives you hope, he said.

But even for those who struggle with the concept of the mission forthe sake of the animals, its also a matter public health, Fine is quick to note. As that feral dog and cat population grows, it will inevitably result in the spread of zoonotic pathogens, most frightening among them, rabies, which kills upwards of 60,000 people per year already. Two of the vets hes working with have already been bitten by rabid cats, he said.

There is no question that venturing into a warzone is dangerous, and even Fines family members have told him hes a bit nuts.

Fine said they take calculated risks but still, there are close calls, including on the most recent trip when he wandered into an area off the beaten path only to find himself surrounded by Russian land mines poking through the surface of the soil.

Im not really frightened. I feel stupid sometimes, like I should be paying more attention, he said. Every time, I learn a little bit more.

They routinely have to cross military checkpoints, but with a frontline that shifts every day, they sometimes dont know who is in control of a given area when they arrive.

Its Russian, youre dead, right? Or theyre going to hold you for ransom he said.

Fine has seen first-hand the devastated towns and villages, the Kerson Airport in ruins, and the Ukrainian people weary of a brutal war. Just days ago, the Russians bombed a central marketplace filled with civilians, he noted.

But fine said he also seesa steely resolve in the people of Ukraine.

Theyre under a lot of stress right now. They havent been working. The economy is in tatters. They never know when drones or missiles are coming. Kids cant go to school, he said. But the Ukrainians have their heart into the game. They are super optimistic. And everyone you talk to men and women are willing to fight. Theyre into it. Theyre going to protect their country.

Fine said the most optimistic he can be is for Russias leadership to see what hes seen and realize that the war is ultimately unwinnable for them.

Its impossible to know when Russia will end its invasion or whether the Ukrainians will push them back across the borders, but Fine saidtaking care of Ukraines animals is a winnable battle and he plans to keep mustering donations.

Every time [people]donate,we can sterilize more animals. We can fix this, he said. We have a huge job ahead of us. Weve got to do hundreds of thousands more animals. Otherwise it wont be successful.

To contribute to the Ukraine War Animals Relief Fund, visit petfundr.com/campaigns/12CIU0.

brichter@nsnews.com twitter.com/brentrichter

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What is happening with pets in Ukraine? - North Shore News