TRANSLATION MENU: LOOK UPPER RIGHT BELOW THE SOCIAL MEDIA ICONS.

IT OFFERS EVERY LANGUAGE AVAILABLE AROUND THE WORLD!

ALSO, SOCIAL MEDIA AND PRINT ICONS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST!

Pictured above: Pavel Volkov on the left and yours truly on the right.

Sixteen years on the streets, living and working with the people of China, Jeff

For donations, print books, ebooks and audiobooks, please see at the bottom of this post.

Text and audiovisual.

Downloadable audio podcast at the bottom of this page, Brighteon, iVoox, RuVid, as well as being syndicated on iTunes, Stitcher Radio and Reason.fm (links below),

Brighteon Video Channel: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/jeffjbrown

Brighteon video. Be sure to subscribe while watching,

Audio (download at the bottom of this page),

Note before starting: thanks to Trotskyist Platform (Trotskyist Platform fighting to free Australia’s “other Assange”, political prisoner Chan Han Choi. Join the cause! 191101 https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/10/31/trotskyist-platform-fighting-to-free-australias-other-assange-political-prisoner-chan-han-choi-join-the-cause-191101/) for introducing me to Pavel Volkov. What an incredible story! You will be transfixed. Thanks to Pavel’s friend, Sinologist and his son, who helped Pavel with some translation snags.

Also, Pavel contacted me after recording that he misspoke. Russia does not have a reported 150,000 political prisoners. He meant 1,500.

Transcript

Jeff J. Brown (Host): This is Jeff J. Brown China Rising Radio Sinoland and I have a very interesting guest on the show tonight, Mr. Pavel Volkov. How are you doing, Pavel?

Pavel Volkov (Guest): Oh, I’m fine, thank you. Nice to meet you.

Jeff: Pavel reached out to me through the Trotskyist platform in Australia, who I also interviewed a couple of three years ago, and we have stayed in touch and they contacted me and said, hey, this guy wants to talk about prisoners in Ukraine and the problem in Ukraine. And I said, well, heck yeah. So well, Pavel, first off, tell us a little bit about who you are and why you’re here today.

Pavel: All my life, I lived in the city of Zaporozhye in the southwest of Ukraine. I was born there, and I lived there. It’s the region nearby, the Donbas.

Jeff: Okay. All right.

Pavel: Now most of the Zaporozhye region is under the control of Russia, and my native city is under the control of Ukraine.

Jeff: Okay. All right.

Pavel: Yeah. So I lived there till the end of 2022. So when the war began, I was there in my city in Ukraine.

Jeff: And did you fight for Ukraine or did you fight with the Ukrainian army or did you fight with the Russian army, or did you stay out of it? Did you not have to fight? What happened?

Pavel: So I will tell the story. I’m a journalist. And in 2014, I didn’t welcome the Euromaidan. And then I fell into the first wave of political repressions for the journalists and the journalists who did not welcome this issue. And I worked in 2015, and in 2016, I worked in Donbas. I made the reports from the war zone where the Donbas army fought with the Ukrainian army. And in 2017, I spent 13 months in custody risking either a life sentence or 15 years of imprisonment for my reports from Donbas. I was accused in separatism and terrorism.

Jeff: And terrorism by the Ukrainian judicial system.

Pavel: Yes, by the Ukrainian judicial system.

Jeff: And this is because you reported on the Maidan overthrow of the Ukrainian government.

Pavel: Yes, I told you that it was a coup d’etat. So, I went into custody because of this.

Jeff: All right. And what happened when you were in custody? So you were in custody for 13 months?

Pavel: For 13 months and then nearly five years, there was a criminal process against me nearby five years.

Jeff: So you could not leave Ukraine?

Pavel: I could leave Ukraine, but I didn’t want to do this because it could be a problem for the other political prisoners if I fled maybe no nobody of them could leave the custody.

Jeff: So were you under house arrest? Were you forced to, like, stay in your house or stay in your city?

Pavel: I had no preventive measure at all because there was such a law at that time that political prisoners could be only in the detention center or without any measure, no house arrest, no anything at all.

Jeff: So either you were in jail or you weren’t?

Pavel: Yes.

Jeff: When you are out of jail, how did you put food on the table? How did you eat? How did you pay for your rent?

Pavel: Oh, only my relatives. Only with the help of my relatives.

Jeff: Well, thank goodness you had relatives that were loyal to you. Are you married? Were you married or do you have children?

Pavel: Oh, I have no children. And my wife helped me to run through this situation from the very beginning.

Jeff: Okay. All right. And so now you’re in Moscow, what happened after you? How did you get to Moscow?

Pavel: So, you see my story of my acquittal, yes is unique because there are no now there are no similar positive decisions on the cases of journalists accused of separatism or terrorism in Ukraine. So in this sense, the Maidan Ukraine and Post-Maidan Ukraine differ radically because after 2014, political motivation criminal cases began to number in the hundreds, and after 2022, when the Great War began, it was something like a turning point, after which thousands of ordinary people, not only journalists or opposition politicians or ordinary people who have had strong family ties with the Russian Federation or some Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine or especially sympathetic to Russia or Russians who found themselves in the territory of Ukraine at the time of the conflict outbreak, many of them were arrested. And now I want to talk about those people and the fate of those people who are now arrested in Ukraine.

Jeff: Please do so. Please talk.

Pavel: And first of all, maybe I should tell you how I came to Moscow from Ukraine before this. So, despite of the fact that I consider the post-maidan Ukraine an extremely undemocratic country, I considered Maidan a coup d’état. But I never wanted war. I opposed it in 2014 when it became in Donbas and when Ukraine sent tanks to Donbas. So I have not changed my position now. I don’t like war, and I never wanted this war.

But when I was in Ukraine in 2022, I was ready to meet this fate and the bombing maybe together with the residents of my city even if not all of them adhere to my views, you see. But I hope that in these difficult times, we will all help each other. But I was wrong. So despite the fact that I have never violated the laws of Ukraine even the most unfair laws about this separatist or terrorist on the very first day of the war, many neighbors began to insult me and my family because of my Russian origin, because I was born in Ukraine. But I’m Russian.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Pavel: Yes. There are many Russians in Ukraine historically. So they began to threaten me and my family. And a couple of days later the officers of the Security Service of Ukraine came to my house, but I was no longer there because I understood that it could happen. So it took me eight months to find a way to leave Ukraine because no men from 18 to 60 could leave Ukraine because of mobile mobilization. And I didn’t know if I could do this because of the security service. So I gave almost all my savings to the Ukrainian military. Total corruption in Ukraine sometimes saves lives.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Pavel: Yes. And I fleet to the south to Crimea and then to.

Jeff: Oh, so you went to Crimea. Okay.  All right.

Pavel: Yes, because my city of Zaporozhye is in the southeast, and there is no very long way to Crimea from there.

Jeff: And I know, I’m pronouncing it wrong Zaharovitch. Isn’t one of the areas of Ukraine that voted to join the Russian Federation? Hasn’t it voted to join the Russian Federation?

Pavel: Yes, yes. Zaporozhye region voted to join the Russian Federation, but only the part of the Zaporozhye region which is under the control of Russia.

Jeff: Of Russia.

Pavel: It couldn’t be any voting in the area controlled by Ukraine.

Jeff: By Ukraine. How much area is left of Zaporozhye? And I know I’m pronouncing it wrong. Please forgive me.

Pavel: Zaporozhye.

Jeff: Zaporozhye. I got it Zaporozhye. How much of Zaporozhye is under Russian control and how much is left if Russia decides to repatriate the entire province?

Pavel: About two-thirds are under the control of Russia.

Jeff: Okay. All right.

Pavel: But you see the city of Zaporozhye is the main city of this region. It’s the greatest of the population. And so the main population of this region is now under the control of Ukraine because the main city is under the control of Ukraine.

Jeff: Oh, so, the main capital is under the control of Ukraine?

Pavel: Yes, the capital of this region is under the control of Ukraine and it’s my native city.

Jeff: I know that Russia just captured Kurakhove or something like that. But I think that’s further north right? They just captured a major city.

Pavel: Maybe Kurakhovo

.Jeff: Yeah, Kurakhovo. Are they going to try to take over?

Pavel: Kurakhove is in the Donetsk region. It’s Donbas. It’s not Zaporozhia.

Jeff: Okay. What about your region? Are they trying to take that city next? I mean, are they going to try to repatriate your city?

Pavel: Nobody knows now. There are no great battles in this region after maybe June or August 2022.

Jeff: The Russian media reporting when you read Sputnik News and RT.com, they are reporting that 800,000 Ukrainians have died. Do you think that’s true? Do you think that’s an accurate number?

Pavel: Nobody knows exactly because the war propaganda is strong on both sides, of course. But we understand that many, many people died, and it’s a great problem. And nobody exactly wanted that. But it’s the war. And if it passes then there will be more and more victims of this war.

Jeff: Yeah. And are there political prisoners in Ukraine? Are they being tortured or are they being physically tortured or psychologically tortured?

Pavel: I’ll tell you now about this question. So I wanted to tell you that now thousands of civilian prisoners and political prisoners, civilian prisoners in Ukraine who are deprived of their liberty and human rights for likes under incorrect social media posts, internet discussions, friend correspondence with relatives in Russia via messengers, maybe performing professional duties like teaching or treating people in the territories occupied and then abandoned by Russia, in Kherson, maybe in Kharkiv region, and so on. So, the retreats of the Russian army forces from the Kyiv region, from the part of Kharkiv region, and from the Kherson region in late 2022, it was marked by mass arrests which continue to this day. This is what the Security Service of Ukraine calls the stabilization measures.

Jeff: Stabilization.

Pavel: Stabilization, yes.

Jeff: That’s ironic.

Pavel: That’s ironic, I think. I understand. So the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights sees all these violations, but the UN has to be cautious in its formulations not to lose the mandate in Ukraine, you see. So, beneath this politically correct framing, which is in the UN reports is hidden the monstrous reality. And not so many people all over the world recognize this. So I appreciate you that we can speak about this problem. So now in Moscow, I and my colleagues have analyzed many open sources, including reports from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the Regional Prosecutor’s Offices of Ukraine.

Drawing on this data, we can infer that from the beginning of 2022 to the beginning of 2024. This data is not so new. We have to calculate the new data. But to the beginning of 2022, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, National Police, and the Security Office of Ukraine opened more than 740,000 criminal cases that may concern civilians and maybe politically motivated or related to the prosecutions of oppositional opinions and views – to the beginning of 2024

And more than 20,000 people have been informed of suspicion and more than 12,000, 15,000 I don’t know, cases have been brought to court with indictments. So we can now tell that dozens of thousands of people, maybe 10,000 people are holding incorrect views now under politically motivated criminal prosecution. So they may be currently in the detention centers and in prisons. It’s a very high number because we can compare.

Some days ago one Russian opposition who fled from Russia said that there are about 1,500 political prisoners in Russia. I don’t know if it’s true or false, but we can compare it with this number of people in Ukraine. It’s and we can compare with the number of population in these countries. So, we can see where the real repressive regime and the repressive government is. You see, I don’t want to be an advocate for Russian authorities but this data is objective.

Jeff: Yeah. So you think that Russia really has 1,500 political prisoners?

Pavel: I don’t know. I told you only that Russian prisoners say so.

Jeff: Yeah.

Pavel: And I want to compare this data with those about what I tell you in Ukraine.

Jeff: I see. Well, another country that has a lot of political prisoners is the United States. The United States has many, many, many, many people who are locked up for their political views, especially black people, red people American Indians, Mexicans, Latinos. So the United States is also extremely repressive for people who have.

Pavel: As far as I know now, Trump is going to get them off these Latinos from the country reports.

Jeff: Yeah. He wants to evict Latinos from the United States. But that’s another story. Are you able to communicate with any of the Ukrainian political prisoners, or is there any way to communicate with them?

Pavel: I have some ways to communicate with a couple of those people and with their relatives because as I told you, there is great corruption in Ukraine, and some of them can get some mobile telephones.

Jeff: Okay. All right. Well, what do you see happening after Trump gets into the White House? Now it’s going to be in two weeks. He’s going to be in the White House in two weeks, January 20th. What do you think is going to happen in Ukraine as far as the war is concerned?

Pavel: We all are waiting for negotiations, but we don’t know how it will be held or how they will end, but we will wait for them, of course.

Jeff: Do you think that Russia will end? Because obviously, Russia is winning the war. I mean, they’re gaining territory and gaining territory and gaining territory. Do you think that they will ask or demand that one of the conditions be for the negotiations that the rest of your region be incorporated into the Russian Federation?

Pavel: I think it will be one question of this negotiations but I don’t know if this demand will be fulfilled because, of course, Russia is now winning and it’s taking more territories. But it became very, very slow. And people are dying in both armies. So I don’t know if its demand is realistic now in this situation that is going now.

Jeff: Let’s just say that in the negotiations, Russia reincorporates your region and the Donbas region, et cetera. But how could Russia be assured that the rest of Ukraine is not full of Nazis and fascists, because that’s a huge problem in Ukraine is fascism and Nazism. How do they get rid of them?

Pavel: I think now there is no way to deal with this problem.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they are in the Ukrainian government. I mean, my understanding is Nazis and fascists are controlling the Ukrainian government. Do you think that’s true?

Pavel: I think that the Ukrainian government is under the control of the US government. And this is the greatest problem. Because every time Nazis are little part of the people who control the state, control the government. But now they are very, very huge and they’re very strong because they have the support. They have a great, great support from the US and the European Union.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, that would imply that Europe and the United States are fascists too.

Pavel: No, I don’t think so. But I don’t think that the United States ever was a fascist country, but it’s supported. I don’t know the regime of Pinochet in Chile.

Jeff: Many, many fascist governments around.

Pavel: And many of them in Argentina, in Salvador and many, many countries.

Jeff: Exactly. So how are you putting food on the table in Moscow? Moscow is not a cheap city. You have to pay rent, put food on the table and pay for heat. It’s cold. How are you supporting yourself?

Pavel: Of course, I’m working as a journalist.

Jeff: Oh, you are a journalist. Okay. Are you an independent journalist or are you working for?

Pavel: No, I’m a very dependent journalist, very dependent. I work in the state agency journalistic agency.

Jeff: Oh, you work for TASS. Do you work for TASS?

Pavel: No, no, Rossiya Segodnya. It’s not Russia today. Russia Today is international. Rossiya Segodnya, in fact, Russia Today but it’s internal.

Jeff: Yeah. You know, I actually did an interview with them once. I did an interview with your group. They contacted me and they asked me questions and I recorded my answers in English. And then they actually did publish the interview in Russian and then I got and then I think it was both in Russian and English and then I published it in English. So it was a woman. I can’t remember her name. It’s been 2 or 3 years now, but they were very, very nice. So is your wife with you in Moscow? Did she get out too?

Pavel: It’s a great secret.

Jeff: Okay. All right.

Pavel: For the security service of Ukraine.

Jeff: Okay. All right, all right, all right. So what’s happened to your family back in Ukraine? You said your relatives were supporting you. What happened? Are you in communication with them or are they afraid to talk to you?

Pavel: No, I have no problems with my relatives in Ukraine, but it’s a bad idea to talk in public about their life now.

Jeff: Do you have a Ukrainian passport now and a Russian passport, or are you a Russian citizen?

Pavel: Yes, I have two passports now.

Jeff: The two passports. Okay. All right. And do you think that you’ll ever be able to go back to Ukraine?

Pavel: I don’t know if the regime stays the same. It’s impossible for me, but maybe sometimes.

Jeff: If the rest of your region is incorporated or is repatriated to Russia, could you go back then if Russia had administrative control of your region?

Pavel: Of course, I’ll try because I want to see my city and I want to see, my relatives. And I want to see my friends. Some of them are still there, but I don’t know if it will happen, I don’t know.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. And can they come to visit you in Moscow?

Pavel: Oh, as we talked the men from 19 to 60 could not leave Ukraine. And for women, they can leave.

Jeff: Because they want to put an end to the army.

Pavel: Into the army. Yes. And for women, it’s a problem too, because how they can get from Ukraine to Russia now. They need to go to Poland, then to Turkey, then to Russia. And it’s very expensive and a very long way.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Well, this is amazing. Do you think that Russia might try to help all of these political prisoners to get them released as part of the conditions for the negotiations for a settlement?

Pavel: I believe that this condition will be a part of this negotiation. I want to make a petition to the Russian government to put this condition to the negotiation plan. But, you see, the statistics that we talked about, it do not reflect the numbers of missing persons as well as the persons subjected to what is called enforced disappearance. It’s abduction by the state such as for example, my friend journalist Nikolai Sydorenko from Kramatorsk from Donbas.

On March 20th, 22 the city under the control of Ukraine at that time Nikolai was taken from home from home in a car with Kyiv license plates by people in Ukrainian military uniforms. Since then, his relatives have not been able to obtain any news about him. The response to their numerous official requests to the Ukrainian government, it was the same. The authorities have nothing to do with this abduction. They don’t know anything. But he was taken by the people in Ukrainian uniform. And there are many people who disappeared in such a way.

So we don’t know how many people and where are now? So if these people are still alive, they may be held in a number of places not provided by the law. Some apartments, basements, or administrative premises of Local Security Service of Ukraine departments, and so on and so forth. So now the Ukrainian media brands the workers of international humanitarian missions who sometimes try to talk about this problem, they brand these workers as agents of the Kremlin. This issue, they told them is Russian propaganda not worthy of attention. So now, if you please, I’d like to tell you about three main categories of this person persecuted for political reasons.

Jeff: Please.

Pavel: Okay. So the first category as we see there is detainees for their personal views and beliefs. There are people who speak out on various sociopolitical topics in a manner that is not approved by the Ukrainian regime. So they talked about coup d’etat in Maidan. They talk about right-wing radicalism, the language policy of Ukraine, the persecution of the Orthodox Church, or simply those people who provided some comments to Russian media.

Some of them are for example, the oppositional politician from the western city of Ukraine, from the city of Lvov Inna Ivanchko, she may be sentenced to 15 years for propagating the federalization of Ukraine, which is now equated to separatism. You see she did it on Russian television in 2018 before the war began. But now she may be sentenced to 15 years for this or Professor Sergei Shubin from Nikolayev. He was sentenced to 15 years. He is an old man, but he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for making notes in his personal diary with reflections on what life would be like in the Nikolaev region if it were occupied by the Russian army. Only the notes in his diary, you see.

Jeff: Yeah. That’s like George Orwell’s 1984 when Winston is the hero. Winston was writing in his diary in 1984, I think.

Pavel: I think that some of his students told the Secret Service’s service about his views. And then there was a search.

Jeff: They searched his house and found his diary.

Pavel: Yes, his house, and then they found this his diary. Or Kyiv journalist Dmitri Skvortsov, who can get 15 years of imprisonment. He is being accused of violation in the decision of the National Security Council of Ukraine by 2020, but by criticizing the policy of discriminating against ethnic Russians and Orthodox believers in 2016. You see that the decision of the National Security Council was in 2020, and he wrote about the problems in Ukraine in 2016.

But he is accused of this. All the judges from the Cherkasy region, Svetlana Fedorets, she was arrested for justifying Russian aggression. There is a law now in Ukraine because she wanted to reunite with her family in Crimea, and in a private conversation with a friend, expressed doubts that the Russians were specifically targeting residential areas, you see. So a friend handed her over to security service. And there are many other people who are detained for such issues.

And the second category I want to talk about is the detainees for alleged assistance to the Russian army. In many cases, these are people who have been accused of publishing in social media photos or projectile impact locations and guided missiles, Russian missiles. So importantly, most of the sentences for missiles have been handed down without evidence in the hope of a lighter sentence, you see.

Jeff: Unfortunately, you’re cutting out on me. And I don’t know.

Speaker3: Yeah, he’s working.

Jeff: Unfortunately you cut out on me for about one minute. Well, about 30, I lost you.

Pavel: Now, it’s good?

Jeff: Now, it should be okay. It’s okay now.

Pavel: I told about that these missile gunners had been handed down without evidence and the deals within the investigation, it’s a result of their self-incrimination in the hope of a lighter sentence.

Jeff: Yeah.

Pavel: For example, with no confiscation of property, you see, or maybe for the future prisoner exchange with Russia. So there are many examples, for example, teenagers from Bakhmut, Donetsk region Vladimir Markin and Nastia Glushchenko, were sentenced. They were 16 and 18 years old when they were held by the security office of Ukraine Security Service of Ukraine. And now they are sentenced to ten years in prison each for transmitting information to Russian special services about the deployment of the Ukrainian military.

But this is despite the addresses of the information; they were not verified by the court, and strikes were not recorded at the transmission coordinates. So the verdict does not specify any victims or damages, you see. Another is the law of human rights defender, one of the founders of the Ukrainian section of the German International Society for Human Rights, Alexander Castanie. He was given 15 years. He was accused of pointing to Russian calibers which have satellite guidance missiles. Caliber is a Russian missile that has satellite guidance at the landfill according to the map of the local mushroom farm of the ’60s, you see.

Jeff: But you know, Pavel, when they want to lock you up, they’re going to lock you up. I mean, it doesn’t matter what the evidence is or no evidence or they create evidence and frame you with fake evidence. I mean, when they want to lock you up, they’re going to lock you up. I mean, that’s just all there is to it. It’s terrible. Just terrible.

Pavel: So now the man is over 70 years old, so a 15-year sentence can be life.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Since the repression in Ukraine is so bad, are there people in Ukraine who are secretly hoping that Russia will take control of their territory so that they don’t have to deal with this?

Pavel: Of course, there are many people, but we don’t know how many because there is no sociology about this, of course. And these people now don’t have any chance to talk about their views because their fate will be similar.

Jeff: 15 years in prison. 15 years in prison. They like 15 years. That’s the sentence they like is 15 years. Just unbelievable.

Pavel: They like it very much because there is the highest sentence in Ukraine after 15 years, there is only the life sentence.

Jeff: 15 years or life. Oh, God.

Pavel: No, I don’t want to tell you that everyone from these people was sentenced to 15 years, maybe 10 years. Some of them are five, six, or eight years. But, this is also a big problem. So you see, there is an 82-year-old veteran of Afghanistan, war writer Yuri Yury Chernyshov. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and 82 years with confiscation, of course.

He was sentenced for listening for walking near the Zhytomyr City Hall and then writing to an unknown person on the internet. Ukrainian Secret Service thought that it was the Russian Secret Service, but it was a known person. And in the court, they didn’t find out his person. And the assignment is ridiculous. You see what kind of troops also firing near the mayor’s office in the city of Zhytomyr. But it’s easy to deceive an old man.

Jeff: So you said they confiscated his property too?

Pavel: Of course, they confiscate property in almost all the cases.

Jeff: Oh, they confiscate their houses and their cars and all that. Well, they do that in the United States, too, so that happens to a lot of prisoners in the United States, too. They confiscate their property, too.

Pavel: So they have a good example.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. They have a very good example. They have a good leader back in the West. Well, let’s keep our fingers crossed that with Trump coming into the White House. First off, they will stop sending all these missiles and arms to the Ukrainian side. But I think personally and you obviously know a lot more about this region than I do. I’m just an observer. But I think the only solution to Ukraine and to solve the Ukrainian problem is for Russia to go all the way to Lviv, and Hungary and Poland and Slovakia and Moldova and Romania. That’s the only way this is ever going to be solved because otherwise, it will continue.

Pavel: But that’s not going to happen, you know.

Jeff: It’s not going to happen. Yeah. Because otherwise the United States and Europe will continue. They lied about the Minsk agreement. They lied about everything. You know, with Minsk one and Minsk two, why would they just keep lying, and they will just keep supplying the Ukrainians secretly with arms? And it’ll never end. It’ll never end because the United States wants to overthrow Russia. And I don’t see that happening either.

So I don’t know what the solution is, but the United States and Europe have never told the truth. They’ve never honored a treaty. They’ve never honored a treaty. Just ask the American Indians. The Americans have never honored a treaty going back to 1776. So I just don’t know what the solution is. I don’t think it will ever end. So is there anything else you would like to tell us, Pavel? This has been really fascinating. And unfortunately, it’s not a pleasant subject, but it needs to be discussed and brought out into the open.

Pavel: You see, I can talk very much. I can talk about people who worked in the territories occupied by Russia. I can talk about the violence in the colony where the political prisoners are being held if you want to listen to something about it.

Jeff: Well, tell us about the people that were in the Russian territories.

Pavel: Okay.

Jeff: We’ve got about ten minutes. We’ve got ten minutes.

Pavel: Okay. Okay. It’s great. They are detainees for maintaining public life in the territories occupied by Russia. You see, these are the people who disturbed humanitarian aid or worked in public institutions in the areas occupied by the Russian army, such as the Kyiv region, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Kherson in 2022. And after Russian troops left these territories, these people found themselves to be traitors and collaborators, and so on. One of them is Olga Galina. She was deputy chairman of the Berdyansk administration.

It’s the south of the Zaporozhye region near the Sea of Azov. She was the chairman of the Berdyansk Administration for Humanitarian Affairs. And now she may be sentenced to life in prison because she agreed to continue her work in this administration under Russia, you see. So the Secret Service of Ukraine officers kidnaped her student son in the city of Dnipropetrovsk and held him in a place of detention not provided by law, forcing his mother to come to the territory controlled by Ukraine. And then there she was arrested.

Another example in Kherson the Secret Service seized Svetlana Margaritescu, who headed the Kherson Department of Health Protection during the stay of Russian troops in the city. She is accused of treating the Russian military and supplying medicines to Kherson hospitals. You see, it is strictly prohibited to prosecute for such in international law. The Red Cross requires doctors to provide assistance to all victims, regardless of the side of the conflict. But on the contrary, refusing to treat victims on the basis of any ideology, it can be qualified as a criminal act.

Nevertheless, now Svetlana faces ten years of confiscation of her property. Or 43-year-old resident of the city of Kharkiv region Natalia Sabalenka. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison for organizing the work of the post office in her hometown. Or maybe, for example, 33-year-old Irina Polyakova. She worked in the Kherson pretrial detention center under the control of Ukraine and then under the control of Russia. After her arrest, she was accused of treason but she did not receive any evacuation orders from Ukrainian authorities.

And according to her official duties, she simply had no right to leave her place of work. What would she have done? Open the cells or leave the prisoners in locked cells to die or what would she have done? I don’t know. This means that she was charged with treason solely for her work in law enforcement agencies in enemy-occupied territories, and it is explicitly prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Yeah, well, she now receives six years in prison with confiscation of her property.

Jeff: Unbelievable. Well, I think what we have to do is just hope that things will be different under Trump. I know that Biden just signed off on another $8 billion worth of arms to be fed to the Ukrainian army. And we know that was Israel, actually. But anyway, hundreds of billions of dollars have been pumped into the Ukrainian army. And let’s just hope that it slows down or is stopped after Trump gets into office.

But I imagine that the Russians are in a powerful position. They are in a powerful negotiating position and I’m sure that the Russians are going to be asking for an awful lot. And it’ll just be interesting to see. But then Germany last week, planning on sending soldiers to Ukraine. Germany wants to send soldiers to Ukraine. So if it’s not the United States, you’ve got the Europe Western Europe there. You know, it’s just they’re Russia phobia. They’re Russia’s Phobia.

Pavel: I don’t think the Germans will send any troops there. It’s now a great political crisis in Germany. And there is a rise of far-right and far-left in Germany who oppose this politics. So I don’t think it could happen.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Pavel: But you see in the end, I just want to say that no military actions can be an excuse for mass persecutions, for views and opinions, and even more so for humanitarian volunteering. So I am only convinced that for all people of goodwill around the world, regardless of their political views, regardless of which side of the conflict they support, it’s not an issue. They should demand the immediate release of all political prisoners because it’s not a crime to talk about your views and your hopes and thoughts about the fate of your country, about the future of your country, of your people. It’s not a crime, I think. So they must be released immediately.

Jeff: Well, Pavel Volkoff, this has been an incredibly interesting discussion. I’d like to thank the sinologist who we can’t see. But I saw him before the show started. He helped with some of the translation of the Russian. Since my Russian is zero. Other than knowing Moskva, I’d maybe say Moskva correctly, but other than that and Saint Petersburg. But other than that, my Russian is non-existent. Well, let’s stay in touch, and maybe we’ll have you back on the show after Trump gets in office and we’ll see what happens with the developments of if there’s any negotiations and we can get you back on the show. What do you think? And you can give us an update.

Pavel: Great. I always like, to talk about this issue, and it will be very interesting and very useful, I think.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Pavel Volkov, a former, I guess, former Ukrainian who is now… Oh no, he’s binational. Sorry, my phone is going off because my partner has a Chinese lesson in four minutes. But anyway, this has been incredibly interesting. It’s been a little bit depressing, but you know, it needs to be brought out into the open. And I think it’s been extremely useful. I think a lot of people are going to be extremely interested in this interview, and I’ll blast it out all over my social media, and I’m sure it’ll get a lot of attention. Can I send you the transcript so that you can correct all the Russian names and stuff, all the Russian names, and all the proper names?

Pavel: Of course. Of course.

Jeff: Before I publish that way, they’ll be spelled correctly. Because of my editor, I don’t know how good the transcript will be when I get it transcribed. Well, Pavel, I will give you a Buddhist bow here in Taiwan Province in China, and take care of yourself. Take care of your family as best as you can and let’s stay in touch, okay?

Pavel: Okay. Thank you very much. Stay in touch.

Jeff: And thank you, Sinologist. Thank you, Sinologist and his son.

###

IMPORTANT NOTICE: techofascism is already here! I’ve been de-platformed by StumbleUpon (now Mix) and Reddit. I am being heavily censored by Facebook, Instagram, Quora, SoundCloud, Substack, TikTok, X and can no longer use StumbleUpon/Mix, Tumblr and YouTube. It’s only a matter of time before they de-platform me too. Please start using Brighteon for my videos, then connect with me via other social media listed below, especially VK, Telegram, Gettr, Gab and WeChat, which are not part of the West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM).

I will post EVERYTHING I produce on my Twitter and Telegram channels, including useful news and information you may not come across, so subscribe for FREE, for the most frequent updates,

Daily news: https://twitter.com/44_Days

Daily news: https://t.me/jeffjbrown

I also write shorter pieces on Seek Truth From Facts,

https://seektruthfromfacts.org/category/cwg/

And edit STFF’s Guest Submissions,

https://seektruthfromfacts.org/guess-submissions/

Also, sign up for my FREE email newsletter…

Support, donations and contributions for my work here, any amount, one time or monthly,

A to Z support. Thank you in advance, Jeff

Checks or cash: mail to: Jeff J. Brown, 7 rue du Général de Gaulle, Équeurdreville 50120, France

Donorbox: www.donorbox.com, find China Rising Radio Sinoland

Euro bank wires: 44 Days Publishing, Bank: TransferWise, IBAN: BE70 9672 2959 5225

FundRazr: https://fundrazr.com/CRRS_2021_fundraiser?ref=ab_78aX23

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/China_Rising_Radio_Sinoland OR https://www.patreon.com/China_Tech_News_Flash

Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/ChinaRisingRadioSino

Stripe US$/ApplePay: https://buy.stripe.com/14k8zl5tp5mVeT66op

Stripe Euros/ApplePay: https://buy.stripe.com/fZe02P8FB9DbcKY28a

US bank wires: Jeff J. Brown, Bank of Oklahoma, Routing Number/ABA: 103900036, Account: 309163695

WeChat and Alipay:

Do yourself, your friends, family and colleagues a favor, to make sure all of you are Sino-smart: 

Google ebooks (Epub) and audiobooks:

44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YBKHEAAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCkQXRlM

China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YNmLEAAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCfHo86M

BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6Wl4EAAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCfHo86M

Amazon print and ebooks (Kindle):

44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484939999/

China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations

https://www.amazon.com/China-Rising-Capitalist-Socialist-Destinations/dp/0996487042

BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution

https://www.amazon.com/BIG-Red-Book-China/dp/1673322719/

Author page:

https://www.amazon.com/Mr.-Jeff-J.-Brown/e/B00TX0TDDI

Praise for The China Trilogy:

https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/

Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History

44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass

China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in deniner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

Wechat group: search the phone number +8619806711824 or my ID, Mr_Professor_Brown, friend request and ask Jeff to join the China Rising Radio Sinoland Wechat group. He will add you as a member, so you can join in the ongoing discussion.