Thirty years after Westray disaster, families say justice still rare in worker deaths

NEW GLASGOW, N.S. — Family members who lost loved ones in the Westray coal mining disaster in Nova Scotia marked the 30th anniversary Monday, while continuing their calls for more criminal prosecutions of workplace deaths.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

Thirty years after Westray disaster, families say justice still rare in worker deaths

Genesta Halloran-Peters, who was scheduled to speak at a memorial gathering Monday evening, says the loss of her husband, John Halloran, had a huge impact on the direction of her life and the lives of their two children.

"My daughter was 11 weeks old and my son was 22 months old at the time," she said in a recent interview from Antigonish, N.S. "My children were so deprived of John's wisdom, his love and support. Every special occasion his absence was felt.

"I think it would have been easier to deal with if it wasn't preventable," she said. "It was production at all costs; it was pure intimidation (of the workers)."

Halloran was one of 26 miners who died on May 9, 1992, when a methane and coal-dust explosion ripped through the shafts in Plymouth, N.S. Eleven miners' bodies were never recovered from a shaft, located near the memorial site in New Glasgow, N.S.

Halloran-Peters and Debbie Martin, the sister-in-law of miner Glenn Martin, who died in the blast, said the Criminal Code amendments brought in through Bill C-45 — referred to as the Westray law — should be applied more often. They say more training is required for police officers on how to investigate and provide evidence for potential prosecutions.

The amendments allow for criminal negligence convictions when the Crown can demonstrate that an employer was responsible for directing a worker and also showed "wanton or reckless" disregard for that worker's safety.

However, Martin said the amendments haven't resulted in many successful cases since the legislation was adopted in 2004. "It (the Westray law) is not being pushed enough. There's not enough enforcement. There's not enough training," she said in a recent interview.

The United Steelworkers recently published a legal brief saying that to date, there have only been nine convictions or guilty pleas across the country — and no convictions in Nova Scotia.



Meanwhile, the Steelworkers note that about 900 to 1,000 workers die of work-related causes each year in Canada, across all sectors of the economy. Thousands of other deaths from occupational disease go unrecognized, the Steelworkers said.

The union's national campaign, "Stop the Killing, Enforce the Law," is calling for increased training for law enforcement and Crown prosecutors in using the Westray law. The union is also calling for the appointment of dedicated police officers and prosecutors to investigate and prosecute workplace fatalities when gross negligence is involved.

Alex Keaveny, the workplace safety prosecutor in Nova Scotia, prosecuted the province's first charges under the Westray law, against the owner of an auto shop where a worker died in 2013 while using a welding torch to remove a gas tank.

However, the owner — who was later fined for workplace safety violations — was acquitted of criminal negligence charges in 2019.

Keaveny said in a recent interview that the test of "wanton and reckless" disregard for the safety of workers is a difficult one to meet.

"The test for criminal negligence is quite a stringent one and often the evidence to show that higher degree of negligence is hard to marshal … as in many of these circumstances the main witness is deceased," he said.

Steven Bittle, a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa, said a federal government review and redrafting of the Westray law is needed to ensure it achieves its original aims of holding company officers accountable for worker deaths.

"It was promised as something that would fundamentally change corporate criminal liability and would hold people accountable, and by any standards it just hasn't come close to achieving those goals," said Bittle, who also is the author of "Still Dying for a Living," published in 2012.

In most cases where companies were either convicted or pleaded guilty as a result of the Westray amendments, large fines have been imposed, rather than "flesh and blood" executives and owners being held accountable, Bittle said.

"It's not achieving much in terms of deterrent, except in cases where it's a small company that is owner-operated," he said. "For large companies, it's merely the cost of business to pay a fine and go on doing business afterwards."

According to the United Steelworkers, of the nine successful prosecutions to date, there have been seven convictions of corporations, with fines imposed. Two individuals were convicted: a construction project manager in Ontario was sentenced to three and a half years, and the owner of a Quebec landscape company was sentenced to two years served in the community.

Halloran-Peters also said she's come to believe the law has to be rewritten to make it easier to prosecute companies for criminal negligence. "Is it well worded? Is there a loophole that allows people to get out of it (prosecution)? I don't want any ambiguity in that law," she said.

Meanwhile, Halloran-Peters said she still finds great comfort in attending the memorial services alongside other family members of victims.

"I find peace going to the memorial because I realize I never was alone in my grief," she said. "I never was alone in my fight for justice. I never was alone in dealing with the circumstances that came with this."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 9, 2022.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press

Research shows grizzly bears and wolves avoid towns, trails in Alberta's Bow Valley

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A study that looked at data on the movement of grizzly bears and wolves in Alberta's Bow Valley shows the animals avoid towns and developed areas when lots of people are around.

Research published last month in the journal Movement Ecology analyzed two decades of global-positioning information from 34 grizzly bears and 33 wolves. The animals had been fitted with collars in and around Banff National Park west of Calgary.

"We wanted to really understand how grizzly bears and wolves were using the landscape and responding to our activities both inside and outside the national parks," Jesse Whittington, a Banff park wildlife ecologist who was the study's lead author, said in an interview.

The data, he said, included 156,000 GPS locations collected in an area that spanned about 17,000 square kilometres.

Researchers found that grizzly bears and wolves responded differently to people depending on whether it was day or night and how close they were to developed areas.

"One of the striking things from our paper is the strategies wolves and grizzly bears use to avoid encountering people," said Whittington. "As they travel through the landscape, if they have a choice, they will try to avoid encountering us."

Whittington said that means the animals zip through towns and any spots with a lot of people.

"The sites they select for feeding and resting, which are absolutely essential for their survival ... are far from towns and have very low human use," he said.

"When we have busy landscapes like the Bow Valley, we need to make sure they provide secure, high-quality habitat that has minimal human disturbance."

Mark Hebblewhite, a wildlife biology professor at the University of Montana and a study co-author, said the results are important.

"Development in the Bow Valley has been a multi-decade conservation challenge for both Parks Canada and also Alberta Environment and Canmore," he said.

The study, he said, was partly prompted by a debate in the town of Canmore, which borders Banff National Park, about whether to allow more development on its eastern edge.

"That development has the potential to reshape not only Canmore, but also ecological integrity in the entire region, including Banff National Park," said Hebblewhite.

A draft of the study was submitted to the town last year during hearings for two proposed projects, which would have almost doubled the population in the coming decades.

The proposals, which included about 80 per cent of Canmore's remaining developable land, were both rejected by town council. They are now before the courts after the developer sued the town.

Experts who presented at the hearings said the plan to provide homes for up to another 14,500 residents and tourists would have added more pressure to an already busy valley.

Hebblewhite said he and the other researchers wanted to broaden the environmental debate.

"Our goal in this analysis was to try to provide greater context about the effects of that development and other developments in general," he said. "Large carnivores, which are a flagship species, are just an indicator for all other types of species."

He noted that the Bow Valley has already lost 80 to 85 per cent of its best wildlife habitat, and the developments that were proposed in Canmore would have increased that by another three per cent.

"Somebody might say, 'Three per cent, that's no big deal,'" he said. "But that's moving the needle from 85 per cent disturbed and lost habitat to 88 per cent.

"That's, in my mind, significant because it puts the debate over this property or that property in a valley-wide context."

It's getting to the point where animals won't be able to make it through the Bow Valley, a key corridor used by animals to move around in the Rocky Mountains, Hebblewhite said.

The research has even larger implications, he added.

"One of the main challenges to national parks — not just in Canada, not just in Banff, but around the world — is exactly what's happening in Canmore: exploding and burgeoning development on a border of a park. Because why? Everybody wants to live there," he said.

"Without some sort of a co-ordinated federal, provincial plan, the very same thing that attracts everybody to live there will lead it to being loved to death."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May9, 2022.

Colette Derworiz, The Canadian Press

ALBERTA

Anti-Safe Supply Report Panned by Critics

More than 50 research scientists, doctors and people who use drugs say the conclusions of a report on safe supply commissioned by an Alberta legislative committee are unsupported and “potentially dangerous” to people who use drugs.

The report, “Public Supply of Addicted Drugs: A Rapid Review,” by four researchers affiliated with Simon Fraser University, concludes there are no documented benefits of safe supply, a harm reduction strategy that separates people from an increasingly poisoned and unpredictable drug supply by providing regulated, pharmaceutical-grade dosages of typically criminalized substances.

It was commissioned and paid for by a controversial Alberta legislative committee examining safe supply. The four NDP members resigned in February saying the process was a sham designed to support the United Conservative Party’s anti-harm reduction agenda.

In an open letter to the Alberta panel Monday, 53 experts from across B.C., Alberta and Ontario warned the report is deeply flawed and should not be used to inform the panel’s recommendations.

The report fails to acknowledge evidence documenting the beneficial impacts of safe supply and prematurely discounts its life-saving potential, they wrote.

It is also “critically low-quality,” according to a standardized research assessment they conducted, the letter said.

“Clearly, accepting the status quo is not acceptable, and we must explore novel interventions with potential to save lives,” reads the letter, published by the BC Centre on Substance Use.

“Safer supply is one such intervention, and until we have high quality outcome data from safer supply evaluations, reports such as the one discussed herein are unhelpful and potentially dangerous.”

And another Monday letter from the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs expressed deep concerns that the perspectives and expertise of drug users was ignored by the report.

“As the people most affected by the current contaminated drug supply, we were disappointed to see this offensive and flawed report come from researchers working at a Canadian university, and request that you give no serious consideration to it when deliberating safe supply policy,” wrote association executive director Natasha Touesnard to the Alberta panel.

“We are the true experts, who live by the philosophy ‘Nothing about us without us.’”

More Albertans died of toxic drugs in 2021 than in any year on record, with 1,758 deaths. For the first time, that’s more per capita deaths than B.C., where 2,232 people died of toxic drug poisonings.

Alberta’s United Conservative Party government, which has fought a number of harm reduction efforts since taking power in 2019, convened a panel of legislators to examine the possibility of implementing safe supply in December.

A number of research and advocacy organizations, including the BC Centre on Substance Use and Moms Stop the Harm, have withdrawn from the chance to present to the panel for fear of legitimizing what they say is a biased process.

Four researchers at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction — Julian Somers, Dr. Paul Sobey, Dr. Akm Moniruzzaman and Stefanie Rezansoff — were commissioned by the safe supply panel to report key evidence on the efficacy of safe supply. Their report, published last month, is not peer-reviewed.

The report’s authors concluded there is “no evidence demonstrating benefits” of safe supply.

Experts, including B.C. provincial health officers, chief coroner and drug user advocacy groups, have repeatedly called for safe supply to prevent deaths while other supports are increased and issues like criminalization, poverty, racism, poor housing and stigma are addressed.

The two letters released Monday say the report’s authors ignored evaluations of safe supply that have taken place in Canada and reach conclusions “not based on scientific evidence.”

They also point out several false claims made about the nature and definition of safe supply made in the report.

“While they do not cite any evidence demonstrating that safer supply interventions are ineffective or harmful, the report’s authors still claim that this is a dangerous and unethical form of intervention with immense potential for harm,” read the BC Centre on Substance Use letter. “They write that the provision of safer supply will be ‘associated with highly probable adverse effects,’ but fail to cite empirical work to support this claim.”

The politicization of research on substance has been seen time and time again, centre research director Thomas Kerr said in an interview, including in a controversial and widely-criticized report on supervised consumption sites ordered by the Alberta government in 2019.

“The authors may have done good science in the past… but the report just doesn’t hold up,” said Kerr, who co-ordinated the letter.

“When we see what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working enough, usually that motivates us to try something new and innovative. But you don’t pronounce an intervention a failure before an evaluation is complete.”

In an emailed statement to The Tyee, Somers characterized support for safe supply as “providing addictive drugs without reservation,” and said he and co-authors were more concerned with “evidence-based interventions that address root causes of addiction.”

“We’ve had little time to examine the letter but are enthused that our review has elicited such an impassioned reaction from Canada’s ‘harm reduction’ establishment,” he wrote.

The BC Coroners Service has consistently reported that the majority of people dying are not addicted and the current safe supply options are not contributing to deaths in B.C.

The unprecedented toxicity of the supply is killing people no matter how frequently they use, and is not an addiction crisis, a recent death review panel convened by the chief coroner found.

Kerr hopes the Alberta panel, which has extended its review process, will take the extra time to reflect on the growing and promising evidence in support of safe supply.

Safe supply needs to be in place to allow further evaluation, he said. “It could save a lot of lives, but we need to find that out.”

Moira Wyton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Tyee

Training, Weapons, Intel: The US Military's Slow Slide Toward Confrontation with Russia over Ukraine




Travis Tritten
Fri, May 6, 2022

In early March, defense officials avoided even confirming the first Stinger missiles were being sent to Ukraine amid concerns of escalating the conflict as Russian troops marched toward Kyiv, and defense analysts counted the days until Russian President Vladimir Putin would likely control the government of his next-door neighbor.

But over the last two months, as Ukraine has made a stand and fought back against the invasion, the aid has ballooned to billions of dollars' worth of helicopters, armored vehicles, newly developed drones and artillery.

Reports this week that U.S. intelligence had helped Ukraine sink a Russian warship and kill Russian generals on the battlefield were the latest signs of what appears to be the Pentagon's slow, steady march to deeper involvement in the European war.

The Pentagon has now moved to releasing itemized lists of the thousands of weapons, ammunition and hardware now being shipped to allies in Kyiv. It has also announced a new Florida National Guard mission to train Ukrainians on the howitzers and radar systems in Germany, creating a rotating pipeline of skilled troops to fight the Russians.

The use of U.S. intel in the sinking of the ship Moskva by Ukrainian missiles and Russia's stunning loss of about a dozen generals in the war was not publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon, despite reports by multiple news outlets. Still, it was met with an acknowledgment that the military is sharing vital battlefield intelligence with Ukraine.

"We try to provide them useful and relevant, timely intelligence so that they can better defend themselves," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday. "But ultimately, they make the decision about what they're going to do with that information."

The loss of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, and the loss of generals have been an international embarrassment for Moscow, if not strategic victories that have shifted momentum to Ukraine.

The changing U.S. involvement is at least partly due to the changing nature of the war, which began Feb. 24 when Putin invaded Ukraine. Early in the conflict, the Ukrainians were seen as underdogs, but Putin's forces floundered, and the U.S. and the West became bolder in their assistance to Kyiv.

The war has now shifted to the eastern Donbas, a flat region where artillery will play a key role in the fight as it stretches into its third month. Ukrainian requests for armor and larger weapons have been granted.

The Pentagon has been authorized to send about $4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of the war, with the bulk of that coming over the past month. In mid-April, President Joe Biden ordered the first 18 of the M777 howitzers and 40,000 rounds be sent to Ukraine. The announcement detailed 1,400 Stinger and 5,500 Javelin shoulder-fired missiles, as well as 22 other categories of weapons and battlefield supplies, including armored personnel carriers, helicopters, radars and drones.

Another 72 howitzers and 144,000 rounds, as well as vehicles to tow the cannons, were authorized by Biden on April 21 -- a massive increase from the first tranche. The president is now requesting Congress approve a $33 billion aid package for Ukraine, with $16 billion of that directed to the Pentagon.

On Friday, the White House announced yet another package of "artillery munitions, radars, and other equipment." The new aid amounted to $100 million, according to Reuters.

In addition to the massive uptick in weapons headed to Ukraine, the Pentagon announced that U.S. troops would start training the Ukrainians on the equipment. A Florida National Guard unit recently pulled from Ukraine in the lead-up to Russia's invasion had never left the continent and is now heading up that mission, it said last week.

The 160 Guard troops assigned to the 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, known as Florida's "Gator Brigade," are training the Ukrainians on the M777 howitzers and radar systems in Grafenwoehr, Germany, and other sites in Europe that the Pentagon did not disclose.

So far, the Guard has trained 150 Ukrainians on the howitzers. Another 15 have completed training on AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radar system, and 60 on the M113 armored personnel carriers, Kirby said Friday. Another 50 are in training on the M113 now, he said.

The military's involvement in the Ukraine war has "absolutely" increased since the start, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I see two things going on. One of them is an increased willingness to talk about what we're doing," Cancian said. "If you're an administration being criticized for not doing enough, the inclination is to say more about what you are doing.

"But there's no question we're doing more over time," he said.

In the early days of the war, the U.S. was sending Javelins and Stinger missiles that accounted for roughly $50 million per day. By last month, that average was closer to $100 million per day, according to Cancian.

The Ukrainians had already been training on those weapons, as well as some of the other Soviet-era weapons that the West had supplied to help in its war effort. But the addition of U.S. arms, such as the M777 howitzer and the Sentinel radar system, required training, which required the expertise of the Guard.

"Each step, you can see both an increase in cost and an increase in the scope of the activity," Cancian said.

The next step in U.S. involvement is likely to be the addition of defense contractors inside Ukraine to maintain the influx of American weapons systems, which are flooding into Ukraine and may risk being sidelined without proper handling and care, Cancian said.

Biden has insisted U.S. troops will not enter Ukraine. But the administration could find a workaround by funding Ukrainian maintenance contracts with foreign companies, he said.

"All the equipment that we're giving to the Ukrainians is just too extensive to be absorbed in the short amount of time that we're giving them," Cancian said. "I think we're just asking too much, frankly, and I think what's going to happen is that, when that becomes apparent, we'll start using contractors in some way."

-- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten.

Russia's Grave Miscalculation: Ukrainians Would Collaborate

Andrew E. Kramer
Sat, May 7, 2022

Steel workers wear fire protective gear toil on the maintenance of the blast furnace at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, May 5, 2022.

 (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine — The solicitation to commit treason came to Oleksandr Vilkul on the second day of the war, in a phone call from an old colleague.

Vilkul, the scion of a powerful political family in southeastern Ukraine that was long seen as harboring pro-Russian views, took the call as Russian troops were advancing to within a few miles of his hometown, Kryvyi Rih.

“He said, ‘Oleksandr Yurivich, you are looking at the map, you see the situation is predetermined,’” Vilkul said, recalling the conversation with a fellow minister in a former, pro-Russian Ukrainian government.

“Sign an agreement of friendship, cooperation and defense with Russia and they will have good relations with you,” the former colleague said. “You will be a big person in the new Ukraine.”

The offer failed spectacularly. Once war had begun, Vilkul said, the gray area seeped out of Ukrainian politics for him. Missiles striking his hometown made the choice obvious: He would fight back.

“I responded with profanity,” Vilkul said.

If the first months of the war in Ukraine became a military debacle for the Russian army — deflating the reputations of its commanders and troops in a forced retreat from Kyiv — the Russian invasion also highlighted another glaring failure: Moscow’s flawed analysis of the politics of the country it was attacking. The miscalculation led to mistakes no less costly in lives for the Russian army than the faulty tactics of tank operators who steered into bogs.

The Kremlin entered the war expecting a quick and painless victory, predicting that the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would fracture and that leading officials in the largely Russian-speaking eastern region would gladly switch sides. That has not happened.

The political myopia was most significant in the country’s east, political analysts say.

In all but a tiny number of villages, Russia failed to flip local politicians to its side. Ukrainian authorities have opened 38 cases of treason, all targeting low-level officials in individual instances of betrayal.

“Nobody wanted to be part of that thing behind the wall,” said Kostyantyn Usov, a former member of Parliament from Kryvyi Rih, referring to Russia’s isolated, authoritarian system.

He said that system had dismal appeal in Ukraine and noted the absence of widespread collaboration with Russia, including among Ukrainians who speak Russian and share the country’s cultural values.

“We are part of something bright,” he said of Ukraine. “It is here, with us, in our group. And they have nothing to offer.”

Other prominent, once Russian-leaning politicians including Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv, and Hennady Trukhanov, the mayor of Odesa, also remained loyal and became fierce defenders of their cities.

Along with leaders in the southeast, Ukrainian people also resisted. Street protests against occupation in Kherson continue despite lethal dangers for participants. One man stood in front of a tank. Kryvyi Rih’s miners and steelworkers have shown no signs of pivoting allegiance to Russia.

“Before the war, we had ties to Russia,” said Serhiy Zhyhalov, 36, a steel mill engineer, referring to familial, linguistic and cultural bonds. But no longer, he said. “No one has any doubts that Russia attacked us.”

Ukraine’s southeastern regions, an expanse of steppe and blighted industrial and mining cities, is now the focus of fighting in the war.

Driving south from Kyiv, the highway leaves behind the dense pine forests and reedy swamps of northern Ukraine, and the landscape opens into expansive plains. Farm fields stretch out to the horizons, in brilliant, yellow blossoming rapeseed or tilled black earth.

In many ways, the region is entwined with Soviet and Russian history. The iron and coal industries shaped southeastern Ukraine. In and around the city of Kryvyi Rih are iron ore deposits; the coal is farther east, near the city of Donetsk.

The two mineral basins, known as the Kryvbas and the Donbas, gave birth to a metallurgical industry that drew in many nationalities from around the Czarist and Soviet empires from the late 19th century onward, with Russian becoming the lingua franca in the mining towns. Villages remained mostly Ukrainian-speaking.

The region for years elected Russian-leaning politicians such as Vilkul, a favorite villain to Ukrainian nationalists for promoting Soviet-style cultural events that angered many Ukrainians. He staged, for example, a singalong party in Kryvyi Rih to belt out “Katyusha,” a Russian song associated with the Soviet World War II victory.

More substantively, Vilkul ascended in politics under the former, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in whose government he served as deputy prime minister until street protesters deposed Yanukovych in 2014.

Much of the rest of Yanukovych’s Cabinet fled with him to Russia. But Vilkul remained in Ukraine as a de facto political boss of Kryvyi Rih while his aging father served as the city’s mayor.

And he caught Moscow’s eye. In 2018, Vilkul said, he was told through an intermediary that “the time of chaos is over” and that he should now follow orders from Moscow if he wished to remain in politics in the southeast. He said he refused.

The Russians, he said, had not even bothered to court him, they only leveled demands. He said Moscow took the same approach to other politicians in Ukraine’s east. “They didn’t even try to convince us,” he said. “They just thought we would be, a priori, on their side.”

On the eve of the war, Vilkul was most likely the Russian-leaning politician in Ukraine with the broadest popular support. “I was alone on this level,” he said. He was also viewed by Moscow as a promising potential convert to its side when it invaded Ukraine.

That’s when the call came to Vilkul’s cellphone from Vitaly Zakharchenko, a Ukrainian in exile in Russia who had served as interior minister under Vilkul in Yanukovych’s government. He recommended Vilkul cooperate with the Russians.

“I told him to get lost,” Vilkul said. “I didn’t even consider it.”

Vilkul said he had been misunderstood — by Russia’s leadership and his nationalist opposition at home. A great-grandfather, he said, had fought White Russians in the civil war. The Vilkul family, he said, “has been fighting Russians on this land for a hundred years.”

The Kremlin, he said, had misinterpreted his respect for World War II veterans and support for rights of Russian speakers as potential support for a renewed Russian empire, something he said was a mistake. He called the Russians “classic megalomaniacs.”

“They mistook common language and values like attitudes to the Second World War and Orthodoxy as a sign that somebody loves them,” he said.

A second offer, this time presented publicly by another Ukrainian exile, Oleh Tsaryov, in a post on Telegram, came about a week later, when Russian troops had advanced to within 6 miles of the city. “My fellow party members and I have always taken a pro-Russian stance,” the post said, referring to Vilkul and his father, and added ominously that “cooperation with the Russian army means preserving the city and lives.”

Vilkul responded with an obscene post on Facebook.

On the first days of the invasion, Vilkul ordered the region’s mining companies to park heavy equipment on the runway of the city’s airport, thwarting an airborne assault, and on approach roads, slowing tank columns. The tires were then popped and engines disabled.

The city’s steel industry began to turn out tank barriers and plates for armored vests. Zelenskyy, whose hometown is Kryvyi Rih, appointed Vilkul military governor of the city on the third day of the war, though the two had been political opponents in peacetime.

Vilkul has taken to wearing fatigues and a camouflage bandanna. A parade of Ukrainian nationalists, including the leader of the Right Sector paramilitary, Dmytro Yarosh, and a prominent activist and military officer, Tetiana Chernovol, once sworn enemies of the Vilkul family, have shown up in his office to shake his hand.

“If we fight the Russians,” he said, “were we ever really pro-Russian, in essence?”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

CULTURAL GENOCIDE

Kharkiv region: Russians destroy Skovoroda Museum with missile strike, one injured


Ukrayinska Pravda
Olha Hlushchenko - Saturday, 7 May 2022

Russian invaders have destroyed the Hryhorii Skovoroda National Museum in the Kharkiv region.

Source: Suspilne Kharkiv quoting Viktor Kovalenko, Head of the municipality (hromada) of Zolochiv

Details: The aggressors destroyed the building with a direct Russian missile strike on the night of 6-7 May.

The shell flew under the roof of the building, and a fire broke out. The fire engulfed the entire museum premises.

As a result of the shelling, the 35-year-old son of the museum director, who had stayed overnight to guard the premises, was injured. The man was pulled out from under the rubble, medics diagnosed him with a leg injury and sent him to hospital.

Why this is important: The museum is located in the village of Skovorodynivka. The building dated back to the XVIII century, on an estate where Hryhorii Skovoroda (outstanding and much-loved Ukrainian philosopher, poet, teacher and composer - ed.) worked for the last years of his life and was buried. Ukraine will celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian philosopher this winter.

Ukraine's Zelenskiy 'speechless' after shelling destroys museum dedicated to Cossack poet & philosopher

 

Sat, May 7, 2022, 

(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday he was speechless after Russian shelling destroyed a museum dedicated to the 18th century philosopher and poet Hryhoriy Skovoroda.

The overnight attack in the village of Skovorodynivka in eastern Ukraine hit the roof of the museum, setting the building ablaze and injuring a 35-year-old custodian. The most valuable items had earlier been moved for safety, said Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Sinegubov.

"Every day of this war the Russian army does something that leaves me speechless. But then the next day it does something else that makes you feel the same way again," Zelenskiy said in a late night video address.

"Targeted strikes against museums - not even terrorists would think of this. But this is the kind of army we are fighting against," he said.

Skovoroda, of Ukraine Cossack origin, spent the last years of his life in the village of Ivanovka, which was later renamed in his honour - Skovorodynivka.

"This year marks the 300th anniversary of the great philosopher's birth," Sinegubov said in a post on social media. "The occupiers can destroy the museum where Hryhoriy Skovoroda worked for the last years of his life and where he was buried. But they will not destroy our memory and our values."

Moscow calls its actions a "special military operation" to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West. Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked act of aggression.

Gregory Skovoroda - Wikipedia

Gregory Skovoroda, also Hryhoriy Skovoroda, or Grigory Skovoroda (Latin: Gregorius Scovoroda; Ukrainian: Григорій Савич Сковорода, Hryhoriy Savych Skovoroda; Russian: Григо́рий Са́ввич Сковорода́, Grigory Savvich Skovoroda; 3 December 1722 – 9 November 1794) was a philosopher of Ukrainian Cossack origin who lived and worked in the Russian Empire. He was also a poet, teacher and composer of liturgical music. His significant influence on his contemporaries and succeeding generations and his way of life were universally regarded as Socratic, and he was often called a "Socrates."^[2][3] Skovoroda's work contributed to the cultural heritage of both modern-day Ukraine and Russia.^[4][5][6][7]

Skovoroda wrote his texts in a mixture of three languages: Church Slavic, Russian, and Ukrainian, with a large number of Western-Europeanisms, and quotations in Latin and Greek.^[8] Most of his preserved letters were written in Latin or Greek, but a small fraction used the variety of Russian of the educated class in Sloboda Ukraine, a result of long Russification but with many Ukrainianisms still evident.^[8]

He received his education at the Kiev Mogila Academy in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine). Haunted by worldly and spiritual powers, the philosopher led a life of an itinerant thinker-beggar. In his tracts and dialogs, biblical problems overlap with those examined earlier by Plato and the Stoics. Skovoroda's first book was issued after his death in 1798 in Saint Petersburg. Skovoroda's complete works were published for the first time in Saint Petersburg in 1861. Before this edition many of his works existed only in manuscript form.

Gregory Skovoroda
Born	3 December 1722 village of Chernukhi, Lubny Regiment, Cossack Hetmanate/Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine)
Died	9 November 1794 (age 71) village of Ivanovka, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Occupation	Writer, composer, teacher
Language	Latin, Greek, Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, Russian[1]

War rumours bewilder Moldova's pro-Russian separatist enclave


Flags of Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniestria and Russia

 flutter in central Tiraspol

By Peter Graff

Fri, May 6, 2022, 

RYBNITSA, Transdniestria, Moldova (Reuters) -"Of course we're afraid," said pensioner Marina Martalog, walking across a long bridge over the Dniestr River to her home in Transdniestria, a pro-Russian breakaway sliver of Moldova along the border with Ukraine. "Who isn't afraid of war?"

Alongside her, the bridge was choked with cars and trucks, backed up across the entire 400 metre span because of extra checks from Transdniestria's separatist authorities, who have announced a state of emergency after what they say was a week of terrorist attacks aimed at drawing the region into the Ukraine war next door.

Reported shootings and explosions have turned the territory of Transdniestria - long an anomaly on the post-Soviet map rarely noticed by the outside world - into the subject of international speculation that the Ukraine war could spill over frontiers.

Transdniestria's separatist authorities blame Ukraine for attacking their territory to provoke war with Russian troops based in the enclave. Since last week, they say attackers shot up their security agency headquarters, blew up two radio masts, and sent a number of drones across the frontier from Ukraine armed with explosives.

"The situation is alarming because Transdniestria has suffered terrorist attacks," Vitaly Ignatiev, foreign minister of the separatist administration, told Reuters this week in an interview by video link from his office in Tiraspol, the region's capital.

"Honestly, I don't see any reason why the Ukrainian side would use such methods against Transdniestria. Transdniestria does not threaten Ukraine," he said. "I have said several times we are an absolutely peaceful state."

Ukrainian government officials have repeatedly denied any blame for the incidents in Transdniestria, saying they believed Russia was staging false-flag attacks to provoke war. Moscow, too, has denied blame, while saying it was concerned that Kyiv was trying to escalate.

Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu blamed the unrest on "pro-war factions" among the separatists.

Reuters has been unable to independently verify who is behind the attacks.

For Martalog and some other residents of Rybnitsa, a factory town on the left bank of a wide and gentle stretch of the Dniestr River, there was only an ominous sense of bewilderment. Around half a dozen residents interviewed by Reuters said they did not know what to believe.

"We leave the apartment, come home. Everyone sees the same thing: what they show on the television," said Martalog, returning to Rybnitsa after a visit with family on the Moldovan-held side. "Who knows?"

The separatists who control the area say they have cancelled all foreign journalist accreditations under the state of emergency they imposed last week in the wake of the attacks.

Reuters was granted permission to enter the region, provided no interviews were conducted or pictures taken during the visit. For this story, a reporter walked through Rybnitsa, observing the town, before exiting separatist territory and speaking with some of the many residents crossing the bridge.

ALL QUIET

Apart from the extra traffic on the bridge itself, there was little sign of an emergency. There were no checks at all on the other, Moldovan-held side of the bridge, where a single policeman sat in a booth.

"You see? It's all peaceful," said Andrei Duca, a Rybnitsa resident walking with his pre-school son on his shoulders across the bridge for a day-trip to the smaller, tidier town of Rezina controlled by Moldovan authorities on the right bank.

"If the situation were serious, they'd have shut the border altogether. There would be speedboats zooming up and down the river. You see? It's all quiet," he said.

A small contingent of about 1,200 Russian soldiers has remained in Transdniestria since the breakup of the Soviet Union, guarding a huge weapons dump at the town of Cobasna, a short drive from Rybnitsa on the Ukrainian frontier.

Last month, a Russian general said one of Moscow's war aims was to seize a swathe of southern Ukrainian territory to link up with Transdniestria. The remarks drew a formal protest from the Moldovan government.

Inside separatist-held Rybnitsa, a fruit and veg market of covered stalls was humming, with fresh seasonal strawberries and mounds of fragrant tomatoes on sale. Shelves were full at a big, busy supermarket nearby.

It was a sunny, clear day. Upriver, faint smoke could be seen above a huge cement factory, one of the many heavy industrial enterprises that have thrived in Transdniestria thanks to heavily subsidised Russian gas. Kayakers were paddling in the river by the quay on the separatist side.

At a bus stop on the Moldovan side, Diana Blanari sat with a baby on her lap and a young daughter by her side.

"Of course you feel it, the people over there in Rybnitsa, they are afraid to suddenly be dragged into it. What with - where all the weapons are in Cobasna," she said.

But she smiled and so did her daughter.

"I think it will be alright. We don't believe in rumours," she said.

(Reporting by Peter Graff, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Gareth Jones)

Russia Expert Fiona Hill Explains Why 

Jan. 6 Was Key Moment For Putin And Ukraine

Lee Moran

Sat, May 7, 2022, 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have played out very differently had Donald Trump succeeded in blocking the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, says former top National Security Council analyst Fiona Hill.

Russian President Vladimir Putin would have been massively emboldened and “would have probably just driven right into Ukraine himself,” said Hill, an expert on Russian affairs, in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emma Barnett released Friday.

Had former Vice President Mike Pence not blocked Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election result, Putin “would have seen the United States as completely finished from a leadership perspective because we would be no different from any other country in the world that had just had a coup,” explained Hill.

But the attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol was still “a particular moment” that helped inspire the Russian leader to order the military invasion of Ukraine, agreed Hill.

Other motivating factors for the war, which is now in its 73rd day, were Putin’s increased isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic and his belief the West had become “weak and distracted,” she said.

Hill served as an intelligence analyst under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama before joining the NSC under Trump, about whom she testified during his first impeachment.

Last month, she said the U.S. Capitol violence was Trump’s shot at “pulling a Putin.”

“In the course of his presidency, indeed, Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors,” Hill told The New York Times magazine.

Watch the full interview here. Hill’s comments about Putin are at the 9-minute mark:

Ukrainian scientists see working amid war as act of defiance
 

This March 2022 photo provided by Alona Shulenko shows her, right, and fellow zoologist Anton Vlaschenko outside the Feldman Ecopark area outpost of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center in Kharkiv, Ukraine. “Our staying in Ukraine, our continuing to work – it’s some kind of resistance of Russian invasion,” Vlaschenko said via Zoom, a barrage of shelling audible in the background. “The people together in Ukraine are ready to fight, not only with guns. We don’t want to lose our country.” (Alona Shulenko via AP)

CHRISTINA LARSON
Sat, May 7, 2022

Anton Vlaschenko often hears shelling outside his office in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, not far from the front lines of the war. He sometimes even sees smoke rising from Russian tanks hit by missiles.

But the 40-year-old zoologist continues his work, dissecting and labeling bat tissue, as he probes the disease ecology of the flying mammals. When news of the war overwhelms him, he says, it helps to have something familiar to do with his hands.

He also sees it as an act of defiance.

"Our staying in Ukraine, our continuing to work — it’s some kind of resistance of Russian invasion,” Vlaschenko said via Zoom, a barrage of shelling audible in the background. “The people together in Ukraine are ready to fight, not only with guns. We don’t want to lose our country.”


His resolve isn't unique. Like other Ukrainians whose labors aren't essential to the war effort, the scientists and academics want to continue their important work where they can.

A common refrain is that they want to stay connected to their scholarly community, which provides a shard of normalcy amid the chaos and violence, and “keep the light of Ukrainian science and humanities alive,” said Yevheniia Polishchuk, who teaches at Kyiv National Economic University.

As vice chair of the Young Scientists Council at Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science, Polishchuk organized an online survey of academics to assess their situation and needs after the Feb. 24 invasion. An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had left Ukraine by early April — mostly women with families — but about 100,000 stayed.

Most who went abroad wound up in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, getting temporary positions at European institutions. Some scientists have received grants from the Polish Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and other organizations. Polishchuk, now in Krakow with her children and husband, is a visiting professor at a university for May and June but says she hopes to return to Kyiv when fighting stops.

“We don’t want the war to result in a brain drain from Ukraine,” she said.

While Ukrainian scholars are appealing to international scientific bodies for assistance — including remote work opportunities and access to journals, datasets, archives and other materials — there is also a will to prevent the war from permanently sapping talent and momentum from the country’s academic and professional ranks, which will be needed to rebuild after fighting stops.

“Most of our scholars do not want to move abroad permanently; they want to stay in Ukraine,” Polishchuk said.

Shortly after the war began, Ivan Slyusarev, a 34-year-old astronomer, helped the director of Kharkiv National University’s observatory move computers, monitors and other materials into the basement, which had sheltered equipment and historical artifacts when Nazi forces occupied the city during World War II.

The observatory’s main telescope is located in a field in Russia-occupied territory, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Kharkiv on the road to Donetsk. Slyusarev said he doesn’t know its condition, but thinks Ukrainian forces blew up a nearby bridge to stop the Russian advance.

He is relying on scientists outside Ukraine to continue his work. Astronomers in the Czech Republic have sent him observational data from their telescope so he can keep analyzing the properties of metallic asteroids. He also can see data from a small robotic telescope in Spain's Canary Islands. He operates mostly from a home office on the outskirts of Kharkiv.

Slyusarev, who says he became an astronomer because of “romantic” ideas about the stars, finds refuge in scientific discovery. Astronomy “produces only positive news” and is a welcome respite from daily life, he said.

“It’s very important in wartime,” he added.

After the war started, theoretical physicist and astronomer Oleksiy Golubov left Kharkiv to join his parents in Batkiv, a village in western Ukraine.

Although the buildings of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology were “bombed and shelled and virtually destroyed,” Golubov said, the school continues to offer some remote classes. He has been keeping in touch with students online — in Kharkiv, in western Ukraine and in Poland and Germany.

The 36-year-old scientist is also a coordinator and trainer for the Ukrainian students preparing to compete in the International Physicists Tournament, a competition for tackling unsolved physics problems that is being held in Colombia this month. The students, who had been training online, met this week in Lviv for the first time — following train journeys delayed by the war.

“We still want to take part and prove that even inconveniences like war can’t stop us from doing good science and having a good education,” he said.

Golubov, who was turned down from joining the military because of a paralyzed hand, submitted a paper in March to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and wrote in the acknowledgements, “We are grateful to Ukrainians who are fighting to stop the war so that we can safely finish the revision of this article.”

Some scholars, like Ivan Patrilyak, dean of the history department at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, have enlisted. Eighteen months ago, he was hosting a speaker series on the legacy of World War II and lecturing about the Holocaust. Now, he's with a territorial defense unit in Kyiv.

Igor Lyman, a historian at the State Pedagogical University in Berdyansk, had to flee when Russian forces occupied the port city early in the war. Before leaving, he had seen the troops break into dormitories to interrogate students and order administrators to teach in Russian, rather than Ukrainian, and use a Moscow-approved curriculum. He said the directors "refused and resigned.”

He later settled in a camp for internally displaced persons at Chernivtsi National University, living in a dormitory with academics from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson and other cities.

“Each of these families has its own terrible story of war,” he wrote in an email. “And everyone, like me, dreams of our victory and coming back home.”

He said the Russian forces “are doing everything they can to impose their propaganda.”

Vlaschenko, the Kharkiv zoologist, wanted to protect 20 bats in his care from the shelling, so he carried them to his home, a walk of about an hour. It also helped to preserve his valuable research, which couldn't be easily replaced, even if buildings and labs can be rebuilt after the war.

“All the people who decided to stay in Kharkiv agreed to play this dangerous and potentially deadly lottery," he said, “because you never know in what areas a new rocket or new shell would hit.”

As he scrambles to record data and safeguard his rare samples, he sees it as part of his mission — “not only for us, but also for science in general.”

___

Follow Christina Larson on Twitter at @larsonchristina and AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

In this March 2022 photo provided by zoologist Anton Vlaschenko, smoke rises from a fire after Russian shelling struck a street market in Kharkiv, Ukraine, close to the office of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center. Even amid war, many Ukrainian scientists are continuing their research and teaching. A report published in April said Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had already left Ukraine – mostly women with families – but around 100,000 remained. (Anton Vlaschenko via AP)

 

In this March 2022 photo provided by Anton Vlaschenko, fellow zoologist Maryna Yerofeieva prepares a bat skull to add to a scientific collection in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Even amid war, many Ukrainian scientists are continuing their research and teaching. A report published in April said Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had already left Ukraine – mostly women with families – but around 100,000 remained. (Anton Vlaschenko via AP)

 

This March 2022 photo provided by zoologist Anton Vlaschenko shows the destroyed remains of a street market that was struck by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, close to the office of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center. Even amid war, many Ukrainian scientists are continuing their research and teaching. A report published in April said Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had already left Ukraine – mostly women with families – but around 100,000 remained. (Anton Vlaschenko via AP)

 

In this March 2022 photo provided by Alona Shulenko, fellow zoologist Anton Vlaschenko, foreground, and a volunteer transport bats at the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The team released hibernating bats from their facilities in March. (Alona Shulenko via AP)

 

This March 2022 selfie photo provided by astronomer Ivan Slyusarev shows him in his home office in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He no longer has access to data from the Kharkiv National University's observatory, which is now in Russian-occupied territory. Slyusarev is using data from a colleague's telescope in the Czech Republic to continue his work analyzing metallic asteroids. (Ivan Slyusarev via AP)

 

In this March 17, 2022 photo provided by astronomer Ivan Slyusarev, smoke rises from the Barabashovo market in Kharkiv, Ukraine, after it was hit by shelling, 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from his home office. He no longer has access to data from the Kharkiv National University's observatory, which is now in Russian-occupied territory, and is using data from a colleague's telescope in the Czech Republic to continue his work analyzing metallic asteroids. (Ivan Slyusarev via AP)

This May 2022 provided by Antonina Golubova shows her son, theoretical physicist Oleksiy Golubov, in Batkiv, Ukraine. He left Kharkiv to join his parents in Batkiv, a small village in western Ukraine, after the buildings of Kharkiv National University's Institute of Physics and Technology were "bombed and shelled and virtually destroyed," he said. (Antonina Golubova via AP)

Radioactive flask stolen by aggressors at Chornobyl nuclear power plant found in Bucha



Ukrayinska Pravda
Svitlana Kizilova - Saturday, 7 May 2022

One of the flasks containing radioactive material that was stolen by Russian troops at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant during the occupation has been found in Bucha.

Source: Energoatom on Telegram

Details: A Bucha resident found the flask in his own home after it had been "visited" by Russian aggressors. He immediately called mine clearance specialists.

The specialists who arrived following his call collected the hazardous container and handed it over for disposal.

Later, it was found that the radiation background of the flask, which contained mercury, was significantly higher than normal.

Background:

The Russians stole a lot of things from the Chornobyl zone. In particular, they robbed the police station located right on Chernobyl territory. Radioactive items, among other things, had been stored there.

Energoatom CEO Petro Kotin visited one of the areas of the Red Forest in the Chornobyl zone, where the Russian aggressors had been digging trenches, and said that they would in all likelihood be facing radiation sickness.