Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 10th, 2022

[The Chair]

Ambassador, could I ask you to wrap up your comments?

[Natasha Power Cayer]

Other things are also being done now. We are documenting collections that cannot be moved. There are techniques used that UNESCO can provide. UNESCO can help find experts who can travel and will even go to a country at war to ensure that photographs of everything are taken. That way, if an object that cannot be transported is destroyed, we will at least have photographs that can be used for reconstruction purposes. UNESCO can do a lot of things.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Ambassador.

[The Chair]

We now go to Ms. McPherson, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's nice to see you back.

I'd also like to thank our witness today. This has been very interesting.

I'm interested in learning a bit more about those ties to the need to erase a people when we are looking at the perpetration of genocide, and how the erasure of cultural heritage is part of that. I recognize that right now in Ukraine it is extremely chaotic. There is a war going on, an illegal war, an illegal invasion, and people are dying. Of course, that must be our first priority and our first focus, but the work you're doing to ensure that the cultural identity of Ukraine is kept as safe as can be is so vitally important.

I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, we've heard Vladimir Putin speak about how Ukrainians are not even a people, that in fact Ukrainians are Russians. I think obviously that's indicative of his genocidal intentions, but can you talk a little bit about how that position influences the destruction of cultural and heritage sites by the Russian army? Can you also explain the link between genocidal intent and the destruction of cultural and heritage sites, please?

[Natasha Power Cayer]

Again, I'm not a legal expert of the department and I can't really comment on the determination of genocide with regard to this specific case. That's going to have to be adjudicated. People will then go through all of these elements that you've identified to try to piece together if there is a case or not that proves intent.

Clearly there is, in the current situation, absolutely no indication that there is any restraint being put on Russian armed forces in terms of the messaging they're receiving from their leadership. I think if you're messaging that these people are only a people who have Nazi intent against Russia and against russophones, then you're going to be enabling bad behaviour by your own armed forces. You're not going to be feeling as a soldier, I'm sure, that you're going to be sanctioned for doing something when the country that you're in is being vilified by your own leadership. Those who are perpetrating these actions are not being called to account by their senior officers.

That's just an observation, as somebody who is watching this from the outside, of what that will look like in a situation should there ever be, finally, a real investigation and prosecution of the war crimes being perpetrated. It will be for the courts to determine, based on what the investigators are able to put together and the prosecutor is able to argue. From my perspective, of course, as somebody who's worked on the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, and Ukraine and the west, for over two decades now, I have to say the intent, to me, is pretty clear, but that's just Natasha Cayer. It has nothing to do with anything else, and it has no value. It's just a feeling. I'm sure that's a feeling that's widely shared across Canada and across the western world by those who have been watching these atrocities going on.

With regard to cultural property, I think there is clearly a disregard for anything that is Ukrainian cultural property, and there's not seemingly much intent to try to circumscribe what targeting and activities are going on within Ukraine. We've seen some significant sites that have been completely destroyed, including ones that were harbouring people. I think that speaks for itself, but what the determination will be eventually is going to be in the hands of the experts who do the investigation and the prosecutors who will bring it forward.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I think you mentioned some of this when you spoke to my colleague from the Bloc, the idea that the destruction of cultural artifacts is a tool. Whether it is in this case, whether that determination has been made by legal experts in this case, has of course not been determined, but in previous examples of genocide, the destruction of cultural identity has been a piece of that. Is that correct?

[Natasha Power Cayer]

I'm not an expert on genocide, but I think if you look at the Holocaust—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm sorry. Even just when we look at examples of the past, when it has been very clearly proven that genocide has taken place, the destruction of heritage and culture often accompany that. Would that be accurate to say?

[Natasha Power Cayer]

I would say...based on my reading as an amateur historian of military history and the Second World War in particular, which was catastrophic on that score.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

I think that's all the time that I have.

[The Chair]

Yes, it is. Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

Once again, Madam Ambassador, allow me to thank you for joining us late into the night, your time. We're very grateful. Your comments and your responses were incredibly helpful, so thank you. I know I speak on behalf of all members of the committee.

Members, we will be going into the second session. We're going to have to suspend and then resume.

[The Chair]

Allow me now to welcome members of our second panel, who again, I should add, are joining us at a very late time in the evening, local time, in Ukraine.

By my calculations, it's around 2:30 in the morning your time. We're very grateful that you made yourselves available and that you accepted our invitation.

We have with us today, Ms. Yevheniia Kravchuk, member of Parliament and deputy chair of the Servant of the People faction. We also have Mr. Vladyslav Atroshenko, who is the mayor of the city of Chernihiv. The third person we currently have is Ms. Sevgil Musayeva, who is the editor-in-chief of the Ukrayinska Pravda.

Allow me to explain that you each have five minutes for your opening statement, and, of course, we're being provided with simultaneous translation. After your opening statements are over, we will open it up to the floor and the members will have an opportunity to ask you questions.

Ms. Kravchuk, if you're ready, the floor is yours.

[Yevheniia Kravchuk, Member of Parliament, Deputy Chair of the Servant of the People fraction, Parliament of Ukraine (Verkhovna Rada)]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am very honoured to be able to speak at this hearing. I was honoured to be a part of a women's delegation that came to Canada just five weeks ago. I met with some of you, whom I recognize.

First of all, I would like to thank you for your help and the help of the Canadian people. It's very important for us. It's very important that Prime Minister Trudeau visited Ukraine a few days ago.

I would also like to thank the chair of the subcommittee, Ali Ehsassi, for coming to Ukraine a few days ago as well, having the opportunity of witnessing the results of atrocities by the Russian army in Ukraine and visiting the Kyiv region and the small villages near Kyiv that were occupied for more than a month.

Also, I would like to thank all of the members of both the Senate and the House of Commons for voting for and supporting the resolution about genocide in Ukraine, because we really do think and feel that it is genocide.

But we haven't won yet, as you know. The war is ongoing. Right now, it has been 75 days of ongoing war and ongoing atrocities in Ukraine, with violations of human rights every day. It has been a full-scale invasion for 75 days, but the war has been ongoing for eight years. It started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. We have to understand that, if the world had been strong enough to answer to Putin in 2014, if he had been stopped then, we probably would not be facing such atrocities right now.

The Russian army, its political leadership in the Kremlin and Putin himself are responsible for numerous war crimes in Ukraine—thousands of war crimes. They have crossed every red line since this full-scale invasion: shelling and bombing civilians; torturing civilians and executing them; raping women and children; establishing “filtration camps”; deportation; and kidnapping, especially activists, journalists and representatives of local governance and local councils.

I can give you a few facts, and then I will be ready, of course, to answer your questions.

We can't even say what the estimated number of civilians is who have been killed since February 24, but in only the Kyiv region, the police discovered over 1,200 bodies. These people were tortured. They were shot to death. Bodies were found with their hands tied.

There were witnesses of women who were raped in front of children, and children who were raped in front of their mothers. Some schools were turned into torturing camps. We have a witness from Katiuzhanka, the principal of one of the schools, who said that in their basement there was a torture camp, where at least a couple of thousand people were tortured and some of them were killed.

In Mariupol—you have probably heard the name of the city—we can't really say how many people died in Mariupol, but probably at least 20,000. We can't count them because we don't have access to the city right now. There have been mobile crematoriums working there to cover up the bodies and to cover the traces of these war crimes that were committed. There are also mass graves near Mariupol. We can see them from above.

Right now, the defenders of Mariupol are still in the Azovstal steel plant. Over 500 wounded soldiers are still there. The Russians will not let them go, despite all the rules of the Geneva Convention. We are working together with the United Nations, the Red Cross and third party countries to get them out. We really hope for your support, as well as your political leadership in this process to get these people out.

I can send additional information, both in English and French, about the biggest cases of shelling civilians. You've probably heard about the Kramatorsk railway station, where 59 people died and over 100 were wounded. The maternity ward in Mariupol was bombed in March. At least one mother-to-be died, along with her unborn child. There are many other cases. You will read about them in the paper. In every case, someone loses their life. Families are losing their children, or children are losing their parents.

Another thing I would like to—

[The Chair]

You have 30 seconds.

[Yevheniia Kravchuk]

Okay. I will leave it until I answer questions.

To summarize, we really need to understand that this evil cannot go unpunished. These war crimes have to be punished and we need to establish an international war tribunal so that all of these soldiers who committed crimes, as well as their political leadership, will be tried in this court and punished.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much, Ms. Kravchuk.

We now turn to Mayor Atroshenko.

You have five minutes, sir.

[Vladyslav Atroshenko, Mayor, City of Chernihiv]

[Witness spoke in Ukrainian, interpreted as follows:]

Greetings to the esteemed members of Parliament. I would also like to thank you on behalf of all of the residents of Chernihiv.

On my own behalf, I would like to thank the Government of Canada, the Prime Minister and the people of Canada for the powerful support you're lending us. We can really feel it. We're very grateful for this. We're grateful to those Canadians who were one of the first to come to our aid. We're also grateful to the members of the Ukrainian World Congress, which is based in Canada.

With regard to war crimes that Russia committed in Chernihiv, here's what I have to say. From the very first days of the war.... You'll know that the active phase of the war started in 2014. Then, in 2022, it started on February 24, and on February 27, the first Iskander missiles hit the building of our city council in the very centre of Chernihiv, next to the central square.

These are very powerful missiles, and they were obviously directed by the Russian officers at the downtown of a city that's 1,300 years old. Clearly, they were aiming at the city council, but I think they were also aiming at the civilian population. The city was surrounded for a month and a half. The city was shelled with all kinds of weapons. The shelling was indiscriminate. It was chaotic. Various calibres of weapons, artillery, tanks and missiles were used. Aviation bombing was deployed. Three hundred and fourteen civilians died, 16 of them children under 16 years of age.

Russians were consciously committing these crimes. They knew they were not shooting at any military units or infrastructure. They were shooting at the infrastructure of the city, the civilian infrastructure, and in particular the water pumping stations, the electricity stations, the auto parks belonging to the city, public transit and parks. Nine thousand, six hundred and fifty-two apartments have been destroyed completely, and 1,500 private houses have been destroyed as well. This shows that the entire city was under fire.

Putin himself called the city the cradle of orthodoxy. It was in the city of Chernihiv that the Kievan Rus started, so it was not just the city they were destroying. It was the entire historical city that contains many cultural sites. This is a city of ancient history.

Luckily, the Russians were unable to enter the administrative territory of the city thanks to the armed forces of Ukraine and thanks to the thousands of residents of the region who took up arms and who repeated the feats of their ancestors, who have never given up and have never surrendered in their history.

There are egregious cases of war crimes that I could cite. There's a pilot by the name of Krasnoyartsev who was killed, but he also testified. He dropped six bombs of TNT, 500 kilograms each. At the epicentre of these explosions, about 10 kilometres from there, there are no military infrastructure sites. During these bombing attacks, 49 civilians died. They were just in their own apartments. They had no weapons in their hands. These were mostly women, children and elderly people. They died without ever trying to resist the Russian army.

There's another egregious case. A mortar shelling was done on a lineup of people who were trying to buy bread. Several people died in that attack. I also know of a case where mortar shelling led to the dismemberment of an IT programmer. He lost his limbs as he was going to work. Many other people, innocent people, have lost their lives.

[The Chair]

Mr. Atroshenko, could I ask you to conclude your remarks? You will later have the opportunity to answer questions by the members.

[Vladyslav Atroshenko]

[Witness spoke in Ukrainian, interpreted as follows:]

Yes.

I would like to conclude my remarks by saying the following. I'd like to support what Yevheniia said before me. These atrocities, these crimes, of the Russian army have been committed consciously. The Russian army is called a terrorist organization by all the residents of the region. Russia is the aggressor. Russia has to be held accountable by the international tribunal, and Putin has to be brought to account personally.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Ms. Musayeva.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Sevgil Musayeva, Editor-in-Chief, Ukrayinska Pravda]

Thank you.

Good evening, all. My name is Sevgil Musayeva. I'm chief editor of Ukrayinska Pravda. I'm not a politician or a human rights defender, but I am faced with human rights violations and the violation of humanitarian international law every day.

I want to thank you for your continuous support of our country during this very hard time.

As a journalist, I recognize that this war is not only a war between democratic values and a totalitarian regime, but also a war between truth and propaganda. I see how during the last eight years Russian propaganda has fuelled this war. I also see how journalists during this war became real targets. What I mean is that more than 20 journalists have already been killed by the Russian army in Ukraine. Of course, not all of them were killed during the coverage of this war, but during the coverage of this war, there have already been 11. This is crazy.

One of them was my good friend, Brent Renaud. He was an American filmmaker. He came to Ukraine to show the stories of Ukrainian refugees. He came to Ukraine together with another of my friends, a Colombian journalist, Juan Arredondo. He was injured, and he's already been through five operations. It's difficult.

As journalists, we became human rights defenders, because during all of this time, we're faced with a lot of human rights violations. What I mean, for example, is that three weeks ago, one of my colleagues asked to tell a story about her mother. Her mother was in Rubezhnoye, a city in the Donetsk region. Together with her two small kids, she was first deported to Leningrad oblast in Russia. For three days, they were travelling on the train. Of course, we helped them. Now they're in Estonia. As a Crimean Tartar, whose family was deported in 1944 by the Soviet army, I can show that it is possible in the 21st century.

During all of these 75 days of war, we covered a lot of stories about filtration camps in occupied territories. A lot of our Ukrainian people went through these filtration camps. Unfortunately, some of them were captured by Russians and are still in these filtration camps.

I will add that more than 100,000 people are still in Mariupol, which is now occupied by Russia. They can travel and they can be evacuated during this story, but what I am shocked by in the last three days are militaries in Azovstal. My colleague Yevheniia has already described this brutal situation.

One of the physicians was travelling together with her kid in an official evacuation by the international Red Cross. Unfortunately, she was separated from her daughter—four months old. Her mother is now in a filtration camp in Manhush. She was a physician in Azovstal. She is in a filtration camp. Her daughter was travelling alone to Poland, because Russians captured her mother. We still don't have an idea where she is. She is maybe in this filtration camp in Manhush.

We ask all humanitarian organizations to help us. This is not like any similar situation. We're faced with such brutal human rights violations every single day.

I have some remarks about the situation.

First of all, help us to locate people. Help us to provide international humanitarian corridors for people from Azovstal, because we know there are lots of civilians still in this place. We know there are lots of injured soldiers. Right now, there are 600 injured soldiers, and today they showed us brutal pictures of that. There are lots of physicians who have helped these people over the last 75 days, but already they don't have medicines, they don't have water and they don't have medical tools to provide assistance.

Second, of course, I'm asking about your support to help Ukraine resume investigations of all of these humanitarian war crimes. Of course, we need separate international humanitarian support for the Ukrainian situation. I know that it will be difficult. I know all of the problems with this.

One time I interviewed a very famous professor, Philippe Sands, who wrote a book about two brave Ukrainians who created the basis of international law, even for genocide. He described that it was difficult during their time, but they did it.

I hope that, in the 21st century, when our world is faced with such brutality and humanitarian law violations, we need a new—

[The Chair]

Ms. Musayeva, perhaps I could ask that you conclude.

[Sevgil Musayeva]

I'm finished.

[The Chair]

Thank you for that.

Our fourth witness has now joined us. We have Mr. Yuriy Bova, who is the mayor of the city of Trostyanets.

The floor is yours, Mr. Bova. You have five minutes, please.