Simultaneously believing that the Palestinians are unacceptably put-upon and that the Ukrainians should roll over and give peace a chance also seems like an incongruous and not especially good look.
You don’t have to believe that the Palestinian situation is acceptable in order to recognize that more or less everything you dislike there is on the table(mostly in more intense and/or widespread form; eg. the estimate for number of shells fired during the 2014 war is “around 32,000”; which is roughly half the estimated daily fire rate by Russian forces, at least when their supply lines are working) in Ukraine and shows no sign of being stopped by pious invocation of dialog and mediation.
He’s far from unique in this; there are enough UN members with similar interests to keep the Israelis exceptionally well deplored per suspected war crime compared to the sadly numerous and prolific war criminals of the world generally; but just seems particularly dissonant to embrace the position while simultaneously suggesting that war is just so sad that the Ukrainians should give just getting shelled into rubble and sent to the filtration camps a chance.
They presumably weren’t there for the vote. It happens, and honestly I don’t see much point in delving into whether they had a good or bad excuse for that. Hawley and Paul, who were very much present, are a whole another thing.
Votes prior to that aren’t easily available online for Spain (3rd Enlargement, 1982), West Germany (Second Enlargement, 1955), Greece and Turkey (First Enlargement, 1952).
Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk, says Amnesty International
Ukrainian forces are violating international law and endangering civilians by establishing bases in residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
The defenders’ tactics “in no way justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks”, the rights group said in a new report, and some Russian “war crimes”, including in the city of Kharkiv, were not linked to the tactics, AFP reports.
But Amnesty listed incidents when Ukrainian forces appeared to have exposed civilians to danger in 19 towns and villages in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions.
Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard said:
We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas.
Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.
Kyiv calls Amnesty report that says Ukrainian forces are endangering citizens ‘unfair’ and a ‘perversion’
Ukraine has slammed a report by Amnesty International (See 13:56) which found that Ukrainian forces are endangering civilians as “unfair” and a “perversion”.
Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba says in a video posted on Facebook:
This behaviour of Amnesty International is not about finding and reporting the truth to the world, it is about creating a false equivalence - between the offender and the victim, between the country that destroys hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories, and a country that is desperately defending itself.
Top presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak insisted Ukraine’s armed forces take all measures to move civilians to safer areas and suggested Amnesty was complicit in spreading Kremlin disinformation.
He tweeted:
The only thing that poses a threat to Ukrainians is (Russian) army of executioners and rapists coming to (Ukraine) to commit genocide.
Meanwhile, defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov called the report a “perversion” as he said it questioned the right of Ukrainians to defend their country.
This result was probably inevitable and this was always a B.S. show trial, but damn that’s an excessive sentence, even if she had been planning to deal drugs (which she clearly did not)
The economics ministry also said on Wednesday that the largest Russian bank, Sberbank, has had its assets frozen and is now banned from providing funds, economic resources, or technical services.
