Day: April 5, 2022

Background Briefing: April 5, 2022

 

Zelensky’s Call For a Nuremberg Tribunal Accusing the Russian Military of Behaving Like Nazis

We begin with President Zelensky’s condemnation of Russia before the U.N. Security Council today accusing Putin’s military of behaving like Nazis and calling for war crimes trials along the lines of the Nuremburg Tribunal to hold Russia accountable. Joining us to investigate the ghastly evidence of the massacre of civilians emerging from towns around Kyiv following the Russian retreat is Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Previously, he served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. He has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world and has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations and has an article at Just Security, “Embracing Autocrats to Help Ukraine Is a Losing Proposition”.  We discuss the work Human Rights Watch is doing in Ukraine to document evidence of Russian atrocities.

 

The Brainwashing of the Russian Military and the People About Fighting Nazis When it’s Their Government, Leaders and Soldiers Who Act Like the Nazis

Then we go to London to speak with Taras Kuzio, a Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Non-Resident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Institute at School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, and Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He is the author and editor of 21 books, including Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime and, most recently, Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War. We discuss his article at the journal Ideology Theory Practice, “The nationalism in Putin’s Russia that scholars could not find but which invaded Ukraine” and how the Russian military like the Russian people have been brainwashed into believing they are “liberating” Ukraine from the Nazis when their government, leaders are soldiers are behaving like the Nazis.  

 

Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan’s Desperate Fight to Hold Onto Power Now That the Army Has Dumped Him

Then finally we look into Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan’s desperate fight to hold onto power now that his former patron Pakistan’s all-powerful army has turned against him and speak with Christine Fair, who is a Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul and has served as a Senior Fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. She is the author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War and In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and she speaks and reads Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi.