WASHINGTON, November 11. /TASS/. It is becoming increasingly hard for the Kiev government to contain the information about the scale of its violence against the people of Ukraine, including forced mobilization, US journalist and activist Bruce Gagnon told TASS.
"Things have become far too brutal against the ordinary Ukrainian citizens by their own 'government' to hide from the world any longer. The constant grabbing men off the streets (which I have long reported on my blog) and the brutal treatment of Russian ethnics in areas controlled by the [neo-]Nazis are steadily leaking out via social media in spite of Western media covering up these horrid stories," said Gagnon, who is the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
"The vast corruption of [Vladimir] Zelensky and his criminal accomplices has also become an issue that the Ukrainian people and the world can no longer ignore," the activist continued.
Gagnon, who earlier visited both Russia and Ukraine, went on to say that "this recent event, that fully exposed the brutality of Azov (a nationalist regiment recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia - TASS), and the complicit security agencies in Ukraine, will help chip away at the fabricated media image of the Zelensky war machine."
"One must wonder, with the Democrats now taking control of Congress beginning in January, if they will return to the <…> program of full support for Zelensky," he added. "It seems to me these recent disclosures and the reaction of Ukrainian citizens of good heart will make it increasingly difficult for the Democrats to ignore these emerging truths."
In his view, "this recent disclosure is just one more atrocity that reminds me of the early 2014 attacks on Russian-ethnics in the Donbass by the [neo-]Nazis."
"Ukraine was always planned as an instrument to begin a war on Russia that the US and NATO successfully created," the activist said. "The intention was to break Russia into smaller nations that would then be taken over by Western resource extraction corporations. The US-NATO had no concern or care for the Ukrainian people - they were just an 'easy tool' to use to hammer Russia."
Secret prisons in Ukraine
On November 2, reports emerged that about 40 men were being held in a basement in a private house near Kiev. The law enforcement officers present at the scene tried to prevent both doctors and crowds from entering the building but were forced to relent under pressure from the outraged crowd. As a result, it was found that the basement was being used as a secret prison for mobilized soldiers and those caught deserting. Among those held there was a 14-year-old boy who had accidentally ended up there. The boy was severely beaten.
The prisoners, many of whom showed signs of beatings, were released and sent to hospitals, and head of Zelensky’s office Kirill Budanov (listed in Russia as a terrorist and extremist) even admitted that there are "many such houses" in Ukraine.
However, the very next day, the authorities launched a campaign to discredit the protesters; three were sent to pre-trial detention, including a female medical worker who reported the basement. Now, the Ukrainian media is saying it was a provocation, while the topic of "secret prisons" is being hushed up.