Rape, torture, kidnapping children. Which would mean for Ukraine “exchange of territories”
The subject of the current conversations is “exchange of lands”, the devotion of Ukrainian territories over which Russia does not control, but which it annexed under its own law, as well as dismantling of Ukrainian defense fortifications.
This week showed that Moscow basically demands the capitulation of Ukraine in installments – and thus its systematic weakness to facilitate future military campaigns. There are practically no concessions on the Russian side.
“Donald Trump has no real plan to end the war,” says Jewhen Magda, director of the Ukrainian Think-Tank Institute of World Policy. According to a political scientist He led to the reversal of the perpetrator and victim. It is Russia who puts demands and is listened to. There is talk of Moscow's wishes, not the needs of the victim of this war, i.e. Ukraine.
For the Ukrainian historian Anatoly Podolski, director of the Ukrainian Holocaust Research Center, the cause is obvious: – The goal of the Putin regime and the imperialist ideology of today's Russian Federation is to destroy statehood, identity and subjectivity of Ukraine, destruction of a modern state and civil society.
In Ukraine, but also in the EU, there is a great fear that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump will make decisions about unpredictable consequences, skipping sticks and Europeans, and the real addressees of these decisions will be omitted. As Jewhen Magda emphasizes, something like “exchange of territories” does not exist in international law. Talking about it is dangerous.
Despite this, in the center of the debate there are territorial concessions of Ukraine. Recently, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte suggested that “in future agreement” it may be recognized that Russia “de facto controls part of Ukraine's territory.”
However, according to Rutte, in territorial matters it is important to distinguish between “de facto” and “de jure”, that is, between actual acceptance without legal legitimacy and legally binding recognition. Such solutions are unclear and leave the field for interpretation. So exactly what Moscow is happy to use.
Russia thus made an illegal annexation of regions over which it does not perform full military control. An example is the large city of Zaporozhye in the south of Ukraine, which from the point of view of Moscow is occupied by Ukraine.
Disturbing gaps in Witkoff's knowledge
When the special envoy of Trump Steve Witkoff went to Moscow last week, Putin probably presented him with Russian reality in detail. Until now, Witkoff was distinguished above all by huge gaps in knowledge about the history and geography of Ukraine. In an interview he could not mention the circuits that Russia demands, He repeated a Russian narrative without reflection And he talked about the “Russian -speaking regions of eastern Ukraine” – as if it was possible to deduce the reasonable claims of Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes the special US envoy Steve Witkoff before talks in Moscow, August 6, 2025.
In an interview with Putin Witkoff, he apparently misunderstood the Russian catalog of demands: “offer” of the withdrawal of Russian troops became a “demand” of Ukraine's withdrawal.
When Witkoff talks about the “Russian -speaking regions” of Ukraine, it's not just about Earth. It is about the homeland, millions of human lives, and lives for life. About six million Ukrainians live in the territories occupied by Russia, whose protection is a constitutional duty of Kiev.
Moscow leads a merciless strategy of Russification in the occupied territories: The open civil resistance was pushed or pushed under the underground, journalists, activists and politicians were murdered or abducted without charging.
Rape, torture, kidnappings
The Russian regime progresses strictly according to the plan: local leaders have been intentionally and demonstratively eliminated in front of everyone; Curities of the population are kept in obedience through the ubiquitous fear of rape, torture and kidnapping of children; Schools, churches, museums and media have been subordinated to the regime line. Without a Russian passport, there is no access to medical care, pensions or the possibility of exceeding control points.
Just speak Ukrainian or read a Ukrainian book to be arrested. Who openly resists, risks life. Psychologists working with people who escaped from the occupied areas claim that they have experienced the deprivation of liberty, physical and above all sexual violence almost without exception.
It is about these people when the decisions about the fate of Ukraine are made almost like in the game. But it is also about justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes that live outside these areas. For millions of displaced people who lost everything.
And finally, it is about tens of thousands of children who Russia has been systematically kidnapped for indoctrination, re -education and militarization – And whose traces were systematically blurred in Russian bureaucracy. It is about at least 20 thousand Children who were taken away from parents on the order of Russia, who had previously managed to bring home just over 1,000. 300.
Kidnapped children – and the crime of genocide
This crime does not appear in the current debate. However, it is particularly well documented and examined. In this case, the International Criminal Court issued an order to arrest Putin and the Russian spokeswoman for Children's Rights Maria Lviv-Biełowa.
The crime, which is genocide, is by definition the intention to destroy, directly or indirectly, “national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such, in whole or in part.”
It includes killing members of this group, inflicting them physical and mental suffering, intentional submission to their conditions of life aimed at destroying this group, preventing births and “forced transfer of children from this group”.
Moscow talks about “saving” these children. – These children and their families have never asked Russia to save their lives – says Mykola Kułyba, head of the Ukrainian NGO “Save Ukraine”. When Ukraine raised this issue during direct negotiations with Russia, She proposed “exchange” of children – like prisoners of war. Ukraine, however, does not kidnap Russian children.
Kułyba is worried about mass militarization, which all children living under occupation are subject to. According to him, Moscow is about “making Ukrainian children of Russian soldiers”. – All children who “Save Ukraine” brought from Russia underwent military training – he claims.
Kidnappings, executions, rapes, attacks on civil infrastructure: war crimes committed by Russia in the last over three years are obvious to everyone. However, what is currently called a negotiation field would not only allow Moscow to avoid punishment, but would also reward her for aggression.
