Talk:Torture in Ukraine

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Article seems to be heavily sensationalised with severe lack of sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stathisdjs (talk • contribs) 15:23, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Heavily sensationalised?

The article lacks citation and seems to be heavily sensationalised. Stathisdjs (talk) 15:24, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Lack of sources and written with bias

Many of the claims made are not cited or cited incorrectly. Persuasive language is also used excessively throughout the article often with broad claims. Rockin sasquatch (talk) 17:33, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Russian propaganda

Article seems like Russian propaganda Calligrapher321 (talk) 20:02, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely, it was created for Propaganda!

I found at least 10 tweets referring to this low quality article created within ~4 months.

It's very misleading, it's taking about crimes committed before 2014 and after 2014 with making a distinction between the Yanukovych regime (<2014, pro-Russian & authoritarian) and the post revolution Ukraine.

Basically this article helps spread misinformation.

It must be deleted, because its existence insinuates that Ukraine has a torture problem on a scale that doesn't exist in other countries (which don't have such articles), and that's just not true. 2604:5500:C2A4:3400:D4C6:BF97:A5A1:C7B7 (talk) 03:57, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Torture in Ukraine is incorrectly reference

A long passage is quoted as being from a der Speigel article, however the reference (number 12) is not to the primary source, but to a secondary one “Human Rights”. 2601:191:8481:21A0:8C30:C05B:422C:4492 (talk) 16:07, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I have removed links to victims of Russia

I am not sure if the HRW external link should be used. Xx236 (talk) 07:15, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

This article is incomplete and as a result places wp:undue weight on Ukrainian government issues while completely ignoring the torture by Russian occupiers and Russian proxies. Please refer to the content tags at the top of the article. —Michael Z. 13:29, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I understand the problem, but the page does not describe Russian crimes, so a selected fact misinforms. I do not know if the page is needed, there ia a page about War crimes.Xx236 (talk) 06:37, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Move to draft, merge, or delete

This article has been flagged for serious problems for six months. I can see three possible remedies:

• Move to draft: space, anticipating a rewrite or addition of material
• Merge any useful sourced material to War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russo-Ukrainian War, and Human rights in Ukraine
• Delete

 —Michael Z. 18:28, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Not sure yet what to do. But the sourcing is raising suspicions. Why is so much sourced to books that are difficult to check? Why does one of the books have an intro saying that the Western media have the conflict wrong? Why is one claim (about OPCAT) in apparent contradiction to an easy-to-check authoritative source? Adoring nanny (talk) 20:53, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

None of the three suggestions are valid topics for RfC; see WP:RFCNOT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:29, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

@Redrose64: yet the article clearly has a desperate need of outside input. I just put notices on some related talk pages. Can you help further? Adoring nanny (talk) 22:01, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

The RFC is not for one of those topics. It is to decide which process to start. If you prefer, we can just file an RFD and be done with it.  —Michael Z. 15:25, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

For the moment, I am content with the collaborative process we have started. Come to agreement on the value (or lack thereof) of a source, then act on that consensus. Adoring nanny (talk) 01:40, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

The article was some awful garbage with pretty blatant misrepresentation of sources and obviously willful POV pushing if not outright lying about what sources actually say. I tried to clean it up, but yeah, probably best to Merge to the War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine article. Volunteer Marek 04:11, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

This is such a weird stubby little article. I'd agree to merge, whatever well referenced materiel it has, or frankly just delete it. BogLogs (talk) 07:09, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I am pretty sure I have laughed at this sourcing before. Is this a spinoff of 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, maybe? I lean heavily to *delete* but if somebody thinks there is useful stuff here I am willing to listen. For a start: that 2015 source. It just isn't fair to rely on a source that old, and that's before I start asking who that author and that publisher are. I am absolutely positive that I have said this before. Definitely have think these thoughts.For anyone who may be unfamiliar: seven years ago Ukraine was just barely independent and still in the grip of oligarchs. Any book published in 2015 will largely be dealing with Ukraine when it it was de facto a Russian client state. There is a case to be made that nonetheless these events (assuming they are true) took place on Ukrainian soil. If we decide this is the case, then we need to be clear about the time element, and make it clear who was running these institutions at the time Elinruby (talk) 08:07, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it's pretty obvious this was created as a WP:POVFORK. Oh, screw it, I'll just redirect it. Volunteer Marek 09:17, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Any of the choices above would probably be acceptable to me but the sooner the better in my humble opinion. Otherwise why even have an encyclopedia if it says things that that probably aren't true and that it does not source? Elinruby (talk) 12:49, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I can't believe we still have this article. It was indeed worse when I laughed at it before. I don't claim that every Ukrainian policeman or soldier has clean hands, but the referencing here is appalling and absolutely unacceptable. How can we go on for three sentences about some Der Spiegel article and then not provide a reference? I dropped some cn tags but couldn't get all the way through the article. Has anybody nominated this for deletion yet? Who wrote this article? Elinruby (talk) 08:29, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

User:RaiderQ did. Xx236 (talk) 08:46, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

(answering my own question) Somebody named RaiderQ made 21 of his/her 27 total edits to this page and disappeared. I mean. AGF is a fine policy and all but. How long are we going to take to disprove all these claims one by one while the article stays up? And was RaiderQ competent to remove the original redirect in the first place? I need a nice cup of tea and a lie-down. Elinruby (talk) 08:47, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Answering my own other question: Aha, when I come out of mobile view I see that yes, somebody nominated it for deletion, and it was me. No wonder I had déja vu. And I'm an inclusionist, mind you, and never nominate anything for deletion.

I stand by my earlier position that sure, such things did arguably happen, but if they are "documented" we definitely don't show that here. The overall article is POINTY garbage that we have hosted for seven years. The more people verify it, the more problems they find. Possibly one or two or three of the sources may be salvageable. I have no objection to anyone using them to rewrite this into an article that does not misrepresent its sources, if somebody wants to do that Elinruby (talk) 09:14, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

.

Ukraine over the Edge -- reliable or not?

A look at one of the sources for the article leaves me concerned.

Here, the preface is publicly available. [1]. I'll quote a portion of the first paragraph. If a source is saying the West misrepresented the whole thing, that's an indication there might be a problem.

Having studied the nature of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus, the causes and courses of the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, and other events involving Russia, I had seen a pattern of misrepresentation of these events by by most Western, especially American, media, academic, and Government sources. There was a clear sense that this pattern was being repeated with regard to the events on the Maidan. Hence, I decided to investigate matters for myself and have come to a distinctly different conclusion regarding them than that imparted on the Western public.

The book says it is published by McFarland & Company. A brief look at their Wikipedia article does not show any red flags. But the intro quoted above does. Adoring nanny (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I found two academic reviews. (I have not read the book.)

One review by a doctoral student at a faculty of biochemical engineering at the time.[2] It describes a geopolitical approach to the views, citing Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin (!) among others.

The other review is by Ukraine expert Taras Kuzio. It describes the book as following a “five-point template on the Ukraine–Russia crisis deferential to Russia and first developed by Richard Sakwa and Nicolai Pedro . . . The template includes blaming the West and the Ukrainian authorities for the crisis; describing Crimea as always ‘Russian’; depicting Ukraine as an artificial, regionally divided and failed state; downplaying Russian military intervention and describing the conflict as a ‘civil war’; and exaggerating Ukrainian nationalism while downplaying Russian nationalism.”

Hahn is not a Ukraine expert. His own statement quoted above puts him at odds with mainstream media, academic, and government sources. The source can be objectively classified as borderline WP:FRINGE according to our guidelines. It should not be used to support statements that can be supported by clearly reliable sources, and is only suitable if used with attribution as an opinion. It is not needed to source the (too-vague and context-free) statements that it is used for in the text of the article and the citation should be removed. It should not be included in the “References” section without a caveat, or at all.  —Michael Z. 16:52, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Elsewhere Kuzio goes into more depth about Hahn (2018) and other similar sources’ pro-Kremlin misinterpretations, and says the book “includes so many mistakes that it would require a separate chapter to discuss them.”[3]  —Michael Z. 17:06, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

The source had been used as the only source for assertions of crimes. You don't seem to think that's appropriate, and I also have serious misgivings about the source. So I just deleted it from the article.[4] Adoring nanny (talk) 01:31, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

This is not what WP:FRINGE means. One critical review of Kuzio (why should we trust him, btw?) does not mean it's an unreliable source. Even in the quote you've cited Kuzio doesn't accuse Hahn of publishing falsehoods. The proper venue for the reliability discussions is WP:RSN. Alaexis_¿question? 07:27, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE: “in a very broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field.”

Hahn literally defines his own views as “a distinctly different conclusion” from that “imparted on the Western public” by “most Western, especially American, media, academic, and Government sources.”

Kuzio offers a framework of major themes that let us identify a group of writers that occupy this particular fringe, and confirm this with reference to their statements. I haven’t read Hahn’s book, but his main theses are pretty obvious after skimming over the contents and a few pages inside.

I described it as “borderline fringe” because there are some prominent figures that advocate the “Russia is defending itself against the only real empire by violently colonizing Ukraine” view. But that was a mistake. This is an example of a worldview absolutely contrary to the academic consensus. Precisely WP:fringe. —Michael Z. 17:22, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Partial hoax?

Not sure what to make of the paragraph starting with "On many occasions, the European Committee . . ." in the current version.[5] At least one portion of it fails a rather obvious check. The last sentence says "Currently, Belarus and Ukraine are the only European nations that have not implemented the independent torture prevention system OPCAT (Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture)". However, when I go to https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/TreatyBodyExternal/Treaty.aspx?Treaty=CAT-OP&Lang=en, it shows that Belarus and Russia have not ratified OPCAT. Russia is a partly European country. Furthermore, it shows that Ukraine signed in 2005 and ratified in 2006. I don't know what "implemented" means. But it is concerning that the text is at variance with a presumably-authoritative source. Adoring nanny (talk) 20:46, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Redirect needed

This must redirect to War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.--Aristophile (talk) 22:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Please contribute in #Move to draft, merge, or delete, above.  —Michael Z. 17:08, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Source broken link, overreliance on single source

Many of the most serious allegations in the article (volunteer unit war crimes, SBU prisons, etc) rely on a single source - de Ploeg, Chris (2017) Ukraine in the Crossfire, Atlanta Clarity Press ISBN 978-9978965-4-1. The link on the source, however, points to the next one, and does not actually link to the source. In fact, based on a google search, the ISBN is also wrong. Based on the author's personal blog [6] it seems like the source is likely to be inherently biased, and has no inherent qualification to write on such a subject ("investigative journalist") and/or OR concerns. I have not been able to find any English language criticism of it to directly show that it is an unreliable source, but also the fact that there is no mention probably means that most RS consider it of so little value to be barely worth a mention.

As many other people have pointed out above, this entire article is quite contentious. I will be notifying the author of the page on their talk page, and if there is no reply here or there in 24 hours, I'll WP:BOLD blank the page. Fermiboson (talk) 22:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Never mind, the author's user page seems to be deleted and inactive, and the rest of the major contributors that aren't removing content are all IPs. Fermiboson (talk) 22:24, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Taras Kuzio, who doesn’t mince words, names Ploeg among “Putinversteher scholars” in “Academic Orientalism in Russia-Ukraine Scholarship,” giving examples of Ploeg using anti-Ukrainian tropes. —Michael Z. 00:40, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Good, we have a source for that then. Thank you. Fermiboson (talk) 05:39, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Chris Kaspar de Ploeg is Writer – Speaker – Organizer https://www.chrisdeploeg.com/

He does not claim to be a scholar. Xx236 (talk) 08:53, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Google Scholar shows 38 quotations, 4 of them by Kuzio. Xx236 (talk) 09:01, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Please feel free to be bold and delete it. BogLogs (talk) 07:12, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Bias is not a sufficient reason to dismiss a source (per WP:BIAS). Academics criticise each other all the time, the existence of such criticism doesn't mean we need to purge everything from the article. The proper venue for the reliability discussion is WP:RSN. Alaexis_¿question? 07:23, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Bias doesn't even come into play for the simple reason that whoever wrote this piece of shit article was straight up lying about what's in the sources. For example, the Amnesty International source that was in here states explicitly that it was Russian militias in Donbass who murdered prisoners yet the author of this garbage wrote that it was Ukrainian police. You keep on insisting on restoring that kind of stuff... yeah, discretionary sanctions and all. Consider this a formal notification of DS. Volunteer Marek 09:21, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

As much as I agree with you it's probably a good idea to AGF, for now. Fermiboson (talk) 09:44, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Except this isn't ordinary criticism. Kuzio is essentially accusing de Ploeg (corroborated by de Ploeg's own blog) of being a crackpot/POV pusher. Granted, Putinversteher can also mean someone like Mearsheimer, but this is clearly not the case with de Ploeg. It falls squarely within WP:FRINGE (and I thought WP:RSN was for news sources not individual academics anyways). Nobody would, for example, consider using Grover Furr as a serious source on Stalin even though he has "only" been "criticised by some academics". Fermiboson (talk) 07:45, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to open an RSN discussion if you feel that is the right place to have this discussion. Fermiboson (talk) 07:54, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I would direct you to Chotiner’s remarkable recent interview of Mearsheimer in The New Yorker.[7]  —Michael Z. 17:05, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Based on the discussion, I feel like we have consensus to blank. Doing it now Fermiboson (talk) 09:45, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh wait. Who redirected it? I feel like torture in Ukraine does encompass more than just 2022. Fermiboson (talk) 09:46, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Possibly, but this is definitely not that. I have zero objection to a well-sourced article about actual torture in Ukraine, and considering the massive trauma on both sides there likely were some instances of it. There were as I recall extrajudicial killings in the Euromaidan period, but that was when Ukraine was functionally Russia, and if we are going by boundaries, ok then, are there any legit cases of that mentioned here? If there is anything in this article that is accurate and sourced then let us by all means merge it into an appropriate article until/if there is enough of it for a stand-alone article. Elinruby (talk) 13:03, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Fair. I felt like a better solution would be to blow it all up and start over again. Fermiboson (talk) 14:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, all. —Michael Z. 17:06, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

This article needs improvement: it shouldn't be deleted. The subject is notable (we already have Torture in the United States, Torture in Turkey, Torture in Bahrain, Torture in Venezuela, Torture in the State of Palestine, Torture in Brazil) and there's plenty of sources on it. Over the weekend I intend to spend a couple of hours improving the sources and the text - it's shouldn't be too difficult. In the meantime, if you think the article must be deleted, the right way to proceed is to open another AfD. Since the previous one ended with Keep [8], a brief discussion on the talk page cannot override that consensus. Please remember that the ARBCOM has authorized uninvolved administrators to impose discretionary sanctions on users who edit this article. Deleting the article without consensus may be regarded as highly disruptive. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 10:55, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Let me add that instead of spending time discussing about how bad is this article and the need to delete it, editors could easily improve it with sources or - and this would be even better - they could write a brand new article on Torture in Russia. We now only have a section on this topic in Human rights in Russia, which could easily be expanded, updated and become a self-standing article. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 11:11, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I would like to note (before the arbcom threats are thrown around) that I think we all agree that pretty much the entirety of the content of the article as it was should be thrown out. That part, I think, is consensus. Fermiboson (talk) 11:13, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek Fermiboson (talk) 11:12, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree. If anyone wants this to be an article - and Gitz6666, please stop WP:STALKing and reverting my edits, I’ve asked you several times before and my patience is running out - then don’t restore the garbage that was before but rewrite it from scratch. Perhaps start with a minimal NPOV stub. Most definitely DONT try to limit the scope of the article only to torture allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine police since the main subject here is torture perpetrated by Russian and pro Russian forces.

Also, I guess we can put any claims of “I’m just trying to be balanced and neutral” aside here Huh? Why would anyone who’s trying to be balanced and neutral restore such an obvious piece of propaganda junk? Volunteer Marek 13:43, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I do not, yet, have an opinion whether the article should exist or not. But I am certain that the material I deleted in this edit [9] does not belong. Hahn's own preface says he is in opposition to Western sources generally. That's pretty much the definition of WP:FRINGE. I am going to stay out of the delete/restore wars for now. But the Restore people need to think about just what they are restoring. The Hahn material should not be restored. I haven't gone through VM's subsequent deletions to see if they shouldn't be restored either. But if you are restoring, it could be a good idea to consider just what you are restoring. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:02, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

'It is highly likely that the volunteer battalions are responsible'

The paragraph quotes 2017 and 2018 sources. The 'volunteer battalions' have been reorganised or massacred since that time. Xx236 (talk) 08:13, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

'Ukrainian volunteer battalion "Tornado"' was disbanded in 2015. https://uacrisis.org/en/55087-need-know-case-former-tornado-battalion-servicemen Xx236 (talk) 08:18, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

"highly likely", snort. If that isn't a flag for OR, I have never seen oneElinruby (talk) 09:16, 22 November 2022 (UTC)