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DPAGenevaTrials by Russian-backed authorities of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the occupied port city of Mariupol could start within days, the UN Human Rights Office said on Tuesday, warning that such proceedings could amount to war crimes under international law.Photos and videos circulating in news reports and on social media “appear to show metal cages being built in Mariupol’s philharmonic hall, apparently to restrain prisoners of war during proceedings,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.It was unclear how many prisoners would be tried, what they would be charged with and how the court would be composed, she said. The UN has demanded the prisoners be allowed access to independent visitors.Shamdasani said the UN Human Rights Office fears deaths sentences will handed out by what occupation authorities are falsely calling a “international tribunal” and that credible reports have been seen that suggest some of the Ukrainians being held have been tortured.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the weekend that negotiations between Ukraine and Russia will be cut off if trials in Mariupol take place.In Toronto a spokesperson for Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday that Germany is prepared to ship more than $499.3 million in weapons to help Ukraine fend off the ongoing Russian invasion,.Kiev is to receive three more IRIS-T air defence systems and a dozen Bergpanzer armoured vehicles, among other items, the spokesperson said as the chancellor visits Canada. Scholz had recently promised further large-scale financial and military support for Ukraine.Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reaffirmed his country’s sovereignty over Crimea during an international conference on the status of the Black Sea peninsula. “I would like you all to know that we will return in any event,” Zelensky said. He accused parts of the international community of blotting out the 2014 Russian annexation. “A place of paradise was turned into a depressive and dependent region - into a region of high fences, barbed wire and lawlessness,” he said. To Ukrainians, Crimea was not just a piece of territory, Zelensky said. “For Ukraine, Crimea is part of our people, part of our society.”On a visit to Kiev, Polish President Andrzej Duda called for the elimination of the Baltic Sea gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, Nord Stream 2.There can be no return to normality in relations with Moscow, Duda said on Tuesday at the deliberations of the so-called Crimea Platform. Therefore, a new policy is required to dispose of Nord Stream 2, Duda said, according to Polish news agency PAP. Poland and other eastern EU countries long criticized the Russian-German project as giving the Kremlin leverage over Europe and putting the continent’s energy security at risk.Meanwhile the US has urged its citizens in Ukraine to leave the country immediately amid fears of increasing Russian attacks. The US embassy in Kiev issued a security alert on Tuesday saying “the Department of State has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.” Ukraine celebrates its 31st anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union on Wednesday, exactly half a year after the war began.
