ah ah ah ah, this is dw news live from berlin. russia's war against ukraine enters its 4th month . the kremlin plans for an easy victory and quick conquest of kia for, but ukraine's defenders defied those expectations. and now russia's army struggles to gain territory in ukraine, south and east. also coming up as well. leaders meet in dab was your chief ursula

on the line calls for unity to both defeat russia and to rebuild ukraine. plus the new evidence of china's crack down on we go, or muslims a day to leak all photos from inside. jim jones mass interim and comes off as a rep limbs, into the state sanctioned repression of recourse and other minorities in china, northwest. ah, monica jones, welcome to the program. 3 months into the war with the months into the ukraine will rather the fighting has moved largely to the east of the country. there. russia is making slow progress in its attempt to control the best region for now the center

and west of the country are no longer threatened by rational to artillery. but some towns outside of keith that saw a devastating fighting are still struggling to recover. dw corresponded max asunder visitor to the town of hosta mail, where an international team of psychologists are helping residents process. the wounds of war. was a busy morning at the clinic and the key of suburb hostile no bullet holes in the windows bear witness to the russian occupation. medical staff have been working round the clock since the clinic reopened in april because they're dealing with visible and invisible grants. i think there's kind of a collective trauma or if you laclare with earth, people living the communities, honorable psychologist malcolm hugo has joined. the operation here is part of the international organization, doctors without borders. he just returned from a home visit in the area, some of the woman whose house was completely destroyed was living there with her

son, who sir, 30 years of age and her. and unfortunately he was killed her in there, dr. why boy? a rocket. and so she's obviously going through a grading process she's on her own. now. the key of suburbs bore the brunt of the fighting. in the early days of the invasion, that was followed by a ruthless occupation marked by violence against residence. the russians have left reconstruction is underway, but people here are only starting to put their lives back together. the emotional scars run deep. there are various types of trauma people here are dealing like those who experienced the occupation and extreme levels of violence than others. returning to their homes, see not much left of it. and then there are those who are taken prisoner by the enemy kidnaps even taken across the board. doctor and your son finished only is one of them focus on that. he says russian soldiers shot him in both legs in front of

his home. then took him and his son. and you probably drop me on the porch and started to put the gun to my head. and in my mouth, we could assume that when my son saw this, he got on his knees and screamed, please don't kill my dad now. so they put us in the vehicle, blindfolded off with tables. courtroom tied our hands and took us in an unknown direct, sorry by this evening, just on the pavilion. they were taken across the border to bela rose than flown to cost and russia. weeks later, o lick was freed than a prisoner exchange. his son still missing reasonable creditors that australia it, it's you from the inside and you can take away the sorrow with your tears. what is his? i mean, we need destruction. 3 work and life while we're waiting for his for to reason it will was or done yet the worst or was quite a, the renewal of there are believe to be hundreds of similar cases in this town alone

. how did you do all that has joined the team of doctors without borders seeking to assist the psychologists by sharing his experiences, doing his bit to help others heal. rushes invasion of ukraine has surprised many military analysts who expected fighting to be over very quickly. and stay at the 3 months old was exposed, unexpected weaknesses and rushes forces. heavy troop and equipment losses have reportedly heard morale even more. and the was initial aims have been severely scaled back. it was supposed to be over. in a few days. russian tanks rolled into ukraine from multiple directions from belarus in the north separatist controlled parts of ukraine and russia itself in the east and occupied crimea in the south. aiming to decapitate the government by taking the capital cave and capturing as much territory as quickly as possible. but planning

and logistics soon proved to be a major problem. a menacing 40 kilometer line of tanks and personnel carriers was spotted heading towards keith. but it soon bogged down and came under ferocious attack. russian tanks were cut off from fuel supplies and abandoned and the army gave up on heat. in late march, russia shifted its efforts to the east, trying to cut off a huge chunk of territory south and east of ha keith. but it became clear that the invading army had another problem, command and control officers on the ground had to call senior officials in moscow to make the smallest decisions. meanwhile, dug in ukrainian forces inflicted heavy losses on the russians who made few gains.

in fact, around huck eve, they lost significant territory. generals were called to the front to solve problems and several were killed in battle with sheila images of a botched river crossing. we're a major embarrassment. dozens of tanks destroyed, and hundreds of soldiers killed in what experts say was a desperate attempt to show some kind of progress. as rush as attempts to take new territory were scaled back to a small slice of the original aim of taking the entire don best region, it became increasingly clear that there was a major problem with morale intercepted communications showed russian soldiers discussing sabotaging their own equipment or trying to injure themselves to be sent away from the fighting. that makes it harder and harder to make progress and even hold territory against super motivated ukrainian fighters. the coming weeks

will show if russia can hold the territory it seized. or whether ukraine will push the invaders fact to the border at which i'm not by good stuff. castle a for my soldier, and he's now with the european council on foreign relations. good to have you with us. let me start by asking you this was entering. it's 4 months with no easy victory for russia inside. are you surprised by the strength of ukraine's resistance? yes. say i'm, you know, i told the ukrainians with give a terrific fight and that would definitely be motivated to part. i didn't think that they would sort of track this on into the 3rd months in a, in an organized way. not in a part of some way that the biggest surprise has been the actual did the multiple failures. all the russian offices. a lot of things that they claim they would do and could do and have learned and improved actually picked out to be non stop at

the wrong coordination and use of the air force is, is the, i think most remarkable thing that just doesn't work on the russian side also to have claimed that in syria they have made by little progress and some small as expeditionary forces actually have most of a, some better degree at the wrong ordination them done and will show. now. all that is, is kind of a wake up hold up. a lot of the russian military reforms have not used the results that russia thought it would have produced. multi produced capabilities that the faults they had. we certainly seen that russia has switched to focus now from trying to quickly talk ukraine government to now trying to consolidate its hold and territories in the south and the east. so what do you think, flooding your proteins long term ames on now well is approaching on the long run still believes that he can take you train and he

can kind of drawing ukrainian on forces it to death by a long war attrition. it's not going to happen quickly, will happen, not this. some might, might happen new years to come on such a war. he, in such a war, he will now sort of trying to enjoy your friends if they're conducting as long as they can. and then rather go for a limited ceasefire, like the one agreed in 2015 and resumed the war. once russian forces have regrouped and half improve themselves in order to, in order to take or what put in still believes is his. i mean that the means ceasefire. and did not provide a lasting peace and, and any sci fi rush on line at this point, be willing to go for will not provide lasting piece. russia narrative was largely

based on security issues. now, we've seen that sweden and finland want to join nato. quite the opposite. android as news agency is, is now quoting the spanish prime minister saying that we didn't feel and will actually join nato as june summit. is this a sign that their application to join the alliance are not moving forward? well, i hope so very much for sweden and finland bought on russia's warnings. the whole security argument is the pretext. russia was never threatened in a military way by ukraine or by, by nato in that regard. and putting basically laid out of his reasoning, multiple articles, and then in february speeches predating the war, it's about reconstructing the empire, put in savings than russia. lisa life, the 21st century as an independent power, if it becomes an empire again, beyond the borders of the corin bratia, andree incorporating regaining the. you're better us and,

and ukraine on the street or colonial control is what this was about. a ne, to lay to expand expansion security guarantees. this was the pretext we clearly sold this in the wake up in or in the ramp up of the war where russia was offered so many guarantees and arrangements and declined all of them. i thought that this was certainly not the true intention and the truth or concern of the russian and stuff could i so from the european council on foreign relations. thank you so much for your time. you're welcome. european commission president. it was left on that line law has promised that the european union will help rebuild ukraine, so that he can achieve its democratic aims. she was speaking of the world economic forum in davos, switzerland, while the focus has been on the russian invasion of ukraine. he has what funded line, how to say the reconstruction of the country should come my massive investment.

with ambitious we forms, for example, to modernize ukraine's administrative capacity to firmly establish the rule of law and the independence of the judicially to fight corruption. get rid of the only gas to build a fear sustainable and strong competitive economy. and thus, to firmly support ukraine in pursuing its european path. ukraine belongs in to the european family. i'm joined now in the studio by the w's chief political correspondent, melinda crane. good to have you with us again, melinda. you've been following the entire speech and a quite strong statement there from was a fonder line. what, what did you make of make it were clear there?

she is holding out that beacon of e u membership or to ukraine. and she is essentially also saying, let's turn this crisis into an opportunity, an opportunity to really help ukraine reform it's, it's government and it's, and it's institutions and try to allay some of the criticism that we've seen over a very long period of time that ukraine is corrupt that it's oligarch dominated and so on in that where she's also supporting what the ukrainian leadership in davos has been trying to do to essentially tell a different story about ukraine and she's also telling us stability and resilience begin with good governance. and we have to make sure that ukraine is in a position to follow through on what is leadership clearly wants to really put into place reforms that lead to good governance there. i certainly also something cuz she is german by birth, something that germany had to learn the hard way after world war 2. ah, now she said, she said that ukraine must win. that is

a strong statement. what do you read into that? a very interesting statement because what she is doing is essentially addressing the point that was made just now by your last guest, who said this could turn into a long war of attrition. and that's increasingly acknowledged now by many countries in the west. in some we're hearing and in opinion debate about, well, how long can we keep up this level of support and how strong is our will to support ukraine and she saying the will and the resolution are they are, we will continue to support them. we cannot allow russia to win this more and, and it, out of that last guest, made it clear a cease fire could allow russia to regroup, so a clear message from her there. no, we are not going to debate right now whether there need to be peace negotiations and when is enough, is enough? is enough. we're not going there. not the strong measure so far taken our sanction so, but when a line did not necessarily talk about an oil embargo, however,

she did mention the possibility of using russian assets to, to rebuild ukraine. was interesting issues of playing russia. there somehow, both points interesting what she omitted and what she did include. so the oil embargo were told it's in the works and you all embargo could just be a matter of days according to the german climate, an economy minister, but she didn't, she didn't speak to that point as you should a she did in the context of talking about all that the you wants to do for ukraine's reconstruction, a new platform that she has set up for that purpose. that possibly one might want to use russian assets. well, there are millions and millions of euro's worth of impounded assets all over the world. yachts, apartments and more, and there is increasing debate. how can we make this money work for ukraine's reconstruction? because at the moment, it's rather absurd. we're seeing energy prices going up as a result of the war. and the one who profits from that is vladimir putin with his

war machine. so this is, it's going to take some creative thinking about how those assets might be used. the legal measures are difficult, but the debate is beginning and add to the world economic forum and douglas, which is not a bad place to, to start such a debate. didn't use chief political correspondent, melinda grain. thank you so much. thank you. and here are some of the other stories making news around the world. australia's new prime minister, antony albanese, is meeting the leaders of the u. s. japan in india for regional security talks in tokyo, so called quad countries, are focusing on the potential threat from china. a key issue is the security of taiwan turkish president, rich at time air to one says he will no longer speak to the greek prime minister ad on accusers kitty ac was amidst attack is of harboring a muslim cleric, hostile to ankara,

and pressuring us officials not to sell fighter jets to turkey. germany's a foreign ministry is calling for a transparent probe into abuse claims. after more evidence emerged of china's brutal crack down on its predominantly muslim, we go are minority. a cache of documents does the sheen jung police files was leaked to international media including photographs inside gene jugs, mass incarceration facilities. it's a rare look behind the walls of a so called re education camp in the north west and chinese province. the photo show police using physical force against prisoners in handcuffs and chains. the league was published by a consortium of investigative journalists, including from the bbc and to germany's adhere spiegel and a r d. the publication coincides with the arrival in china on the un human rights commissioner michelle bachelorette. a, we're now joined by

a frederick obama from the german media outlet dish bigger. he is, one of the about 30 investigative journalist behind this story. so very good to have you with us. first of all, after years of denial by the chinese government, your research gets hundreds of thousands of abuse wiggers a face. please help us to understand the meaning of it by sharing the story that stood out most for you. thinks the most important thing about that in general police files is that we now see from places attached to this crime, a few minutes to receive thousands of people, the pain in cam northwest in china. we see a 15 year old children being detained, up to elderly women, not like 70 degree old women, be detained there. and 1st of all, 1st and foremost, we see the argument of the chinese government contracts. the argumentation so far was that this, this location of schools that people out there on their own,

well they, they could leave whenever they want. but in the documents that were a leak to us, we see no shoot to kill policy. we see that the reverse in those comes warehouse verify, course the data set consists of more than $5000.00 photos, many of them showing sensitive and security related footage. do we know who to take them and why? no, we don't know who exactly took those for just we have hence that it was people working on those campuses taking them like for example, like shows of the people detained there and then like making photos of their exercises of them treating the details in windows and then the data was obtained by source who leaked it to a german scientist called artery. and so far we have to think that

the source could be a hacker. obviously the data comes from with in the chinese government or the 30 operators. and we were able to independently verify the documents and the photos. i mean, it is a strange thought to think that the handling of the people would be documented in such a way. how do we know or how could you assess that? these pictures are actually real and paul, 1st and foremost we did hire independent experts, looked checks the article, 50 of the photos if there were manipulated in any way. then we had a 2nd step. we did to feel ok. those many of those photos, for example, whenever you could see something in the picture that was outside of the county, for example, was towers and stuff like that. and we were, we were able to locate them with the help of centralized images. we also were able

to find information in the metadata of the photos that showed us that they were taken. we've been camps that could be seen from space. we centralize. and then we also were able to speak where we were living outside china, our mentor, who could that their relatives that we have seen on the photos and, and on the list of the trying to do with us that they were, there's appeared basically several months or even years ago. okay. well thank you so much. frederick obama from german media outlet. dish, pico, one of the about 30 investigative journalists behind this story. thank you so much for sharing it with us. thanks robin. and also on the human rights groups radar state sanctioned executions. the practice ro, substantially across the world last year, according to the annual amnesty international report on the death penalty. the n g

o says that 579, a legal executions to place in 2021. that's a 20 percent increase from the year before. china is estimated to execute the most people, but releases no official figures. none that puts iran at the top of the countries for which numbers are available at least 314 people were put to death. there last year. iran is followed by egypt and saudi arabia. one high profile case in iran is a journalist, af, madre sally, a half a swedish half iranian man, accused of being a spy for israel, amnesty and to the swedish government urging iran to spare his life. and we'll be talking or we be taking a look at this specific case now also unpacking some of the why the implications of amnesty is a report with our studio guest. namely mac las

n b. cool. he's a secretary general of the german branch of amnesty international. welcome to the w . welcome to the studio. good to have you with us. thank you, monica. so let's a pick up right on this last information. as far as we know, at much recent july, lee was facing execution on may the 21st. so that is now 3 days ago. what is the latest that we know and he's case? yes. so we are monitoring the situation on the ground. i think it's important that there's global attention because we had the situation already here at the end of 2020, that the execution seemed very doing soon to happen. and, but there was massive global intervention. and this is necessary in several of the cases we've seen where iran uses the death penalty, arbitrary and following torture and grossly unfair trials to

actually are either used as repression against individuals or as it's also estimated here, is being individuals who are being used as hostage for the exchange of other arrested iranians across the globe. ok, so there is a sort of another aim behind keeping them then on death row. if you keep them as hostage in exchange for something else, but an awful lot of them are put to death in iran. what's behind that high number of death penalties there? yeah, so iran has been over the last years, belonging to that rather small group of states which systematically and continuously use the death penalty for this this cool and really largely arbitrary punishment. and this goes along, as i said, with, with torture,

with unfair trials. and also we have totally neglecting international standards around the death penalty to starts with m cases, which for instance, iran still sentences people for drug offenses. while international law limits the application of the death penalty to intentional killings. and while iran has reduced the number of offenses, it's still largely violating international law there. we also see that ethnic groups are targeted in the high proportion with the death penalty. and iran also belongs to the few countries which have been sentencing. people who are under age minus, or at the moment of where they're suspected criminal offense has happened. now, now iran obviously is, is right now, top of the list at least with the numbers that are available. but your report also

shows that her state sanctioned execution sir, has risen all over the world over the last year. do we know why? yes, so our latest report shows that executions have arisen about 20 percent globally. 18 countries were responsible for that. but we also see that sentences have gone up by nearly 40 percent, and that's an alarming trend because over the recent years, we have luckily seen that more and more countries abolish and no longer use the death penalty. but as we see now, there is this number of states which they stick to this crude punishment. and numbers of executions and sentences are going up. partly because we had the coven 19 pandemic last year, which halted legal ongoing proceeding sentences, but also execution. so the good news is why numbers have gone up,

it's still after last year, one of the lowest lum numbers in recent years. but i think it takes now the pressure of the international community or on those countries be it china bit iran, but also egypt and saudi arabia and syria to make sure that we go back to the positive development. absolutely, and it's, i was just a, you saw it. i was just a, had a smoke on my face because the thought of co 19 creating a backlog in, in death penalties being executed to which created the rise. ah, it is just to bizarre the same time, obviously the hope that maybe next year the number will decrease again, which actually leads me to the next question. have you discovered anything that one could call a positive trend? yes, so i think of the good news is that every year there countries again and again who bring legislation to abolish the death penalty. countries like gonna we're in, in,

in the, in the process to do so. we have a positive development after difficult developments in the us now that at least the new government and the new federal government, the new biting of administration, has halted executions on the federal level. and we ought to see that virginia is the, is joining as the 23rd of abolitionist state in the us. so, and they are more to mention. so there is a, the fight against the death penalty is important. and it's a fight which has been successful and we need to put more pressure on those countries who are sticking to this punishment. well, thank you so much, marcus and baker, secretary general of the german branch of amnesty international for bringing those figures. in fact, to us here to d, w, thank you so much. very welcome. you're watching dw new sir up next her close up and you said with imagine how many portions of lunch

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