Juan Carlos Rivera: death of a Colombian on the US-Mexico border - Other Cities - Colombia

“The border is an area of ​​piranhas waiting to devour you and in which you don’t live if you don’t have money. Or also in some cases, you die if you have it. It depends on how you arrive and who brings you because if things are done well, everything is possible here with tickets”. (German Castro Caycedo, ‘The Hollow’)

The night of February 23, 2022, Colombian Juan Carlos Rivera began his long journey through Mexicali: his destiny was to cross the border of the United States at any cost.

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I have mistrust of the man who takes me, he has made me change cars several times

Before starting his journey through the desert sands of this border area, he sent a WhatsApp voice message to his older brother, Jhon, who remembered what he said: “I have mistrust of the man who takes me, he has made me change cars several times.”

Then, he told his relatives that his cell phone was about to die, to pray and that they would hear from him once he reached the top and was safe, enjoying the American dream.

Mexicali, border city with the United States.

Months ago Juan Carlos was desperate for his present in Colombia. The economy of his home was scarce due to the ravages of two years of the pandemic. The business in his father’s butcher shop, with whom he worked, did not pick up and he had no other choice but to explore ways so that the crisis would not knock him down.

I was trying to give everything to them. At the end of the year they planned to get married

First, he got into debt with loans that allowed him to buy a car, with which he intended to work from sunrise to sunset on mobility platforms. That’s how he tried for a good part of 2021, but the accounts still didn’t add up.

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“Brother, what do I do?” Jhon recalled that Juan Carlos asked him, desperate.
It was there, at the beginning of February, that they began to explore the possibility that Juan Carlos, the second of four brothers, would cross into the United States as many other Latin Americans and Africans do: through the gap.

And that border between Mexico and the United States, which has become a dream for many illegal migrants to cross, can also be a grave. According to data from the Customs and Border Protection Office, only in 2021 557 deaths of people seeking to cross illegally into US territory were recorded.

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He did it to help his family

Such was his point of desperation to support his children and wife, whom he loved and adored, that he ventured

Juan Carlos was a man who lived for his children, ages 10, 6 and 3. With Karen, his wife, before the covid-19 pandemic broke out, they tried to travel through Colombia, but the couple’s economic muscle progressively weakened.

Xiomara Méndez, a close friend of the couple, commented that they planned to marry at the end of this year. A goal that would have been one of the heights of her happiness.

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“I was trying to give everything to them. At the end of the year they planned to get married.” However, the happiness she projected was almost always being swallowed up by the anguish of debt and not being able to meet the needs of her family.

Juan Carlos Rivera and his family.

Photo:

family courtesy

“He was a nervous man, that’s why it seemed strange to me that he made the decision to go through the gap to the United States. He always tried to be with a friend or a physical support. Such was the point of desperation of him to support his children and wife, whom he loved and adored, that he ventured. There was no complaint about him, he was a great person,” said Xiomara.

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Juan Carlos, 37, devised his plan to travel to Mexico. With his brother Jhon, they watched videos, asked acquaintances who made that journey for advice, until they found the human trafficker, who is known in these worlds as the ‘coyote’; the man in charge of being the illegal transport across the border between the two countries.

The price that he assessed to cross it to the United States was 800 dollars (approximately 3 million Colombian pesos). Juan Carlos sold the car, with that money he bought tickets to Mexico and saved the money for the coyote.

The plan did not leave the family nucleus because of how convoluted and dangerous the subject could be for other people. Even more so when, just 4 months ago, Colombian Claudia Marcela Pineda and her 11-year-old daughter succumbed to high temperatures while crossing the Sonoran desert. The route that these compatriots had taken was also through Mexicali.

the day of the tragedy

After leaving his house in the Villa del Río neighborhood, in the south of Bogotá, saying goodbye to his children, wife, siblings and parents, this Bogota native left on February 21 for Cancun.

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Two days later he took a flight to Mexicali, a city that borders the United States and is surrounded by the Sonoran desert, whose area is immense: it covers 260,000 square kilometers, which is why many people – like Claudia’s case – can lose their way and die of thirst and hunger if the coyote abandons them in a desolate field.

Juan Carlos Rivera leaves behind three children aged 10, 6 and 3.

It was on February 23 that Juan Carlos met the coyote. That day he alerted Jhon: “In some voice notes, at 8:20 at night, my brother told me that the person was very strange. I tried to calm him down, I told him it was normal, because the Mexican police could get to them.”

A few minutes later, he wrote to Jhon again, telling him that the coyote had left him at a point where he had to walk 300 meters until he found a place where he would find other migrants.

During that walk through the desert, the man informed Karen that her cell phone was about to turn off due to running out of battery.

Hours passed. The family assumed that Juan Carlos had managed to cross the gap, despite the fact that he had not communicated.

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After 48 hours, the communication about the whereabouts of Juan Carlos arrived. The Colombian consulate in Los Angeles, United States, informed the family, via email, that he was dead.

What happened in the desert?

Jhon says that the first thing he thought was that Juan Carlos had been murdered. It was strange to them. A thousand things came to mind.

The family, devastated by the news, began to consult with the United States authorities about the possible causes of Juan Carlos’s death.

The medical examiner explained to the family that the man’s body was found on the morning of Thursday, February 24, by Arizona border guards.

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They left him there all night, alone. His mind could have played a trick on him, he got scared and ventured over the wall

Jhon stated that, after finding out what had happened, it was established that Juan Carlos was late for the group that was going to cross the border that night. He was left alone at the point where more migrants were supposed to arrive and after waiting for hours, not knowing what to do, he made a decision.

“Before him, it seems, there was a group of 14 people who had already been taken to cross the border. They left him there all night, alone. His mind could have played a trick on him, he got scared and ventured past the wall”, John counted.

This is the wall on the border between Mexico and the United States that Juan Carlos was trying to cross.

At that border point there are two walls, which are up to 9 meters high and are made of steel bars. Juan Carlos, according to his brother Jhon, was able to cross the first wall, but when he crossed the second, he fell and died instantly.
It is not known how long the Colombian waited for other migrants to arrive in the area, nor the hours that his body was lying in the desert.

“It is very sad. He hurts a lot for his three little children.” John said. Juan Carlos’s family is now trying to gather the resources to be able to repatriate the body of the Colombian, whose body will be delivered to an acquaintance this Saturday.

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However, the procedures cost approximately 25 million pesos, money that the family does not have, but which, they said, the solidarity of Colombians is helping to obtain.
*The Rivera family is seeking donations to repatriate the young man. If you are interested in helping, you can call 302 4194949, 301 6975521 and 322 3297598.

The savings account number that they have arranged is: 91230368151 from Bancolombia, in the name of Karen Julieth Sánchez, whose citizenship card is 1024527646.

Read the stories of the special Dying away from home

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Social leaders defy violence in Colombia's border town of Saravena | Main | Spanish edition

On January 19, a car bomb exploded a few meters from a building in the city of Saravena, in the Colombian municipality of Arauca, where some 60 community leaders had gathered.

The activists survived the bombing because hours before the attack, they had erected makeshift barricades with plastic barrels they filled with stones as FARC dissidents, with Antonio Medina at the helm, were attempting on assassinating them.

The attack claimed one life, Simeón Delgado, who was a security guard at the Colombian Agricultural Institute headquarters where the van exploded causing extensive damage to several buildings, including the Héctor Alirio Martínez building which is used by community-led organizations and was the target of the attack.

US Border Agency Chief Faces Challenges from Within and Outside

One agent protested that he didn’t join the Border Patrol to look after children in custody. Another asked why a policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for court hearings wasn’t being used more. And one turned his back on the senior officials who had come to listen.

Unsurprisingly for anyone who’s been tracking migration along the United States’ southern border, the recent showdown happened in Yuma, Arizona, where encounters with migrants illegally crossing into the country from Mexico jumped more than 20-fold in December from a year earlier.

Discontent among the ranks is only one of the challenges Chris Magnus faces as the new leader of the United States’ largest law enforcement agency. Magnus, who was sworn in this month as commissioner of the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, also faces persistent allegations that his agency is mistreating migrants, failing to recruit more women and is at the mercy of a broken asylum system.

Magnus might seem like an unconventional pick. When he was the police chief in Tucson, Arizona, he rejected federal grants to collaborate on border security with the agency he now leads and kept a distance from Border Patrol leaders in a region where thousands of agents are assigned.

In his first interview as commissioner, Magnus acknowledged morale problems and outlined some initial steps meant to fix them. He had no simple answer to address migration flows.

“There have always been periods of migrant surges into this country for different reasons, at different times,” he said last week. “But I don’t think anybody disputes that the numbers are high right now and that we have to work as many different strategies as possible to deal with those high numbers.”

Magnus noted the growing number of migrants who from countries outside of Mexico and Central America, a trend that has been especially strong in Yuma.

Under a public health order known as Title 42 that was designed to limit spread of COVID-19, Mexico takes back migrants from the U.S. who are from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador and are denied a chance to seek asylum. Other nationalities are eligible for expulsion, but the U.S. often won’t fly them home due to the expense or strained diplomatic relations with their home countries. Instead, they are often quickly released in the U.S. to pursue asylum.

FILE – Migrants released by the Border Patrol with notices to appear in court, Feb. 5, 2022, in Somerton, Ariz., wait for COVID-19 testing at a Regional Center for Border Health warehouse.

“There’s a lot of frustration,” said Rafael Rivera, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2595, a union that represents agents in the patrol’s Yuma sector, which has seen a huge increase in such migrants. “They feel like there’s no consequences, that we have an open border.”

In December, U.S. officials stopped Venezuelans at the border nearly 25,000 times, which was more than double September’s count and more than a hundred times the roughly 200 they made in December 2020. Venezuelans trailed only Mexicans in the number stopped at the U.S. border in December.

In the Yuma sector, which stretches from California’s Imperial Sand Dunes to western Arizona’s desert and rocky mountain ranges, Venezuelans were stopped nearly 10 times more than Mexicans in December. Colombians, Indians, Cubans and Haitians also outnumbered Mexicans.

Mexico began requiring visas for Venezuelans on Jan. 21, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted during his contentious Jan. 26 meeting with Yuma agents, according to a recording leaked to the website Townhall, which publishes conservative viewpoints. He said the U.S. was pressing Mexico to accept more nationalities under Title 42 authority and to increase immigration enforcement within its own borders.

Magnus, who reports to Mayorkas, told the AP that migration flows are “increasingly complex” and that the U.S. was “doing our best to build and take advantage of relationships with these different countries that migrants are coming from.”

Although President Joe Biden faces many of the same challenges as his predecessors, Donald Trump visited the border often, spent massively on enforcement and got an early endorsement from the agents’ union in 2016.

As a Biden appointee and an outsider who had a chilly relationship with Border Patrol leaders in Tucson, Magnus might struggle winning over agents.

FILE – A Border Patrol agent fills out paperwork for migrants who surrendered in Yuma, Ariz., Feb. 5, 2022, after crossing the border illegally from Los Algodones, Mexico.

Roy Villareal, chief of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector from early 2019 until late 2020, said he sought an introductory meeting with Magnus, who was then Tucson’s police chief, but that he never heard back, calling their lack of interaction “a telling sign.” Villareal could recall speaking to Magnus only three times during their overlapping tenures — each one a courtesy call from Magnus to inform him that Tucson police were about to arrest one of his agents.

“He’s the wrong person for the Border Patrol,” said Villareal, who retired after 32 years in the agency. “His knowledge and understanding of border enforcement just isn’t there. … Agents will challenge him.”

Others consider Magnus a good fit.

“He is very respected among his colleagues,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief whose focus on use of force rankled some agents when he held Magnus’ job from 2014 to 2017. “Chris’ background on holding people accountable is pretty extensive.”

Magnus, 61, was born and raised in Lansing, Michigan, where he served stints as an emergency dispatcher, paramedic, sheriff’s deputy and police captain. He was police chief in Fargo, North Dakota, and Richmond, California, before he took the job in Tucson in January 2016. In that latest role, he took orders from elected leaders in the liberal city of more than 500,000 people.

In Tucson, Magnus created a program to steer people away from drugs, worked with nonprofits helping homeless people and overhauled the department’s use-of-force policy. He openly criticized Trump policies for making migrants more reluctant to share information about crimes with police.

CBP critics in Tucson give Magnus mixed reviews. Vicki Gaubeca, of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, said he championed “some very progressive policies,” but that the Border Patrol needs a visionary who will change what she calls a deep-seated “culture of impunity.”

FILE – A Mexican smuggler guides a Haitian family across the Morelos Dam over the Colorado River from Los Algodones, Mexico, on Feb. 4, 2022, to Yuma, Ariz., on the other side.

In his final weeks as police chief, Magnus called for the firing of an off-duty officer who shot and killed a suspected shoplifter in a motorized wheelchair, saying it was “a clear violation of department policy.” The officer left the department last month.

And in 2020, Magnus offered to resign over an in-custody death that the department failed to make public for two months, but the city manager asked him to stay.

One longstanding issue Magnus faces is allegations of agents using excessive force. Agents have been involved in an increasing number of use-of-force incidents and there have been more fatalities involving Border Patrol agents, though the number of encounters surged at an even higher rate.

Magnus said the use of force is a “very serious concern” and that he believes the overwhelming majority of agents act responsibly. He also defended specialized teams that collect evidence in incidents that might involve agents’ excessive use of force. Democratic congressional leaders have expressed serious concerns about the Critical Incident Teams, which some activists allege are shadowy cover-up operations.

“This is really not unusual in most police agencies,” Magnus told the AP. “There’s absolutely no reason why trained investigators in the field can’t be gathering this kind of critical evidence.”

Two young people are murdered on the border between Valle and Cauca - Cali - Colombia

The bodies of two young people were found on the side of the road, on the road that connects the municipalities of Florida, Valle del Cauca, and Miranda, Cauca.

Is about two males, that still remain unidentified.

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The victims were dressed in T-shirts, yines and sports shoes.

The bodies were found this Sunday morning in the Los Guaduales sector, in the vicinity of the Desbaratado river bridge.

“They are two bald men who appeared lying on the side of the road. So far we do not know who they are. Apparently they took them to this point and then kill them with a firearm”witnesses reported.

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The young people received several impacts from a firearm at the height of the head.

Authorities are present at the scene.

Last January 14 three people were killed in the municipality of Miranda. Two of the people were killed by armed men when they were in the area of ​​’Las Gradas de la Plazoleta’, located in the municipal seat, where armed men traveling in a truck arrived, and opened fire indiscriminately against those who they found on the spot.

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The other case occurred in the village of Guatemala. In this place, the body of a young man was found with several impacts from a firearm and next to him a sign in which they are accused of participating in criminal acts.

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Working Conditions for US Border Patrol Getting More Attention

Washington — 

A strained Border Patrol is getting increased attention from the Biden administration after tense meetings between senior officials and the rank and file while the agency deals with one of the largest spikes in migration along the U.S.-Mexico border in decades.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the Border Patrol, laid out 19 ways to address working conditions after frosty receptions by agents, said Chris Magnus, the new commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

Mayorkas also pledged in a memo to push for more prosecutions of people accused of assaulting CBP personnel in the course of their duties, an issue raised at a recent meeting in Laredo, Texas, and elsewhere, Magnus said Tuesday.

FILE – US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus speaks during an interview in his office with The Associated Press, Feb. 8, 2022, in Washington.

“That’s something that agents in the field want to hear because assaults are on the uptick,” Magnus told The Associated Press. “We are not just seeing folks who are fleeing to the U.S. to get away from conditions. We are seeing smugglers, members of cartels, and drug organizations that are actively engaged in doing harm.”

Efforts to deal with working conditions for agents come as President Joe Biden has been criticized across the political spectrum over immigration. He has sought to reverse many hardcore policies of his predecessor but has come under fire over the situation at the border that could cause trouble for Democrats in the midterm elections.

CBP encountered migrants from all over the world about 1.7 million times along the U.S.-Mexico border last year. The total, among the highest in decades, is inflated by repeated apprehensions of people who were turned away, without being given a chance to seek asylum, under a public health order issued at the start of the pandemic.

Immigration advocates have condemned the administration for not repealing the public health order, known as Title 42, while critics, including many Border Patrol agents, say a Biden policy of allowing children and families to stay in the country and pursue asylum has encouraged irregular migration.

FILE – Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. are being processed by the U.S. border patrol after crossing the border from Mexico at Yuma, Arizona, Jan. 22, 2022.

Magnus said the agents, and the administration, are just trying to manage a complicated situation.

“We’re seeing folks that are encountering political conditions and violence, unsafe conditions to live and work, at unprecedented levels,” the former police chief of Tucson, Arizona, said in an interview, the first since he was sworn in Friday. “We’ve seen, for example, in places, earthquakes or other environmental conditions. We’re seeing unprecedented levels of poverty. All of these are things that are in many ways, you know, pushing migrants again at high levels to this country.”

The administration has sought to address the cause of migration, including by increasing aid to Central America and re-starting a visa program that was ended under President Donald Trump. It has also sought assistance from other countries, including Mexico, to do more to stop or take in migrants.

As the overall numbers have increased, and the administration has decided to allow many families to stay and seek asylum in a process that can take years, some Border Patrol agents have grown disenchanted as they spend their shifts processing and transporting people, not out in the field.

That frustration boiled over in Laredo as agents met late last month with Mayorkas and Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who acknowledged morale was at an “all-time low,” according to a leaked video published by the Washington Examiner. One agent complained about “doing nothing” except releasing people into the United States, referring to the practice of allowing migrants to remain free while their cases wind through immigration court.

FILE – Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, on Sept. 21, 2021 on Capitol Hill.

At another meeting, in Yuma, Arizona, Mayorkas told agents he understood that apprehending families and children “is not what you signed up to do” and that their jobs were becoming more challenging amid an influx of Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, according to video published by the conservative website Townhall. One of the agents turned his back on the secretary.

Magnus has heard similar concerns raised in meetings. “I think it has been difficult for many of them who spent most of their careers or anticipated that their careers would be largely working in the field, on the border,” he said.

The commissioner declined to specify the 19 areas where Mayorkas “wants to see improvement,” because they have not been publicly released. But another official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said they include expanding the role of a new class of civilian employees to add tasks such as transporting migrants to medical facilities so agents can return to other duties.

Another point calls for faster decisions on asylum cases at the border. Agents have expressed frustration that asylum-seekers are freed in the U.S., often for years, while their claims make their way through a system backlogged with about 1.6 million cases.

Magnus said he hopes to expand mental health services for agents and provide additional resources to help them and their families cope with a stressful job that requires them to move often.

“There is never one simple solution to addressing morale at any organization, but I absolutely appreciate the very challenging conditions that the men and women of the Border Patrol and CBP in general have been have been working under,” he said.

Barranquilla: controversial information sign on the border with Soledad, Atlántico - Barranquilla - Colombia

Signaling the limits between one territory and another is normal and necessary when investing in municipal resources, issuing charges for property taxes and public services, among others. But an official warning shocked the community that lives in the limits of Barranquilla and the municipality of Soledad (Atlántico).

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The sign that had significance is located precisely on Calle 30 – Autopista Aeropuerto, before reaching a stationery store, in the north-south direction, towards the air terminal that serves the District.

What is the intention of the message? Send two different messages, like a contempt

In that sense, they are 100 linear metersapproximately, those that separate the vehicular bridge over Circunvalar Avenue with the informative sign that was installed by the District Traffic and Road Safety Secretariat.

For greater accuracy, the message on the billboard ‘This is Barranquilla – We await your return!’ It was what generated various reactions, such as discomfort, confusion, ridicule, discord and even memes that were spread on social networks.

On the other road, towards the capital of the Atlantic, was painted on the road the city ​​flag just below the informative sign ‘Welcome to Barranquilla’.

“As an organization, we looked at it and the first question that came to mind was, ‘What is the intent of the message?’ Send two different messages, like contempt. When it could have been something like ‘Thank you for visiting Barranquilla, come back soon,’ ”said the president of the Pride for Solitude Foundation, Hugo Ordóñez, to EL TIEMPO.

According to the electronic engineer, a native of the municipality, the other message he sees after analyzing the signal is that it has a tinge of “political marketing.”

“Could it be that we want to show that there is effective infrastructure management? But we are not showing that sense of brotherhood and love for our neighbor, ”he said.

A few meters ahead of the informative signal this flag was painted.

Photo:

Vanexa Romero /THE TIME

The memes were not lacking for the signal

Due to the fact, there was no shortage of creatives on social networks who designed memes when the photos that Ordóñez made known through these digital channels went viral.

One of those assemblies, by way of ‘revenge’, was a supposed informative signal in the old failure of the Ernesto Cortissoz International Airportwith the message “Welcome to the Ernesto Cortissoz de Soledad airport, Atlántico”, as it is located in the jurisdiction of this municipality.

Internet users ‘revenge’ themselves with the memes.

Photo:

Taken from social networks

However, others went further and spread a supposed notice with the slogan “This is El Concord (neighborhood), Malambo is further on.”

It must be taken into account that, in addition to this point on Calle 30, the billboard with the message ‘So far is Barranquilla’ was also installed on the extension of the Murillolowering the vehicular bridge of this avenue on the Circunvalar.

Neighbors fear being left in limbo

What is in total abandonment, our idea is to pave it with our resources

Beyond the folklore on the networks, the inhabitants of this sector are concerned that the segment between the new Barranquilla information fence and the ‘Municipio de Soledad’ sign (north – south) remains in limbo.

Since in said area, where there is a stationery store, an EPS and a shipping company, the state of the road infrastructure is in bad conditionsin contrast to the Barranquilla side, where an improvement was recently made with the expansion of the roads.

“Seeing the refusal of both administrations, both Soledad and Barranquilla, we took on the task as a Foundation of appropriating the piece. What is in total abandonment, our idea is to pave it with our resources, in alliance with private companies”, said Ordóñez.

He added that, through the formation of a Works Committee, they seek to establish the real budget to intervene the section, with the strategy of dividing the stage works. Before this management, the community made a demonstration on the road, asking themselves “So, who does this belong to? Barranquilla? Loneliness?”.

The traffic signal in Murillo has gone unnoticed by some inhabitants.

Photo:

Vanexa Romero /THE TIME

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The reaction of the District of Barranquilla

The signs installed on some roads of the District that communicate with the surrounding municipalities inform the inhabitants and visitors, in a friendly way

Inquiring about the limits, it was learned that those of Barranquilla, established by the Agustín Codazzi Institute, have not changed in decades. In addition, this medium consulted the Secretary of Traffic and Road Safety of the District, after the installation of the signal.

“The signs installed on some roads in the District that communicate with the surrounding municipalities inform the inhabitants and visitors, in a friendly way, of the end of the district jurisdiction”, communicated this dependency of the Mayor’s Office.

The Secretariat added that this is intended to provide guidance on its current and future location. In addition, he recalled that the informative location signs (green background) have the function of indicating jurisdictional limits of cities or urban areas, identifying rivers, lakes, parks, among other points of interest, in accordance with the guidelines of the Signaling Manual Road 2015.

“In cities with a tourist vocation, it is necessary for visitors to know the limits in order to guide them in accessing services, places of interest and various activities,” added the authority.

Thus, the signal is maintained, as is the poor condition of the road, which connects with the international air terminal and which now has the community in anguish over its fate.

Deivis Lopez Ortega
Correspondent of EL TIEMPO Barranquilla
On twitter: @dejholopez
Write me at deilop@eltiempo.com

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RFE/RL is uniquely positioned to cover the Ukrainian border crisis from all angles – USAGM

Resources you need: RFE/RL is uniquely positioned to cover the Ukrainian border crisis from all angles

January 24, 2022

Washington, D.C. — As Russian military forces and equipment continue to flood into Russian and Belarusian territories adjacent to those countries’ borders with Ukraine, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Ukrainian, Russian and Belarus services and Current Time digital network are reporting the facts on the ground on either side of the Ukrainian frontier.

On January 19, RFE/RL’s Russian Service, in collaboration with the Conflict Intelligence Team, published the results of a joint investigation that exposes the scale and nature of Moscow’s military mobilization along Ukraine’s borders. Using Russian-language social media posts, the investigators traced the movement since January 7 of Russian soldiers based in far-Eastern Russia towards Belarus. In about half of the posts, the investigation notes, the friends and relatives of Russian contract soldiers write about the soldiers’ dispatch “for assignment” or “for training.”

These posts and others offer further evidence of Russia’s massive concentration of troops and equipment from throughout Russia near Ukraine. RFE/RL’s Belarus Service reported on January 21, citing a Telegram post by Belarusian railway workers, that 33 of 200 Russian military trains, each averaging 50 cars bearing passengers, munitions, and other equipment had already arrived in Belarus for joint military exercises near the borders of Ukraine. The service supported this information with audience reports about Russian troop and equipment movements in Gomel region, only 150 miles north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

To track the Russian military buildup, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service has created an up-to-date interactive map (in Ukrainian) that provides new information on troop deployments and equipment stockpiles along Ukraine’s border in Russia and Belarus, and within the territory held by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

RFE/RL has also sent reporters to Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus, as well as the eastern Ukraine conflict zone, to learn more about the views of Ukrainian soldiers and local residents about the looming threat.

To provide insight on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the face of the military threat from Russia, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service aired an exclusive interview on January 23 with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, and the day before its Crimea Realities unit posted an exclusive with Ukrainian naval forces chief Rear Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa. RFE/RL and its services have also interviewed numerous other foreign officials, including Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks, Polish Member of the European Parliament and former foreign minister Radek Sikorski and Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil, as well as U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R) and Chris Murphy (D), who visited Ukraine on January 17 as members of a bipartisan delegation.

RFE/RL has also provided audiences in-depth reporting and analysis on the summit discussions in December between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin; the January 10 U.S.-Russia talks, January 12 NATO-Russia meeting, and January 13 OSCE Permanent Council session; and the January 21 discussions in Geneva between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, with a monthly average of over 8 million visits and 11 million page views to its websites as well as nearly 600 million video views on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram in 2021, sets a standard in the Ukrainian media market for independence, professionalism, and innovation. Its comprehensive coverage includes the award-winning reporting of its Donbas Realities and Crimea Realities websites and “Schemes” investigative reporting team.

Labeled an “extremist organization” by the Belarus government, RFE/RL’s Belarus Service provides independent news and analysis to Belarusian audiences in their own language, relying on social media platforms such as Telegram, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as mirror sites and an updated news app to circumvent pervasive Internet blockages and access disruptions.

About RFE/RL

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is a private, independent international news organization whose programs — radio, Internet, television, and mobile — reach influential audiences in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through USAGM.

Related information

RFE/RL in Russia

RFE/RL’s Russian Service is a multiplatform alternative to Russian state-controlled media, providing audiences in the Russian Federation with informed and accurate news, analysis, and opinion. Despite being labeled by the Russian government as a “foreign agent,” The Russian Service’s websites, including its regional reporting units Siberia.Realities and Northern.Realities, earned a monthly average of 12.7 million visits and 20.6 million page views in 2021, while 297 million Russian Service videos were viewed on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Current Time

Current Time is a 24/7 Russian-language digital and TV network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. In addition to reporting uncensored news, it is the largest provider of independent, Russian-language films to its audiences. Despite rising pressure on Current Time from the Russian government, which has labeled the network a media “foreign agent,” Current Time videos were viewed over 1.3 billion times on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram/IGTV in FY2021.

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