"What I saw in Ukraine SHOOK me to my core" Ukraine is not a democracy, it never was | Redacted

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Redacted News

Episode: "What I saw in Ukraine SHOOK me to my core" — Ukraine is not a democracy, it never was

Host: Clayton Morris
Guest: Benoit Par, Former French Ministry of Defense, OSCE Observer, Author
Date: November 26, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode challenges the mainstream Western narrative about Ukraine's status as a democracy before and during the current war, drawing on the eyewitness experiences of Benoit Par, who served as an observer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2015–2022. The conversation shines a light on human rights abuses, judicial corruption, media censorship, and state-sponsored violence in Ukraine, and raises questions about Western support for the country’s government.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Democracy" Narrative and the 2014 Coup

• Western justification for supporting Ukraine hinges on the claim it is a democracy fighting Russian aggression (02:00)
• Benoit Par contests this, pointing to longstanding US State Department and media characterizations of Ukraine as highly corrupt, even before the 2014 Maidan events.
• He cites scholarly research (Ivan Katchanovski, Univ. of Ottawa) indicating that the Maidan protests involved a false-flag attack, with opposition forces killing demonstrators to blame the government—undermining claims to democratic legitimacy (05:50).
  • Quote:
    “This was a coup based on a false flag attack on demonstrators. Now all the evidence is out there for people to look at, except that people don’t want to look at it.”
    — Benoit Par (05:50)
• Media Complicity: Major Western journalists, even those with the influence of a New York Times equivalent, refused to investigate these findings because "it would change too many things." (07:05)

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2. OSCE Observations: Human Rights Violations and Kidnappings

• Par’s Role: He was in a small, sensitive “Human Dimension” unit of the OSCE with access to reports of kidnappings, torture, and extrajudicial arrests, mostly in Eastern Ukraine (10:45).

• Pattern of Abuses:

  • Civilians were routinely kidnapped by armed men (often from “volunteer battalions” such as Azov, Aidar, Donbas, Dnipro-1/2) and subjected to torture and sexual humiliation.
  • Journalists were a primary target to suppress dissenting narratives (24:19).
  • Quote:
    “They asked him to hold a gun in his hand ... ‘Now we have your fingerprints. If you don’t do as you’re told, we will accuse you of terrorism.’”
    — Benoit Par, recounting a journalist’s story (27:08)
  • SBU (Ukraine’s security service) often prosecuted journalists, threatening them with long sentences if they continued reporting (28:23).

• Systematic Judicial Abuse:

  • Civilian courts in Donbas (and later Odessa) saw 100% conviction rates, especially for “terrorism”—often just for talking to family across the line about troop positions, or posting online in favour of separatists.
  • Quote:
    “Anyone could be arrested … In both oblasts, prosecutors told me, ‘We have only one or two people who escaped conviction, but don’t worry, they’ll be convicted on appeal.’”
    — Benoit Par (31:33)
  • Torture was routine and confessions extracted under duress were accepted as evidence (38:24).

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3. Press and Political Suppression:

• Courts and SBU: Judges admitted they merely followed prosecutors’ requests, and the SBU surveilled and intimidated both defendants’ families and trial attendees (42:58).

• Political Censorship: Opposition Bloc, the main Russian-leaning party, was subject to harassment, denial of resources, and bans on public rallies from 2015 onward. By the time of the current war, 11 opposition parties had been banned, and party leaders arrested. (73:33)

• Quote:
  “From the moment I decided to run for mayor, my credit card was blocked … and I was told, if you want to be able to use it again, you have to step down as candidate. So I did.”
  — Benoit Par, relating a Donbas politician’s experience (74:19)

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4. Media Blackout and State Cover-up

• Suppression of OSCE Reporting:

  • Detailed civilian casualty reports showing that Ukrainian government shelling caused the majority of deaths in separatist-held areas were suppressed at the behest of Ukrainian authorities (55:26, 57:18).
  • Quote:
    “Our head of mission decided that from then on we would no longer publish statistics that would show on which side we would actually confirm the biggest amount of victims.”
    — Benoit Par (56:59)

• Western Government Silence:

  • Par attempted to raise these realities with both OSCE management and the French government, but was met with silence or indifference (67:26).

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5. Organized Crime, Corruption, and Morality in Ukraine

• Corruption:
  • Widespread at every level of government, including police, judiciary, and local politicians.
  • Foreign aid frequently vanished into private hands; local officials advised foreign donors to give only at the local level lest funds disappear (80:12).
• Deep Systemic Rot:
  • Par recounts stories of blackmail, “mafia” ties among prosecutors, and even cases tied to pedophilia and trafficking (82:27, 83:44).
• Children-for-Sale and Surrogacy Industry:
  • Ukraine emerged as a hub for legally dubious surrogacy, with babies routinely sold abroad. Certain clinics locked women in for entire pregnancies, and contracts denied them any access to the children later. (84:08, 86:21)
  • Quote:
    “…We have customers who come and we show them a catalog. In our catalog we have different options—you could basically request the woman stays locked inside the clinic for the whole pregnancy … but it was more expensive.”
    — Benoit Par (85:28)

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6. Allegations of Organ Harvesting and Human Trafficking

• Organ Harvesting:
  • Par heard unconfirmed but disturbing reports—especially from Russian sources—of facilities linked to child organ trafficking, particularly after the Russian invasion, but lacks direct evidence (92:19, 93:15).
• Human Trafficking:
  • A highly policed conflict zone may have suppressed visible trafficking locally, but surrogacy and baby-selling were rampant, with minimal safeguards against abuse.

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7. War, Propaganda, and the Prospects for Peace

• Western Elites Pushing for Escalation:

  • Par warns that European governments and the media are pushing narratives of inevitable war with Russia. France and the EU lack the constitutional checks of the US, making them more susceptible to elite-driven policy without public consent (95:04, 98:29).

• Quote:
  “We are living through the fabrication of the enemy … They are trying to convince us that Russia basically wants to recreate the Soviet Union, the Soviet Empire, and will not stop there … We are living through everyday situation. It's like a coup is being arranged against the European people, against their will, and there’s nothing we can do.”
  — Benoit Par (96:42, 98:29)

• Suppression of Freedom:

  • The EU is actively legislating for increased digital surveillance, threatening freedom of speech, and criminalizing dissent about the war (100:30).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media Silence:
  “A major journalist … just paused and said, 'No, it would change too many things.' That was his answer.”
  — Benoit Par (07:05)

• On Justice in Ukraine:
  “The prosecutor asks and we follow. … The SBU was running the show.”
  — Benoit Par (42:58, 44:27)

• On Civilian Suffering:
  “The Ukrainian military was not doing anything, they’re just sitting there waiting to be shot at … But when I look at the figures … 72% of the victims that we verified were actually based on the separatist side.”
  — Benoit Par (57:18)

• On Corruption:
  “If you want to invest money in Ukraine, give it to the local people. If you give it to higher level, it will disappear.”
  — Local mayor, relayed by Benoit Par (80:12)

• On Surrogacy & Human Rights:
  “She worked in one of these clinics where they literally sell babies … There was even one option, to have the surrogate woman locked inside for the whole pregnancy. It was more expensive.”
  — Benoit Par (85:28)

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Key Timestamps

• Proxy War & Democracy Narrative: 02:00–05:00
• 2014 Maidan Coup & Media Cover-up: 05:00–09:40
• OSCE Human Rights Findings: 10:45–20:00
• Journalist Kidnappings & Torture: 24:19–28:40
• 100% Conviction Courts, Civilian Arrests: 31:33–39:00
• Justice System & SBU Control: 42:58–48:00
• Odessa Massacre & Judicial Corruption: 47:57–51:00
• Suppression of Critical Reporting: 55:26–57:18
• French & Western Government Inaction: 67:26–71:24
• Political Oppression, Party Bans: 73:33–78:30
• Corruption & Organized Crime: 80:12–83:44
• Surrogacy, Baby Factories: 84:08–91:53
• Organ Harvesting Allegations: 92:17–93:15
• Escalation Toward WW3: 95:04–99:23
• EU Surveillance Laws, Loss of Freedoms: 100:30–102:21

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Tone & Takeaway

The conversation is charged, skeptical, and at times plainly alarmed about both the conditions inside Ukraine and the narratives dominating Western policy and media coverage. Par delivers his first-hand testimonies deliberately and with professional sobriety, yet conveys a deep sense of betrayal by Western democratic institutions that, in his view, have sacrificed truth for geopolitical expediency. The episode ends with a call for transparency, courage in exposing official lies, and resistance to escalating war.

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Recommended For:
Viewers seeking dissenting views on Western support for Ukraine, first-hand observer testimony about human rights and state abuses, and a broader inquiry into the intersection of war, media, power, and truth in contemporary international affairs.

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Transcript

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[Clayton]

Well, we've been told that we must support the proxy war against Russia because Ukraine is a democracy. That's what they tell us that NATO and the Western world must support Ukraine's proxy war because we're fighting for democracy, we're fighting for freedom. But long before the war started, long before the CIA backed coup in Ukraine, the Maidan couple, Ukraine was listed by the United States, his own State Department, as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. We've covered that extensively here on the show. In fact, you can go to the U.S. state Department's own website and see it for yourself. So hardly a country that supported democratic principles. And many Western media publications talked about Ukraine's corruption openly. But then when the war broke out, the media changed their tune. The propaganda by Western media and Western governments went into overdrive, basically trying to rewrite Ukraine's history. But today, we're lucky to have a former member of the French Ministry of Defense, Benoit Par. He was an international observer of Ukraine before the war broke out. He was there and he's written a book called what I Saw in Ukraine from 2015 to 2022. And we're very lucky to have Benoit joining us now to talk about his experiences in Ukraine and what he saw while he was there. He was one of the very few people with access to the very sensitive information that we never got to see about civilian victims, about human rights violations. The OSCE decided not to make that information public. And Benoit joins us now. Great to see you. Thank you so much for doing this.

[Benoit Par]

Hi, great to see you, Clayton. Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm glad to be here.

[Clayton]

My pleasure. Western governments, you know, insist that Ukraine is a democracy. It's worth defending at all costs. There's a new tranche of advanced fighter jets that Sweden has now signed a deal with zelensky to send 150 new advanced fighter jets to continue this proxy war. I just spoke with the spokesperson for Vladimir Putin and the press office of Russia, and she told me the moment that those jets arrive in Ukraine, they will be destroyed. So this continues, but based on what you personally witnessed as an OSCE observer from 2015 to 2022, was Ukraine ever functioning as a true democracy? What did it look like? What did democracy look like to you on the ground in Ukraine?

[Benoit Par]

Well, thank you, Clayton, for this question. It's spot on, I would say, if you allow me, just a quick remark. I mean, also yesterday the French president signed a letter of intention with President zelensky to buy 100 Rafale fighter jets. So it's the same as the Gripen contract. It's like a copy paste. So it's going even further.

Now when I was thinking of what to say for this interview, I thought one of the key messages I wanted to convey was to say that Ukraine before 2022 was far from being a model democracy. And this is just how you decided to start this conversation. So I think it's spot on. Now, why do I say that? It's because since 2014, we, the Western audiences, were basically lied to.

By our media, by our politicians about what really happened back then on the Maidan Square 2014. This is where this whole war started.

This is when the elected president was considered pro Russian, was basically chased out by violence, by an insurrection. And when you read the. Actually the studies that what was made by a university professor from the University of Ottawa in Canada. His name is Ivan Katzianovsky. Ivan Katzianovsky demonstrated in a massive work which was 72 pages long, which I read while I was in Ukraine, he demonstrated that most of the victims that were allegedly killed by police that day, this is when it all started, were basically killed from positions held by the opposition parties, the opposition parties that were then to take power. Right. So in other terms, this was a coup. Right? This was a coup based on a false flag attack on demonstrators. Now all the evidence is out there for people to look at, except that people don't want to look at it. I mean, when I say people, I mean the mainstream media. When I was in Ukraine, I was once interviewed by a journalist on the mainstream media.

It was back in 2016. And back then I had just been introduced with this thesis by Ivan Kachanowski on the Maidan massacre. And I basically explained him, like I just explained to you what it said, basically. And I said, well, don't you as a journalist from a major media, aren't you interested in digging into it to see how credible the story is? And he just paused for two seconds and said, well, no, it would change too many things. That was his answer. Right. And I'm talking about somebody who worked for the equivalent of the New York Times in America. This is kind of level of newspaper.

[Clayton]

And what specifically were you asking him to look at? What specifically were you asking him to look at? The Maidan Square coup and the false flag attack. Is that what you were asking him to say?

[Benoit Par]

I was asking him to have a look into the thesis of this university professor, Ivan Kasanovsky, who is by the way, Ukrainian. Ukrainian from Western Ukraine originally. And just ask him to have a look at the 72 pages document that was available online which basically demonstrated that this was a coup. Actually, back then I had not read the whole document myself because I felt a Bit intimidated by it back then. I just had just read the introduction and the conclusion, but just what he said was like, you know, mind blowing, right? So I thought it deserved to actually be studied carefully, that he just refused. Journalists just refused. So it was a demonstration to me that a major journalist representing a major media that all the other medias rely upon to see what should we say about what's going on in Ukraine. And this guy decided that it was not worth it. So I understood that mainstream media were not interested in the truth. That's the first point I wanted to make. That's why I'm saying we have been lied to since 2014, because it was. I was convinced about it myself when I finally read the whole thesis and when I watched all the videos that were actually referred to in this document because they were later on translated in English. And then I even had some of my interpreters with whom I was working with in Ukraine, I had them check the translation, the English subtitles of some of the key moments of these videos. And it was confirmed to me that the translations were correct. Right. So, okay. That's why I thought these pieces of work is basically.

Proof of what happened back then. So I would recommend people to check the work of this professor. He has a X account which is very well documented. He has his own website. So for anyone interested, I recommend first to look at it because that basically gives you a different understanding of everything that happened since then. It basically tells you that the regime that took power from 2014 is illegitimate because it's based on a violent coup and on a false flag operation. Something extremely cynical because they actually decided to kill their own supporters, people who basically wanted.

Not Milosevic, sorry, Yanukovych to be removed. Right? And they actually sacrificed that. This is what it says. Now moving on to my own experience as an OSCE observer. I was working for this organization.

For between 2015-2022, as you mentioned. Now, I was lucky in a sense, because from the very start, 2015, I was assigned to a specific unit within the OSCE mission which was called the Human Dimension. Now, as members of the Human Dimension, we had access to very sensitive information about civilian casualties and about human rights violation, as you mentioned. And we were just a small team actually having access to all that data. And from the very beginning I discovered stories about people being kidnapped in the streets, in their homes, by people wearing balaclavas, which was basically some kind of faceless masks that these people were wearing. And then they were taken into minivans and then were driven away at high speed, and nobody knew who they were. And the families were in panic, not understanding what's going on. And my colleagues at the OCE office in Kramatorsk back then were visited every second day by people who came to complain that their relatives had been kidnapped. Right. And so they decided to investigate.

[Clayton]

So, Benoit, just so I understand, so you had a small office, and this was a. You were a French contingent who was there from OSCE with your French. French compatriots, or was it international?

[Benoit Par]

It was international, actually. When you work for the osce, you are basically pre recruited by your own Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Because in my career.

[Clayton]

We were on a bit of a delay. People can forgive our little bit of a delay here, but technology, it's amazing. Can you explain what the OSCE is for our audience and this international group then? You had an office set up there, and the Ukrainians, I guess, knew that you had an office there. And so they were coming to complain to you that their relatives have been just rounded up and thrown into minivans. But can you explain what OSCE is and what is their mission?

[Benoit Par]

Sure. The OSCE stands for Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It is an international organization based in Vienna, but it basically comprises all the countries from the Northern hemisphere. Initially, it was created in 1975 as a conference meant to organize a dialogue between the Western bloc and the Eastern bloc, former Soviet Union. It's basically NATO countries talking to the former vassal pact countries. This is how it was born. Right. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, it became the osce, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. And it started to replace the un, the United nations, in various countries where there were deep crisis. It started with just after the civil war in Bosnia Herzegovina. So the first major OEC mission abroad was in Bosnia Herzegovina from 1996, just after the Dayton Agreement. So it's like a mini United nations, if you will. Right. So now, in order to work for the oace, member states basically select candidates within their own ranks, and you have to go through your own Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Usually in the US it's the State Department. And they select people who then they present to the OIC as candidates for various missions. This is how we were all recruited. So in the OSCE mission in Ukraine, it was called the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, there were many Americans as well. There were also Russians, basically people from all over the Northern hemisphere, as I said. And we were all working together, but not representing our own states. We were representing the OAC as such. The OSCE as an independent entity. Right. So this is how it was organized. But we were also, all of us, somehow.

I mean, we were all paid to different degrees by our own member states. Right. So we also. We had, like, two different bosses. We had our own member states in the background, but our main boss was oac.

Now then, when this mission deployed, one of its first tasks, actually, because we were deployed from 2014, March 2014, our first task was to monitor the situation with human rights and to report on every security incident in a neutral manner. Insist on that. We were supposed to be neutral, and.

We were supposed to report on a regular basis about all. All these things that we would notice. And we had freedom of movement to go wherever we wanted to monitor the situation. And then when the Minsk Agreement was signed, we were tasked within the Minsk agreement to also monitor the ceasefire violations and the withdrawal of heavy weapons. These were the two main tasks that were assigned to us. OAC observer within the framework of the Minsk agreements. But myself, I belong to this small unit within the OAC called Human Dimension, that was not actually. Whose mandate was not part of the Minsk Agreement. As such, we were following the initial mandate from 2014, which required U.S. to monitor human rights violations, basically.

And this is what I did.

[Clayton]

Can I just ask you.

[Benoit Par]

Yep.

[Clayton]

So you were specialized in this. You had this small office. You said you had freedom of movement, that you could go anywhere in the country to monitor these situations. How were you tipped off about these human rights violations? Was it through intelligence sources from. From your French Ministry of Defense? Was it just simply citizens in Ukraine who were knocking on your door saying, hey, my son was just kidnapped and thrown into a minivan? How did you come to.

I guess, capture these violations?

[Benoit Par]

Well, as you mentioned, sometimes, many times, actually, at the beginning, it was just people knocking on our door at the office in Kramatorsk. This is how most of the stories my colleagues were exposed to, this had happened. Just people knocking on the door. We call that walked ins when people just walked in. Right.

I experienced that as well myself later on. But we were also reading the daily press, local press. So we got stories from the local press as well. Sometimes we had requests from headquarters in Kyiv, but we didn't have a direct communication link with our home countries. We started to have a direct communication link from late 2015, at the initiative of France, by the way, my own country. And we started to have, like, regular meetings with French embassy as well for the French people. But Americans did the same with their own embassy. The Brits, the Russians and so forth. But that was happening about twice a year on average.

[Clayton]

So just to be clear, just to be clear, the Americans, the French, the British, all of you were receiving separate human rights violations reports, kidnappings.

All of these things. So all of these countries were receiving this information.

Not just France and your contingent?

[Benoit Par]

Yes and no. Because all these human rights violations were treated as a sensitive matter. So every time somebody walked in with an issue which was considered to be possible human rights violation, they were sent to us, the Human Dimension Unit. And we were supposed to treat those information as sensitive, meaning not necessarily for everyone to know, because oftentimes people were threatened or were afraid to be threatened.

So in order to protect them, we had to assess whether to make the information public or not, whether to write reports about it or not. We had different reporting systems. Our whole mission was a gigantic report mechanism. Our main mission was to write reports about what was going on on the ground. But our unit, Human Dimension Unit, we had two separate channels of communication. There were some information we were actually feeding into the main communication channels. But the most sensitive stories, we were not actually communicating them through these means. We had like a separate, almost secret channel in which we would actually collect the most sensitive information. And it is that information that only very few people knew about. Myself, among others. But 90% of my colleagues, 90% of my colleagues had no clue of the type of information I and other colleagues were collecting. Because of the way we functioned, this confidentiality was.

[Clayton]

This is a very sensitive.

[Benoit Par]

Protect the people, protect the victims.

[Clayton]

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[Benoit Par]

Initially, the first person I interviewed myself who had a story to sell was a journalist from the Donbas, but he was working on the Ukrainian controlled part of a Donbass. You know, the Donbass was divided in two since 2014.

So initially I was working in the Ukrainian control part, and then I moved on to the separatist control part. But I could see, you know, both sides now. On the Ukrainian control part, I talked to this journalist who claimed he was kidnapped, as I mentioned earlier, in the street by people wearing these balaclavas. And then he was driven away in a van far away. And then he was kept in a basement for three days with a hood on his head, which was almost never taken off. And he was subject to torture, interrogation, humiliations. He didn't want to describe the type of torture that was inflicted upon him, but we could guess it was of a sexual nature because he was basically stripped naked on a chair for three days with just a T shirt and a hood on his face and his hand tied behind him. This is how he was treated for three days. Now, he told us the people who took him were what was called voluntary battalion in those days. From 2014, the Ukrainian government decided to form so called volunteer battalions. Azov was part of them. This is how Azov was born. But you also had other battalions named like Donbass Battalion. Others were named Aida Battalion, Dnipro 1, Dnipro 2 Battalions. And I heard so many stories about people being snatched, kidnapped by these people and tortured. Now, because then I moved on to Mariupol and I got similar stories in Mariupol from other people, other journalists. So journalists were one of the key targets for them because they didn't want a counter narrative to emerge. So they were targeting journalists on a priority basis. And I personally talked to five or six different journalists in my book. Actually, there's one testimony I couldn't write about in my book because it was too sensitive because the person who was accused of torturing the guy was a famous figure in Ukraine.

So the journalist asked me not to reveal the details. So. And that was the worst story of all.

[Clayton]

Can you just tell me? It's in your book. Can you tell me where these journalists were from? Just a sampling. Were they from many different countries? They were local or Ukrainian journalists?

[Benoit Par]

Yeah, yeah.

[Clayton]

What specifically.

They were covering? What topics specifically were they covering? Stories about human rights abuses and the coup and what was actually happening. And they were trying to be silenced. Can you.

[Benoit Par]

One journalist, for instance, basically said that the beginning of the conflict.

You know, the Ukrainian military was shelling different cities, like shelling Slaviansk Kramatorsk. So one journalist wrote about that, and he said that this is why he was kidnapped afterwards, because they said, you cannot write that. But he said, but that's the truth. My job is to write the truthful, maybe job is to write facts. And he was told, no, you cannot write such things. And he was even blackmailed. They asked him to, at some point, to hold a gun in his hand. So he did. And then he said, okay, now we have your finger trims, we have your fingerprints on a gun. If you don't do as you're told, we will basically accuse you of terrorism. Right. And I have other people, other journalists who told me that the sbu, it was not the volunteer battalions, in this case, it was the sbu, the secret service of Ukraine, that basically told them, you have to stop working as a journalist. If you don't, we'll put you in jail for eight years. We'll put a file against you. Two different journalists told me that from Mariupol. Both of them from Mariupol. And.

Well, you know, there is even one of his guy who actually died in detention. His name is in the book. I don't recall it right now, but even Amnesty International back then even wrote about him, but now it's totally forgotten. Well, you know, his main.

Fault, if I may say, he was the leader of a newspaper called I Want ussr, Right? So he was. His newspaper was a major target. So that guy was kidnapped very early on, from June 2014, and then never seen again. Even though the SBU at some point acknowledged that they actually held him in detention. And then they said, oh, we don't know where he is. And everybody believes he died in detention. Again, the details are in my book. I even had colleagues who talked to the chief of police of Mariupol about the case of this guy. Back then, even the chief of police actually confirmed that SBU was actually holding this guy in custody, but then the SBU denied and the guy was never seen again. And his wife said that she met somebody at some point, also was in detention at some point, and who said he actually saw her husband being detained and being looking extremely tired, and then he was never heard of again. Right. So other people I talked to were tortured. They witnessed other people around them being tortured. And then I attended court hearings because, you know, the Human Dimension Unit, we started to attend court hearings in related, what we call conflict related cases. I started to attend court cases in Kramatorsk, then in Slovyansk, and then in Bakhmut, and then most of them attended in Mariupol. So in all the cities that were controlled by the Ukrainian government, all the Donba cities, control of the Ukrainian government, and they kept arresting people. And when you went to these court hearings, you could see anybody could be arrested, not just journalists, like average people. If you were caught talking about a military position of the Ukrainian military somewhere, you know, just like down the street where you live, if you were caught talking about that on the phone, you would be arrested and you will be charged for revealing positions of the Ukrainian military. And that was considered to be a crime, especially if you were talking to people who were living on the other side of Donbass. And in Donbass, actually, people had relatives everywhere. You know, most families had relatives on the other side. So of course, they would talk to them, you know, about what was going on. They would talk to their friends. And in court hearings, you realize that it was just. They would just like, drag people who were talking to their friends or family members on the other side and just discussing about the general situation and say, oh, you know what? You know, the school over there that we went to, but now it's occupied by the military. Oh, really? Yes. And then the SBU listens to that and says, oh, you revealed a military position to somebody based on the other side. So it's. Giving intelligence to the enemy will cut you. And then from the moment the trial started, there was no way they could escape the condemnation. They were. All of them. I'm talking about thousands of cases. All of them were sentenced in Both the Donetsk and Lugansk oblast. I got statistics from the office of the prosecutor in both oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk. I personally met the teams of prosecutors with some of my colleagues in both oblast and they gave us the figures of how many people they actually arrested, how many people they convicted and so forth, and how many people were yet to be convicted. And in both cases, prosecutors told me, oh, you know what, we have only one or two people who actually escape conviction in the first instant court. But okay, don't worry, they will be convicted in the appeal. There's no doubt. So, and there was a 100% conviction rate of all these people whose trial started. I mean, this is a conviction rate.

[Clayton]

What were the charges? What were the charges? I mean, under what I was going to say, what were the charges? Because as to my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, under the 1996 constitution in Ukraine, after the separation from the Soviet Union, they have in their constitution under Article 34, freedom of thought, freedom of speech. But I think, as the government has laid claim from my understanding, is that in situations where the Ukrainian government says that this is a.

This could hurt national security, then your freedom of speech goes out the window. So what charges were these people charged with that that wound them up in prison for the rest of their life or killed?

[Benoit Par]

Well, there were basically four or five different articles of the penal code, criminal code that were used against them.

Now you talk about freedom of speech, actually. Well, freedom of speech is allowed, but in certain cases it is not. For instance, Article 110 of the Criminal Court of Ukraine actually prevents people from publicly calling for a change of the borders of the country. Right. So if you're caught doing a Facebook post which happened, there was one trial we attended of two young guys, they were like less than 20 years old. They actually posted statements in favor of DPR, DPR, which was like the Donetsk People's Republic separatist entity. So in other terms, that is calling for a change of the border of Ukraine, and that's actually falls under Article 110, public call for changing the borders of Ukraine. So you're not allowed in Ukraine to actually revampate any separatist ambition. It's not allowed in public speech. Now in a country like mine, France, a country like the UK or in a country like Canada, it is allowed, if you live in Quebec, to talk about Quebec independence. You know, in Quebec they had like a couple of referendums on the topic, but it's considered part of democratic debate in the UK as we all know they had even a referendum on. I'm not changing the borders. Actually yes, there was had one referendum about Scotland's independence, if you remember some years ago, just changing the borders of the state in France, you know, there has been talks about the independence of Corsica, for instance, for decades. But you know, we even have members of an independentist party elected in parliament. It's completely allowed to talk about it. Right. As long as it remains in the United States.

[Clayton]

In the United States we are actively trying to have California removed from the United States and we can talk about it openly.

[Benoit Par]

So you could say mature democracies actually don't have problems about talking about these issues. Right. But Ukraine does not allow conversation about such topics. Actually it basically shows that the people who actually conceived this criminal cold were afraid of opening some kind of Pandora's box because I think they were venue that their state was fragile. Because when you look at Ukraine, it's a very young state. It never existed as an independent state until the collapse of the Soviet Union actually, except for maybe a couple of years at the end of World War I. But even then it was not exactly the same state. It was never really functional. And anyways, in Ukraine you have people from western Ukraine and eastern Ukraine who speak different languages, have completely different histories, different aspirations. So they were aware of that from the very start. And that's why they wanted to prevent any public speech talking about change of borders, because they were very much afraid of it. That you know, at some point you cannot actually prevent people from talking about virtue aspirations. You know, it cannot last forever. So this is one of the reasons why I consider Ukraine was not a real democracy from very early on because some basic freedoms that we have in the west, they didn't have those. You couldn't talk about changing the borders of a state. That was one thing. Now the article under which most people were sued was Article 358 of the Criminal Code which was about terrorism. Terrorism. They used article about terrorism to go after everyone who actually exchanged information about military positions of Ukraine with friends or relatives. Or sometimes it could be actually real people who were collecting intelligence on the side of dpr. I think in some cases it was indeed the case from the evidence I saw in court. But they actually mixed some cases you could consider legitimate with case which were obviously just people talking to their families or friends and nothing more than that. And. But anyways they were arrested. All the arresting all these people. I'd like to make a point. You know, we don't allow you to talk about military Positions. So. And then, yeah, once. What we realized is that from the moment the trial started, there was no way back. There was no way out. And worse than that, in half of the cases I personally followed, me and my colleagues, and I'm talking about 30 different cases that I followed altogether. In half of the cases, I counted once, amid statistics, people complained in court that they were tortured.

While they were interrogated or just after arrest or just upon their arrest. Some of these people were arrested inside.

[Clayton]

By the sbu or prisoner. Sorry, by the sbu or prison by the sbu.

[Benoit Par]

Both the SBU and the volunteer battalions. Both. Right. Mostly volunteer battalions in 2014, but also by the SBU. Like, there was one former chief of police I remember from Volnovakha, which is a town in Donbas. He described how he was arrested. Like sbu, people burst into his home, beat him up, beat his wife up as well, to the point he thought he was going to die, and his wife thought he was going to die as well. But it was like a tactic to shock them, impress them, so that they would confess, whatever. And I heard different stories that were similar. People were basically beaten up from the very moment they were arrested in order to create a shock, in order to have them disoriented and confess, whatever. And then once you actually manage to confess, to make people confess whatever you want them to say, then you just have contessions which you present in court as being legitimate. But then these people would say, oh, sorry, this is not legitimate. I was forced to say this, you know, and I heard that personally in court in various cases, I heard the testimonies of people telling these stories. So, you know, from the body language and the tone of the voice and stuff, we also talked to the defense lawyers, family members. I had no doubt that these people were telling the truth. You know, you can tell when people are lying, and these people were not lying. In some cases, we even had medical certificates because something. What they did sometimes. Sorry, just to. Quick, quickly, to describe this kind of method they were using. They would first grab people in the street or in their homes, bring them to a basement somewhere for a couple of days, beat them up, scare them like hell, make them sign blank papers, then released them. And they were released in the street, didn't know where they were, and one hour later, they were actually officially arrested and then charged. And then they would use the blank papers they had signed previously, and they would put a text upon this paper and present it as evidence of confession. Now, I had this story basically described in court in Kamatorsk I heard it, and it was also reported, reported by some of my colleagues in reports that I read, which they wrote before me. So I realized, okay, it's a modus operandi that they were following, right? And this is the country that we are told is like the defense of democracy. You know, what happened in those days in Donbas was worthy of the worst dictatorships. But who knows about it? Nobody knows about it because it was completely kept under the rug. The media would not report about it because the journalists themselves were intimidated. And in our case, we were told, this is sensitive. We cannot report about it. So this never appeared in our reports. We were just actually feeding the United nations human rights monitoring mission that was present as well with some of the information, because they dared to report a bit more than we did. But only a fraction of information about all these cases came out.

And it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, this is not to say that the separatists on their side also committed violence against people in some cases. We had information about that as well. But what I find worrying is that we decided to support one side, which was considered the side of good, the side that defends democracy, then it does not defend democracy. I've seen it firsthand. And as you mentioned, what I saw scared me for years. And I witnessed this for years in court. And I thought, at some point, I have to put this on the table. People need to know this. They need to know that we're on the edge of World War three to defend this state that committed such crimes against its own citizens.

[Clayton]

The judiciary, the judges, it seems like with 100% conviction rate, that they are really in the pockets of the corrupt government? In your experience, would you say that that's the case? Can you describe the judges and the judiciary that was so willing to just lock these people up and look the other way with 100% conviction rate?

[Benoit Par]

Yeah, I mean, it was obvious. In Donbass, I can't tell about every single region of Ukraine, but in Donbas, it was obvious. Even one of my colleagues, at some point, he talked to one of the judges. He interviewed one judge, and at some point, he put his pen away and said, okay, now I just have a question for you. I'm not writing the answer down, so it's between you and me. Now, tell me in simple words, how does your justice system function here? The guy said, well, it's very simple. The prosecutor asks and we follow. Basically, this is how trials were going on in Donbas, systematically.

[Clayton]

So no defense. The judges were following defense is irrelevant here.

[Benoit Par]

The judges were following whatever the prosecutors would say, right? And some other people said that basically the courts in Donbas were completely under the control of sbu. And it was obvious in some cases, you know, at some point, I was witnessing a pretty high profile trial in Kamatorsk, and at some point I see one guy who actually films everyone, including myself. And then I asked, well, who is this guy who's filming me? He has no media sign. So, you know, I was wondering, who is this? And I was told he's representing the sbu. So the SBU was filming everyone who attended the court hearings.

And then I know also because it was like reported to me by family members that then they would visit all the people who would attend the hearing, visit in their homes and say, why do you attend the hearing of this traitor? You're going to be in trouble if you continue to attend the hearing. Are you sure you want to create troubles for yourself? This was reporting back to me by family members of the defendant in this case. And in this case, it was like a small town mayor, so they were intimidating everyone. The SBU was running the show. And one lawyer also said that, anyways, the courts in Donbas are controlled by the sbu. You know, the whole operation, they call it the anti terrorist operation ato. It was run by the sbo. It was not the military that was running operations in Donbas. Counter insurgency operations, you could say, in Donbas. It was the SBU directly until 2018. And from 2018, they actually transferred authority to the military. But before it was the secret service VSBU that was totally in charge, including of the armed forces. They were controlling everything. And at some point I was personally called by. We had a secret call, a secret meeting.

In a town in Donbas, and didn't really know what it was about. They didn't want to tell us. And then I arrived there, I realized it was the group of local journalists who were panicking because they knew the SBU was investigating them, and they knew that.

If a trial started, it would be already over, because with a 100% condition rate, once the trial starts, there's no way back. So they wanted to prevent the trials to tart. That's why they contacted me as OSCE representative, to raise their case with us, the oice. And then I realized, talking to them, that they were not only targeting the journalists in this case, but also the mayor of the town. It was a relatively big town in this case. And then I interviewed him, and I could see he was panicking. He was Afraid because he knew that he would also be put into jail if the SBU wanted. And there were cases like the mayor of Slavyansk is a pretty big city of 100,000 people. And Slaviansk was taken by separatists very early on in the conflict. And she was put in jail very early on for three years. Her trial lasted for three years. In the end she was released. She was one of the very few people who managed to be released, but because she was like a pretty high profile figure. So okay, she managed, but okay. But there are many other people who never managed to escape because they were small people, they were not important enough. So the judicial system in Ukraine was really scary. And then I discovered that it was not only in Donbass, but it was problematic because then I moved to Odessa at the end of my stay in Ukraine. And then I heard stories about what was going on in Odessa, which were mind blowing. You know, In Odessa, on 2nd of May 2014, there was what. There was what we call the Odessa massacre, when about between 40 and 50 Russian pro Russian supporters were basically burned alive or beaten to death.

In a building in and around a building in Odessa. Right. It's a famous case in Ukraine. And then there were mass trials after that, because it basically started with after there were some brawls in the city between the pro Ukrainian and the pro Russian people. So they arrested people on both sides. But the only people who were later convinced convicted were pro Russian people. The pro Ukrainian people were never convicted of anything. And.

They were not even put into custody. Only the progression people were put into custody. They didn't do that with the others.

Or when it happened, it was only like short periods.

I know a person of a case, Gary Sergei Hodiak, whom I actually saw with my own eyes in the street in 2022, on 20th of February in Odessa, he was participating in a demonstration against Russia. And the guy was actually still indicted officially for murder after the Odessa event. But he was just walking free. And my colleagues told me, you know, when his trial started, his colleagues, usually former military guys, they basically came to the court and physically removed him from the court and told the court, you know, you will not judge this guy. He's a patriot. And this court is illegitimate to judge a patriot. So we're taking Mina out and that's it, that's the end. And the trial never resumed.

That was the end of it. This is the justice system Ukraine way. So this was told to me by my colleagues when I came in Odessa. And then one interpreter basically showed Me, the guy in the street, and I could see herself. He was shocked. She was still on the shock. And when I was in Kramatovsk, also during a trial, one guy who was like a small mayor, he was basically set up by the sbu. He had the proof he was blackmailed before he was arrested, they asked him to give money, said, you should give money to a certain account or you will be in trouble. And he didn't want to give money. He didn't want to basically obey this blackmail. And he was arrested one week later, and then he was put in jail. Right. And. But he had contacts in the local police, and actually he showed them the phone number that was blackmailing him. He said, well, this is a phone number, but he's blackmailing me. Who is behind it? And the local police don him. That's the sbu.

And he said that in court. Right. But then during, I know separately from.

[Clayton]

Mauro, our own sources here at Redacted how, you know, obviously how corrupt the SBU is and targeting of journalists, targeting of civilians, the. The. The illegal arresting of civilians and locking them up. Of the journalists you've been talking about and the people that have been arrested, thrown and tortured by the sbu, those are all Ukrainians. Right. Do you have instances where these were international journalists, United States journalists, others who were also caught up in the sd?

[Benoit Par]

I never heard stories about international journalists being caught up and tortured like this. I never heard such stories. I think they were cautious enough not to target internationals.

But actually that.

[Clayton]

Except friend. Friend. Former friend of the show. Gonzalo Lira.

[Benoit Par]

Yeah.

[Clayton]

Who, except him, is the United States and. And a friend and a friend. And I, I, you know, I've had him on the show. I've been on his show, and he was, of course, tortured and beaten up by the sbu. He wasn't really allowed to talk about it. He was thrown behind bars and then released. And then I think, made. Well, it's, you know, it's up to speculation, but sort of made to look like he was running for the border, trying to get away, but was really being used in many ways as like, a honeypot to try to capture other journalists and to be caught up by the sbu. And then he was killed in prison, arguably by the sbu, and there was really no international outrage from the United States at all. The Biden administration did nothing about it. A United States, a US Citizen journalist killed by the sbu.

[Benoit Par]

I'm well aware about this case of Gonzalo Lira, but it was after I left Ukraine. So I was basically thinking about the time when I was there. And also, I mean, he was, you know, alone. He was independent. He didn't work for a media outlet. Right. So he had nobody to protect him, unfortunately, you know, and I was familiar with his work before he was arrested, actually, because I was following his YouTube videos pretty closely before that. And I'm well aware of his case because I read the Twitter feed that he basically published before being arrested for the second time, where he gave all the details about how he was set up and tortured in prison, and that actually his story then I could actually see how it fitted into other testimonies I myself collected from other people who were put in jail in Ukraine. So. And I could see this is coherent, basically.

So, I mean, the judicial system, were you ever intimidated?

[Clayton]

Did they ever come here? You are in your group, you're going around and you're getting this information. You're getting this sensitive information. The SBU clearly knew what you were up to. Were you ever confronted by them? Were you ever told to not do what you were doing?

[Benoit Par]

When I was in Ukraine, they knew we were there. In court at the beginning, they, as we were told, it seemed that the judges kind of tried to behave better. That's what local people told us, right? So they were happy when they were there. But quickly then they realized that we wouldn't make any difference. They realized we were no threat because we didn't have the power to tell them what to do. We're just observers, right? We didn't have the power to tell the courts what to do, how to do their job.

So they realized we were harmless in this sense. And also since, you know, nothing came out in official reports, okay, we see it's harmless. So, you know, they had no need to threaten us in this case.

So that's how it. This is what happened. Now, there's also another type of information we were collecting in the field, which is very important. The information about civil and casualties of acts of war, basically shelling, shooting. From 2016, we in the OSCE Human Dimension Unit started to systematically try to verify every allegation of civilian victims on both sides of the line of contact. And at the end of the year, people in our mission, in our Human Dimension Unit, decided to release a report which was a statistical report of all the victims whose stories we had verified. And that made, like a special report for the whole year 2016. Now, our management.

Was afraid of this report because they knew it was, like, highly sensitive. They asked several edits, and eventually it was Released in September of 2017. But when it was released, and I'm not sure to what extent the report was public, to be honest, but at least it was shown to the delegations of uic, the delegations of the member states, and the Ukrainian delegation. Ministry of Foreign affairs of Ukraine made a scandal when this report was published. Why? Because on page seven it was stated that 63% of the victims we verified were basically living on the Ukrainian side, Ukrainian control side of Donbas, which. No, sorry, the other way around. They were living on the separatist control side of Donbas. Meaning when that, you know, Ukraine was responsible for the injuries. Right, illogically. So they made a scandal because we published that. But even this figure actually was mixing all kinds of reasons for causes, for injuries, because we're mixing shelling with people who are working on mines and booby traps. And when you work on mine booby traps, you cannot really actually say this. You cannot really blame one side or the other, especially when this happens in the gray zone, in between the sides controlled by very different parties. So we had mixed all the data, but then.

Okay, sorry to finish the story about this report. So our head of mission, because of the Ukrainian reaction, decided that from then on we would no longer publish statistics that would show on which side we would actually confirm the most, the biggest amount of victims ahead of mission decided, okay, we no longer report upon this.

[Clayton]

So Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukrainian government requested that you no longer publish that information.

[Benoit Par]

They made a scandal about it. And I had a mission say, all right, fine, we won't publish these figures anymore. Right? But actually I was myself then continuing to work, we were all continuing to work on the verification of the civilian casualties throughout Donbass. I was part of that. And at the beginning I was working in the Donetsk oblast, right? And at some point I had access to the database of a holoblast. And it was the oblast, out of the two oblasts in Donbass that had the biggest amount of victims by far. And in the area where I was working back then, it was Mariupol. I noticed the percentage of victims on the separatist side was huge. Compared to the site controlled by Ukraine, it was. 90% of the victims in our case were on the separatist control side. And I said, well, there's something massive here. And then I was wondering, how is it in other areas like Donetsk surroundings and the northern part of the oblast around Kramatorsk? And I noticed that the trends were more or less similar. And then I did statistics of the holoblast And I showed it to my colleagues. I said, we have something here. Because if you consider not only all the causes of injuries, but only those we call the continuation of the acts of war, like shelling and shooting, the discrepancy, the imbalance between the sites is even worse. And I noticed that then I even got data from the Luhansk Oblast, because I was assigned there at the turn between 2018 and 19. So I had access to the database of Luhansk Oblast, and then I had a database of victims of the whole of Donbas. I made statistics about that. And the statistics showed between 2016 to 2018, 72% of the victims that we verified were actually based on the separatist side of the law of contact, meaning caused by Ukrainian armed forces in most cases. And when we had doubts about who was responsible for the actual cause of injury, I was putting that in a different category. Right? Because in some cases, like which I could, cases I personally investigated on the Ukrainian control side. Some victims found on the Ukrainian control side were, I believe, shot at by Ukrainian forces, not separatist forces. When people are injured by bullets of assault rifle, when they live 3km away from a lot of contact, there's a little chance that they are actually injured by a bullet coming from the other side. Right? And when you investigate behind it, then you find lots of testimonies of people who say, yes, there was shooting that day very close, 200 meters away, right? So this is how you could. You could guess. Okay, so it was Ukrainian troops shooting here, not separatist troops. But even when they were like, cases like, okay, you're not sure where to put them, I would put them in the box of gray zone. So even when I eliminated those strange cases, I still had this huge discrepancy statistics. And I decided we need to communicate on that, because the general public in Ukraine believed what their own media were telling them, which was that they were basically aggressed, attacked every day by pro Russian separatists, and that the Ukrainian military was not doing anything. They're just sitting there waiting to be shot at. Right? And so. And even President Poroshenko back then in 2018 was saying, you know, we have 10,000 people dead in Donbas. Back then, he said, everything is Russia's fault, you know, and we will never forget that. You know, Russia is responsible for 10,000 victims in Donbass. But when I look at the figures and I see. Wait, wait a minute. Victims of Russia? Are you sure? We have statistics that tend to show otherwise. But, you know, the General public in.

[Clayton]

The west also, most people don't know that and believe in that.

Right. And it was lied, covered up and believed that Russia was attacking their own Russian, Russian citizens in this separatist region. By all accounts, it was a genocide. I mean, 14, 15,000 people, many of them, as you pointed out, civilians, children on their way to school bombings in parks. Friend of the show and great journalist Eva Bartlett, who's covered, you know, the pedal mine launching, these small sort of like leaf like pedal mines that are just launched into parks. Kids pick them up and they're just killed instantly or their hands are blown off. Launched on a regular basis. People who have lived there talk about the trajectory, the trajectory of these shells coming in from the Ukrainian direction and of course, course ignored by the Western media. I would say across the board.

[Benoit Par]

Yeah, I mean, I would myself maybe not use the term genocide because I think it's a very strong word. It's debatable, let's say.

But.

At least, I mean, what I.

[Clayton]

Personally verified.

Ethnic cleansing. I mean, the intentional targeting of Russians.

[Benoit Par]

I believe for sure, I verified it also.

For the Ukrainian nationalists. The Donbass people are all traitors.

Separatists, and they despise them. Because it's not only about victims, but we had so many testimonies about. There were checkpoints all around Donbas, military checkpoints and police checkpoints, National Guard checkpoints all over the place, especially near the line of contacts of local inhabitants who had to move in and out for various reasons. They were harassed on a regular basis at these checkpoints. We knew it. We collected testimonies about it every single day all around Donbass. So it was not just causing injuries, it was the daily humiliation. And in so many different places, local inhabitants hated the Ukrainian UN forces. And if there was armed forces that they considered occupiers, it was not Russian armed military or the separatists. It was a Ukrainian military that were obviously considered by so many people as forces of occupation. It was blatant in the testimonies we were collecting. And again, there are so many examples of that in my book.

Things we were collecting on a daily basis. But actually such statements were considered non factual by hierarchy, so they never made it into reports. So it always stayed at the local level. You know, the real atmosphere, the atmospherics about how people felt. That was considered non factual by the oic.

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[Clayton]

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Proxy war against Russia, France, the uk, the United States, Germany. Did you get any pushback from your own government when you were reporting this information?

[Benoit Par]

Actually, when I made the statistics myself that I just mentioned, 2016, 2018, 72% of victims on the separatist control side, I wrote to my hierarchy within the OSCE to say this is too important to hide. We should communicate about this because it contributes to.

Letting the propaganda being unchallenged. Our mission is to report facts. This is a major fact and we're keeping it silent. And I was told, oh yeah, but you know, we actually report on individual cases on a daily basis that, you know, who actually makes statistics on their own? Maybe people in embassies or in ministries of defense here or there, that it was never talked about on the public square. You know, it was so considered, it was hidden. And we had the power to attract attention of the entire world about the real situation on the ground. And I consider it was a mandate to report on the reality on the ground. And that's why I tried to convince we should communicate about these statistics. It's important if we really want to work for truth and peace, we have to communicate about that. Then the Ukrainian people realized, hey, wait a minute. Actually the separatists we consider as the graces, they are more victims than we are. So okay, maybe what we are told is not the reality. So maybe we should sit down and talk and stop this madness, stop killing each other. But I basically use these arguments in the memos I sent to Maharaarchy saying this is why we have to communicate upon these things, to stop the dynamics of hatred and the dynamics of war. Because you know, many people in Ukraine would support the war because of a false narrative. And not only in Ukraine, but in the Western world. But you know, they treated me with silence. And then I decided, okay, I wrote to, even to the head of the OSCE organization who was then the Minister of.

Foreign affairs of Italy because you know, OSCE has a presidency that's rotating every year. And that year it was Italy. I didn't get an answer. And then I decided to knock on the door of my own government.

I Mean, I basically went to my embassy and I told them, because this is the reality, this is the figures. And they listened to me politely, okay, fine. But nothing changed. And then even once when I was in Paris, I tried to talk to a diplomat I knew about the situation, and, you know, same thing, he said, no. They thought that there was no reason to communicate upon that. And, you know, France was one of the godfathers of a Minsk agreement like Germany. So I thought we had a specific responsibility to communicate about the reality on the ground. I initially thought France was the neutral power in this case because of our role in the Minsk agreement. But, you know, as year passed by and as I was like, you know, also bringing information that was accusing Ukraine of causing so much trouble, and I never heard any statement from my government condemning Ukraine. Only once somebody told me off.

Well, you know, this is a country that's been invaded. So, you know, you have to understand them. What.

So they didn't want to react upon it.

But for me, I was working for an organization which stated that we have to be neutral. I didn't see any reason to hide the truth of the reality on the ground. For me, that was a betrayal of our mandate, and that was a betrayal to all the citizens who pay their taxes to pay people like us.

I got paid by US Citizens at some point, because when you look at who pays the budget, well, it's all the member states, including the US or my government. It was a collective budget. So part of the money I earned was paid by the US Taxpayers.

And we collectively decided, okay, no, this is too sensitive information to release, so we will not release it. So I consider that we betrayed a mandate. So this is why I thought, okay, now that we're on the edge of World War Three, I want to talk about this. I want to put this on the table, even if that means, okay, I will never work again for my government for sure, because they won't forgive me for this. But I thought it was a duty, a moral duty. And then I was ready to assume the total change of my life testifying about this. And I think it's so important.

[Clayton]

No, and thank you for doing that. Thank you for coming forward with this. When we talk about the principles of democracy, we're talking about an independent judiciary separate from an executive branch, separate from a congress that they are free to carry out and adjudicate the laws and actually make sure that people are punished or set free based on that process. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press. So I'm just kind of running down all of the ways in which I view democracy here in the United States.

Freedom of religion, freedom to practice that religion without the government stepping in and closing churches or arresting priests, killing of priests, killing of journalists, suppressing free speech, disallowing what you're looking at online.

Again, an open judiciary that follows the letter of the law. So given all of those points, would you say that Ukraine is a democracy?

[Benoit Par]

As you mentioned, I think it gradually drifted into a dictatorship. Now I would say it's almost a full blown dictatorship as of now because, you know, the mandate of a president expired long ago. They forbid 11 political parties and actually talking about opposition political parties while I was there, they were constantly harassing the opposition bloc, which was like the main considered pro Russian party, even though they would never say publicly they were pro Russian. But the fact that they were in favor of a Minsk agreement labeled them as pro Russian because they were also in favor of the freedom of the Russian language.

And just because they were supporting the Russian language, they were labeled pro Russian. And these people were harassed Very early on, from 2015, like before the local elections. I talked to the candidate for the mayor in Kramatorsk, like the biggest city in the northern part of oblast. And she told me, okay, from the moment I decided to run for mayor, my training card, my credit card was blocked, and I didn't understand. I went to the bank, I said, what's going on? I can't use my credit card anymore. And the bank told them, well, sorry, we can't do anything about it. And then she discovered that she got a message that, okay, if you want to be able to use a credit card again, you have to step down as candidate for mayor. So she stepped down as candidate for mayor, and she managed to get the use of a credit card back again. This was 2015. This is how it was working. So the opposition bloc, the biggest political party in Donbass, was not able to present a candidate in the second biggest city of the Donetsk oblast, controlled by Ukraine. Just mind blowing. And I discovered that talking directly to her, right? And then I talked to other people in Mariupol from the same political party, and they said they were not allowed to hold rallies. Whenever they were trying to organize.

Signatures for some petitions in the streets, like people do in any democratic country, they were basically stopped by some mob people wearing masks who would come and just beat them up and they would have to run away. It happened twice in Mariupol.

Until then and until they decided, okay, we cannot do normal campaigning. We can't do it. And one of the politicians even told me that the chief of police of the done Yezkobla said that they would not allow the opposition bloc to hold rallies.

So if you talk about political freedom from 2015, there was none if you belong to the opposition. So they go, oh yeah, if you support joining NATO, joining the eu, no problem, you will never be intimidated. Right. So of course there's, oh, there is democracy in Ukraine because you have 10, 12, 20 different parties who can campaign normally and so forth. But they're all saying the same thing. You know, I was an election observer in 2020 in western Ukraine. There were all these different parties that did not complain about anything special, but because they were all following the same motto, we're pro NATO and pro eu and that's it, nobody else was allowed to say anything else.

So, well, the opposition bloc still managed to present candidates for even though they could not campaign normally and still they managed to get big amounts of votes in Russian speaking areas, especially Donbas, but also Odessa region and so forth, Odessa city. So in spite of the fact that their political freedom was limited, they managed still to have significant votes. And then Zelenskyy forbid this party and Zelenskyy decided to arrest the party leader from 2021 before the Russian intervention. So what is a country where the sitting president decides to arrest his main political opponent for, you know, fake charges on top of it, when you look at it, you know, what is it? And then.

[Clayton]

Yeah, yeah, so you bring up Zelensky. I want to ask you about that. We just learned last week about this massive scandal. We've been covering this here for a few years, which is the theft of US tax dollars, dollars, eu, EU tax, EU money as well, by a corrupt Zelensky government. We now know that his inner circle stole hundreds of millions of dollars. They found bags of cash in their houses, multiple houses, cars. When I spoke today to Maria Zarakova from the Russian Federation, who's Putin's press spokeswoman, I asked her that question about the corruption. She specifically said that it's much bigger than anyone can imagine. She said that Viktor Orban's assessment of what's going on in Ukraine is like he likened it to a mafia, a money laundering operation that's massive. We're talking about houses, international mafia, where these houses and money is just laundered into Ukraine, Ukraine and it's going out to Ukrainians who have moved to Mallorca, I mean all over the world.

So can you talk in your experience about some of the, maybe the corruption piece that you might have uncovered while you were there inside. And would you say that that's accurate? Would you agree with what Maria Zarakova has to say about the corruption inside of Zelensky's circle? That it's much bigger than just these.

[Benoit Par]

Few arrest information about was going on at the highest level. But while I was in Ukraine, I heard different stories of corruption at the local level from regular citizens or even mayors. Like there was one mayor of a city of it was called Dzherzinsk at that time to risk municipality. And you know, he told me a story about how money from the Embassy of Japan actually that he was supposed to get for some big project in his city, have money disappeared. And he told me, like, please, if you can convey message to Western countries is that never give money to the Ukrainian state, because it's going to disappear. If you want to invest money in Ukraine, give it to the local people on the ground. If you give it to higher level, it will disappear.

So I was aware of that very early on. And then there was a normal citizen when I was in Mariupol who came to me and said that he was subjected to a huge blackmail from a local prosecutor.

And local prosecutor basically asked him, he was like a small entrepreneur, he owned a building facing the court building. And local prosecutor told him, okay, well, you have to.

Sell me your building for nothing. You have to give it to me. He said, what, are you kidding? No way. Oh really? Well, you're going to have problems. And then he started to be attacked. Him and his family, his wife, his kids, physically attacked. And then he still did not want to basically cede his building. So then they tried to harass him with various conflicts, complaints. He had five different cases against him from the prosecutor, this corrupt prosecutor, and then the guy investigating about this prosecutor, who's this guy who's behind him. And according to him, I don't have the evidence, but he came to see me with a file that thick, which he says, I can give you my file, please help me. And he basically said that this prosecutor was working with the mafia. And he said he was protected by people above him. And at some point he brought his case all the way to a court of appeal in Kyiv. And he said, when the judges looked at my case and when they saw the name of that prosecutor, they closed the case. And they said, sorry, we're not competent. And they said, the audience. The hearing lasted 15 minutes. And then he came to us because they said, I'm desperate, I don't know how to defend my rights in my own country, because the justice system doesn't defend me. Or what I forgot to mention is that his building in the end was taken over by thieves who had weapons. And that was before the conflict in Lombard. Actually, it was before. But this story told me, okay, so the judicial system in Ukraine is totally corrupt. You know, stories like this can exist.

It shows something. And he was also telling me stories about how judges also were involved in pedophilia scandals. I remember I never wrote about these in my notebooks, in my reports. And then when I prepared my book, you know, I went through all my notes and I found stories that I had forgotten about, like these stories about pedophilia. I, you know, in those days, I was very disturbed by such stories, so I was kind of burying them, you know, didn't want to dig into that.

And.

[Clayton]

But then, yeah, yeah, a lot of people do. For whatever reason, I. That's a. I talk about that often on the show. For whatever reason, like child trafficking, pedophilia. We kind of. It's. It's hard for us. We kind of block it off, and we can focus on the other crimes. But these. These deeply dark crimes. That. That's what I was going to ask you. You kind of preempted me there. In Ukraine, we've heard horrible stories of child sex trafficking, pedophilia, and that it's facilitated in many ways at the highest levels of the government. So sorry to continue, but I'd like you to ask, you know, ask. Talk about that. And if you saw a lot of examples of child trafficking.

[Benoit Par]

Local police officers in Mariupol who were in charge of human trafficking.

I was there with a colleague. I was not leading the conversation, but I was just, like, there. And basically, they were mostly focusing, as they told us, on cases of young women who would be tricked into getting jobs abroad.

Mostly. Don't want to specify a specific country, but in foreign countries in the Balkan area or in the Middle East. And in the end, they fell into traps of forced prostitution. So they were following cases like that. But in Ukraine, as such, they didn't talk much about what they could find. And I didn't have the impression that there was a lot of human trafficking in Donbass back then because it was heavily policed. You had military and police all around.

So it was the same. When I was working in Bosnia, Hezegovina, at some point, I was told that Sarajevo was the most secure capital city in Europe by far because of so many military people around and foreign military in those days. So there was a Similar effect maybe in Donbass during the conflict. But once, while I was traveling in a train between Kyiv and Donbass, I talked to a woman, a young woman who was working in one of his clinics where they actually sell babies, literally. And she explained to me how it worked. And she said, basically, you know, we have customers who come and we show them a catalog. And she said, in our catalog, we have different options. So they can basically.

Buy a woman's belly for a limited period of time. And there was even one option. You could basically request that the woman who is impregnated actually stays locked inside the clinic for the whole duration of the pregnancy, for the whole nine months. It's like being in jail for nine months just to make sure. And the woman would be like, watch thoroughly to make sure she doesn't smoke, to make sure she doesn't drink, to make sure she doesn't do anything but could hurt the child. They offered that in their catalog. Right, so. But it was more expensive, right? If you wanted that and.

Yeah, exactly.

[Clayton]

So it's like a menu, a catalog that you could just pick through and choose that, I want to have a woman. I want to have a baby. That's the woman that I want. And I want her locked here inside of this for nine months or longer.

[Benoit Par]

No, actually, the woman would sign against her will, sign a contract saying, okay, I agree. I agree to be locked in for nine months because she was paid. Right.

It's not okay. It was like, you know, capitalism, if you say, but, you know, still, it's very strange. And he said, what is it? I mean, is it normal to have such things? But when I was talking to her, she didn't have any moral issue with it. For her, it seemed completely normal. So that surprised me. You know, I was like, wow, is it possible to do this kind of thing?

[Clayton]

I've heard. I've heard many reports. I've heard many reports of the baby making factories in Ukraine. We've covered them again here on the show where they show, these facilities. They show. And a lot of them are sort of like underground bunkers. From what? What? Well, at least one or two of them that I've covered here on the show. They're sort of like underground bunkers, like sort of below where there's incubators, there's all sorts of baby materials, and where these women sort of churn out these babies and they're sold off.

[Benoit Par]

I can tell you one case.

[Clayton]

Do you know where they're sold off to?

[Benoit Par]

Which countries are buying Ukrainian and oftentimes I was flying through Amsterdam.

Because Air France and klm, the Dutch company, had a partnership. So. And once on these flights, you know, when we actually just before boarding the plane in Kyiv, where we were in this bus, on the shuttle bus, you know, on the tarmac, I could hear the voice of a very young baby crying, you know, and you can realize it's a very young baby.

Maybe one week old, not much older than that. And I was very surprised because I never heard such a tone of a voice outside, you know? And so I was trying to figure out, where does this voice come from? And the only thing I saw was a guy standing in front of me wearing a T shirt, happy to be young dad, written in French. And I said, oh, okay. And he was looking towards the direction where the cries of the baby came from. Okay, So I think he must be the dad, right? And I figured, okay, then his wife is sitting somewhere.

So I assume it was a wife. But then when, actually when we got off the shuttle bus, then I realized that the person who was holding the baby was another man. They looked very much alike, like in their early 30s.

You know, beard, both of them had a beard, well cut, you know, well dressed, so it looked like they had money. And then I realized, okay, it's like a gay couple. And they just got a baby in Ukraine, which is one month, one week old. And then they got into the plane. And then when we arrived in Amsterdam, I saw they joined the queue. I saw them on my left side. And they went all the way to the custom officers with a pile of documents and the baby in their arms. And the custom officers looked through the documents. It took maybe two minutes. And then she gave the documents back and they were allowed in. Now, then I checked, you know, in France.

Buying babies abroad is forbidden, right? It's forbidden by law. But actually, I checked afterwards by The Netherlands, from 2018, actually allowed.

A couple of homosexuals to buy babies. I mean, there's a legal term which I just forget right now, but the Netherlands allowed it. So then I realized, okay, so it was very clever for these guys to go through Amsterdam, the Netherlands, because the Netherlands doesn't have an issue with buying a baby's infant baby in Ukraine. And once they are on the EU territory, they can go to France and nobody will control them. So that's very clever. I thought so. That's one example. And I'm pretty sure these people bought a baby in one of these baby factories in Ukraine, you know. And why would you go to Ukraine to do that? Because it's not allowed in many, many developed countries, no.

[Clayton]

We've heard multiple reports of people throughout Europe buying babies in Ukraine, in the United States as well. And these baby making factories, they're very lucrative. One estimation I had $10,000 to buy a baby. And so. And some of these women continue to churn these out. $10,000 a baby. I might be wrong on the pricing.

[Benoit Par]

No, no, that's the amount I cannot remember. If you had asked me that question, I would say the range of that people were paying in euros was all the way to €9,000, as I remember. But it started lower, like 5 or €6,000 all the way to 9,000, depending on how much control you want on the model, how much demand you have, how many. So that was more or less the range that I recall about these transactions. Now what is scary though, is that, okay, if you can buy babies like that so easily, I mean, what guarantee do you have that real criminals will not buy babies with no identity? How can you guarantee yourself against that? And that's the scariest part.

[Clayton]

Women captured into prostitution, brought in and held against their will, babies sold off against their will. Horrible things that we've heard in Ukraine. The one other big piece, and I'm.

Reluctant to bring it up, but since we're on this topic, is the business of organ harvesting in Ukraine again, something we've covered here?

[Benoit Par]

Yeah, we heard stories about that.

[Clayton]

Can you tell me what you know?

[Benoit Par]

But I don't have evidence, I don't have evidence about this because it's like one of the most taboo subject. I know there were accusations from Russian social accounts from 2022, once the Russian soldiers basically started to invade Ukraine. You could say, yeah, I remember reading about this. I remember there was an interview of a young soldier, a sergeant, who was identified by name on the Russian media. And he said that they discovered in a house.

Some very disturbing scenes. And he said apparently this was some houses where children were kept and for.

Organ harvesting. And he seemed to be very disturbed when testifying about it. So he looked credible to me.

But I don't know more than that.

While I was there, I was not subjected to stories of this kind.

But one thing I can say though, going back to this.

Clinic is that the women also were to sign a commitment that they would never try to get news of the babies. They were not allowed to try to find out who would buy the babies and so forth. So even you could imagine something like a. The financial transaction. It's not like necessarily women forced into prostitution, but a woman Comes to this clinic, she's forced to sign a contract, but she doesn't know what happens to the baby or who collects the baby. She has no clue. And by contract, she's not supposed to know. So it can be anybody and they can do whatever they want. That's very scary. So. But you know, I don't have evidence.

[Clayton]

Right? Yeah, we have an idea that they might be raised in a. Might be raised in a great home and they're playing in the backyard with their dog.

But more horrible things we've uncovered and I know, I know, just horrible ideas that these children are sold off for the purposes of horrible things. Not, not having a great childhood and not being raised by great parents. And that's, that's what's deeply troubling on a, on a child's sex trafficking or our organ harvesting front. Deeply, deeply disturbing. Well, Benoit, you've been gracious with your time. I guess I'll get you out of here on this. You've mentioned a couple of times, indications are that we seem like we are on the precipice of World War three over this country, which we claim is a democracy, and we're fighting for democracy. How close do you think we are to a full blown war?

[Benoit Par]

War? Well, the more days pass, the more it seems to me Western European elites, so called elites, political elites, media elites, are pushing us towards, towards war with Russia. Why do so many higher ranked people, including French generals, actually mentioned that we are on a collision course with Russia, that Russia is enemy, and that we should expect, we should be prepared, be prepared for war within the next three to four years or maybe sooner. And you even hear the chief of a general staff in Germany who said similar things, people in other Nordic countries, the UK say similar things. I mean, so many people say the same thing at this high level that you realize, okay, it's organized. They are trying to convince us that we are heading towards collision with Russia and it's inevitable. They are trying to convince the audience about it and they are trying to convince us that Russia basically wants to recreate the Soviet Union, the Soviet Empire, and will not stop there. It will go all the way to Western Europe and that we have to be prepared because Russia is bad, Putin is Hitler and so forth. The same stories they kept saying since 2022. So we are living through the fabrication of the enemy. It's pretty obvious. And what's scary is that you have unanimous speech from all these different actors that I mentioned.

And you know, you had President Trump elected in the U.S. so I mean, I don't want to comment much of, you know, American politics. You know, I'm not well positioned for that, I guess. But it seemed that in the US it's not so obvious, this push for war right now, because if you consider that the global deep state controlled the whole Western world.

Then it is kind of in conflict maybe with the Trump administration right now. So we don't really know in which direction they will go. But in Europe, I think the globalist deep state that was controlling the Democrat Party before, okay, they lost total control of America. They haven't lost all control, but they lost most of it. And now they are trying basically to control Europe as much as they can. And this is what they do.

And the problem is that the European institutions do not protect their citizens like the US Constitution does protect American citizens, nor the EU Institutions are not elected. The European Commission is not elected by the people. You know, so we have a much less democratic system in Europe. And this body, which is called the European Union, actually is trying to grab more and more responsibilities outside of signed treaties.

And so this is very worrying because it looks like we citizens do not have any say about it and do not have any means to control it. It's just happening and the mainstream media don't say anything about it. We are living through everyday situation. It's like a coup is being.

Arranged against the European people, against their will, and there's nothing we can do about it because it just goes progressively.

Bit by bit, measure by measure. And that's the scariest part.

So some people say that they are doing this because they realize that European economy is going down and they need to convince people that we need to step into a war economy, as that would be the only way.

To recover. Right. We need to create the idea of a war to boost the economy. Some people say that, but I hope it's just that. But I'm not sure. Sometimes I'm afraid that Delhi really won the war because maybe they think once we have war, we can impose total control.

The European Commission is working, is proposing different bills which basically are more and more scrutinizing the basic freedoms of European citizens. And I know it causes problems with the US digital companies, for instance, like X or WhatsApp, because basically the European Union wants to spy on all our conversations. You know, first there was the dsa, the Judicial Service act that was passed, and now it's a different bill called Chat Control. Okay, Last time recently it was like rejected because there was no majority in favor of it. But they want to Propose it again in December. I think they are not giving up, even though American tech companies are against it because they say it will infringe on the rights of U.S. citizens. But it doesn't seem to bother them. They keep pushing for it. So I'm worried we have to see how it goes. But if it goes through this chat control bill, that would be very worrying for freedom of expression in Europe.

And I read stories every day about the uk, about Germany, in France, also in France, to some degree, about people being arrested for posts they basically put on the social networks. Right. So we no longer have freedom of expression in Europe. If you challenge some of the wrong people, you can be arrested in your own home. No, there's no freedom of speech anymore. It's very limited. So we still have now some margins, some spaces where you can still talk. But I'm thinking for how long?

So we'll see how it goes. But I'm not optimistic, to tell you the truth. But we'll see how it goes. But that's also why, because I want to counter this narrative of a Russian fear, because I think it's completely fabricated, completely fake, and I want to play my role in trying to offer truth to counter these lies, because this is a bunch of lies for very dishonest and dark purpose. And I don't want to be complicit in that. And that's why I'm talking to people like you, because I think people who can speak out and raise truthful elements to counter this, this war mongering narrative, we should speak out because it's now never. Because, you know, then it might be too late. So I don't want to have regrets later on and thinking, oh, I should have spoken out more. No.

I think it's. We are living in very dangerous time and now it's not time to calculate and think about our own little advantages. We need to say what we think needs to be said to avoid. Try to avoid. Try to avoid the catastrophe.

[Clayton]

Well, thank you for everything that you've done to expose this story. My guest has been Benoit Par. He's the author of the book what I Saw in the Diary of an International Monitor from 2015 to 2022. Benoit, thank you so much for your time today.

[Benoit Par]

Thank you so much also for your invitation, for everything that you do.

[Clayton]

Thank you.