title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Reports claiming that Sahrawi mercenaries have been contracted by Gaddafi in 2011 have been vehemently refuted by Polisario and remain unsubstantiated to date.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In Mali, members of the Tuareg tribe confirmed that a large number of men, about 5,000, from the tribe went to Libya in late February. Locals in Mali said they were promised €7,500 ($10,000) upfront payment and compensation up to €750 ($1,000) per day. Gaddafi has used Malian Tuaregs in his political projects before, sending them to fight in places like Chad, Sudan and Lebanon and recently they have fought against the Niger government, a war which Gaddafi has reportedly sponsored. Malian government officials told BBC that it is hard to stop the flow of fighters from Mali to Libya. A recruitment center for Malian soldiers leaving to Libya was found in a Bamako hotel.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Reports from Ghana state that the men who went to Libya were offered as much as €1950 ($2,500) per day. Advertisements seeking mercenaries were seen in Nigeria with at least one female Nigerian pro-Gaddafi sniper being caught in late August outside Tripoli. One group of mercenaries from Niger, who had been allegedly recruited from the streets with promises of money, included a soldier of just 13 years old. "The Daily Telegraph" studied the case of a 16-year-old captured Chadian child soldier in Bayda. The boy, who had previously been a shepherd in Chad, told that a Libyan man had offered him a job and a free flight to Tripoli, but in the end he had been airlifted to shoot opposition members in Eastern Libya.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Reports by EU experts stated that Gaddafi's government hired between 300 and 500 European soldiers, including some from EU countries, at high wages. According to Michel Koutouzis, who does research on security issues for the EU institutions, the UN and the French government, "In Libyan society, there is a taboo against killing people from your own tribal group. This is one reason why Gaddafi needs foreign fighters," Rumours of Serbian mercenary pilots participating on the side of Gaddafi appeared early in the conflict. Time magazine interviewed mercenaries from ex-Yugoslavia who fled Gaddafi's forces in August.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: A witness stated that mercenaries were more willing to kill demonstrators than Libyan forces were, and earned a reputation as among the most brutal forces employed by the government. A doctor in Benghazi said of the mercenaries that "they know one thing: to kill who is in front of them. Nothing else. They're killing people in cold blood".


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 7 April, Reuters reported that soldiers loyal to Gaddafi were sent into refugee camps to intimidate and bribe black African migrant workers into fighting for the Libyan state during the war. Some of these "mercenaries" were compelled to fight against their wishes, according to a source inside one of the refugee camps.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In June 2011, Amnesty International said it found no evidence of foreign mercenaries being used, saying the black Africans said to be "mercenaries" were in fact "sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya," and described the use of mercenaries as a "myth" that "inflamed public opinion" and led to lynchings and executions of black Africans by rebel forces. Human Rights Watch has countered that while many foreign migrants were erroneously accused of fighting with Gaddafi, there were also genuine mercenaries from several nations who participated in the conflict.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In October 2011 it was reported that the South African government was investigating the possibility that Gaddafi hired South African mercenaries to help him escape the besieged city of Sirte, where he was ultimately caught. It is thought that two South African mercenaries died in that operation from a NATO air strike on Gaddafi's convoy. One of the alleged mercenaries speaking from a hospital in North Africa stated that around 19 South Africans had been contracted by different companies for the operation.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: A subsidiary of Bull developed a software called Eagle which enabled Gaddafi to monitor internet traffic and which was implemented in Libya in 2008 and with better performance in 2010. Gaddafi shut down all Internet communications in Libya, and arrested Libyans who had given phone interviews to the media. International journalists were banned by the Libyan authorities from reporting from Libya except by invitation of the Gaddafi government.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 21 February, "The New York Times" reported that Gaddafi had tried to impose a blackout on information from Libya. Several residents reported that cellphone service was down, and even landline phone service was sporadic. However, every day new footage made with cell phone cameras found its way to YouTube and the international media. Journalists and human rights researchers made daily phone calls to hundreds of civilians in government held territory.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In the city of Misrata, rebel leaders imposed restrictions on the foreign media. Journalists were prevented from travelling to the village of Dafniya and were turned back at rebel-held checkpoints. Journalists were only able to use officially approved translators.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: International journalists who attempted to cover the events were attacked by Gaddafi's forces. A "BBC News" crew was beaten and lined up against a wall by Gaddafi's soldiers, who then shot next to a journalist's ear and laughed at them. A journalist working for "The Guardian" and another Brazilian journalist have been detained. An Al-Jazeera journalist Ali Hassan al-Jaber was murdered, and was apparently deliberately targeted. Gaddafi's soldiers held four "New York Times" journalists – Lynsey Addario, Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell and Tyler Hicks – in captivity for a week. Libyan citizen journalist Mohammed Nabbous was shot in the head by Gaddafi's soldiers soon after exposing the Gaddafi government's false reports related to the cease-fire declaration.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: After the uprising began, Libyan students studying in the United States allegedly received phone calls from the Libyan embassy, instructing them to join pro-Gaddafi rallies, and threatening the loss of their government-funded scholarships if they refused. Gaddafi's ambassador denied the reports.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Gaddafi's aides also organized tours for foreign journalists in Tripoli. "The Economist" correspondent in Tripoli noted "The picture presented by the regime often falls apart, fast. Coffins at funerals have sometimes turned out to be empty. Bombing sites are recycled. An injured seven-year-old in a hospital was the victim of a car crash, according to a note passed on surreptitiously by a nurse. Journalists who point out such blatant massaging of facts are harangued in the hotel corridors."


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: "The Guardian" described journalism in Gaddafi's Libya as "North Korea with palm trees". Journalists were not allowed to go anywhere, or talk to anyone, without authorization from Gaddafi's officials who always followed them. Journalists who did not report events the way Gaddafi's officials instructed faced problems and sudden deportations.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In June 2011, Amnesty International criticized "Western media coverage" which "has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime's security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge."


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Gaddafi forces reportedly surrounded themselves with civilians to protect themselves and key military sites like the Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli from air strikes. Amnesty International cited claims that Gaddafi had placed his tanks next to civilian facilities, using them as shields.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: According to Libyan state television, the rebels used human shields in Misrata. The Jamahiriya News Agency reported on a speech delivered by Leader Gaddafi to Misrata tribes in Tripoli, in which he said that the rebels "used children and women as human shields. They took more than 100 children whose whereabouts we do not know — maybe to Europe, to be evangelised."


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In response to the use of force against protesters, a number of senior Libyan public officials either renounced the Gaddafi government or resigned from their positions. Justice Minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil and Interior Minister Major General Abdul Fatah Younis both defected to the opposition. Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem and Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa fled Libya, with the latter defecting to the UK. Libyan Prosecutor General Abdul-Rahman al-Abbar resigned from the post and joined the opposition.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The staff of a number of diplomatic missions of Libya have either resigned or condemned the actions of the Gaddafi government. The ambassadors to the Arab League, European Union and United Nations have either resigned or stated that they no longer support the government. The ambassadors to Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Sweden, and the US also renounced the Gaddafi government or formally resigned.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: A number of senior military officials defected to the opposition, including General Abdul Fatah Younis, General al-Barani Ashkal, Major General Suleiman Mahmoud, Brigadier General Musa'ed Ghaidan Al Mansouri, Brigadier General Hassan Ibrahim Al Qarawi and Brigadier General Dawood Issa Al Qafsi. Two Libyan Air Force colonels each flew their Mirage F1 fighter jets to Malta and requested asylum, after being ordered to carry out airstrikes against civilian protesters in Benghazi. Colonel Nuretin Hurala, the commander of the Benghazi Naval Base also defected along with senior naval officials.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Muhammad as-Senussi, son of the former Crown Prince and grand-nephew of the late King Idris, sent his condolences "for the heroes who have laid down their lives, killed by the brutal forces of Gaddafi" and called on the international community "to halt all support for the dictator with immediate effect." as-Senussi said that the protesters would be "victorious in the end" and calls for international support to end the violence.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 24 February, as-Senussi gave an interview to Al Jazeera where he called upon the international community to help remove Gaddafi from power and stop the ongoing "massacre". He dismissed talk of a civil war saying "The Libyan people and the tribes have proven they are united". He later stated that international community needs "less talk and more action" to stop the violence. He asked for a no-fly zone over Libya but does not support foreign ground troops. On 20 April, Mohammed spoke in front of the European Parliament calling for more support for Libya. He also stated that he will support any form of government that Libya will choose after Gaddafi including a constitutional monarchy.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: A rival claimant to the throne, Idris bin Abdullah al-Senussi, announced in an interview with "Adnkronos" that he was ready to return to Libya and "assume leadership" once change had been initiated. On 21 February, he made an appearance on "Piers Morgan Tonight" to discuss the uprising. In March, it was reported Idris bin Abdullah had held meetings at the State Department and Congress in Washington with US government officials. It was also reported attempts at contact had been initiated by French and Saudi officials. On 3 March, it was reported that another member of the family, Prince Zouber al-Senussi, had fled Libya with his family and was seeking asylum in Totebo, Sweden.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: By 23 February, Gaddafi was suffering from the resignations and defections of close allies, from the loss of Benghazi, the fall of Tobruk, Misrata, Bayda, Zawiya, Zuwara, Sabratha, Sorman, and mounting international isolation and pressure. By the end of February, Gaddafi's government had lost control of a significant part of Libya, including the major cities of Misrata and Benghazi, and the important harbours at Ra's Lanuf and Brega. But in early March, Gaddafi's forces pushed the rebels back and eventually reached Benghazi and Misrata. On 10 March, the president of the ICRC Jakob Kellenberger warned of the increase in the intensity of fighting and in the number of casualties arriving at hospitals in Ajdabiya and Misrata.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: By 11 March, the Libyan Air Force was running out of quality jet fuel, and the government tried to bribe Maltese Air Force officials in order to buy fuel.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS "Charlottetown" was deployed to the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya on 2 March 2011, but did not take immediate action once arrived. Seventeen days later, a multi-state coalition began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which was taken in response to events then occurring during the conflict. That same day, military operations began, with US forces and one British submarine firing cruise missiles. the Royal Canadian Air Force, French Air Force, United States Air Force, and British Royal Air Force undertaking sorties across Libya and a naval blockade by the Royal Navy.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: From the beginning of the intervention, the coalition of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Qatar, Spain, UK and US expanded to 17 states. Newer states mostly enforced the no-fly zone and naval blockade or provided military logistical assistance. The effort was initially largely led by the United States. NATO took control of the arms embargo on 23 March, named Operation Unified Protector. An attempt to unify the military command of the air campaign (while keeping political and strategic control with a small group), first failed due to objections by the French, German, and Turkish governments. On 24 March, NATO agreed to take control of the no-fly zone, while command of targeting ground units remained with coalition forces.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In May 2011, when Gaddafi's forces were still fighting, and the result of the civil war was still uncertain, Putin and Dmitri Medvedev's Russian government recognized the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya as a legitimate dialogue partner. On 9 June 2011, some negotiators from NTC arrived in Beijing to have negotiations with the Chinese government.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In June 2011, Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam announced that they were willing to hold elections and that Gaddafi would step aside if he lost. Saif al-Islam stated that the elections could be held within three months and transparency would be guaranteed through international observers. NATO and the rebels rejected the offer, and NATO soon resumed bombardment of Tripoli.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In July 2011, Saif al-Islam accused NATO of bombing Libyan civilians, including his family members and their children, under the false pretence that their homes were military bases. He also stated that NATO offered to drop the ICC charges against him and his father if they accept a secret deal, an offer they rejected. He thus criticized the ICC as "a fake court" that is controlled by the NATO nations.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: A book by the UN's top man on the ground in Libya during the anti-Gaddafi uprising, Ian Martin, revealed that NATO's' deployments of special forces were "deliberately concealed" from the UN Security Council. Also, NATO failed to investigate civilian deaths from its bombing campaign and gave "unconvincing" arguments for promoting regime change in the name of protecting civilians. Martin writes "Nato operations had increasingly extended from preventing attacks by Gaddafi's forces to supporting rebel advances."


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Heads of the rebellion reported on 21 August that Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, was under arrest and that they had encircled the leader's compound, suggesting that the war had reached its endgame with an imminent rebel victory. By 22 August, rebel fighters had gained entrance into Tripoli and occupied Green Square, which was promptly renamed Martyrs' Square in memory of those who had died fighting in the civil war. Early on 23 August, Saif al-Islam appeared at the Gaddafi-controlled Rixos Hotel in central Tripoli and boasted his father was still in control. Later the same day, rebels blasted open the Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli through its north gates and stormed inside. Despite previous reports suggesting that Muammar Gaddafi may be inside, no members of the Gaddafi family were found.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Early the following day, 24 August, Gaddafi broadcast an address from a Tripoli local radio station in which he said the withdrawal from Bab al-Azizia had been a "tactical" move. "The New York Times" reported rebel leaders as saying they believed the only areas still under Gaddafi's control, other than the immediate neighbourhood of Bab al-Azizia, were al-Hadhba and Abu Salim, the latter including the Rixos Hotel where a group of foreign journalists had been trapped for days. However, the report noted the rebels lacked a unified command and that Gaddafi loyalists and snipers remained at large in many areas of Tripoli. Local hospitals and clinics, even in areas considered under rebel control, were reporting hundreds of cases of gunshot wounds and the death toll was impossible to estimate. By late afternoon the journalists trapped at the Rixos Hotel had been released while heavy fighting continued in the Abu Salim region close to Bab al-Azizia and elsewhere. The rebels were reported as estimating 400 people had been killed and a further 2,000 injured in the battle.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Efforts to mop up pro-Gaddafi forces in northwestern Libya and toward Sirte began even before the rebels fully consolidated control of Tripoli. Rebels took the city of Ghadames near the borders of Tunisia and Algeria on 29 August. Members of the Gaddafi family took flight to Algeria. In September, the Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid was besieged by rebels, who reported that Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam was hiding in the city. On 22 September, the NTC captured the southern city of Sabha, and claimed to have found a large cache of chemical weapons. Concerns were raised over the danger of Gaddafi mounting an insurgency against the new authorities.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: By mid-October 2011, much of the city of Sirte had been taken by NTC forces, although fierce fighting continued around the city center, where many pro-Gaddafi fighters were encamped. The NTC captured the whole of Sirte on 20 October 2011, and reported that Gaddafi himself had been killed in the city. Some civilian Gaddafi supporters remaining in the city reported that women and children had been killed in crossfire or fired upon by rebel forces. There were also reports of harassment and theft by rebels; however, the rebel army indicated it would leave unarmed civilians "to their own devices", and had allowed families in the city access to supplies and medical assistance.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 1 September, when Gaddafi lost his capital Tripoli but continued fighting, the Russian government under president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin recognized the Libyan NTC as the only legal regime in Libya. On 5 September, Libyan NTC spokesman, Abdulrahman Busin, said the NTC has hard evidence that Gadhafi bought arms from China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu has confirmed arms sales talks with Gaddafi forces, but no arms were delivered. On 12 September, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's People's Republic of China government also recognized the NTC of Libya as the only Legal regime in Libya. When China and Russia had abandoned their support of Gaddafi, a spokesman of the NTC of Libya said because of their long time support of Gaddafi, it will be very hard for a Chinese, Russian or Indian oil companies to acquire new exploration contracts.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Despite the defeat of Gaddafi's loyalists, the capture of his last cities and Gaddafi's death, Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and successor, remained hiding in the southern region of Libya until his capture in mid-November. In addition, some loyalist forces crossed into Niger, though the escape attempts exploded into violence when detected by Nigerien troops.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Sporadic clashes between NTC and former loyalists also continued across Libya with low intensity. On 23 November 2011, seven people were killed in clashes at Bani Walid, five of them among the revolutionary forces and one Gaddafi loyalist.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Fighting broke out on 3 January 2012, at a building used as intelligence headquarters by the Gaddafi government. Abdul Jalil, the chairman of NTC, warned Libyans that the country could descend into another civil war if they resort to force to settle their differences. It was reported that five people were killed and at least five injured in the events.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Also on 3 January, Libya's government named a retired general from Misrata, Yousel al-Manquosh, as head of the country's armed forces.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Bani Walid was captured by local tribal fighters on 23 January, due to the NTC's perceived inability to cooperate with them. The local forces were said to have used heavy weapons and numbered 100–150 men. Eight NTC fighters were killed and at least 25 wounded, with the rest fleeing the city. Clashes were also reported in Benghazi and Tripoli.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The NTC has functioned as an interim legislature during the transitional period. In early May 2012, it passed its most sweeping measures to date, granting immunity to former rebel fighters for acts committed during the civil war and ordering that all detainees accused of fighting for Gaddafi should be tried or released by 12 July 2012. It also adopted Law 37, prohibiting the publication of "propaganda" criticising the revolution, questioning the authority of Libya's governing organs, or praising Muammar Gaddafi, his family, his government, or the ideas of the "Green Book".


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: A September 2013 report by "The Independent" shows that Libya had plunged into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi. The production of oil had almost completely stopped and the government had lost control of large areas of the country to the militias, while violence increased throughout the country. By May 2014, conflicts between several factions in Libya had descended into a second civil war.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Independent numbers of dead and injured in the conflict have still not been made available. Estimates have been widely varied.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 24 February, Libya's ambassador to Malta said that Gaddafi's government believed the number of dead to be about 300, including civilians, police officers, and soldiers. The exact same day, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting reported that the International Criminal Court estimated 10,000 had been killed. The numbers of injured were estimated to be around 4,000 by 22 February.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 2 March, the World Health Organization estimated approximately 2,000 killed. At the same time, the opposition said that 6,500 people had died. Later, rebel spokesman Abdul Hafiz Ghoga reported that the death toll reached 8,000.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In June 2011, Amnesty International stated that earlier estimates of the initial clashes in February were exaggerated. It estimated that during the first few days of the conflict, 100 to 110 people were killed in Benghazi and 59 to 64 were killed in Bayda.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: On 8 September, Naji Barakat, the Health Minister of the National Transitional Council, stated that about half of an estimated 30,000 dead were believed to have been pro-Gaddafi fighters. War wounded were estimated as at least 50,000, of which about 20,000 were serious injuries, but this estimate was expected to rise. However, there was no independent verification of the Health Minister's statement and, one month later, the NTC reduced the estimated number of killed to 25,000.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In January 2013, the new Libyan government, based on figures still being checked, estimated the number of killed to be actually far lower than previous estimates, with 4,700 rebel supporters and a similar number of Gaddafi supporters killed during the conflict. An estimated 2,100 people on both sides were missing.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which compiles a database of all reported fatalities due to political violence on the African continent, listed 6,109 fatalities from 15 February to 23 October 2011, of which 1,319 prior to NATO intervention.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, a public data resource that includes information on different types of organized violence (e.g. actors involved, casualties, date, location, etc.), reported that between 1,914 and 3,466 people were killed during the 2011 fighting. In addition their data shows that between 152 and 168 civilians were deliberately killed by the pro-Gaddafi forces in 2011.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: There were no combat casualties amongst the coalition forces, although one RAF airman was killed in an accident in Italy.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Legal qualification of an armed conflict determines which rules of international humanitarian law apply to the conduct of the parties during that conflict. In general, the normative framework applicable to international conflicts is broader and more detailed than the sum of rules that apply in conflicts not of an international character.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The qualification of the Libyan conflict is the subject of some academic controversy. While most agree that the intensity of the fighting and the organization of the insurgents quickly rose to the level required for the existence of a non-international armed conflict under Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the exact date when these conditions were considered fulfilled ranges from late February to 10 March 2011.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: It is generally accepted that the military intervention by a multi-state coalition acting under the Security Council mandate since 19 March 2011 occasioned an international armed conflict between Libya and the intervening states. Some academics believe that this intervention transformed the legal nature of the conflict as a whole, with the result that even the rebels should have been considered one of the parties to an overarching international conflict spanning the whole Libyan territory. Others doubt this on account of both legal and factual considerations.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Finally, it remains unsettled whether or not the rebels' overthrow of Gaddafi's government following the fall of Tripoli in August 2011 changed the nature of the conflict again. Some academics believe that as the rebels were now the legitimate and effective government of the state of Libya, the conflict was "deinternationalised" and thus non-international in nature again. Others maintain the opposite position, arguing that the available legal tests for "deinternationalisation" are unpersuasive and introduce vague and politicized criteria that cannot be satisfactorily considered in the heat of the battle. Consequently, these authors would consider that the international nature of the conflict remained unchanged until the end of hostilities.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The ongoing conflict (or conflicts) ended for the purposes of legal qualification with the conclusion of hostilities in Libya in the end of October 2011.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: By the end of February 2011, supplies of medicine, fuel and food were dangerously low in Libya's urban centres. On 25 February, the International Committee of the Red Cross launched an emergency appeal for to meet the emergency needs of people affected by the violent unrest in Libya. In early March, the fighting across Libya meant that more than a million people fleeing or inside the country needed humanitarian aid. The Islamic Relief and the WFP also coordinated a shipment of humanitarian supplies to Misrata.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In March, the Swedish government donated medical supplies and other humanitarian aid and the UN World Food Programme provided food. Turkey sent a hospital ship to Misrata and a Turkish cargo ship brought 141 tons of humanitarian aid.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Another humanitarian issue was refugees fleeing the crisis. A humanitarian ship docked in harbour of Misrata in April to begin the evacuation of stranded migrants. By 10 July, over 150,000 migrants were evacuated. Migrants were also stranded elsewhere in Libya, such as in the southern towns of Sebha and Gatroum. Fleeing the violence of Tripoli by road, as many as 4,000 refugees were crossing the Libya–Tunisia border daily during the first days of the uprising. Among those escaping the violence were native Libyans as well as foreign nationals including Egyptians, Tunisians and Turks.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: While the UN sanctioned military intervention has been implemented on humanitarian grounds, UN agencies seeking to ease the humanitarian crisis repeatedly rejected offers of support from the military to carry out the agencies' humanitarian operations. The conditions under which such support may be accepted are outlined in the Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets to Support United Nations Humanitarian Activities in Complex Emergencies (MCDA), whereby military support can be used but only temporarily and as a last resort. Yet, there remains the concern that aid agencies' neutrality will be brought into question by accepting military support, putting aid staff at risk of being attacked and causing some parties to prevent the agencies accessing all the areas they need to. Furthermore, the military may not always have the technical skills required to assess the need for aid and to ensure its effective distribution. Despite this, offers continue for the creation of an aid corridor and aid agencies have accepted military logistical support in the past, for instance in the 2010 Pakistan floods response.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In August 2011, the UNHCR issued a strong call for the rights and lives of sub-Saharan Africans living in Libya to be protected due to reports that black Africans were being targeted by the rebel forces as cities fell. Other news sources including "The Independent" and CNN have reported on the targeting of black people in rebel held areas.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: An Amnesty International statement, released on 30 August 2011, stated that on visits to detention centres in Zawiya and Tripoli, Amnesty International was informed that between one third and half of those detained were from Sub-Saharan Africa. A New York Times online article also comments that "it seems that plenty of the black Africans captured as mercenaries were never actually involved in the fight". "Hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans worked in Gaddafi's Libya, doing everything from managing hotels to sweeping floors. But some also fought as pro-Gaddafi mercenaries, and many migrant workers [-] fled ahead of the rebels, fearing they would be mistaken for mercenaries."


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: It was also reported that some African women had said rebels were raping them in refugee camps, with additional reports of forced labour. Foreign aid workers were also claiming to be prohibited from officially talking about the allegations.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The town of Tawergha, which supported Gaddafi prior to its capture by anti-Gaddafi fighters in August, has been emptied of its mostly black inhabitants in what appeared to be a "major reprisal against supporters of the Gaddafi regime", according to an 11 September report from "The Sunday Telegraph", and commanders of the Misrata Brigade are refusing to allow the displaced townspeople to return. One commander was quoted as saying, "Tawergha no longer exists."


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: In 2014 a former Gaddafi officer reported to the "New York Times" that the civil war was now an "ethnic struggle" between Arab tribes (like the Zintanis) against those of Turkish ancestry (like the Misuratis), as well as against the Berbers and Circassians.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Fleeing the violence of Tripoli by road, as many as 4,000 refugees were crossing the Libya–Tunisia border daily during the first days of the uprising. Among those, escaping the violence, were native Libyans as well as foreign nationals including Egyptians, Tunisians and Turks. In February, Italian Foreign Minister Frattini expressed his concerns that the amount of Libyan refugees trying to reach Italy might reach between 200,000 and 300,000 people. By 1 March, officials from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had confirmed allegations of discrimination against sub-Saharan Africans who were held in dangerous conditions in the no-man's-land between Tunisia and Libya. By 3 March, an estimated 200,000 refugees had fled Libya to either Tunisia or Egypt. A provisional refugee camp set up at Ras Ajdir with a capacity for 10,000 was overflowing with an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 refugees. Many tens of thousands were still trapped on the Libyan side of the frontier. By 3 March, the situation was described as a logistical nightmare, with the World Health Organization warning of the risk of epidemics.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: To continue responding to the needs of people staying at the Ras Ajdir crossing point in Tunisia, the WFP and Secours Islamique-France were upgrading a kitchen that would provide breakfast for families. Separately, the ICRC advised it was handing over its operations at the Choucha Camp to the Tunisian Red Crescent. Since 24 March, the WFP supplied over 42,500 cooked meals for TCNs at the Saloum border. A total of 1,650 cartons of fortified date bars (equivalent of 13.2 metric tons) had also been provided to supplement these meals.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: "The Sunday Telegraph" reported on 11 September that almost the entire population of Tawergha, a town of about 10,000 people, had been forced to flee their homes by anti-Gaddafi fighters after their takeover of the settlement. The report suggested that Tawergha, which was dominated by black Libyans, may have been the subject of ethnic cleansing provoked by a combination of racism and bitterness on the part of Misratan fighters over the town's support for Gaddafi during the siege of Misrata.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Oil prices around the world increased during the Libyan conflict, due to the country's significant oil reserves. The Arabian Gulf Oil Company, the second-largest state-owned oil company in Libya, announced plans to use oil funds to support anti-Gaddafi forces. Islamic leaders and clerics in Libya, notably the Network of Free Ulema – Libya urged all Muslims to rebel against Gaddafi. The Magarha tribe announced their support of the protesters. The Zuwayya tribe, based in eastern Libya, threatened to cut off oil exports from fields in its part of Libya if Libyan security forces continued attacking demonstrators.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The Tuareg people consistently supported Gaddafi during the Civil War, and for a time sheltered Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam. It is worth noting that Gaddafi had given many Tuareg refuge from persecution in neighbouring Sahel countries, and that he patronized Tuareg culture in many ways, such as through festivals such as the Ghadames Festival, and also the designation of Ghadames old town as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One Tuareg fighter said he and other Tuareg were ready to "fight for Gaddafi to the last drop of blood".


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Many states and supranational bodies condemned Gaddafi's government over disputed allegations of air attacks on civilian targets within the country. Virtually all Western countries cut off diplomatic relations with Gaddafi's government over disputed reports of an aerial bombing campaign in February and March, and a number of other countries led by Peru and Botswana did likewise. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 was adopted on 26 February, freezing the assets of Gaddafi and ten members of his inner circle and restricting their travel. The resolution also referred the actions of the government to the International Criminal Court for investigation, and an arrest warrant for Gaddafi was issued on 27 June. This was followed by an arrest warrant issued by Interpol on 8 September.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: The disputed allegations about the Libyan government's use of the Libyan Air Force to strike civilians led to the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 to create a Libyan no-fly zone on 17 March, though several countries involved in the resolution's enforcement have also carried out regular strike missions to degrade the offensive capacity of the Libyan Army and destroy the government's command and control capabilities, effectively acting in "de facto" support of anti-Gaddafi forces on the ground. The later British parliament's Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that by summer 2011 British policy had become one of regime change.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: China and Russia, originally abstaining on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 due to the influence of the Arab League, pointed out that the implemented "no-fly-zone" had gone much further out of the originally agreed aims.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: 100 countries recognized the anti-Gaddafi National Transitional Council as Libya's legitimate representative, with many of those countries explicitly describing it as the legal interim government of the country due to the perceived loss of legitimacy on the part of Gaddafi's government, though the National Transitional Council never obtained authority and security across all of Libya.


title: First Libyan Civil War

text: Many states also either issued travel advisories or attempted evacuations. Some evacuations were successful to Malta or via land borders to Egypt or Tunisia; other attempts were hindered by tarmac damage at Benghazi's airport or refusals of permission to land in Tripoli. There were also several solidarity protests in other countries that were mostly composed of Libyan expatriates. Financial markets around the world had adverse reactions to the instability, with oil prices rising to a -year high.


title: Firmware

text: In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide hardware abstraction services to higher-level software such as operating systems. For less complex devices, firmware may act as the device's complete operating system, performing all control, monitoring and data manipulation functions. Typical examples of devices containing firmware are embedded systems (running embedded software), home and personal-use appliances, computers, and computer peripherals.


title: Firmware

text: Firmware is held in non-volatile memory devices such as ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, and flash memory. Updating firmware requires ROM integrated circuits to be physically replaced, or EPROM or flash memory to be reprogrammed through a special procedure. Some firmware memory devices are permanently installed and cannot be changed after manufacture. Common reasons for updating firmware include fixing bugs or adding features.


title: Firmware

text: Ascher Opler coined the term "firmware" in a 1967 "Datamation" article, as an intermediary term between "hardware" and "software".


title: Firmware

text: In this article, Opler was referring to a new kind of computer program that had a different practical and psychological purpose from traditional programs from the user's perspective.


title: Firmware

text: As computers began to increase in complexity, it became clear that various programs needed to first be initiated and run to provide a consistent environment necessary for running more complex programs at the user's discretion. This required programming the computer to run those programs automatically. Furthermore, as companies, universities, and marketers wanted to sell computers to laypeople with little technical knowledge, greater automation became necessary to allow a lay-user to easily run programs for practical purposes. This gave rise to a kind of software that a user would not consciously run, and it led to software that a lay user wouldn't even know about.


title: Firmware

text: Originally, it meant the contents of a writable control store (a small specialized high-speed memory), containing microcode that defined and implemented the computer's instruction set, and that could be reloaded to specialize or modify the instructions that the central processing unit (CPU) could execute. As originally used, firmware contrasted with hardware (the CPU itself) and software (normal instructions executing on a CPU). It was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software; thus the name "firmware". Over time, popular usage extended the word "firmware" to denote any computer program that is tightly linked to hardware, including BIOS on PCs, boot firmware on smartphones, computer peripherals, or the control systems on simple consumer electronic devices such as microwave ovens, remote controls.


title: Firmware

text: In some respects, the various firmware components are as important as the operating system in a working computer. However, unlike most modern operating systems, firmware rarely has a well-evolved automatic mechanism of updating itself to fix any functionality issues detected after shipping the unit.


title: Firmware

text: The BIOS may be manually updated by a user via a small utility program. In contrast, firmware in mass storage devices (hard-disk drives, optical disc drives, flash memory storage e.g. solid state drive) is less frequently updated, even when flash memory (rather than ROM, EEPROM) storage is used for the firmware.


title: Firmware

text: Most computer peripherals are themselves special-purpose computers. Devices such as printers, scanners, webcams, and USB flash drives have internally-stored firmware; some devices may also permit field upgrading of their firmware.


title: Firmware

text: , most portable music players support firmware upgrades. Some companies use firmware updates to add new playable file formats (codecs). Other features that may change with firmware updates include the GUI or even the battery life. Most mobile phones have a firmware over the air firmware upgrade capability for much the same reasons; some may even be upgraded to enhance reception or sound quality.


title: Firmware

text: Since 1996, most automobiles have employed an on-board computer and various sensors to detect mechanical problems. , modern vehicles also employ computer-controlled anti-lock braking systems (ABS) and computer-operated transmission control units (TCUs). The driver can also get in-dash information while driving in this manner, such as real-time fuel economy and tire pressure readings. Local dealers can update most vehicle firmware.


title: Firmware

text: "Flashing" involves the overwriting of existing firmware or data, contained in EEPROM or flash memory module present in an electronic device, with new data. This can be done to upgrade a device or to change the provider of a service associated with the function of the device, such as changing from one mobile phone service provider to another or installing a new operating system. If firmware is upgradable, it is often done via a program from the provider, and will often allow the old firmware to be saved before upgrading so it can be reverted to if the process fails, or if the newer version performs worse. Free software replacements for vendor flashing tools have been developed, such as Flashrom.


title: Firmware

text: Sometimes, third parties develop an unofficial new or modified ("aftermarket") version of firmware to provide new features or to unlock hidden functionality; this is referred to as custom firmware. An example is Rockbox as a firmware replacement for portable media players. There are many homebrew projects for various devices, which often unlock general-purpose computing functionality in previously limited devices (e.g., running Doom on iPods).


title: Firmware

text: Firmware hacks usually take advantage of the firmware update facility on many devices to install or run themselves. Some, however, must resort to exploits to run, because the manufacturer has attempted to lock the hardware to stop it from running unlicensed code.


title: Firmware

text: The Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab discovered that a group of developers it refers to as the "Equation Group" has developed hard disk drive firmware modifications for various drive models, containing a trojan horse that allows data to be stored on the drive in locations that will not be erased even if the drive is formatted or wiped. Although the Kaspersky Lab report did not explicitly claim that this group is part of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), evidence obtained from the code of various Equation Group software suggests that they are part of the NSA.


title: Firmware

text: Researchers from the Kaspersky Lab categorized the undertakings by Equation Group as the most advanced hacking operation ever uncovered, also documenting around 500 infections caused by the Equation Group in at least 42 countries.


title: Firmware

text: Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the company Canonical, which maintains the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has described proprietary firmware as a security risk, saying that "firmware on your device is the NSA's best friend" and calling firmware "a trojan horse of monumental proportions". He has asserted that low-quality, closed source firmware is a major threat to system security: "Your biggest mistake is to assume that the NSA is the only institution abusing this position of trust in fact, it's reasonable to assume that all firmware is a cesspool of insecurity, courtesy of incompetence of the highest degree from manufacturers, and competence of the highest degree from a very wide range of such agencies". As a potential solution to this problem, he has called for declarative firmware, which would describe "hardware linkage and dependencies" and "should not include executable code". Firmware should be open-source so that the code can be checked and verified.


title: Firmware

text: Custom firmware hacks have also focused on injecting malware into devices such as smartphones or USB devices. One such smartphone injection was demonstrated on the Symbian OS at MalCon, a hacker convention. A USB device firmware hack called BadUSB was presented at the Black Hat USA 2014 conference, demonstrating how a USB flash drive microcontroller can be reprogrammed to spoof various other device types to take control of a computer, exfiltrate data, or spy on the user. Other security researchers have worked further on how to exploit the principles behind BadUSB, releasing at the same time the source code of hacking tools that can be used to modify the behavior of different USB devices.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Pet Sematary is a 2019 American supernatural horror film directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer and written by Jeff Buhler, from a screen story by Matt Greenberg. It is the second adaptation of the 1983 novel of the same name by Stephen King, and a remake to the 1989 film. The film stars Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow, and follows a family that discovers a mysterious graveyard in the woods behind their new home.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Talks for a new adaptation of "Pet Sematary" began in March 2010, with Greenberg initially writing the screenplay. Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Steven Schneider were revealed to be producing the remake with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo in talks to direct it. By December 2017, Paramount Pictures had greenlit this new film version of King's novel, with duo filmmakers Kölsch and Widmyer directing. Principal photography commenced on June 18, 2018, in Montreal and Hudson, Quebec, Canada, and wrapped on August 11, 2018.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: "Pet Sematary" premiered at South by Southwest festival on March 16, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on April 5, 2019, by Paramount Pictures. The film grossed over $113 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the dark tone, atmosphere and performances, but disliked the slow pacing and reliance on jump scares. Critics and audiences were both divided on the changes between the film and book, though many named it better than the 1989 adaptation.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: After being evicted from their home, Louis Creed, an ER doctor from Boston, Massachusetts, moves to the small town of Ludlow, Maine with his wife, Rachel, their two young children, Ellie and Gage, and Ellie's pet cat, Church. Exploring the woods, Rachel and Ellie stumble across a funeral procession of children taking a dead dog to a cemetery called "Pet Sematary." At the university hospital, Louis is left shaken after failing to save the life of Victor Pascow, a student who was fatally injured after being struck and dragged by a vehicle. He later experiences a vivid dream in which Victor leads him to the deadfall at the back of the cemetery and warns him not to "venture beyond." Louis awakens to find his feet and sheets caked in mud, suggesting that the events were more than just a nightmare.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: On Halloween, Church is killed by a truck. Jud Crandall, their neighbor who has a soft spot for Ellie, takes Louis past the pet cemetery to an ancient burial ground to bury Church. The next day, Louis is stunned when Church returns home alive, though he is different: aggressive and violent, tearing apart a bird and eating it alive. Jud reveals to Louis that the burial ground brings things back from the dead and is believed to be inhabited by a spirit known as the Wendigo. He apologizes, having thought Church would return the same. After Church attacks Gage, Louis tries to kill him and he fails. So he decides to set him free in the wild.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: During her birthday party, Ellie spots Church on the road and excitedly rushes to him, but is hit and killed by a derailed tanker truck. The family is devastated, and Rachel and Gage leave to spend a few days with Rachel's parents. Sensing that Louis is planning on resurrecting Ellie, Jud warns the grieving father that "sometimes dead is better." Though Victor's spirit similarly warns him, Louis's grief spurs him to carry out his plan. He drugs Jud, exhumes Ellie's corpse, and reburies her in the animal graveyard as the Wendigo looks on. Ellie rises from the dead but manifests a disturbing demeanor.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Meanwhile, Rachel is frightened by visions of her dead sister Zelda, who suffered from spinal meningitis and died after falling down a dumbwaiter shaft. Gage is also frightened by the ghost of Victor who tries to warn him about going home. Jud wakes up and spots Ellie in the house. He flees home in horror to retrieve his revolver, but Jud, distracted by a growling Church, allows Ellie to surprise him on the stairwell—slicing through Jud's Achilles tendon with a scalpel and taunting him with the voice of his dead wife before viciously stabbing him to death.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Rachel and Gage return home and encounter the undead Ellie. Rachel is horrified and flees with Gage to an upstairs bedroom. Ellie, enraged at being rejected by her mother, attacks Rachel as Louis finds Jud's blood-soaked body. Rushing home, Louis manages to save Gage just as Ellie fatally stabs Rachel. He locks Gage in the car, and Rachel begs her husband not to bury her in the pet cemetery. Ellie knocks Louis unconscious and drags her mother's body to the burial ground. At the pet cemetery, Ellie tries to kill Louis. As Louis prepares to decapitate his daughter, he is impaled from behind by a makeshift grave marker, falling and revealing a reanimated Rachel. Ellie and Rachel silently drag Louis away and he is subsequently buried. Rachel, Ellie, Church, and a resurrected Louis set fire to Jud's house before approaching the car. Louis peers into the car at Gage before a beeping sound of the car door unlocking is heard.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Louis spares Ellie instead of killing her, and they both bury Rachel behind the pet cemetery, promising that they will be a family together forever. After burning Jud's house, Louis and Ellie approach the family car, where Gage is still locked in. In the house, Ellie, Church, and a newly resurrected Rachel approach and reunite with an unhappy Louis holding Gage, who is crying.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: On March 5, 2010, Paramount Pictures was developing a new adaptation of Stephen King's novel "Pet Sematary", and that Matt Greenberg had been hired to write the screenplay. (He was later credited with the "screen story".) By October 2013, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Steven Schneider were to serve as producers for the production, and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was in talks to direct.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: In August 2017, Andy Muschietti, director of the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's "It", said that he and his sister, Barbara Muschietti, wanted to adapt "Pet Sematary".


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: On October 30, 2017, it was announced that Paramount Pictures had officially greenlit the film, which was expected to be directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, from a screenplay by Jeff Buhler and David Kajganich (the latter went uncredited). Aside from Di Bonaventura and Schneider, Mark Vahradian also produced. Other filmmakers considered were Sean Carter and Johannes Roberts.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: On April 16, 2018, it was announced that Jason Clarke had been cast in the lead role of Louis Creed. On May 4, 2018, it was reported John Lithgow had joined the cast in the role of Jud Crandall.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: In June 2018, it was announced that Amy Seimetz would have the film's lead female role, Rachel Creed, along with Jeté Laurence as Creed's daughter Ellie and twins Hugo and Lucas Lavoie as Creed's son Gage.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: In October 2018, it was reported that Obssa Ahmed had been added as college student Victor Pascow, and Alyssa Brooke Levine as Zelda Goldman. Zelda was previously portrayed by stuntman Andrew Hubatsek in the 1989 film.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Principal photography commenced on June 18, 2018, in Hudson, Quebec, Canada. Filming wrapped on August 11, 2018.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: Christopher Young composed the film score. The end credits include a cover version of the Ramones song "Pet Sematary" by American punk rock band Starcrawler. Waxwork Records released the soundtrack on a double LP in 2019 following the release of the film.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 16, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on April 5, 2019, by Paramount Pictures.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: The film was originally going to be released on April 19, 2019, but was moved two weeks from its original release date of April 19, 2019, to April 5, 2019.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: "Pet Sematary" grossed $54.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $58.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $113.1 million, against a production budget of $21 million.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Pet Sematary" was released alongside "Shazam!" and "The Best of Enemies", and was projected to gross $20–30 million from 2,500 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $2.3 million from Thursday night previews. It then grossed $10 million on its first day, including previews. It went on to debut to $24.5 million, finishing second, behind "Shazam!". The film fell 60% in its second weekend to $9.7 million, finishing fourth, and then made $4.9 million in its third weekend, finishing seventh.


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads: ""Pet Sematary" takes its source material in a few different directions, but this remake feels like an exhuming almost as often as it does a revival." The rating fell from 92% since the original critical consensus. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 66% and a 47% "definite recommend".


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: In March 2019, di Bonaventura stated that discussions of the development of a prequel had begun. Buhler reaffirmed this, stating that a continuation would explore "digging into the mythology of the town, these rituals that children present, the mythology of the Miꞌkmaq, the Wendigo, the cemetery, the origins, Jud's life."


title: Pet Sematary (2019 film)

text: In February 2021, the film was officially green-lit with Buhler and di Bonaventura returning in their roles as screenwriter and producer, respectively. The project will be released via streaming, as a Paramount+ exclusive film. In May 2021, it was announced Lindsey Beer will make her directing debut with the film. In June 2021, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that Jackson White was in final negotiations as the young Jud Crandall. The same month, Jack Mulhern, Forrest Goodluck, Natalie Alyn Lind and Isabella Star LaBlanc were cast in undisclosed roles, with filming scheduled to commence in August. Samantha Mathis and Henry Thomas were cast in undisclosed roles in August 2021.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (Olga Nikolaevna Romanova; ; – 17 July 1918) was the eldest child of the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Emperor Nicholas II, and of Empress Alexandra of Russia.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: During her lifetime, Olga's future marriage was the subject of great speculation within Russia. Matches were rumored with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, Crown Prince Carol of Romania, Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Britain's George V, and with Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia. Olga herself wanted to marry a Russian and remain in her home country. During World War I, she nursed wounded soldiers in a military hospital until her own nerves gave out and, thereafter, oversaw administrative duties at the hospital.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga's murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church. In the 1990s, her remains were identified through DNA testing and were buried in a funeral ceremony at Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg along with those of her parents and two of her sisters.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga had chestnut-blonde hair, bright blue eyes, a broad face, and an upturned nose. When she was 10, her tutor Pierre Gilliard reflected that she was "very fair" with "sparkling, mischievous eyes and a slightly retrousee nose." Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, her mother's lady-in-waiting, reflected that "[she] was fair and tall, with smiling blue eyes, a somewhat short nose, which she called 'my humble snub,' and lovely teeth." She was considered less pretty than her sisters, Tatiana and Maria, though her appearance improved as she grew older. "As a child she was plain, at fifteen she was beautiful", wrote her mother's friend Lili Dehn. "She was slightly above the medium height, with a fresh complexion, deep blue eyes, quantities of light chestnut hair, and pretty hands and feet." In her memoirs, Meriel Buchanan described the physical appearance of the 17-year-old Olga at an imperial ball in 1912: "She had not the regular features, the almost mystical beauty of her sister, Tatiana Nikolaevna, but with her rather tip-tilted nose, her wide laughing mouth, her sparkling blue eyes, she had a charm, a freshness, an enchanting exuberance that made her irresistible."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was compassionate and sought to help others. As a child, she saw a little girl crying in the road. She threw her doll out of her carriage, saying, "Don't cry, little girl, here's a doll for you." Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden remembered that "she was generous, and an appeal to her met with immediate response. 'Oh, one must help poor so-and-so. I must do it somehow,' she would say." When she was 20, she took control of a portion of her sizable fortune and began to respond independently to requests for charity. One day when she was out for a drive she saw a young child using crutches. She asked about the child and learned that the youngster's parents were too poor to afford treatment. She set aside an allowance to cover the child's medical bills. A court official, Alexander Mossolov, recalled that Olga's character was "even, good, with an almost angelic kindness" by the time she was a young woman.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was famous for her quick temper and moodiness. As a small child, she told a portrait painter, "You are a very ugly man and I don't like you one bit!" Her mother's friend Anna Vyrubova wrote that Olga's "chief characteristics … were a strong will and a singularly straightforward habit of thought and action... Admirable qualities in a woman, these same characteristics are often trying in childhood, and Olga as a little girl sometimes showed herself willful and even disobedient." On 11 January 1909, Alexandra admonished the 13-year-old Olga for rudeness and bad behavior. She told the teenager that she must be polite to the servants, who looked after her well and did their best for her, and she should not make her nurse "nervous" when she was tired and not feeling well. Olga responded on 12 January 1909 that she would try to do better but it wasn't easy because her nurse became angry and cross with her for no good reason. However, Elizaveta Ersberg, one of the maids, told her niece that the servants sometimes had good reason to be cross with Olga because the eldest grand duchess could be spoiled, capricious, and lazy. On 24 January 1909, Alexandra scolded the active teenager, who once signed another of her letters with the nickname "Unmounted Cossack", again: "You are growing very big — don't be so wild and kick about and show your legs, it is not pretty. I never did so when your age or when I was smaller and younger even." According to Anna, Olga was 'extremely pretty, with brilliant blue eyes and a lovely complexion, Olga resembled her father in the fineness of her features, especially in her delicate, slightly tipped nose.' and measured 165 centimetres tall.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga's governess and tutors noted that she had some autocratic impulses. On a visit to a museum where state carriages were on display, Olga ordered one of the servants to prepare the largest and most beautiful carriage for her daily drive. Her wishes were not honored, much to the relief of her governess, Margaretta Eagar.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was highly intelligent and enjoyed studying. "The eldest, Olga Nicolaevna, possessed a remarkably quick brain," recalled her Swiss tutor, Pierre Gilliard. "She had good reasoning powers as well as initiative, a very independent manner, and a gift for swift and entertaining repartee." She enjoyed reading about politics and read newspapers. She reportedly enjoyed choosing from her mother's book selection. When she was caught taking a book before her mother read it, Olga would jokingly tell her mother that Alexandra must wait to read the novel until Olga had determined whether it was an appropriate book for her to read.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was musically gifted. Her teachers said that she had "an absolutely correct ear." Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden reflected that, "She could play by ear anything she had heard, and could transpose' complicated pieces of music, play the most difficult accompaniments at sight, and her touch on the piano was delightful. She sang prettily in a mezzosoprano. She was lazy at practising, but when the spirit moved her she would play by the hour."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga felt the rights of eldest children should be protected. When she was told the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, she sympathized with the eldest brothers rather than Joseph. She also sympathized with Goliath rather than David in the Biblical story of David and Goliath. When her French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, was teaching her the formation of French verbs and the use of auxiliaries, ten-year-old Olga responded, "I see, monsieur. The auxiliaries are the servants of the verbs. It's only poor 'avoir' which has to shift for itself."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Due to her sheltered life, Olga had little experience with the world. She and her sisters had little understanding of money, because they had not had an opportunity to shop in stores or to see money exchange hands. Young Olga once thought that a hat maker who came to the palace had given her a new hat as a present. Olga was once frightened when she witnessed a policeman arresting someone on the street. She thought the policeman would come to arrest her because she had behaved badly for Miss Eagar. When reading a history lesson, she remarked that she was glad she lived in current times, when people were good and not as evil as they had been in the past.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was fascinated with heaven and the afterlife. In November 1903, the 8-year-old Olga learned about death when her first cousin, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, died of typhoid fever while on a visit to the Romanovs at their Polish estate. "My children talked much of cousin Ella and how God had taken her spirit, and they understood that later God would take her body also to heaven," wrote Eagar. "On Christmas morning when Olga awoke, she exclaimed at once, 'Did God send for cousin Ella's body in the night?' I felt startled at such a question on Christmas morning, but answered, 'Oh, no, dear, not yet.' She was greatly disappointed, and said, 'I thought He would have sent for her to keep Christmas with Him.'"


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was born on 15 November 1895. She was the oldest child and daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. The birth was difficult, and Alexandra was in labour for 13 hours. Ultimately, Dr. Ott used forceps to deliver Olga. She weighed 4.5 kg at birth, and she was so robust that Nicholas said that she didn't look like a newborn. Her parents were overjoyed and insisted that they were not disappointed that their first child was not a boy. When he was congratulated by the court chamberlain, Nicholas declared, "I am glad that our child is a girl. Had it been a boy he would have belonged to the people, being a girl she belongs to us." Alexandra agreed: "For us there is no question of sex. Our child is simply a gift from God."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: In 1896, Nicholas and Alexandra brought Olga on a visit to Scotland, France, and Darmstadt. In Balmoral, Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, Alexandra's grandmother and Olga's great-grandmother, met Olga for the first time. Queen Victoria approved of Olga and declared "the baby is magnificent." In France, Olga was very popular. Nicholas told his mother that "our daughter made a great impression everywhere." Olga was greeted by shouts of "Vive la bebe!"


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga and her siblings were raised as simply as possible. They slept on hard camp cots unless they were ill, and they took cold baths every morning. Servants called Olga and her siblings by their first names and patronyms rather than by their imperial titles.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga had four siblings: Grand Duchesses Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. Her great-grandmother Queen Victoria was one of her godmothers.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga's Russian title ("Velikaya Knyazhna" Великая Княжна) is most precisely translated as "Grand Princess," meaning that Olga, as an "imperial highness," was higher in rank than other princesses in Europe who were "royal highnesses". However, "Grand Duchess" is the usual English translation. Olga's friends and family generally called her simply Olga Nikolaevna or nicknamed her "Olishka," "Olenka," or "Olya."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was most often paired with her sister Tatiana. The two girls shared a room, dressed alike, and were known as "The Big Pair."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: In 1900, before her brother Alexei was born, her father fell seriously ill. During this period, the empress attempted to persuade her husband to change the succession laws in Russia to allow females to inherit the throne in the absence of any male heirs in order for Olga to inherit the empire, as opposed to her uncle, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Ultimately, these changes did not take place.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga idolized her father and wore a necklace with an icon of St. Nicholas on her chest. She, like her siblings, enjoyed games of tennis and swimming with her father during their summer holidays and often confided in him when she went with him on long walks.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Although she loved Alexandra, Olga had a strained relationship with her mother. "Olga is always most unamiable about every proposition, though may end by doing what I wish", wrote Alexandra to Nicholas on 13 March 1916. "And when I am severe – sulks me." In another letter to Nicholas during World War I, Alexandra complained that Olga's grumpiness, bad humor and general reluctance to make an official visit to the hospital where she usually worked as a Red Cross nurse made things difficult. Parlormaid Elizaveta Nikolaevna Ersberg told her niece that Nicholas II paid closer attention to the children than Alexandra did and Alexandra often was ill with a migraine or quarreled with the servants. In 1913, Olga complained in a letter to her grandmother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna about her mother's invalidism. "As usual her heart isn't well", Olga wrote. "It's all so unpleasant." Queen Marie of Romania, who met Olga and her sisters when they visited Romania on a state trip in 1914, commented in her memoirs that the girls were natural and confided in her when Alexandra wasn't present, but when she appeared "they always seemed to be watching her every expression so as to be sure to act according to her desires."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Alexandra frequently reminded Olga to be a good example for her younger siblings and make sure that they behaved. In many letters, Alexandra told Olga "remember above all to always be a good example to the little ones" and warned her that "you must have a positive influence over them." Olga struggled to keep her siblings in line. Alexandra blamed sixteen-year-old Olga, who was sitting beside her seven-year-old brother, for failing to control the misbehaving Tsarevich Alexei during a family dinner. The spoiled Alexei teased others at the table, refused to sit up in his chair, wouldn't eat his food and licked his plate. The Tsarina's expectation was unreasonable, said Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, a distant cousin of the imperial family. "Olga cannot deal with him", he wrote in his diary on 18 March 1912. Court official A. A. Mossolov wrote that Olga was already seventeen, but still "she had the ways of a flapper", referring to her rough manners and liking for exuberant play.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was especially close with her paternal aunt and namesake, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. Later, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna reflected that "[Olga] resembled me in character, and that was perhaps why we understood each other so well."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was close to her younger brother, Alexei. Alexei adored Olga and considered her his favorite sister. Whenever his parents reprimanded him, Alexei would "declare that he was Olga's boy, pick up his toys, and go to her apartment."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Despite this occasional misbehavior, Olga, like all her family, doted on the long-awaited heir Tsarevich Alexei, or "Baby". The little boy suffered frequent attacks of hemophilia and nearly died several times. Like their mother, Olga and her three sisters were also potentially carriers of the hemophilia gene. Olga's younger sister Maria reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils, according to her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, who was interviewed later in her life. The doctor performing the operation was so unnerved that he had to be ordered to continue by Tsarina Alexandra. Olga Alexandrovna said she believed all four of her nieces bled more than was normal and believed they were carriers of the hemophilia gene like their mother, who inherited the trait from her maternal grandmother Queen Victoria. Symptomatic carriers of the gene, while not haemophiliacs themselves, can have symptoms of hemophilia including a lower than normal blood clotting factor that can lead to heavy bleeding.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga's mother relied on the counsel of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and wandering "starets" or "holy man", and credited his prayers with saving the ailing Tsarevich on numerous occasions. Olga and her siblings were also taught to view Rasputin as "Our Friend" and to share confidences with him. In the autumn of 1907, Olga's aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was escorted to the nursery by the Tsar to meet Rasputin. Olga, her sisters and brother, were all wearing their long white nightgowns. "All the children seemed to like him", Olga Alexandrovna recalled. "They were completely at ease with him."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: However, one of the girls' governesses, Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva, was horrified in 1910 that Rasputin was permitted access to the nursery when the four girls were in their nightgowns and wanted him barred. Although Rasputin's contacts with the children were completely innocent, Nicholas asked Rasputin to avoid going to the nurseries in the future to avoid further scandal. Alexandra eventually had the governess fired. Tyutcheva took her story to other members of the family. Nicholas's sister Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia was horrified by Tyutcheva's story. She wrote on 15 March 1910 that she could not understand:


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, another nurse for the royal children, was at first a devotee of Rasputin, but later was disillusioned by him. She claimed that she was raped by Rasputin in the spring of 1910. The Empress refused to believe her and said that everything Rasputin did was holy. Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was told that Vishnyakova's claim had been immediately investigated, but "they caught the young woman in bed with a Cossack of the Imperial Guard." Vishnyakova was dismissed from her post in 1913.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: It was whispered in society that Rasputin had seduced not only the Tsarina but also the four Grand Duchesses. Rasputin had released ardent, though by all accounts completely innocent in nature, letters written by the Tsarina and the four grand duchesses to him. They circulated throughout society, fueling rumors. Pornographic cartoons circulated depicting Rasputin having relations with the empress, with her four daughters and Anna Vyrubova nude in the background. Nicholas ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg for a time, much to Alexandra's displeasure, and Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to Palestine. Despite the rumors, the imperial family's association with Rasputin continued until Rasputin was murdered on 17 December 1916. "Our Friend is so contented with our girlies, says they have gone through heavy 'courses' for their age and their souls have much developed", Alexandra wrote to Nicholas on 6 December 1916, a few weeks before Rasputin was killed. However, as she grew older, Olga was less inclined to see Rasputin as her friend and was more aware of how his friendship with her parents affected the stability of her country. Olga wrote in her diary the day after the murder that she suspected Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, her first cousin once removed and the man she had at one time been expected to marry, was the murderer of "Father Grigory." Dmitri and Felix Yussupov, the husband of her first cousin Princess Irina of Russia, were among the murderers. In his memoirs, A. A. Mordvinov reported that the four grand duchesses appeared "cold and visibly terribly upset" by Rasputin's death and sat "huddled up closely together" on a sofa in one of their bedrooms on the night they received the news. Mordvinov reported that the young women were in a gloomy mood and seemed to sense the political upheaval that was about to be unleashed. Rasputin was buried with an icon signed on the reverse side by Olga, her sisters and mother. However, Olga was the only member of the family who did not attend Rasputin's funeral, according to the diary of her first cousin once removed Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia. Olga's own diary however shows that she did attend his funeral. She wrote on 21 December (Old Style) 1916 "At 9 o' clock, we 4, Papa and Mama went to the place where Ania's construction is for the service of Litia and burial of Father Grigory." According to the memoirs of Valentina Ivanovna Chebotareva, a woman who nursed with Olga during World War I, Olga said in February 1917, about a month after the murder, that while it might have been necessary for Rasputin to be killed, it should never have been done "so terribly." She was ashamed that the murderers were her relatives. After Olga and her sisters had been killed, the Bolsheviks found that each was wearing an amulet bearing Rasputin's image and a prayer around their necks.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Prince John Konstantinovich of Russia fell in love with Olga. When he was 16, he attended Alexei's christening in 1904 and met the 9-year-old Olga. He reflected that “I was so enraptured by her I can’t even describe it. It was like a wildfire fanned by the wind. Her hair was waving, her eyes were sparkling, well, I can’t even begin to describe it!!” In 1908, he traveled to the Crimea "only out of hunger to see Olga." He admitted his feelings to Olga's parents, but they rejected him. He told his father, "They won't let me marry Olga Nikolaevna."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: In 1911, there were rumors that Olga would marry George, Crown Prince of Serbia or Prince Boris of Bulgaria. The article claimed that Nicholas intended to make his four daughters the "Queens of the Balkans" to keep the Balkan states faithful to Russia. After the coronation of King George V, there was speculation that either Olga or Tatiana would marry Prince Edward of Wales.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: There were rumors that Olga and her first cousin once removed Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia were romantically involved. As an orphan, Dmitri was very close to Olga's parents, which provoked more speculation that he would marry Olga. Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich wrote, "Such was the emperor's affection for him that all the entourage already saw in him the future fiancé of one of the grand duchesses. Alexandra Bogdanova, the wife of a general and hostess of a monarchist salon, wrote in her diary on 7 June 1912 that Olga had been betrothed the previous night to Grand Duke. The Washington Post reported that Olga had refused Prince Adalbert because "she had given her heart to her cousin Grand Duke Dmitri Paulovitch." In August 1912, Meriel Buchanan, the British ambassador's daughter, wrote in her diary, "I heard a rumour yesterday that a certain person is going to marry the Emperor's eldest daughter. I can't quite believe it considering all the high and mighty people who are panting to marry her. Of course she may have a coup de foudre for him and insist on having her own way." In his book "The Rasputin File", Edvard Radzinsky speculates that the betrothal was broken off due to Dmitri's dislike for Grigori Rasputin, his association with Felix Yussupov and rumors that Dmitri was bisexual.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Before World War I, there was some discussion of a marriage between Olga and Prince Carol of Romania. In 1914, Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov advocated the match because he wanted to ensure that the Romanian royal family would support Russia in case of a future conflict. Nicholas and Alexandra saw the benefits of the match, but they insisted that "the grand duchess's marriage … should take place only as the result of a much closer acquaintance between the young people and on the absolute condition of their daughter's voluntary agreement to it." In March 1914, Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania, Crown Princess Marie of Romania, and Prince Carol of Romania visited the Romanovs in St. Petersburg. Despite going on walks and dinners with each other, Olga and Carol seemed uninterested in each other. During a visit to Romania in the spring of 1914, Olga and Carol were uninterested in each other and did not speak to each other. Crown Princess Marie of Romania noted that Carol was "not enamored of Olga's broad, plain face and brusque manner." She judged that Olga's face "was too broad, her cheekbones too high," and she told her mother that all of the grand duchesses "were not found very pretty." Marthe Bibesco, who was with the Romanian party, heard a rumor that the grand duchesses had "decided... to make themselves as ugly as they could... so that Carol should not fall in love with any of them."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga told Gilliard that she wanted to marry a Russian and remain in her own country. She said her parents would not force her to marry anyone she could not like.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: In 1913, Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin asked Alexandra about a potential marriage between the 18-year-old Olga and her own 38-year-old son, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia. Alexandra was horrified, because "the idea of Boris is too unsympathetic." She refused to allow "a pure, fresh girl" to marry "a well-used, half worn out, blasé young man" and "live in a house in which many a woman has shared his life."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga and her younger sisters were surrounded by young men assigned to guard them at the palace and on the imperial yacht "Standart" and were used to mingling with them and sharing holiday fun during their annual summer cruises. When Olga was fifteen, a group of officers aboard the imperial yacht gave her a portrait of Michelangelo's nude David, cut out from a newspaper, as a present for her name day on 11 July 1911. "Olga laughed at it long and hard", her indignant fourteen-year-old sister Tatiana wrote to her aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia. "And not one of the officers wishes to confess that he has done it. Such swine, aren't they?"


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: In November 1911 a full dress ball was held at Livadia to celebrate her sixteenth birthday and her entry into society. Her hair was put up for the first time and her first ballgown was pink. Her parents gave her a diamond ring and a diamond and pearl necklace as a birthday present and symbol that she had become a young woman.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: While society was discussing matches with the princess, Olga fell in love with a succession of officers. In late 1913, Olga fell in love with Pavel Voronov, a junior officer on the imperial yacht "Standart", but such a relationship would have been impossible due to their differing ranks. Voronov was engaged a few months later to one of the ladies in waiting. "God grant him good fortune, my beloved", a saddened Olga wrote on his wedding day, "It's sad, distressing." Later, in her diaries of 1915 and 1916, Olga frequently mentioned a man named Mitya with great affection.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: According to the diary of Valentina Chebotareva, a woman who nursed with Olga during World War I, Olga's "golden Mitya" was Dmitri Chakh-Bagov, a wounded soldier she cared for when she was a Red Cross nurse. Chebotareva wrote that Olga's love for him was "pure, naive, without hope" and that she tried to avoid revealing her feelings to the other nurses. She talked to him regularly on the telephone, was depressed when he left the hospital, and jumped about exuberantly when she received a message from him. Dmitri Chakh-Bagov adored Olga and talked of killing Rasputin for her if she only gave the word, because it was the duty of an officer to protect the imperial family even against their will. However, he also reportedly showed other officers the letters Olga had written to him when he was drunk. Another young man, Volodia Volkomski, appeared to have affection for her as well. "(He) always has a smile or two for her", wrote Alexandra to Nicholas on 16 December 1916. Chebotareva also noted in her diary Olga's stated "dreams of happiness: "To get married, [to] always live in the countryside [in] winter and summer, [to] see only good people [and] no one official."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga experienced her first brush with violence at age fifteen, when she witnessed the assassination of the government minister Pyotr Stolypin during a performance at the Kiev Opera House. "Olga and Tatiana had followed me back to the box and saw everything that happened", Tsar Nicholas II wrote to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria, on 10 September 1911. "…It had made a great impression on Tatiana, who cried a lot, and they both slept badly." Three years later, she saw gunshot wounds close up when she trained to become a Red Cross nurse. Olga, her sister Tatiana, and her mother Tsarina Alexandra treated wounded soldiers at a hospital on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga was disdainful of her cousin Princess Irina of Russia's husband Felix Yussupov, the man who eventually murdered Rasputin in December 1916. Yussupov had taken advantage of a law permitting men who were only sons to avoid military service. He was in civilian dress at a time when many of the Romanov men and the wounded soldiers Olga cared for were fighting. "Felix is a 'downright civilian', dressed all in brown, walked to and fro about the room, searching in some bookcases with magazines and virtually doing nothing; an utterly unpleasant impression he makes – a man idling in such times", Olga wrote to her father, Tsar Nicholas, on 5 March 1915 after paying a visit to the Yussupovs. She was also strongly patriotic. In July 1915, while discussing the wedding of an acquaintance with fellow nurses, Olga said she understood why the ancestry of the groom's German grandmother was being kept hidden. "Of course he has to conceal it", she burst out. "I quite understand him, she may perhaps be a real bloodthirsty German." Olga's unthinking comments hurt her mother, who had been born in Germany, reported fellow nurse Valentina Ivanovna Chebotareva.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Nursing during the war provided Olga and her sister Tatiana with exposure to experiences they had not previously had. The girls enjoyed talking with fellow nurses at the hospital, women they would never have met if not for the war, and knew the names of their children and their family stories. On one occasion, when a lady in waiting who usually picked up the girls from the hospital was detained and sent a carriage without an attendant, the two girls decided to go shopping in a store when they had a break. They ordered the carriage driver to stop in a shopping district and went into a store where they were not recognized because of their nursing uniforms. However, they discovered that they did not know how to buy anything because they had never used money. The next day they asked Chebotareva how to go about purchasing an item from a store. Yet other stories tell of a regular salary of nine dollars the girls received each month, and how they used it to purchase such items as perfume and notepaper. They had also been shopping with their Aunt, Olga Alexandrovna and Olga had visited shops on a trip to Germany with her sister Tatiana.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga cared for and pitied the soldiers she helped to treat. However, the stress of caring for wounded, dying men eventually also took its toll on the sensitive, moody Olga's nerves. Her sister Maria reported in a letter that Olga broke three panes of a window on a "caprice" with her umbrella on 5 September 1915. On another occasion, she destroyed items in a cloakroom when she was "in a rage", according to the memoirs of Valentina Chebotareva. On 19 October 1915 she was assigned office work at the hospital because she was no longer able to bear the gore of the operating theater. She was given arsenic injections in October 1915, at the time considered a treatment for depression or nervous disorders. Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, one of her mother's ladies in waiting, recalled that Olga had to give up nursing and instead only supervised the hospital wards because she had "overtired herself" and became "nervous and anaemic."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: According to the accounts of courtiers, Olga knew the financial and political state of the country during the war and revolution. She reportedly also knew how much the Russian people disliked her mother and father. "She was by nature a thinker", remembered Gleb Botkin, the son of the family's physician, Yevgeny Botkin, "and as it later seemed to me, understood the general situation better than any member of her family, including even her parents. At least I had the impression that she had little illusions in regard to what the future held in store for them, and in consequence was often sad and worried." Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden recalled that "the horror of the Revolution told on her more keenly than on any of the others. She changed completely, and all her bright spirits disappeared."


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: The family were arrested during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and were imprisoned first at their home in Tsarskoye Selo and later at private residences in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg, Siberia. "Darling, you must know how awful it all is", Olga wrote in a letter to a friend from Tobolsk. During the early months of 1917, the children caught measles. Olga contracted pleurisy, as well.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Olga tried to draw comfort from her faith and her proximity to her family. To her "beloved mama", with whom she had sometimes had a difficult relationship, she wrote a poem in April 1917, while the family was still imprisoned at Tsarskoye Selo: "You are filled with anguish for the sufferings of others. And no one's grief has ever passed you by. You are relentless, only towards yourself, forever cold and pitiless. But if only you could look upon your own sadness from a distance, just once with a loving soul — Oh, how you would pity yourself, how sadly you would weep." In another letter from Tobolsk, Olga wrote: "Father asks to … remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love …"


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: Also found with Olga's effects, reflecting her own determination to remain faithful to the father she adored, was Edmond Rostand's "L'Aiglon," the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's son, who remained loyal to his deposed father until the end of his life.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: There was one report that her father gave Olga a small revolver, which she concealed in a boot while in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo and at Tobolsk. Colonel Eugene Kobylynsky, their sympathetic jailer, pleaded with the grand duchess to surrender her revolver before she, her sisters, and brother were transferred to Yekaterinburg. Olga reluctantly gave up her gun and was left unarmed.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: The family had been briefly separated in April 1918 when the Bolsheviks moved Nicholas, Alexandra, and Maria to Yekaterinburg. Alexei and the three other young women remained behind because Alexei had suffered another attack of hemophilia. The Empress chose Maria to accompany her because "Olga's spirits were too low" and level-headed Tatiana was needed to take care of Alexei. In May 1918 the remaining children and servants boarded the ship "Rus" that ferried them from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. Aboard ship, Olga was distressed when she saw one of the guards slip from a ladder and injure his foot. She ran to the man and explained that she had been a nurse during the war and wanted to look at his foot. He refused her offer of treatment. All through the afternoon, Olga fretted over the guard, whom she called "her poor fellow." At Tobolsk Olga and her sisters had sewn jewels into their clothing in hopes of hiding them from the Bolsheviks, since Alexandra had written to warn them that upon arrival in Ekaterinburg, she, Nicholas and Maria had been aggressively searched and belongings confiscated.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: At the Ipatiev House, Olga and her sisters were eventually required to do their own laundry and learned how to make bread. The girls took turns keeping Alexandra company and amusing Alexei, who was still confined to bed and suffering from pain after his latest injury. Olga was reportedly deeply depressed and lost a great deal of weight during her final months. "She was thin, pale, and looked very sick", recalled one of the guards, Alexander Strekotin, in his memoirs. "She took few walks in the garden, and spent most of her time with her brother." Another guard recalled that the few times she did walk outside, she stood there "gazing sadly into the distance, making it easy to read her emotions." Later, Olga appeared angry with her younger sister Maria for being too friendly to the guards, reported Strekotin. After late June, when a new command was installed, the family was forbidden from fraternizing with the guards and the conditions of their imprisonment became even more stringent.


title: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

text: On 14 July 1918, local priests at Yekaterinburg conducted a private church service for the family and reported that Olga and her family, contrary to custom, fell on their knees during the prayer for the dead. The following day, on 15 July, Olga and her sisters appeared in good spirits as they joked with one another and moved the beds in their room so visiting cleaning women could scrub the floor. They got down on their hands and knees to help the women and whispered to them when the guards weren't looking. All four young women wore long black skirts and white silk blouses, the same clothing they had worn the previous day. Their short hair was "tumbled and disorderly." They told the women how much they enjoyed physical exertion and wished there was more of it for them to do in the Ipatiev House. Olga appeared sickly. As the family was eating dinner that night, Yakov Yurovsky, the head of the detachment, came in and announced that the family's kitchen boy and Alexei's playmate, 14-year-old Leonid Sednev, must gather his things and go to a family member. The boy had actually been sent to a hotel across the street because the guards did not want to kill him along with the rest of the Romanov party. The family, unaware of the plan to kill them, was upset and unsettled by Sednev's absence. Dr. Eugene Botkin and Tatiana went that evening to Yurovsky's office, for what was to be the last time, to ask for the return of the kitchen boy who kept Alexei amused during the long hours of captivity. Yurovsky placated them by telling them the boy would return soon, but the family was unconvinced.