The Government of Valuyki is not the same as Russia’s Military Commanders: Why Russian Militaries Evade the Truth about Ukraine’s Cross Border War

“Our Russian city of Valuyki… is under constant fire,” he said. We get this information from a lot of people, from governors to Telegram channels to war correspondents. But no one else. The reports are the same as always from the Ministry of Defense. They say they were able to destroy hundreds of rockets, kill Nazis and so on. People are aware. Our people are not dumb. But they wouldn’t want to tell the whole truth. This can mean a loss of credibility.

Against that background, Russia has seen some unusual public criticism of the top brass running Putin’s war. Reflecting on the war or Russia’s commander-in-chief is off limits but those who are responsible for carrying out the President’s orders are fair game.

“First of all, we need to stop lying,” said Andrei Kartopolov, a former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. “We brought this up many times before … It is not getting through to individuals.

The Ministry of Defense evaded the truth about Ukrainian cross border strikes in Russian regions, according to Kartapolov.

Valuyki is in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. When it comes to hitting targets across the border, the Ukrainians generally don’tconfirm nordeny.

Some criticism has also come from Russian-appointed quislings who have been installed by Moscow to run occupied regions of Ukraine. In a recent rant on the messaging app Telegram, Kirill Stremousov blasted Russian military commanders for allowing “gaps” on the battlefield that allowed the Ukrainian military to make advances.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation does not have to be shadowed by traitors or incompetent commanders because there are processes and gaps that exist today. “Indeed, many say that the Minister of Defense [Sergei Shoigu], who allowed this situation to happen, could, as an officer, shoot himself. The word officer is an unfamiliar one for many.

But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.

Kadyrov blamed Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and not adequately providing for his troops.

The Russian information space deviated significantly from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense that things were usually under control, according to an analysis by I SW.

Everyone experienced the shock of war in different ways. Millions of people in Russia were ruined by Putin, who destroyed the country’s history.

Kadyrov, who recently was promoted to the rank of colonel general by Putin, has been one of the most prominent voices in arguing for the rights of the people. He recently said in another Telegram post that, if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

Kadyrov said in a post that he would declare martial law and use Weapons if he were the one to make it, because the country is at war with the NATO bloc.

News from Ukraine: Nuclear damage and civilian casualties during the 229th day of the Ukrainian Civil War – a glimpse from Moscow’s defence ministry

Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

To add to Putin’s sense of humiliation, the bridge explosion came amid a surging Ukrainian counteroffensive that has seized key pockets of Russian-controlled territory, including in regions Putin recently annexed.

Russia’s latest strikes inflicted significant damage: They killed at least 14 people and wounded 89 others, destroyed vital infrastructure and caused power failures. They undermined a sense of calm that had been in place since the spring, as Ukrainians went back to work, school and entertainment. (Here’s a snapshot of the destruction in different parts of the country.)

The significance of the strikes on central Kyiv, and close to the government quarter, cannot be overstated. It should be seen by western governments as a red line being crossed on the 229th day of the war.

The area around my office remained quiet between air raid sirens and reports of missiles and drones being shot down. Normally at this time of day nearby restaurants would be busy with customers and chatter about upcoming weddings and parties.

On Sunday, a city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe was struck by a series of attacks on apartment buildings while people slept. At least 17 people were killed and several dozens injured.

In a defiant video filmed Monday outside his office, the President said many of the missile strikes acrossUkrainian were aimed at the country’s energy infrastructure. At least 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and the capital have been damaged; some provinces are without power, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.

In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the war when Russian forces were close to the capital, some media outlets moved their operations to underground bomb shelters. In one metro station serving as a shelter, large numbers of people took cover on platforms as a small group sang patriotic Ukrainian songs.

Millions of people in Ukrainian cities will spend most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, and businesses were asked to shift work online as much as possible.

With many asylum seekers returning home the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence as they start to roar back to life.

There is only one bridge connecting mainland Russia and Crimea, and that symbolism cannot be overstated by Putin. That the attack took place a day after his 70th birthday (the timing prompted creative social media denizens to create a split-screen video of Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President”) can be taken as an added blow to an aging autocrat whose ability to withstand shame and humiliation is probably nil.

The tendency of dictators is hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. After two years of delays, the road bridge opened.

The Crisis on Ukrainian Infrastructure During the August 24th Ukrainian War on Crimea: The Avatars of Putin’s Petty Weapons

The explosion lit up social media channels in a hilarious way. Many shared their jubilation with text messages.

Putin never had the option of sitting still, because of his pride and self-interest. He unleashed more death and destruction, using the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB agent.

Facing increased criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on thin ice.

Before Monday’s strikes, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, had told Ukrainian journalist Roman Kravets in late August that, “by the end of the year at the minimum we have to enter Crimea” – suggesting a plan to push back Russian forces to pre-2014 lines, which is massively supported by Ukrainians I’ve spoken to.

It is important that Washington and other allies use urgent phone diplomacy with China and India to make them rethink their use of dangerous weapons, even if they have leverage over Putin.

Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. A weak response will be seen as proof that the Kremlin can weaponize energy, migration and food.

During the war on Ukrainians, it is important to be prepared. Kateryna and Oleg have cupboards full of batteries, power banks and flashlights. If the Russian missile campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure continues, as most expect it will, the scheduled power outages may become less predictable, with more emergency cuts.

To have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states need to be pressured to join the West’s fight against Russia with trade and travel restrictions.

Editor’s Note: Sasha Dovzhyk is a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London and Associate Lecturer in Ukrainian at School of Slavonic and East-European Studies, University College London. She has a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Birkbeck, University of London. She divides her time between the UK and Ukraine. Her work on Ukraine is supported by the IWM project Documenting Ukraine. The views that she expresses are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

The Ukrainian PR Army: A dark fairy tale of death and loss during the September 11, 1917, invasion of Ukraine by a Russian military scalar

December is the month of fairies and fairy tales, with long nights and the promise of a miracle.

“We used to joke that our life was like a dark fairy tale inclined towards a happy ending. Ievheniia says that she is nursing her two-month old son in Poland, and that she is mourning for the child’s father.

The day after Russia launched its full-scale attack, both Ievheniia and Denys, among thousands of Ukrainian men and women, queued to enlist in the army. Denys signed up straight away, but convinced Ievheniia to first evacuate his relatives from Kyiv to western Ukraine.

In this dark Ukrainian fairy tale, pivotal moments – from marriage ceremony to funeral – take place via video link. This is what love looks like in a time of war, with the romance shifted to the digital space.

The Ukrainian PR Army is a group of professional Ukrainian PR and marketing people who are trying to combat Russian propaganda by sending messages to journalists and governments. She describes a year of severe disruption, and not the kind that Silicon Valley founders typically laud. She’s worked from bomb shelters and coffee shops with backup generators, and walked to her house through dark night in reflective gear.

As we hurry to bring gifts to our loved ones, enchanted by the flickering of Christmas lights, we must remember the country in Europe plunged into darkness by Russia’s barbaric imperialist war.

A fairy tale about death and pregnancy for a Ukrainian soldier in the front line of the warsaw Operation: the case of Ievheniia

After driving westwards across the country under Russian bombardment, Ievheniia finally arrived at an enlistment office. She was interviewed on a Friday and told to return the following Monday to sign a contract with the Armed Forces.

She took aPregnancy test on the weekend in case she had a baby. She joked that with war andevacuation the ground was slipping under her feet. “On top of that, it turned out that I was pregnant.”

The pregnancy test provided that plot twist: the woman who planned to defend her homeland instead joined the flow of refugees looking for safety in Poland.

Ievheniia and Denys tried to show their partnership in the eyes of the state. Ukrainian servicemen are able to marry via video call, thanks to the ingenuity of the country at war. We got married remotely, instead of by boring civil servants, by a handsome man in a uniform. I had nothing to complain about,” Ievheniia said.

During the next few months, Denys ordered flower deliveries and professional photos for Ievheniia from the trenches, and he kept the magic alive via the Internet.

When Ievheniia didn’t pick up her phone one morning in Warsaw, Denys started the alarm and a rescue squad found her unconscious in her apartment. A delay could have resulted in death. A Caesarean section followed. Because the baby was born two months early, the father was able to meet his new son.

Under martial law, Ukrainian men of fighting age are not allowed to leave the country. Denys was allowed to cross the border and spent five days with his family.

It was a magical time that was filled with ordinary things. Then he left. Ievheniia said that they sent him greetings on his birthday. He was dead the next day.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html

Ieveniia: Why do Ukrainians need military aid to win the war with Russia and how we can help them? “The Italian fairy tale told by Italo Calvino”

Italo Calvino, the celebrated Italian journalist and editor of folktales, among other works, called them “consolatory fables” because it is that a rare fairy tale ends badly. If it does, it means the time to be consoled has not yet come. It is time for something to be done.

And we must not be deluded by the narrative logic of a fairy tale. The kid won’t use magic to defeat the monster. Ukrainians need military aid to win the war with Russia, not just prolong the battle with a lot of sacrifice. Ukrainian victory is dependent on our collective effort.

“As a teenager, I was reading a lot of fantasy books and wondering how I would act in a fight against absolute evil. Would I be able to turn away and proceed with my daily life?” I was told by Ievheniia. “Today, all of us have a chance to find out.”

What has changed in Kyiv’s Normal since February 24, 2022? The response of Russia’s counter offensive to Ukraine’s invasion

Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the country has been in a state of flux. The idea of what normal is has had to be reconsidered by Ukrainians.

The war’s outward signs were less obvious during the summer months. “Normal” then meant bustling restaurants and bars — at least until curfew — and the mood throughout the city was jovial, as people celebrated Russian withdrawals and Ukrainian victories.

The summer’s chorus of birds and street musicians gave way in the fall to more ominous sounds, like the steady purr of generators. Nowadays, Kyiv’s winter “normal” consists of electricity, water and connectivity outages — both scheduled and spontaneous — loosely correlated with Russia’s near-weekly drone and missile assaults on the city.

With the one-year anniversary of the invasion approaching, Kyiv’s newest normal is not as dark and cold as it may be, but people still visit Christmas markets, build power banks and go to church.

What’s changed since Russian missiles first began falling on February 24, 2022? The fear felt by Ukrainians has been replaced with anger as they stand up to barrages of rockets and drones.

“It’s like the central nervous system of the human body, if you mess with it, all sorts of systems are out of whack,” said a director of the Defense Priorities think tank who just returned from a trip to the Ukrainian capital. It is an enormous economic cost to have it. The goal is to show that the government can’t protect civilians adequately.

The Mariupol theater airstrike in May of this year that killed 6000 people, and the October bombings of multiple sites in central Kyiv, which caused a lot of death and damage, are just two examples of how Russia’s practice of targeting civilians has become well-known. The repeated failures of Russia’s military to take or hold territory in the face of the Ukrainian counteroffensive seem only to have amplified the Kremlin’s preference for softer, nonmilitary targets: In late November, Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote that fully 97 percent of Russia’s 16,000 missile strikes have targeted civilians. “We are fighting against a terrorist state,” Reznikov wrote.

Jay Parini: The First World War Wired: A Commentary on the First War in a Completely Interconnected World and the Legacy of Tom Zelensky

Jay Parini is a writer and teacher at Middlebury College. His memoir, “Borges and Me,” was written in 1971 during his trip to the Highlands of Scotland with the Argentine author,Jorge Luis Borges. The author has the right to express the views in this commentary. View more opinion at CNN.

In the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman states that it is an unprecedented conflict. Citing TikTok and other social media platforms, along with satellites and live traffic data on Google Maps, Friedman writes, “Welcome to World War Wired – the first war in a totally interconnected world.”

It’s a large-scale invasion that’s being “livestreamed, minute by minute, battle by battle, death by death, to the world,” as Daniel Johnson, an Iraq War veteran and journalist wrote in Slate. Those of you who are far away from the events are able to watch them on your smart phones and other screens in real time.

Ukraine officially and proudly withdrew from the Soviet Union in 1991, but the transition to a full democracy has not been easy due to corruption. I was skeptical at the time of Zelensky’s election. The character he played in the TV show was a reformer, and the show skewered the political classes in Ukraine as well as neighboring Russia, Belarus and Georgia. He was elected by his fellow Ukranians to clean up corruption in real life and use a big broom.

Zelensky’s popularity waned after a couple of years, due to his limited success. By October 2021, polls showed his approval ratings had gone into freefall.

Zelensky, a fluent Russian speaker, has also appealed to Russians in another video, urging them to “just stop those who lie, lie to you, lie to us, lie to everyone, to the whole world. This war needs to be ended. We can live in peace, in a global peace.”

His gifts for communication and his remarkable grasp of social media make him a formidable opponent for Putin, even though the army he commands, in sheer numbers and resources, pales beside Russia’s.

The Ukrainian people have the right to self-determination, thanks to his challenge of Putin’s logic.

This is welcome news for the Lysenkos, who, like most of the city’s residents, have struggled with the uncertainty of waking up each morning, not knowing whether they’ll be able to cook breakfast and log onto the internet, or have to rush downstairs to take shelter. The family doesn’t have a generator — after a few explosions, authorities rolled out a public information campaign on the dangers of using the devices indoors, though that hasn’t stopped some from installing them on balconies — and have gone to stay with friends on cold nights. They worry about how the stress has impacted their daughter Liza, who now draws pictures of Russian missiles before bedtime.

They are also getting ready for the arrival of twins. A woman named Kateryna is eight months pregnant. CNN agreed to use only first names for her and Oleg as they fear for their privacy.

“On New Year’s Eve, I tried to take a nap,” she told CNN from her house in the Kyiv suburbs. “But I woke to the sound of explosions, and they went on through the night. The sirens went off for a long period of time until 4:30 a.m.

When the sirens aren’t wailing, Kateryna said, there is another noise that is new to her neighborhood: the chattering of generators as homes and businesses try to compensate for being without electricity twelve for as much as 12 hours a day.

Kateryna travels into central Kiev twice a week to use one of the co-working spaces that have popped up across the Ukrainian capital.

Living in an apartment with a fireball, but without a lamp: a song of Yukawa and Yevtushenko

These spaces have become quite professional, with furniture, heat, lighting and reliable internet, provided through Starlink terminals, bought from the company owned by Elon Musk.

” It became like a meme now: ‘without water, but without you, without lights, but without you’” said Yevtushenko in a sing-song voice. But it’s not as easy to be self-sufficient in the city, adding that he’s thankful his parents live in a dacha in the Poltava region, where they have everything they need — a wood fire, well and garden.

There is enough food in the stores “but sometimes I have to shop with a flashlight,” Kateryna says. In case the situation gets worse, they keep two months of food supplies in the house.

“I have thought about moving maybe, but only for a quick moment, because we’ve been waiting to reach our dream for so long. This apartment, our home,” Lysenko said.

Kateryna feels they are both involved in the effort to secure Ukraine’s future. In the early months of her pregnancy, she helped Ukrainian volunteer organizations with fundraising for warm clothes and equipment for the Ukrainian army, she said.

A company I work for has a fund and they help the fighters who are on the front line with equipment like drones. We helped collect money for such equipment,” she said.

“I really want my children to live in a free Ukraine, I want them to be safe. They have the right to safety and protection just like all other children in the world. She does not want them to live in fear of dying from a rocket, they should be happy.

Her one concern – beyond giving birth to healthy children – is that she might find herself lying in the hospital amid another wave of missile attacks. At that point, she will pray very hard, she said.

An elderly woman in black pants, heavy shoes and a dirty grey overcoat walks up the street. Another explosion rings out. She flinches, her eyes open wide, but she doesn’t miss a step. She joins a crowd of several dozen, mostly elderly residents bundled up against the cold.

The roads are covered with mud and rubble thrown up by countless incoming rounds. Vehicles have to go around water-filled craters where bombs were dropped. The upper floors of some apartment blocks have been reduced to rubble and barely a window on the street is intact. Telephone and electrical wires snake along the ground, long dead.

Lubov Bilenko, the head of the mobile unit of Siversk, and Oleksi Vorobbiv, her wife’s wife

Lubov Bilenko is standing on the edge of the crowd. Her face is flat, devoid of emotion, and her dark eyes are not expressionless.

“Of course, we were very scared before,” she says in a low voice. She says that they are used to the shelling. We don’t pay attention anymore.

The mobile unit of Ukrposhta brought Bilenko’s monthly pension to town, from her apartment, which she lives alone. Bilenko’s pension is just short of $80 a month. It’s just enough to buy a bit of food from one of the few shops still open.

Anna Fesenko, a blonde woman with a quick smile, heads the mobile unit. Anna makes weary town residents smile and laugh as she and her colleagues check documents against a list of recipients and hand out cash.

Before heading the mobile unit, Fesenko worked at the post office in Bakhmut, about 22 miles south of Siversk. In mid-fall the fighting around the town became so intense that she and her colleagues had to leave.

She understands her job is not just to hand out pensions: It’s to remind the people in Siversk they haven’t been forgotten. “I think we’re the only one connection between them and the rest of the world,” she says.

“I live within a 20-minute walk from here, but my wife is afraid to come here,” says 63-year-old Volodymyr, who declined to give his full name, pulling on a cigarette before joining the line.

Olha, 73, has made it to the front. She has been staying in the basement of her apartment building for months, like many other people in the war zone. It’s cramped and uncomfortable. Yet she is willing to put up with it.

The head of the military administration in Siversk is Oleksi Vorobiov. He is concerned that there are so many people in the open.

Russian forces are just across a wide valley, occupying hills visible from the pension distribution point. They’re about 10 kilometers (six miles) to the north.

We are trying to find the right place and time for the handout. That means every time the mobile unit comes, it’s a different place and time to avoid being targeted by the Russians.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/europe/ukraine-siversk-postal-service-pensions-intl-cmd/index.html

The anniversary of Putin War ukraine Russia wrapped-opinions ctpr (Saturday 24th February, 2002)

No one was injured, she said, but she and her colleagues dispensed with formalities. She said that they quickly gave out the money to those who were still waiting.

I was supposed to go to Kyiv on February 24th in 22nd century. But a few days before that, my husband broke his shoulder and we had to stay in Moscow. The surgery happened at 9:00 a.m.

In the space of a year, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions more. It has tested the resolve of western alliances by driving a global food and energy crisis.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/18/opinions/one-year-anniversary-putin-war-ukraine-russia-wrap-opinions-ctpr/index.html

The Crimes of Vladimir Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. I. Innocence and Impiety

Zaporizhzhia, February 23, 2022. I went to bed thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our lives were getting better. My husband was running his own business. Our daughter made friends there when she started school. We found a special needs nursery for our son after we arranged support services. I finally had time to work. I was happy.

Completely exhausted, crushed and scared, we had to brace ourselves and come to terms with our forced displacement. I will be forever grateful to all those who helped us come to Prague and adjust to a new life in a foreign land.

My husband got a job thanks to the opportunities for Ukrainians provided by the Czech Republic. I found special needs classes for my son. He now attends an adaptation group for Ukrainian children and has a learning support assistant. My daughter goes to a Czech school while studying in her Ukrainian school remotely.

A journalist and former editor in chief of an independent TV news channel, Mikhail Zygar is named after the prophet Mohammed. He has written a book called All the Kremlin’s Men. The upcoming book, War and Punishment, is inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.”

That morning we woke up to learn that the invasion started. I wrote an open letter denouncing the war, which was co-signed by 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures. It was published and tens of thousands of Russians added their signatures.

We left Russia on the third day. I felt a moral obligation to do it. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

We moved to the other side of the world. My husband went to work as a volunteer at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, where thousands of Ukrainians had been arriving every day. And I started writing a new book. It starts like this.

“This book is a confession. I am guilty for not reading the signs much earlier. I am responsible for the war between Russia and Ukraine. As are my contemporaries and our forebears. Regrettably, Russian culture is also to blame for making all these horrors possible.”

I am aware that Russian people are affected by imperialism. We have to come a long way to heal the nation after we missed how deadly the idea of a Russian empire was.

This whole year has been full of tears and worries. I read about people that were killed by Russians, including my teammate, the school director and a friend’s parents.

I have been haunted by the darkness in my father’s eyes every time he retells the stories of relatives who were shipped off to the Soviet gulag. Stories of millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s manmade famine of 1932-33.

A year into the full-scale invasion, my passport is a novel in stamps. My life is split between London, where I teach Ukrainian literature, and Ukraine, where I get my lessons in courage.

My former classmates from Zaporizhzhia whom, based on our teenage habits, I expected to perish from addictions a long time ago, have volunteered to fight. My hairdresser, whom I expected to remain a sweet summer child, turned out to have fled on foot from the Russia-occupied town of Bucha through the forest with her mother, grandmother and five dogs.

It seems that we have experienced several eras over the past four years. The first was euphoric, when Putin suddenly, after a significant time of stagnant ratings, received more than 80% approval from the population.

And in the fall, public demobilization was replaced by mobilization – Putin demanded that citizens share responsibility for the war with him with their bodies. This provoked unprecedented anxiety, but instead of serious protests, the bulk of the population again preferred adaptation.

He canceled the future by aborting the past. Those who were disoriented, preferred to support Putin: it is easier to live this way when your superiors decide everything for you, and you take for granted everything you are told by propaganda.

It is impossible for my family to adapt to what happened, it was a catastrophe. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

On February 23, I washed my dog, took a bath, and lit candles. I have a one bedroom apartment in the north of the city. I loved taking care of it. I liked the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. That night was the last time my life mattered.

I remember talking to colleagues, trying to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. And calling my parents to organize buying supplies.

The life I knew started falling apart soon after, starting with the small things. I no longer care about what cup of tea I used to drink, how I dressed or whether I took a shower. Life itself no longer mattered, only the battle did.

Just a few weeks into the full-scale invasion it was already hard to remember the struggles, sorrows and joyful moments of the pre-war era. I remember being upset with my boyfriend, but now I can’t relate. On February 24, my life was taken from me.

There was another fight to be fought and that was trying to claim my life back. The life Russia stole from me and millions of Ukrainians.

Life values have changed. I like to see and chat with my family and friends. And like other Ukrainians, I believe in our victory and that all of us will return to our beloved country. But we need the world’s help.

I no longer cared about my personal ambitions. Only the common goal was crucial – to raise our flag and show that we are fighting even under these circumstances.

My victories on the track were hard to enjoy. They were only possible because so many defenders had laid down their lives. I received messages from soldiers. They were very happy to follow our achievements and it was my primary motivation to continue my career.

I’ll never forget the stories I heard on the Ukrainian-Polish border one year ago: Newlyweds who separated hours after saying their vows so the groom could return to the front. A tax preparer in Boston quit her job and went to Ukraine with suitcases full of medical supplies. A border guard’s wife made the trip almost daily to deliver fleeing women and children to the Polish border, and pick up weapons and supplies.

How sad that human beings survived deadly waves of Covid only to get right back into the business-as-usual of killing one other. It’s pointless to spend tens of billions of dollars on weapons when more needs to be done to adapt to rising oceans and drying rivers. It’s lunacy that farmers in a breadbasket of the world have gone hungry hiding in bomb shelters. It’s madness that Vladimir Putin declared Ukrainians to be part of his own people — right before he sent his army into the country, where Russian soldiers have been accused of raping and murdering civilians.

Governments gussy up war. They talk of victory because that gives soldiers hope and the will to fight on. But in the end, war is death in a muddy foxhole. It’s an existential fight over a frozen field with no strategic value. There is a new generation of grudges. It’s an $11 billion, roughly 740-mile pipeline laid across the Baltic Sea rendered useless overnight. It is among the largest steel plants in Europe that are unable to produce a single metal sheet. Bombs and siege have emptied it of its charming seaside city.

The Noise of an Engine: A Triangular Shell Came from Chernihiv, Ukraine, During the January 2022 War-Experiment

In January 2022, Valeria Shashenok uploaded a TikTok video of herself playing tourist in Paris: red beret, fresh croissants, posing in front of the Eiffel Tower. There was a very different character in her videos a month later. Touring the bombed-out buildings of her town, Chernihiv, Ukraine; racing for cover as the air raid sirens sounded; reviewing the military rations served in her local bomb shelter.

The Ukrenergo, the national electric utility of Ukraine, was getting ready for an experiment that would put the country off the Russian and Belga grids. After a deal was reached with Europe,Ukraine had to demonstrate that it could operate autonomously for three days from its neighbors.

Kyiv has turned to its regular infrastructure back up and running, thanks to a hot and cold routine by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The president and COO of the company said that they stopped using Starlink to connect to their drones from Ukranian.

“Given this huge range of instability in the position of the SpaceX CEO—from the willingness and then unwillingness to continue financial support—we’re doing contingency planning for ourselves,” Stefanishyna said.

Kyiv, Ukraine — Yana and Serhii Lysenko were fast asleep, their four-year-old daughter in her bedroom down the hall, when they awoke at sunrise to a noise they didn’t recognize — the ominous buzz of an engine, like a motorcycle or lawnmower.

Yana said she will never forget the sound, which came from out of bed. There it was, right above us, right above our heads.

The Shahed-136, later identified as an Iranian suicide drone, was followed by several more. The couple watched in horror as the triangular shells flew past, careening and diving towards the thermal power plant which provides electricity and heat for the capital.

The UN states that Russia’s attacks violate international humanitarian law, which prohibits targeting civilians and infrastructure. In a report released in December, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that it appeared Moscow’s tactic was primarily designed to spread terror among the civilian population, in contravention of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.

“After not being able to win the war for months on end, the Kremlin devised this particularly cynical tactic,” said Tanya Lokshina, HRW’s associate director for Europe and Central Asia, who has researched Russia’s armed conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. I don’t believe this cynical weaponization of winter was something we encountered earlier. It was not about using the cold weather season as a war tactic and instead was about lack of care for civilians and indiscriminate strikes. That is new.”

Temperatures in Ukraine during the winter months typically range between 23 and 36 degrees Fahrenheit (-4.8 C and 2 C), and regularly plunge to -5 degrees Fahrenheit (-21.6 C). In the eastern part of the country, life has been very difficult this winter and parts of the region haven’t had electricity for months.

Ukraine has been able to prevent the grid from collapsing. The government introduced scheduled power outages in some cities and towns, disconnecting consumers for four-hour blocks three times a day to help conserve energy, while electrical engineering crews raced to make repairs.

During blackouts, doctors have carried out heart surgeries under headlamps, families have cooked meals on camping stoves in their apartments and students have done homework by battery-powered flashlights. According to one photograph that went viral, parents brought their kids to a camp where they could get a hot cup of tea, charge their phones and connect life-saving medical equipment.

Warped Ukraine: How Do They Get Their Energy? When Ukraine and the EU were at War, a United Nations Coordinator’s Perspective in Ukraine

It wasn’t anticipated that Russia would resort to such barbarism, and that it would bring us back to Stone Age times. Serhii said that it could have worked. “But we were able to survive.”

The test was scheduled to be held in February but Russia requested it be held on February 24. According to Mariia Tsaturian, a spokesman for Ukrenergo, very few people know about it. “We agreed, but we kept thinking in the back of our minds, that this might actually be when they would invade, because Ukraine would seem weak.”

Ukrenergo had prepared for that possibility, secretly relocating their main control room to an undisclosed location in the west, to keep engineers safe and the grid stable. The country was thrown into chaos and energy officials were busy trying to make sure that the timetable for joining the European system was met. “No one was going to be reunited with the power grids with the enemy,” Tsaturian said.

It was a year and a half before the European power grid was connected to Ukraine, but three days of powered solo stretched to three weeks. It was an early signal that, rather than driving a wedge between Ukraine and the European Union (EU), Russia’s war was bringing the country closer to the bloc, accelerating its integration.

The scale of destruction at individual sites has been difficult to assess, in part because Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy has restricted the dissemination of information detailing damages.

There is a big question mark about how to recover this deficit. There is no sign of Zaporizhzhia coming back online, so it would not be able to balance the need. The cost of electricity from the EU would be much higher for the country’s consumers, so Kyiv is investigating the possibility.

According to Lorkowski, no one on the planet has experienced such a challenge, a country being at war and their energy sector being weaponized in the way that Russia is doing to Ukraine. They have proved they can keep the system running despite all this. It’s for me the source of hope that it will go on until the end of the winter.

When Denise Brown, the UN’s resident coordinator in Ukraine, took up her position overseeing the international humanitarian response in the country last summer, she had one priority: preparing for winter.

When I arrived in August, I jumped into the winterization plans because my fear was that it would be minus 20 in the middle of winter, and people would die, and I was afraid of freezing to death.

The town of Siversk is about 12 miles from Soledar, a town that was captured by Russian forces in January. Only about 1,000 residents remain, without any electricity or running water. The most vulnerable people who have stayed behind are older people with disabilities and chronic conditions who can’t leave their homes.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/europe/putin-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-attack/index.html

Irpin, Yulia Ivanenko and the Russian air bombs: a new escape mechanism to escape the persecution of Russia

In December, she said she felt she was getting to know how to live without power. She was Teaching Italian classes at the university from home and she began taking Liza back to kindergarten.

But air strikes on December 31 disrupted that renewed sense of normalcy. When the missiles hit the city, the family rushed to the shelter and had invited friends over for New Year’s Eve.

Yulia Ivanenko commutes every day from her apartment in the Kyiv suburb of Hostomel to the nearby town of Irpin, where she runs an accounting company. But instead of going to her office, she works from a local library, which has been converted into an “invincibility point,” providing electricity and wifi powered by a generator.

“Unfortunately, I cannot afford to get a generator for the office, so for now, this is our way out. She said that her workers who still work in the office often have only four hours of electricity before they need to go and work elsewhere.

Her 67-year-old father, who also lives in Hostomel, uses a car battery as a temporary power source for his small home. Where did he get that battery? He stole it from the ruscists [Russian soldiers], from their car,” she said. “He’s fearless.”

A film producer named Eduard Yevtushenko got home from a hospital and found out that Russian forces had launched an attack on the city of Ukranian.

The lives of soldiers and civilians living in Kyiv’s basement during the first few days of World War II: From a sleeping area to a warm house

During the first few days of the war, he and his wife used their small bathroom as a sleeping area, with her sitting on a stool next to him. They use the room as their own personal immunity point, with food for their dog, candles, and power banks, to charge their phones and laptops.

The couple have stayed in their high-rise apartment in Kyiv’s left bank throughout the war, unable to flee. Yevtushenko said that the stress of strikes, air raid sirens and outages has slowed down his progress, and that he would have joined the armed forces if not for the stroke.

People are left unsure of the level of risk when the air-raid sirens are activated, because there has not been a major attack on the city in a few weeks.

Some vital supplies, like food, water, and diapers, are left in elevators in high-rise apartment buildings in case of cuts. Most people CNN spoke with though couldn’t remember the last time they had used the lift, worried about being trapped inside.

This is a reflection of what you see in the country. It’s about cafes and restaurants sharing their generators, it’s about the special places where people can charge up their phones, at gas stations, shopping centers, you name it, and an associate director at the human rights watchdog said. “It’s about helping other people, not just taking care of your own.”

”You don’t need much for happiness. A peaceful sky above our heads and some small comforts: a warm house with lights and water. That’s it,” Yana said. “Our values have changed a lot. In fact, we have changed.”

Indications for Victory in the First Anniversary of the Kyiv War: An Address to the U.S. and Russia, and a Brief Note from the Ukrainian Foreign Minister

Responding to a question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a press conference in the capital city, Zelensky said: “Victory will be inevitable. I am certain there will be victory.”

We have everything we need for it. We have motivation, certainty, friends, and diplomacy. You have all come together for this,” Zelensky said. There will be victory if we all do our homework.

The Ukrainian president has been against the idea of negotiating a peace deal that would see the country lose its territory. Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin – even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started.

Meanwhile in Russia, former Russian President and Deputy Chair of Russia’s Security Council of the Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that that Russia’s aim was to “push the borders of threats to our country as far as possible, even if these are the borders of Poland.”

Zelensky used the first anniversary of the war to rally troops and renew calls for international assistance for his country. He handed out awards to soldiers and visited wounded service members before holding the rare press conference.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian leader addressed members of the military in Kyiv. He told them it was they who would determine the future of the country.

landmarks around the world were lit up in colors of the Ukrainian flag and new weapons and funding announcements were made on Friday.

The United States announced a $2 billion dollar security package to Ukraine, which includes new funding for contracts including HIMARS rockets, 155-millimeter artillery ammunition, drones, counter-drone equipment, mine-clearing equipment and secure communications equipment.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/europe/kyiv-war-anniversary-intl-cmd/index.html

The Kyiv War Anniversary Intl-Cmd: A Memory for Two Former Students from the St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery

The UN Security Council should not let Putins crimes become our new normal, according to a statement from the US Secretary of State.

Germany said that it would increase its commitment to 18 tanks and send four more Leopard 2 tanks. The Prime Minister of Sweden pledges to send tanks to Ukraine.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida wants to propose new sanctions against Russia during a meeting with G7 leaders and Zelensky.

Kathalina Pahitsky, a 16-year old student, went to the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv to lay flowers in memory of two former students from her school who lost their lives fighting in the war.

It was a bitterly cold morning in Kyiv, but Pahitsky said she felt it was her duty as the student president of her school to represent her classmates and pay her respects to the fallen heroes.

There are photographs on the main street. It is a great honor. They died doing what they were trained to do. So it’s very important for us. And it would have been for them,” she said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/europe/kyiv-war-anniversary-intl-cmd/index.html

The Changing World: The Atamas-Yang Technicolor Changes Ukraine after the First Battle, and What will I do next?

“It was hard to describe my feelings on Friday; it was hard to see what had happened,” said Olexander Atamas, who is an IT worker before the war.

“I would prefer to describe what I don’t feel now, I don’t feel a fear, but [I] feel confidence in my abilities,” he told CNN. A year ago, I was stressed and scared. Currently there is no fear.

Kosovan is not the only Ukrainian startup founder who has stories of resilience and productivity. Even as coders and entrepreneurs worked from underground bomb shelters and through rolling electrical blackouts, many managed to ship software updates. It is unclear if Ukraine will have a future, which could add to the risks of keeping a technology startup alive.

“When you have all this news trickling in every day, it can be a bit depressing. People keep adapting. There is only one way out; to work for the future and fight for the future.