A Conversation with Velychko and his Family: Refugees from the Second World War, or A New Life in an Emigrant’s House
Shortly after arriving, Urazov, his wife and their three children stayed in Velychko’s one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where Velychko and his wife have hosted as many as 12 refugees at one time.
The television show called Champs For Change profiles Velychko and his two siblings who emigrated from Ukraine years ago and are now helping people escape the war.
The Inside CNN newsletter team caught up with Burnett several months ago after she returned from her trip to Ukraine. There’s an abbreviated version of that conversation.
A couple whose son was killed in war met me. Their house was filled with rockets and bullets. Their backyard was a series of holes dug by Russian troops, still filled with the mattresses, sheets and cigarettes they stole when they lived there for more than a month.
Vadim and Olga had lost everything. The day I met them, their goat, who was pregnant before the invasion, gave birth to two kids. It was like eggs, honey, and milk when she held them, inhaling their smell. She said, “We have new life.”
Sometimes, as much as a moment moves you and affects you, you don’t understand it. I was silenced because they were good at taking joy in their goats and being lucky.
The glory to Ukraine. And why does it matter if it is ours to defend it? When Megan Specia, a Foreign Correspondent, Tells CNN of Ukraine
Russia hit at least 11 Ukrainian cities with missiles in its largest aerial assault against civilians since the invasion. Even after the destruction many people hid for a few hours. Some quickly went back to their lives. As my colleague Megan Specia, a Times foreign correspondent, left a shelter in the capital of Kyiv, she saw residents walking dogs and riding electric scooters.
“We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this.” He concluded, “That is it. I want to tell you that. There was glory to Ukraine.
Travel is a passion of mine. It was one of the reasons I wanted to work at CNN. I wanted to travel to find and tell stories. My mother might have started that by having me write in my journals when I was a child. I have traveled the world for work while Covid has restricted travel recently, and that is a great gift.
After the Arab Spring: What Happened to Me When They Were Kidnapped, And How They Stole Their Child, And When They Returned
Each street in Egypt was protected by armed locals when the Arab Spring started, there were gunshots in the air. At the beginning, it was unclear, but at the end there was a joyous celebration as people reclaimed their country. I’ll remember the possibility of that moment — although still unrealized — forever.
The kids change you as a reporter. We visited a Pakistani women’s prison where the women were serving life sentences for small infractions. Their children were allowed to live with them until they turned 7 — then they were taken away forever. In a refugee camp along the border of Mali, where people were seeking refuge from al Qaeda terrorists, I remember Mariam. Her gaze stares out at me from the photo journal I kept of that reporting trip.
I think of the sad parade of mass shootings: standing outside a casino in Las Vegas, a school in Connecticut, and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. I am a reporter and can’t believe that we cover the same story again and again.
I got into journalism because I left jobs that were not the right fit for me. I thought I’d end up in the CIA or as an advocate, a lawyer. I considered business school.
When I started working in a media startup within a larger company I had to fill a number of roles, including producing video interviews with CEOs and financial experts.
I realized that I loved asking questions. It was not work! My career became clear from there. I worked hard to get my dream job at CNN, even though there were some bumps along the way.
Aleksandr, the Russian Army Soldiers in Lyman, Ukraine, During the May 4 Retook Reimposed by the Kiev Regime
There is a mesh of fields and forests along the northeastern bank of the Siversky Donets river. The Russians captured it in May, but over the weekend Ukraine’s forces retook the city as part of a stunning offensive that is pushing back Russia in the east. Lyman could serve as an important foothold in future Ukrainian advances.
Two days after Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the annexation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the fiasco of the city of Lyman in the east of the country heaped up more pressure on the Russian leadership.
In an article published on Sunday, the Russian newspaper Komsomolsky Pravda reported that in the last few days of their occupation, Russian forces had been plagued by desertion, poor planning and delayed reserves.
When he was captured in the east last week, however, he was wearing a shirt without a flag on it, as he was usually a red or white jersey for Russia and a Donbass yellow one for Ukraine. To keep him warm, the Ukrainian soldiers gave him a Russian parka they had lying around in their trench.
“He came out of the forest and went to our positions,” said Serhiy, one of the Ukrainian soldiers who had found Aleksandr, recounting the capture to a pair of reporters from The New York Times visiting their position near the front line.
A former CNN producer and correspondent is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
The peaceful uprising in Iran: the death of the martyr, mahsa Amini, sparks the fight for freedom and self-determination
On Sunday, almost by accident, two groups of demonstrators came together in London. There were Ukrainian and Iranian flags being waved by one person. They cheered each other, and said they were going to win.
Nobody knows what will happen next. No one knows how all this ends. As the people in Ukraine and Iran fight for their freedom, for self-determination, the world stands at an inflection point. History waits to be written.
These battles show bravery that is almost impossible to the rest of us, and that is inspiring equally brave support in places like Afghanistan.
The death of 22-year-old mahsa Amini was the spark that occured in Iran. Known as “Zhina,” she died in the custody of morality police who detained her for breaking the relentlessly, violently enforced rules requiring women to dress modestly.
In scenes of exhilarated defiance, Iranian women have danced around fires in the night, shedding the hijab – the headcover mandated by the regime – and tossing it into the flames.
The peaceful uprising is not about the hijab, but about cutting the oppression that has been heaped on them by the regime, which is the reason why men have joined them in large numbers.
What Putin’s War With Syria Has Done About It: Military De-Mining in the Khmer Rouge, and the Isolated Regime
After all, it was less than a decade ago that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military entered Syria’s long civil war, helping to save the dictator Bashar al-Assad (as Iran had).
On February 22, just two days before the Russian invasion, Trump publicly gushed over the genius of Putin for moving his troops to eastern Ukraine in order to declare two areas of the country independent.
His forces have planted mines in vast stretches of territory in Kherson from which they’ve recently withdrawn – much as the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia stretching back to the 1970s. Cambodian de-mining experts were called in to assist with the herculean task facing Ukrainians in 2022, according to some reports. At the same time, Russian armies have also left behind evidence of unspeakable atrocities and torture, also reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge.
The repressive regimes in Moscow and Tehran are now isolated, pariahs among much of the world, openly supported for the most part by a smattering of autocrats.
Is it any wonder that Putin’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the start of his Ukraine war was to Iran? Iran is thought to have given Russia advanced drones to kill Ukrainians, and this may be related to the training Iran has given Russian forces.
Both of them have similar regimes with similar tactics of oppression and willingness to project power abroad.
Niloofar Hamedi was the first reporter to report on the case of Mahsa Amini. There’s a deadly profession of journalism in Russia. So is criticizing Putin. After trying and failing to kill opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s people manufactured charges to keep him in a penal colony indefinitely.
For people in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, there’s more than passing interest in the admittedly low probability that the Iranian regime could fall. It would be transformative for their countries and their lives, heavily influenced by Tehran. After all, Iran’s constitution calls for spreading its Islamist revolution.
The cost of chaos: the story of Vladimir Putin and his ally, Sergei Sergei Iginovich Gillessaev
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been able to create more victims and new enemies every day, because he has strengthened the resolve of those he wants to conquer. At home and abroad, there seems to be no limits to Putin’s appetite to wreak havoc in pursuit of his goal.
“They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. I think it was a special unit, but they were frantic. The road was not good and they dropped everything while it was raining.
The Ukrainians have only been focused on keeping the pressure on the Russian army as they press their counteroffensive. Yet after months in the trenches never seeing the faces of the enemy, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have now engaged the Russians up close and gotten a chance to size up their opponent.
Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, New America vice president, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. You can read more about the opinion on CNN.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. As he announced that Russia had taken over the region, Putin lost Lyman.
Putin has once again made a series of speeches that offered his distorted view of history, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing partial mobilization and many of his allies expressing concern.
Giles thinks that Russia can use the war to make it personal for people of Ukraine, as well as other Europeans, to push for the removal of support for the country.
The Russian War on the Front Line: Milblogging in the Kremlin’s Era: The Fall of the Romanov Monarchy in 1917
The Soviets wanted to install a puppet government in Afghanistan before they invaded the country, as described in a recent book called “Afghan Crucible”, by historian Helen Leake.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US was initially reluctant to escalate its support for the Afghan resistance, fearing a wider conflict with the Soviet Union. The Soviets were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan three years after the CIA gave them anti-aircraft missiles for the Afghans, due to the fact that the CIA gave them weapons that ended their air superiority.
In 2022, American weapons are again playing a decisive role in Russian fortunes on the battlefield. The US was initially hesitant of deeper involvement in the war in Ukraine, fearing a bigger conflict with the Russians.
The NATO air defense systems brought down many of the incoming missiles this week, he said.
The withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan two years previous to the fall of the Soviet Union was believed to have been a cause of its downfall.
The Romanov monarchy was weakened by the loss of the Russian empire during the 1905 war. Czar Nicholas II’s feckless leadership during the First World War then precipitated the Russian Revolution in 1917. Subsequently, much of the Romanov family was killed by a Bolshevik firing squad.
The milBlogging discourse over the past week resembled the current onslaught of criticism and reporting of operational military details by the Kremlin’s propagandists. The current military operations were avoided by the Kremlin narrative as it focused on general statements of progress. The Kremlin had never openly recognized a major failure in the war prior to its devastating loss in Kharkiv Oblast, which prompted the partial reserve mobilization.”
The Russian empire was dissolved in 1917 and 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, because of Putin’s gamble.
In a recent interview with Russian arch-propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, the head of the defense committee in Russia’s State Duma demanded that officials cease lying and level with the Russian public.
The Ministry of Defense is hiding facts about Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions, according to Kartapolov.
Valuyki is in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.
“There is no need for the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to be shrouded in a shadow because of some, but incompetent commanders who did not bother with the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. “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 not well-known to 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 wrote on Telegram that he blamed the Central Military District commander Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, accusing him of failing to adequately provide for his troops and moving his headquarters away from his subordinates.
The Russian information space has deviated significantly from the narrative preferred by the Russian Ministry of Defense to describe how things are under control, according to a recent analysis.
One of the most prominent voices in arguing against the methods of the past has been Chechen leader Kadyrov, who recently announced he was promoted to colonel general by Putin. He said in another post that if he had his way he would give the government more power in Russia.
The leader of Chechnya, Kadyrov said in a post that he would declare martial law throughout the country if it were his will and use all weapons to battle the NATO bloc.
With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. China and the former soviet satraps are moving to fill a disorderly vacuum created by Moscow’s loss of its aura and grip.
There is only one remote village in the mountains of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, and it has been destroyed: homes have been reduced to rubble, a school has been destroyed and a gut- wrenching stench comes from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.
The worst violence to hit the area since the collapse of the Soviet Union happened last month and involved members of a Russia-led military alliance who were dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to stop it.
Ukranian Bridge Bombings and Pulsar Attacks during the Break-up of the Kerch Strain by the Ukraine’s Nuclear Power Plant
Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is a Senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He contributes to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.
Even amid irrepressible jubilation here in Ukraine in the aftermath of a massive explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of retaliation by the Kremlin were never far away.
The bombardment was similar to the early days of Russia’s invasion, but also underscored the fact that the conflict in Ukraine, which had appeared to be coming to a halt, has erupted again as winter approaches.
The strikes occurred as people headed to work and while kids were being dropped off at schools. A friend of mine in the Ukranian city of Kyiv sent me a text saying she just exited the bridge before it was struck.
In between air raid sirens, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet, with reports that five drones and three missiles were shot down. Normally at this time of day nearby restaurants would be filled with customers and chatter of upcoming weddings and parties.
Monday’s attacks also came just a few hours after Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings, mostly while people slept. At least 17 people were killed and many more injured.
In a video filmed outside his office on Monday, Volodymyr Zelensky said that many of the 100 or so missile strikes across Ukranian were aimed at the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and the capital have been damaged and some provinces are without power.
At the beginning of the war, the city tried to resist, but people were taken away, tortured, and then vanished, residents said.
Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.
Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.
Russia is struggling on the ground and has failed to achieve supremacy in the air, but Monday’s attacks may have achieved one goal – sending a signal of strength towards the growing list of Putin’s internal critics.
dictators tend to hardwire new territories with record-breaking infrastructure projects. Putin opened the bridge 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. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.
The explosion of laughter on social media has left a grieving Russian citizen stuck on thin ice: The case of the Kremlin
The explosion spread laughter on social media and even caused a Christmas tree to fall. Many shared their joy via text message.
For Putin, consumed by pride and self-interest, sitting still was never an option. He answered by unleashing more death and destruction with the force that comes naturally to a former KGB agent.
Facing increased criticism at home, as well as on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on thin ice.
Faced with growing setbacks, the Kremlin appointed a new overall commander of Russia’s invasion. With the pace and cost of the Ukrainian counter-offensives, it is not certain that Gen. Sergey Suryavanh can lead his forces back to the front before the end of the year.
Important is the fact that Washington and allies should use urgent telephone diplomacy with China and India to discourage them from using more deadly weapons.
Against a man who probes for weakness and tends to exploit divisions, the most important thing for the West right now is to show unity and resolve. Western governments also need to realize that rhetoric and sanctions have little if no impact on Putin’s actions. They need to continue to arm Ukrainians and provide urgent training, even if it means sending military experts closer to the battlefield to speed up the integration of high technology weapons.
High tech defense systems are needed to protect energy infrastructure around the country. It is crucial to protect heating systems prior to the winter season.
The trauma of a playground in Kyiv, Ukraine, revealed by a child who grew up walking with a little help from the enemy
Turkey and the Gulf states, which have a large number of Russians, need to be pressured to join in the West’s effort to ostracizing Russia with trade and travel restrictions.
For months, Russia’s state media claimed that the country was only hitting military targets, leaving out the suffering that the invasion has caused millions of civilians.
On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. In central Kyiv there was smoke and carnage, empty store shelves and a long-range forecast of freezing temperatures.
A Special Projects Curator at the Ukrainian Institute London is associated with the University College London and the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies. 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 a project. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
On Monday a children’s playground in Ukranian, that my family calls our playground, was badly damaged by Russian missiles. Later, people gathered to take photos of the rocket’s footprint in the upturned soil, where bits of twisted metal lay scattered just a few feet from the brightly-painted climbing frame and merry-go-round.
A sunny autumn morning. Moms in Ukraine – and I am one of them – rouse their children with words like “Wake up, dear! We need to get to the bomb shelter fast. Or “Hurry up honey, it’s the air raid sirens again!”
Our playground is in Shevchenko Park in the center of the city, and is very well known to every Kyivan. Close to my parents’ home, it’s the park where I went for my first walk with my newborn son. We’ve visited almost daily in the years since, continuing to do so to this day.
Askold’s main playground, named after a Ukrainian national poet, was empty in late February and March when Russian tanks stood a mere 25 kilometers away.
Askold would bring his sword to the playground, much to the displeasure of the National Guard who were securing the park. The lack of playmates made it difficult for him to chose any slide, see-saw, or merry-go-round that he wanted.
Apart from the National Guard and our family, on some days the only “human” in the park was the imposing yet welcoming monument of Taras Shevchenko (not then protected by a concrete enclosure – that would come later).
The statue is located some 75 meters from Askold’s playground, gazing approvingly at the striking red-columned entrance to Ukraine’s largest university, which also bears Shevchenko’s name.
Askold was holding his wooden sword in Shevchenko Park with his grandparents and a friend. The statue of poet Taras Shevchenko can be seen in the background.
Did Shevchenko somehow know that Russians would turn playgrounds into battlegrounds in Ukraine – playgrounds right here, in a carefully-groomed park named after him? That portions of Kyiv’s National University, along with the monument to historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, regarded by many as the first president of Ukraine, would also be hit by shrapnel? I like to think he probably did.
Would I tell him that Russia is using old maps? Because it wants to destroy monuments of Ukrainian history and culture? Or because it can?
Why does Russia do this? Askold tells us about the wars in Ukraine and in Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel
This question from my son was also among the first he had asked early on the morning of February 24. The full-scale war was a huge shock but unfortunately not a big surprise for us.
The Euromaidan began when Askold was 7 months old. A few months later, Russia annexed Crimea and started a war in the east of Ukraine. We had known that war would happen in our home in Kyiv.
Why does Russia do that? Askold asked again, devastated, looking at pictures and videos of the crater where his favorite swing in the playground used to be.
I told him the truth: because the Russians don’t want us to exist. I felt that I was ready to say these words to my son – after all, we had taken him to visit the sites of mass graves in Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel, where he saw what no 9 year old should see. I knew we needed to.
The Ukraine crisis is in a precarious phase, and what can we hope to learn from Russia? A senior consultant at Chatham House
The war is in a precarious phase, not for the first time. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
With the war currently going on, experts say the next few weeks are crucial and that there is a chance for another spike in intensity as both sides want to strike another blow.
“What seemed a distant prospect for anything that could be convincingly described as a Ukraine victory is now very much more plausible,” Giles said. The response from Russia is likely to get worse.
Putin has launched a laundry list of horrors that only appears to have driven the nation further from the pack of civilized powers that he once tried so hard to join.
According to a military official in the Ukrainian military, they have regained 120 settlements in the last month in the eastern part of the country. The Ukrainians said they had liberated five settlements in Kherson, after a slow but steady push.
The Ukrainian government is setting up evacuation routes to the cities of Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, said Iryna Vereshchuk, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister. She said that the power supply wouldn’t have enough time to heat homes where children, sick and people with reduced mobility live. It won’t be a mass 888-548-5870 888-548-5870. It will cover those who are sick, the elderly and those left without care of their relatives.”
The counter-offensives have shifted the stance of the war and disproved some of the suggestions made by the West and Russia.
According to senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and author of the book “Russia’s Road to War”, the Russians are trying to avoid a collapse in their frontline.
“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”
Ukrainian troops are focused primarily on pushing Russian forces eastwards, having crossed the Oskil River in late September, with Moscow likely preparing to defend the cities of Starobilsk and Svatove in the Luhansk region, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.
“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. The resilience of the Ukrainian people is at stake in the winter energy crisis in Europe and the damage to power grids in the country.
NATO leaders have vowed that they will stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but a number of European countries that relied heavily on Russianenergy face a serious cost-of-living crisis if there is no progress on the battlefield.
After Russian missiles hit parts of the country on Monday and Tuesday, Ukrenergo, the national electricity company, says it has been able to restore supply to the area. Ukrainians were asked to reduce their energy use during peak hours due to the Prime Minister warning of a lot of work to be done to fix damaged equipment.
Experts think it’s unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurring pattern, while estimating the military reserves of either army is a tricky endeavor, according to Western assessments.
“We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Jeremy Fleming, a UK’s spy chief, said in a rare speech on Tuesday.
The I SW said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “skimmed some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets as opposed to militarily significant targets.”
The Ukrainians must move their systems forward so that they can counter any Russian firing that may be on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.
The Russians don’t have the ability to sustain a high-tempo missile assault into the future, so the barrage of missile strikes will occasionally be used for shows of extreme outrage.
Any further Belarusian involvement in the war could also have a psychological impact, Puri suggested. “Everyone’s mind in Ukraine and in the West has been oriented towards fighting one army,” he said. It is thought that the war is about reuniteing the lands of ancient Rus states.
Giles said that the reopening of a northern Front would be a new challenge for Ukranian. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.
Zelensky will hope for more supplies as he tries to drive the gains home. The leader sought to highlight Ukraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying more than half of them were brought down in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needs more systems to stop missile attacks.
Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States, Bronk said.
A woman in Moscow tells me she’s sorry, but i don’t want to tell anybody. I’m afraid I didn’t know what to do
MOSCOW — Friday afternoons at the Chop-Chop Barbershop in central Moscow used to be busy, but at the beginning of a recent weekend, only one of the four chairs was occupied.
Many men are avoiding the streets because of the fear of being handed a draft notice. As Olya came to work last Friday, she said, she witnessed the authorities at each of the four exits of the metro station, checking documents.
“Every day is hard,” acknowledged Olya, who like other women interviewed did not want her last name used, fearing retribution. I don’t know what to do. We always planned as a couple.
There were billboards that used to read “Ukraine is Russian forever” spray-painted with the words “Ukrainian was Russia’s until November 11.”
Until early October, this area of the country was occupied by Russian troops. There are cars that have been burnt out in the fields. The walls are marked by the letter Z.
There are scars of war here. The UN investigators said that Russia used sexual violence as a weapon of war in its conquest of Ukranian. They have even relayed allegations of Russian soldiers carrying Viagra.
Six accusations of sexual assault were documented in two weeks by the team from Kyiv. The real number is almost certainly much higher, they say.
“They walked around those rooms,” she says. One of the men who raped me stayed there and the other came here. He came in, walked a little bit around the room and here in this place, he started groping me.”
He pinned her against the wardrobe, she says, and tore at her clothes. “I was crying, begging him to stop, but with no success,” she says. The only thought that came to my mind was to live.
She remembers that he warned her not to tell anyone. “I didn’t tell my husband right away,” she says, in tears. “But I told my cousin, and my husband overheard. He said that you should have told him the truth but didn’t.
She was widowed more than 30 years ago – she says her husband died in a motorcycle accident – and her son joined the military soon after Russia’s invasion on February 24. She decided to leave three months after Russian troops occupied her village.
Ivan and Ivan in Novovoznesens’ke, the second case of alleged rape by Russian soldiers in a village
The head of his unit was found by his commander. He came to see me and told me, ‘I punished him severely, I broke his jaw, but the most severe punishment is ahead.’ Like shooting. The commander asked me, ‘Do you mind this?’ I told him I wish all of them would be shot.
As the sun sets at the end of a long day, the two-man team arrives in Novovoznesens’ke, a village where they’ve uncovered two more cases of rape, allegedly by Russian soldiers. The next day, they return to Kyiv, to submit their findings.
Ivan said in a text message that Russians were roaming around and found empty houses. He lives in Skadovsk, which is south of Kherson city, and asked that his surname not be used out of concern for his safety. “We try to connect with the owners and to arrange for someone local to stay in their place. That it isn’t abandoned, and Russians don’t take it.
A man in the crowd tells the investigators that he was held by Russian soldiers and subjected to mock execution. The tales of torture like this are common here, but that is not the topic of their work today.
A woman and her daughter take a short drive down a road that is pockmarked by shelling to find that they did not hear of any sexual crimes in their one-road hamlet.
Her village was liberated by the Ukrainian military months later. Shelling had reduced her roof to its rafters.
A man’s daughter in Zaporizhia, Peru, whose house is where he grew up and lived in the Soviet Union
She doesn’t know where to put it because the ceiling won’t fall on her head. “If it would fall and kill me that would be better, so I won’t suffer. I would like to see my son again.
Many of these allegations will be hard to prove, some of them even have a suspect. For now, the team files its reports and its investigators try to file charges in the future.
“I still can’t believe that I left there,” says Viktor, while pulling a red suitcase from the black car he rode to Zaporizhia, about 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”
Outside of Kherson is where his home is. He and his wife Nadiya raised their three daughters there. The Russians broke into their house within hours of them leaving, Viktor says a neighbor told him.
At a Zaporizhzhia shelter, a volunteer who asks that he be called by his middle name, Artyom, helps care for Kherson evacuees as if they were his own family. Artyom asked that we not use his full name to protect his relatives in Kherson.
Artyom, the Russians, and the baby girl he plays with in her street market garden: It’s a gambler’s nightmare
His wife generally stays home as much as she can. But to earn money, she sells potatoes and vegetables she grows in her own garden at a local street market.
Artyom says that it isn’t fine. He keeps his fingers on the frets: He is worried the Russians will stop his wife. He worries that she’ll get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He worries about the baby.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms
Collaborations in the Kherson street market: The experience of working and living in a city with Russian-Russian settlers and Russians
Some of them are called collaborators by the person who is living in Kyiv. And he says some are people who just can’t leave. Many are over the age of 18. Others have few resources. Their lives right now are very intense, according to him.
Since the start of the war, the local street markets have become a hub of activity in the city. Most of the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves, so local farmers and bakers have been selling and trading items at the street markets.
“You can buy most things if you start with medicine and end with meat,” says Natalyia Schevchenko, 30, who fled Kherson. “But it’s terrible to observe. On one car, they sell medicine on the hood and on the side they cut meat.”
Schevchenko, who is volunteering at an Odesa nonprofit called Side-by-Side to evacuate residents from Kherson and other occupied territories, remains in contact with those in the city. She says her grandmother, who refused to leave, gives her regular updates.
Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can. They generally try to keep their conversations light; they worry that Russians are listening in.
Eurphoria in Kherson, Ukraine: The last 8 months of Russian rule in a country without booby traps or mines
Everyone we’ve spoken to is aware that there are some harder days to come, and that the Russians could shell them here. It’s not clear whether Russian troops have left Kherson or not. Behind this euphoria, there’s still that uncertainty.
As the crew filmed live in Kherson’s central square, some in the crowd of locals sang the national anthem while others shouted “Slava Ukrayini!” – glory to Ukraine, a patriotic greeting.
Locals have also been climbing onto the tops of the buildings, including the cinema, in the square to erect Ukrainian flags. Soldiers are greeted with cheers and asked to sign autographs.
After living under Russian rule, every person we have spoken to has had terrifying experiences, like the teenager who was taken and beat up by Russian soldiers. Residents told us they are emotionally exhausted, and overwhelmed by what this new-found freedom means.
“Everyone here is out celebrating in the square here. The people in the Ukrainian flag are hugging the soldiers, and they came out to see what it was like to have freedom.
Katerina stated the liberation was the best day of her life, after eight months under Russian occupation. “Our town is free, my street is free,” she told CNN.
It was a difficult time for everyone. Every Ukrainian family waited for our soldiers, for our army,” a Kherson resident told CNN on Saturday, recalling Russia’s months-long occupation.
Speaking Saturday on the next steps for the Ukrainian military, CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton said: “This is going to be a major urban operation. There is a plan to clear the building of potential booby traps and mines.
The President ofUkraine posted a video on Friday night of a celebration in the city with people waving flags and chanting ZSU.
The southern operational command of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces had been loading into boats that could be used for crossing the river and trying to escape.
The CNN journalists were forced to go through diversions and fields while travelling through smaller towns and settlements.
The Uzbeki-Kherson neighborhood was evacuated by a Russian soldier and his wife: Now they have a hub to support their military counterparts
Trenches and checkpoints were empty, quickly abandoned by Russians who on Friday announced they had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of the same name and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.
The city has no power, no internet and no water. But as a CNN crew entered the city center on Saturday, the mood was euphoric.
The military presence is still limited, but huge cheers erupt from crowds on the street every time a truck full of soldiers drives past, with Ukrainian soldiers being offered soup, bread, flowers, hugs and kisses by elated passersby.
The old man and woman hugged the soldier with their hands on his shoulder, as CNN halted to regroup.
Everyone wants to know how they feel, what they have gone through, and how much they are thankful for the countries that have helped them.
Private company donations and charity funds were used by the couple to buy their own goods. The new pregnant uniform is one of the gear produced by a factory in the countrys east that is called their own brand.
The young couple, both TV journalists before the war started, are now fully dedicated to their independent NGO, “Zemlyachki,” or “Compatriots,” which procures vital items for women in the armed forces.
Servicewomen needed more than uniforms. Everything from smaller boots to lighter plates for bulletproof vests to hygiene products is in demand.
Other items, including body armor plates, helmets and boots, come from companies as far afield as Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey. Even though they are struggling with procuring winter items like sleeping bags and thermal clothing that will be important for comfort during the winter, they insist that they are making progress.
Kolesnyk says they have distributed equipment worth $1 million so far and helped at least 3,000 women. He told CNN that if they were on the front-line shooting rockets, they would do it in minimum comfort.
Kolesnyk said that they were doing this to help the government. The hub is filled with boxes of kit paid for from a variety of sources.
Using the Army to Help Victims of Olenivka Prison: A Model of a Bosnian Border Guard and a Marine Suitcase
“For a man, it’s hard to understand that you can’t go there, and your sister is there. So, I’m trying to do my best here to help not only my family, but the whole army,” he says.
Twenty-one-year-old Roksolana, who gave only her first name for security reasons, walks in to pick up a uniform and other gear before heading out on her next assignment. She joined the army in March and is now a member of an intelligence unit.
She says that having people understand that we are fed up with wearing clothes that are too big is valuable. “We had no helmets, we had old flak jackets, wore tracksuits and sneakers. Now we feel that we are humans.”
She has long fingernails and laces up her new boots. Before they hug goodbye, Drahanyuk hands Roksolana a copy of “The Choice,” the best-selling memoir by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Edith Eger. The aim is that this can be a tool to help process trauma. Zemlyachki has partnerships with military psychologists who can reach women in combat.
Other women, such as 25-year-old Alina Panina, are receiving psychological support through the Ukrainian military. The border guard with the dog spent five months in captivity in the Olenivka prison in the Russian-controlledDomino region, after leaving the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
She was finally released on October 17 as part of an all-female prisoner exchange with Russia and went into mandatory rehabilitation at a military hospital, under whose care she remains.
“I was not prepared [for captivity], and we discussed this a lot with other women prisoners that life hasn’t prepared us for such [an] ordeal,” Panina says at a pizza bar run by veterans in downtown Kyiv.
The fate of her partner is up in the air. He is also a border guard who is still in captivity. Panina said she knows he is alive but she doesn’t know where he is.
When Russian forces invaded Mariupol, Ilya Bespalaya and Vladimir Bespalov were separated from their family. After the Russian invasion, Maria and Vladimir were reunited
When Russian forces invaded their country in February, Maria Bespalaya and Vladimir Bespalov feared their dream of starting a family through adoption was over.
“I remember that morning of February 24, very clearly,” said Vladimir Bespalov, a 27-year-old railroad worker, of the first day of the war. We thought we were late. We realized we were already in a state of war, and we thought we could no longer adopt.”
Instead, the situation pushed the couple to try to do it sooner, he said. We were waiting to earn more money, have a better car, buy a house, and build something to give our children first, and so on. But when the war started, we thought why not adopt a child now and accomplish these things together as a family.”
That message would reach a volunteer helping people flee Mariupol, a city that became an emblem of Russian President Putins ruthless campaign to take Ukrainian land.
Residents were forced underground for weeks while Russian troops pummeled the city with artillery. It is now a virtual wasteland as most of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
His mother was struck by Russian shelling while she was out to find some food for her family, Bespalov and Bespalaya found out from the police.
“The men were drinking alcohol and the children of those neighbors bullied him. He was starving and freezing,” Bespalaya told CNN in a hushed voice. She is careful not to bring up the frightening experience of being trapped in the basement for three weeks in front of him, but she says that he told her everything she needed to know.
They underwent a four month process to become legal guardians for the boy and had many doctor visits, police background checks and government searches to make sure he had no other living relatives. A comfortable home was possible thanks to the financial support provided by numerous donors, including the Shakhtar Donetsk Football Club.
Like any parents, the young couple are fiercely protective of Ilya, sheltering him from the horrors of war the best they can and trying to give him a sense of security and stability.
You try to put your mind off the fighting so you can spend time with your child. We try to create memories of a normal childhood. Work takes time, but we spend every free moment together,” said Bespalov, who as a crucial railroad worker has not been called up for military service.
There is nothing normal about war. After they posted their appeal on Instagram, the couple set up two spare rooms for the possible arrival of a child – one a nursery with a white crib and blue bedding, the other equipped with a bunk bed and lots of toys.
I ended up being totally removed from being afraid of adoption. I was confident that we would have a child, and I was confident that I could care for anyone and deal with their character,” she told CNN.
The First Battle of Slovyansk in Ukraine: a Story of Two Family Trees, One in a Family, One Step Beyond the Front Line
That plan was also shattered by war. After the beginning of the conflict, the pair were forced to leave their home in Slovyansk, a city on the outskirts of the frontier regions of the country.
They received a call in April from the volunteer that they had been searching for, asking if the couple could care for the boy with no parents.
The following morning, they started out on the two-day car journey to Dnipro, where Ilya was sheltering, to meet the boy who would become part of their family.
“Now we have that love, that love that makes you a family. We did not have a baby, but we love each other very much.
But little Ilya is learning to cope. He looked up and said that he was not afraid of the dark anymore after playing in a living room lit by candles during a power outage. I know the light will turn back on.”
In southern Ukraine, the Dnipro has been the new front line, and officials warned of continued danger from fighting in areas that have already suffered from Russian incursions.
Through the afternoon, artillery fire picked up in a southern district of the city near the destroyed Antonivsky Bridge over the Dnipro, stoking fears that the Russian Army would retaliate for the loss of the city with a bombardment from its new positions on the eastern bank.
Mortar shells struck near the bridge, sending up puffs of smoke. There were thunderous, metallic booms during the rounds near the river. It was not possible to determine what had been hit.
On the dangers to the mines in Kherson City, the city where Mr. Zelensky stayed during the stay-at-east visit
It is a serious danger to the mines. The group of people were killed when a family drove over a mine in the middle of the night outside the city. Six railway workers were injured when they attempted to restore service after lines were damaged. And there were at least four more children reportedly injured by mines across the region, Ukrainian officials said in statements.
The deaths underscored the threats still on the ground even after Mr. Zelensky made a surprise visit to Kherson.
In a short appearance in the city’s main square, Mr. Zelensky said “we are stepping by step, coming to all of our country.”
Russian forces continued to fire from across the river on towns and villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian military’s southern command. Two Russian missiles struck the town of Beryslav, which is just north of a critical dam, the military said. There was not known if there were any injuries or deaths.
One resident said thatOccupants robbed local people and traded stuff for homemade vodka in the town of Oleshky across the river from Kherson City. “Then they get drunk and even more aggressive. We are terrified here. She wanted her name to be kept off of her for security.
Identifying Russia through the Story of Andelman Unleashed: During the Cold War between Ukraine and Russia, Insights from a Russian journalist who fled
Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He was once a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
The first missile to have landed in Poland – a NATO member – on Tuesday may well have been a Ukrainian anti-aircraft rocket intercepting an incoming Russian missile a short distance from one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Lviv, as suspected by Polish and NATO leaders. (President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian)
One thing is clear and that is that the missile was designed to hit something. Jens Stoltenberg of NATO stated ” Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”
That said, a growing number of Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they have been asked to do and refused to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.
A Ukrainian military intelligence project dubbed “I want to live” has taken off since it launched, booking some 3,500 calls in its first two months of activity.
Kim’s actions in North Korea are what Putin has tried to emulate, by establishing black market networks around the world to source what he needs to fuel his war machine. The United States has uncovered a wide range ofSHADOW companies and individuals from Taiwan to Armenia, Switzerland, Germany, Spain,France, and Luxembourg that were recently sanctioned by the US in order to source high-tech goods for Russia.
Above all, many of the best and brightest in virtually every field have now fled Russia. Writers, artists, journalists and even some of the most creative technologists are included.
One of the leading Russian journalists, who fled in March, told me recently that he is willing to accept the fact that he might never return to his homeland, even though he hoped this was not the case.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/opinions/putin-poland-missile-ukraine-nato-andelman/index.html
What the West is telling us about the war on the transatlantic scale: a case study in the French-German FAIR project at the Future Combat Air System
The West is attempting to diminish the country of material resources to pursue this war by diminishing their dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, told the G20 on Tuesday that they had understood and learned their lesson of unsustainable dependency.
Moreover, Putin’s dream that this conflict, along with the enormous burden it has proven to be on Western countries, would only drive further wedges into the Western alliance are proving unfulfilled. On Monday, word began circulating in aerospace circles that the long-stalled joint French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System – Europe’s largest weapons program – was beginning to move forward.
It seems that Putin still doesn’t know that revenge isn’t the right way to act on or off the battlefield and in the end it’s most likely to weaken Russia.
2022: From Russia to the Uvalde, Texas, Elementary School Shooting, and the Queen’s Funeral to the Queen Elizabeth II
The world witnessed an unwieldy and unparalleled set of news events in 2022. It was a year that captured historically significant and surprising moments, triggering disbelief and despair. There were days when joy and pride were offered. From Russia’s war in Ukraine to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, these are some of the remarkable stories of the year. The year started, calmly, as the world slowly began to come out of a long, drawn-out pandemic hibernation. However, consistent with the brittleness of these modern times, a full-blown war erupted in Ukraine in February as Russia invaded the country, ending and upending the lives of many, including civilians and children. One of the most vivid pictures of the war was taken by photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, showing a photo of a pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher after a bomb hit a maternity hospital in Mariupol. The woman and baby died soon after. This image has come to symbolize one of many Russian atrocities in the war in Ukraine. The attack on March 9, just 13 days after the war started, was one of the most brutal days of the conflict that continues to this day. In June, the United States once again witnessed a school shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas. Photographer Pete Luna of the Uvalde Leader-News photographed the chaotic scene outside the school as young elementary students ran for safety while the gunman was still inside. The death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8th sent shock waves around the world. The queen had worked with more than one British prime minister. She died two days after inviting Truss to form a new government. The Queen’s funeral drew crowds by the tens of thousands as they paid their last respects to a monarch who reigned for an unprecedented 70 years. This year was also the first to have an elephant in the room. The United States saw the confirmation of the country’s first Black woman Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. At the Winter Olympics, American Erin Jackson became the first Black woman to win an individual medal in speedskating. The first-ever all- female refereeing crew at a World Cup made history. The Supreme Court’s 1972 decision that gave the federal right to an abortion was one of the biggest moments of the year. The court decision this year triggered protests by abortion-rights activists and celebrations in the streets by anti- abortion groups, further dividing the country. In November, Americans went to the polls, producing election results that defied polling expectations. As all these moments unraveled, the Earth continued to warm up, melting and separating glacial ice ridges while much of the Northern Hemisphere dealt with a historic drought that scorched soil, dried up rivers and triggered mass crop failure. Stunning images of space were captured by the James WEBb Space Telescope above the Earth. On the news side of things, a strange moment at the Academy Awards occurred when Will Smith hit Chris Rock in the middle of the show, in protest of what the comedian said about his wife. The moment was witnessed live on television by millions around the globe. This summer, many sports fans rooted for Aaron Judge as he broke fellow Yankee Roger Maris’ American League home run record in a single season, a remarkable feat. Interwoven with these big news events were snapshots of daily life reminding the world of the beautiful, quiet — and sometimes hilarious — moments in and out of people’s lives. And behind all the top photos this year is the hard work of photojournalists. Many of them continue to document wars and conflicts, away from the safety of their homes. It is thanks to their perseverance and dedication that these images come to light, offering a window to the world and helping us understand it through photography. CNN Digital has a series on the year in pictures.
Bakhmut has been facing the relentless firepower of a frustrated Russian army for months. In its pursuit of an increasingly rare battlefield victory, Moscow has leveled buildings with rockets and missiles and sent endless waves of infantry to fight among the destroyed homes.
Tarasov, 48, was sheltering from the shelling in his basement where he now has to live. But last week he dared to venture out – to buy vegetables to make the national dish, borscht.
His face pales as he relays the graphic images still fresh in his mind. “I was wearing a leather jacket and if it wasn’t for that, I would have blown apart. I lost a lot of blood, my guts would have been all over the place. I remember seeing it — a huge puddle.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/europe/ukraine-bakhmut-injured-civilians-intl-cmd/index.html
Tarasov: Invisible power saved his life. When did he come to a hospital where he had torn himself?
Tarasov believes an “invisible power” saved his life. He would like to thank the Ukrainian soldiers who threw him in their truck and drove him to a hospital, one of few remaining hospitals able to treat civilians wounded in the war.
When Tarasov arrived, he begged the doctors to save his limb. The first thing I wanted to know was if I could have my arm sewed back on. It was torn off and hanging in the sleeve, that was what I saw. My stomach was burning. I thought it may be the intestines coming out. There was blood all over the place.
The chief surgeon tells CNN that sometimes power goes out. Water comes by the hour. There was no water over the weekend because of the shelling incident.
She is a resident of Bakhmut. She came under artillery fire and suffered a shrapnel wound to her abdomen with damage to several organs. We see some people with wounds every day. Every day.
The staff at the hospital hear the sound of shells around Bakhmut, which may signal that another patient is near the operating table.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/europe/ukraine-bakhmut-injured-civilians-intl-cmd/index.html
Christmas in Warsaw: The dark Ukrainian fairy tale of a young woman and her brother, Denys, the baby and Ievheniia
The local authorities have warned people to leave the region. But for Tarasov, as for so many in Ukraine’s old industrial heartland, fleeing his home for a safer area had seemed impossible.
“If I had a lot of money, I would rather live abroad,” Tarasov says. I don’t have any money and everything that I had saved up was invested there. I had no money to travel.
Long nights with the promise of a miracle: December is the month of fairy tales, when we peer into the darkness only to be reassured of the “happily ever after.”
We used to say that our life was a dark fairy tale with a happy ending. And now it’s over,” says Ievheniia, a displaced Ukrainian woman in Poland who this December is nursing her two-month-old son – and raw grief for the child’s father.
With a baby, Ievheniia couldn’t go to her husband’s funeral in her homeland. She asked her family to watch it for her. But Russia’s continued attacks on critical infrastructure has made Internet connection in Ukraine unreliable – what she got was a few short recordings. Denys was buried in a closed coffin.
In this dark Ukrainian fairy tale, important moments such as marriage ceremony and funeral take place via video link. In a war time, love looks like it shifted to the digital space and disturbed the plot.
The festive season is well underway in the streets of Warsaw. Christmas is on its way. People don’t want to be reminded that someone somewhere is suffering,” Ievheniia said. “And yet, they must be aware that this fight is unfolding right next to them.”
Ievheniia, a sports medicine physician and reserve officer, has been prepared to join the army of Ukraine for the next eight years. “I am not the kind of person who flees,” she explained.
Magical marriage between a young Ukrainian woman and a man in Warsaw: A story of two ladies who met through a video call
She took a pregnancy test on the weekend just in case. “With war and evacuation, the ground was slipping under one’s feet,” she said with a laugh. “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.
Separated by war, Ievheniia and Denys sought to validate their partnership in the eyes of the state. The everyday ingenuity of the country at war was at work; now, Ukrainian servicemen are allowed to marry via a video call. Instead of boring civil servants we married a handsome man in a uniform. I had nothing to complain about,” Ievheniia said.
Over the following months, Denys kept the magic alive via the Internet, with flower deliveries and professional photoshoots ordered for Ievheniia from the trenches.
Denys went to all of Warsaw to alert them to what happened when she didn’t pick up the phone. A delay could have resulted in death. There was a Caesarean section after that. Because the baby was born two months early, the father was able to meet his new son.
Ukrainian men of fighting age who are servicemen are not allowed to leave the country. Denys was granted permission and was allowed to cross the border, and spent five days with his family.
“It was a magical time filled with ordinary things: shopping, registering with a pediatrician, laughing, talking. Then he left. On his birthday, we sent him greetings. “The next day he was killed.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html
When Ukrainian troops needed military assistance to win the war over Russia, Ievheniia reflected in “consolatory fables”
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. The time to be consoled has not yet arrived. It is time to act.
We must be careful with the narrative logic of a fairy tale. The kid won’t be able to defeat the monster with magic. Ten months ago, Ukrainians needed military aid sufficient to bring a victory over Russia and not just prolong the fight. Our collective effort is what determines Ukrainian victory.
“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 allowed to ignore the situation and continue my daily life? Ievheniia told me. Today, we have a chance to find out.