Category Archives: Ukraine

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Here are the latest headlines in the Russia-Ukraine crisis:

Fighting intensifies in Mariupol

"There can be no question of surrendering or assembling weapons," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told Ukrainska Pravda. "We have already informed the Russian side about this." Instead, the country said Moscow should let residents leave the besieged city in southern Ukraine and deliver humanitarian aid to those who want to stay. The fall of Mariupol would mark a battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely stalled outside major cities after more than three weeks of fighting.

Going hypersonic

With Russia claiming to have deployed hypersonic missiles against targets in Ukraine over the weekend - marking the weapon's first use in combat - the U.S. is rushing the development of its own hypersonic arsenal. General Dynamics subsidiary Bath Iron Works will begin engineering and design work on changes necessary to install the weapon system on three Zumwalt-class destroyers in fiscal year 2023. Current hypersonic use by Russia is not a "game changer," cautions U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. "The reason that [Vladimir Putin] is resorting to using these types of weapons is because he's trying to reestablish some momentum."

EU oil embargo?

The White House has announced President Biden will visit Poland as part of his European trip this week for talks with allies about the war in Ukraine. Ahead of the meeting, the European Union is considering whether to impose an oil embargo on Russia. The decision could prompt Moscow to close flows on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which help provide the 27-country EU with 40% of its natural gas needs.

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Ukraine War Update: Refusing to surrender Mariupol to ...

Ukraine is the largest country that is entirely within Europe. The country sits on the southwestern part of the Russian Plain and has a largely low terrain. The average elevation of the land is only 574 ft (175 m).

As observed on the physical map of Ukraine above, about 5% of the country is mountainous. The northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains stretch across western Ukraine. The country's highest point is located there; Hoverla Mountain, at 2061 m (6762 ft) tall. It has been marked on the map above by a yellow upright triangle.

As can be seen on the map above, the southern lowland of Ukraine continues into the Crimean Peninsula, a peninsula jutting into the sea from southern Ukraine via the Perekop Isthmus. It is a disputed territory.

The Crimean Mountains front the southern edges of the Crimean Peninsula, and some lower, heavily-eroded mountains extend intoRussiajust north of the Sea of Azov.

Much of central Ukraine is covered by plateaus and fertile plains (steppes), somewhat hilly areas of grasslands and shrublands.

The Black Sea Coastal Lowlands cover the southern edges of the country.

Ukraine is bordered by the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Major rivers include the Desna, Dnieper, Dniester, Donets and the Southern Bug. Numerous waterfalls are found in both the Carpathian and Crimean Mountains.

The Dnieper River, one of the major rivers of Europe (fourth by length) flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea. The river's total length is 2,285 km (1,420 mi).

Ukraine is divided into 24 provinces (oblast), 1 autonomous republic (avtonomna respublika) and 2 municipalities (mista). In alphabetical order, these provinces are: Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk (Dnipro), Donetsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytskyy, Kirovohrad (Kropyvnytskyy), Kyiv, Luhansk, Lviv, Mykolayiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Vinnytsya, Volyn (LutsK), Zakarpattya (Uzhhorod), Zaporizhzhya and Zhytomyr. Crimea or Avtonomna Respublika Krym (Simferopol) is an autonomous republic. Kyiv (Kiev) and Sevastopol are two municipalities of special status. The 24 oblasts and Crimea are further subdivided into 136 raions (district) and city municipalities.

With an area of 603,628 sq. km (which also includes the area covered by the Crimean Peninsula), Ukraine is the 2nd largest country by area in Europe and the 46th largest country in the world. With a population over 42 million people, Ukraine is the 7th/8th most populous county in Europe and the 32nd most populous country in the world. Located in the north-central part of the country, along the Dnieper River is Kiev (Kyiv) the capital and the most populous city of Ukraine. Kiev is the chief cultural and industrial center of Eastern Europe.

Ukraine is an Eastern European country. It is situated both in the Northern and Eastern hemispheres of the earth. Ukraine is bordered by 7 European Nations: by Belarus in the north; by Hungary, Slovakia and Poland in the west; by Moldova and Romania in the southwest; and by Russia in the east and northeast. It is bounded by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in the south. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea borders Ukraine to the south.

Ukraine Bordering Countries: Russia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia, Belarus, Poland.

Regional Maps: Map of Europe

The above blank outline map is of Ukraine, a country in eastern Europe. The map can be downloaded, printed and used for education work or for coloring.

The above map represents Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe.

This page was last updated on February 24, 2021

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Ukraine Maps & Facts - World Atlas

Pedestrians cross a street in front of a billboard displaying the letter "Z" in the colors of the ribbon of St. George and a slogan: "We don't give up on our people," in support of the Russian armed forces, in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 7. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Pedestrians cross a street in front of a billboard displaying the letter "Z" in the colors of the ribbon of St. George and a slogan: "We don't give up on our people," in support of the Russian armed forces, in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 7.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has many of us using new words and phrases, from geopolitical terms like "rump state" to military lingo such as "MANPADS."

We're also learning to decipher slogans and spot differences between Russian and Ukrainian spellings during a conflict in which information is treated as its own battlefield.

Tracking surges in the words we use is part of linguist Grant Barrett's job. He is the co-host of A Way with Words, a public radio show about words and language, and a vice president of the American Dialect Society.

"As a word watcher, we get a sense of the worries of the world," he told NPR.

Barrett points out how the term Cold War has now been supplanted by the term "hot war" a violent conflict with many of the worst burdens borne by civilians.

With Barrett's help, NPR created a kind of war glossary, explaining some of the terms people are using to discuss the war Russia and President Vladimir Putin are waging on Ukraine.

The Western world is debating whether permitting Putin to retain some of the territory he has seized would "be like the 1938 appeasement of Hitler by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain," Barrett said.

Some experts, noting that Russia seized Crimea in 2014, warn that Putin could be further emboldened by any accommodations.

The circumstances have led to talk of a "smell of Munich" being in the air, Barrett said, referring to the 1938 Munich Agreement that allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia an unsuccessful attempt to prevent further fighting.

The Ukrainian word for bomb shelter a new necessity that's forced libraries and other facilities into new roles of protecting civilians.

Ukrainians prepare tea in a bomb shelter in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 13. Felipe Dana/AP hide caption

Ukrainians prepare tea in a bomb shelter in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 13.

In general, a "cessation of hostilities" is temporary and can be localized, while a cease-fire is meant to be permanent and comprehensive.

The United Nations lists at least seven terms that describe pauses in violence, many of which are aimed at allowing civilians to reach safety or access help or, in the best cases, providing time to negotiate a lasting peace.

From the earliest days of the war, human rights groups accused Russia of using these controversial weapons, which open midair and indiscriminately spray wide areas with dozens or even hundreds of small "bomblets" often with tragic effects, especially in urban or civilian settings.

Unexploded cluster bombs are seen here in 2020, collected during the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Unexploded cluster bombs are seen here in 2020, collected during the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A U.N. convention banning the use of cluster munitions took effect in 2010; but Russia, Ukraine nor the U.S. have agreed to that ban.

"Donbas" comes from an abbreviation meaning "Donets coal basin," Barrett said. Leaders in this region of eastern Ukraine have recently favored Russian control, and it's home to Luhansk and Donetsk the Ukrainian territories that Russia recognized as independent republics.

The term describes a nation that, while technically neutral and independent on the international stage, yields to the policies of a larger, more powerful neighbor, as Finland deferred to the USSR during the Cold War in return for maintaining its sovereignty.

In the weeks before the war, the term made occasional headlines in part because it's generally seen as a pejorative. It could resurface if Ukraine and Russia agree to negotiate.

Also known as the Czech hedgehog, the spiky-looking steel obstacles can divert or delay tanks. Ukrainian civilians have been DIY-ing hedgehogs, welding two bars or beams at an angle to make a cross and then adding a third to ensure it holds its shape even if it's knocked over.

Volunteers connect I-beams to make anti-tank obstacles known as Czech hedgehogs, in a workshop in Lviv, western Ukraine, on March 3. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Volunteers connect I-beams to make anti-tank obstacles known as Czech hedgehogs, in a workshop in Lviv, western Ukraine, on March 3.

"Specific routes and logistical methods agreed upon by all relevant parties to allow the safe passage of humanitarian goods and/or people from one point to another in an area of active fighting," the United Nations said.

People rest as they take shelter from attacks in a metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 10. Emre Caylak/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

People rest as they take shelter from attacks in a metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 10.

The anti-tank missiles are "very, very effective" at knocking out tanks and armored vehicles, retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack told NPR. Javelins went into full-scale production in 1997.

A U.S. soldier walks with a Javelin surface-to-air missile launcher in the countryside of Deir Ezzor in northeastern Syria in December 2021. Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A U.S. soldier walks with a Javelin surface-to-air missile launcher in the countryside of Deir Ezzor in northeastern Syria in December 2021.

The weapon's ability to destroy Russian armor has made it a cultural phenomenon in Ukraine, where it even has its own meme: St. Javelin.

A derisive Ukrainian nickname for pro-Russian separatists, many of whom wear orange-and-black St. George ribbons that symbolize Russia's military strength.

George was a Roman army officer who became a martyr because of his Christian faith. The Order of St. George is among Russia's highest military honors, dating back to 1769 after a hiatus, it was reinstated by Putin's government in 2000.

Koloradi is also the Ukrainian term for the Colorado potato beetle, an invasive, destructive pest whose stripes resemble the ribbons.

Man-portable air-defense systems, sometimes called MPADS, are portable surface-to-air missiles. In Ukraine, they've been seen carried by soldiers and reportedly bringing down Russian aircraft.

There are many types of MANPADS, although the most famous is the U.S.-made Stinger.

The jet warplanes are named after the Mikoyan-Gurevich aviation company. The MiG-15 fought in the Korean War of the 1950s. Ukraine's air force uses the MiG-29 and Poland recently threw the U.S. a curveball by announcing a plan to give Ukraine more Russian-made MiG-29s.

A MiG-31 fighter of the Russian air force takes off at an air base during military drills in Tver region, Russia, in a photo provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service in February. Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP hide caption

A MiG-31 fighter of the Russian air force takes off at an air base during military drills in Tver region, Russia, in a photo provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service in February.

The phrase is used by Russians who are against the war in Ukraine even under the threat of detention, arrests, steep fines and other punishments. Even children have been taken into custody for holding homemade signs.

The Kremlin's harsh response to anti-war sentiments has recalled the mass purges of Russia's Stalinist era.

Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly asked their allies in Europe and the U.S. to "close the skies" over Ukraine to give their ground forces a chance against Russia's invading military. But Western nations have stopped short of calling for this measure.

A protester in Paris calls on NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine during a demonstration on Feb. 26. Peter Dejong/AP hide caption

A protester in Paris calls on NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine during a demonstration on Feb. 26.

"The only way to actually implement something like a no-fly zone is to send NATO planes into Ukrainian airspace and to shoot down Russian planes, and that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. "President Biden has been clear that we are not going to get into a war with Russia."

"A very wealthy businessperson with strong political ties," Barrett said, adding, "wealth alone does not make one an oligarch."

"The use of 'oligarch' to refer specifically to wealthy Russians dates to the 1990s, although general use of the term dates to the 1600s," he said.

Ukrainians have invoked the Lord of the Rings villains to refer to Russia's force, saying the hordes were being sent to loot their country and dismantle its democracy. Those using the term include a doctor in Melitopol who filmed and posted video of a protest to social media.

Ukraine's defense intelligence service features an owl in its insignia. In it, the owl hovers above a global map, stabbing a sword down from the sky into Russia. The service recently promised that its owls would track down Russian marines that Ukraine says attacked civilians.

Ukraine's defense intelligence service uses an owl in its insignia and the owl is pointing a sword directly at Russia.

Critics of Putin use a range of "blended names" for the Russian leader. Barrett cites a chapter from Language of Conflict: Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis, published in 2020, for some examples:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gained a number of unflattering nicknames as of late. Alexei Nikolsky/AP hide caption

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gained a number of unflattering nicknames as of late.

The term refers to any nation that has seen a large portion of its territory carved away and absorbed into another country.

The Russian Federation is sometimes considered to be a rump state of the USSR. Now Putin wants to turn Ukraine into a rump state, expert Fiona Hill recently said.

"Glory to Ukraine!" now peppers many statements coming out of Ukraine. It's often followed by the reply, "Heroiam slava!" glory to the heroes.

People stand in front of a huge banner with the lettering "Slava Ukraini" as they take part in a demonstration in support of Ukraine on Freedom Square in Tallinn, Estonia, on Feb. 26. Raigo Pajula/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

People stand in front of a huge banner with the lettering "Slava Ukraini" as they take part in a demonstration in support of Ukraine on Freedom Square in Tallinn, Estonia, on Feb. 26.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the phrase in Congress as she introduced Zelenskyy ahead of his March 16 speech to U.S. lawmakers.

The phrase dates at least as far back as Ukraine's war for independence (1917-1921); it also had a resurgence when Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991.

Putin's term for his country's attack on Ukraine is, at best, a euphemism and, at worst, a sign of the gap between the reality of what is taking place in Ukraine and the narrative many Russian people are being fed. While the rest of the world sees a tragic humanitarian crisis, the Kremlin has insisted it is on a peacekeeping effort in Ukraine.

The global bank messaging system operated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications is a crucial part of the harsh sanctions on Russia.

Images and other evidence show that Russia has brought thermobaric weapons to Ukraine.

Russian Army TOS-1A "Solntsepyok (Blazing Sun)" multiple rocket launcher and thermobaric weapon mounted on a T-72 tank chassis seen during the annual Army Games defense technology international exhibition. Leonid Faerberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

Russian Army TOS-1A "Solntsepyok (Blazing Sun)" multiple rocket launcher and thermobaric weapon mounted on a T-72 tank chassis seen during the annual Army Games defense technology international exhibition.

"These are very devastating weapons that create a gas [fuel] cloud that then explodes," Jeffrey Edmonds, a research scientist who is a former director for Russia at the National Security Council, told NPR. "These are the weapons they used to clear out Aleppo" in Syria.

Edmonds describes them as "very indiscriminate weapons that cause mass destruction." Thermobaric weapons are not explicitly banned the U.S. has them as well but critics question their legality.

The letter, which isn't part of the Cyrillic alphabet used by both Ukraine and Russia, is now seen as a Russian pro-war symbol. It was painted on Russian tanks and other military vehicles as a large white Z. It's also often rendered in the same colors of the ribbon of St. George, orange and black.

"In the beginning, it looks like it was just simply a way for the Russians to mark their vehicles in some kind of internal classification," Barrett said. "But the Russians quickly realized that they could capitalize on it and use it as kind of a badge of honor."

Excerpt from:

SWIFT, hedgehog, MiG: Here's a guide to the terms of war in Ukraine - NPR

Ukraines president has warned Russians that continuing the invasion would exact a toll for generations after tens of thousands attended a nationalist event to hear a speech by President Vladimir Putin.

The remarks by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday came after a mass rally was held in support of Russian forces in Moscow the previous night.

Noting the 200,000 people reported to have attended the rally was similar to the number of Russian forces deployed to Ukraine, Zelenskyy said Fridays event in Moscow illustrated the high stakes of the largest ground conflict in Europe since World War II.

Picture for yourself that in that stadium in Moscow there are 14,000 dead bodies and tens of thousands more injured and maimed, the Ukrainian leader said.Those are the Russian costs throughout the invasion.

Putin lavished praise on his countrys military forces during Fridays flag-waving rally, which took place on the anniversary of Russias 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The event included patriotic songs such as Made in the USSR, with the opening lines Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, its all my country.

We have not had unity like this for a long time, Putin told the cheering crowd.

Taking to the stage where a sign read For a world without Nazism, he railed against his foes in Ukraine with a claim they are neo-Nazis and insisted his actions were necessary to prevent genocide.

The rally took place as Russia has faced heavier-than-expected losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home. Russian police have detained thousands of antiwar protesters.

Fighting raged on multiple fronts in Ukraine more than three weeks after Russias February 24 invasion.

The northwest Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin and Moshchun were under fire on Saturday, the Kyiv regional administration reported. The city of Slavutich, 165km (103 miles) north of the capital, was completely isolated, the administration said.

In the besieged port city of Mariupol, the site of some of the wars greatest suffering, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant, one of the biggest in Europe, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraines interior minister, said on Saturday.

Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish 10 humanitarian corridors for bringing aid in and residents out one from Mariupol and several around Kyiv and in the eastern Luhansk region, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

She also announced plans to deliver humanitarian aid to the southern city of Kherson, which was seized by Russian forces.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said Russian forces were blockading the largest cities with the goal of creating such miserable conditions that Ukrainians will surrender. But he warned Russia would pay the ultimate price.

The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russias costs will be so high that you will not be able to rise again for several generations, he said.

Vladimir Medinsky, who has led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said on Friday the two sides have moved closer to an agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting a neutral status.

In remarks carried by Russian media, he said the sides are now halfway on issues regarding the demilitarisation of Ukraine.

However, Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, alleged that Moscows characterisation was intended to provoke tension in the media.

Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulas, he tweeted.

Britains foreign minister accused Putin of using the talks as a smokescreen while his forces regroup. We dont see any serious withdrawal of Russian troops or any serious proposals on the table, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told The Times newspaper.

In a phone call with Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin laid out plans for ending the war, according to the Turkish presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin.

President Putin thinks the positions on the Donbas and Crimea are not close enough to meet President Zelenskyy. What we need is a strategic-level meeting between the two leaders. There seems to be growing consensus We are hoping there will be more convergence on these issues, and this meeting will take place sooner than later, because we all want this war to come to an end, Kalin told Al Jazeera.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, during a Saturday visit to NATO ally Bulgaria, said the Russian invasion had stalled on a number of fronts but the United States had not yet seen signs that Putin was deploying additional forces.

Major General Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defence of the region around Kyiv, said his forces are well-positioned to defend the city.

We will never give up. We will fight until the end. To the last breath and to the last bullet, said Pavlyuk.

Original post:

Ukraines leader warns war will cost Russia for generations - Al Jazeera English

Ukraine has been an independent country for more than half Vladimir Putins adult life (he turns 70 this year). Its been a free republic for more than 30 years, long enough for the first generation of Ukrainians born since independence to have school-age children of their own. Its had seven different leaders, all of them still alive.

It would be sentimental and patronising to talk about a country having grown up. But 30 years is long enough for countries to change, for better or for worse; long enough for countries to have eras. Ukraine was well into its second era, its European era, when Putin invaded last month. Putin never accepted the right of post-Soviet Ukraine to exist in independent Ukraines first era. In terms of understanding the country, thats the period hes stuck in; Putin doesnt acknowledge that a second era began.

The west shares many of the Kremlins misapprehensions about Ukraine. We are still too ready to see the country through the cliche of a nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking west and a Russia-friendly, Russian-speaking south and east. Or, more crudely and colourfully, neo-communist miners in the east, neo-Nazis in the west. Of course it was never that simple, even in post-Soviet Ukraine. But European-era Ukraine, which emerged in 2014, overturned its own political fundamentals. Faced with an existential struggle against a powerful, ruthless neighbour, Russia, where nationalism now serves autocracy, an emergent class of Ukrainian liberals made common cause with Ukrainian nationalists. Its been an uncomfortable alliance but it has kept the country together. As Ukraine defends itself against Putins terror campaign, mutually estranged liberals and nationalists in other countries the US, England, France would do well to watch.

To talk about European Ukraine isnt to describe an achieved state but a state of hope: hope of membership in the European Union more meaningful to Ukraine, at least until Russia attacked, than membership of Nato.

Ukraines hope of Europe had its material side, a hope of grants, jobs and trade. Since the revolution of dignity also known as Maidan in 2014, trade with the EU soared while trade with Russia plunged. More than a million Ukrainians went to work, legally or otherwise, in the EU. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, much has been made in Britain of the EUs openness to Ukrainian refugees compared with the barriers put up by London. But its a depressing reflection of how mainstream anti-immigrant assumptions have become in the UK that virtually no one in Britain is aware the EU gave Ukrainians visa-free access years ago, as a reward for their countrys sacrifices in Europes name. Since 2017, as a result of that and of Brexit, Ukrainians have levelled up and Britons levelled down to identical rights of EU entry: 90 days stay without a visa.

Beyond the material hopes of European-era Ukraine, there is the prospect, less tangible and more powerful, of an alternative form of nationhood. Rather than the archaic, romantic, racial mystifications of old Ukrainian nationalism, or Putins neo-imperial vision of Ukraine pulverised and remade as a puppet state to serve Russian nationalism, its of Ukraine pursuing its free course as an equal member of a self-constraining, self-governing association of countries, the EU.

The beauty of the EU, for Ukraine, is the capaciousness of its model for both liberals and nationalists. In some ways, the aims of European-era Ukraine closely resemble those of the Scottish National party and the Irish republic: to use the economic power of the EU to leverage their own, to break out of the orbit of a delusional post-imperial culture, to find national self-determination by accepting multinational rules. As Tom Nairn wrote of Scotland, a country could aspire to a new interdependence where our nationhood will count, rather than towards mere isolation.

For Ukraines more conservative nationalists, its Poland and Hungary that offer the more appealing EU models stridently patriotic, subordinating media, courts and education to national ideals and social conservatism, all while getting subsidies and trading freely within the EU.

The prelude to Ukraines European era occurred in 2013 under president Viktor Yanukovych, a profoundly corrupt politician from the east of the country. Although seen as a proxy for Kremlin interests, and generally loyal to the idea of post-Soviet Ukraine as a Russian client state, he threw his weight behind an association agreement with the EU. He had his country on side, but Putin gave it to be understood that he considered it a betrayal Ukraine could partner with the EU or Russia, not both.

Whether Yanukovych was genuinely up for the deal with Brussels, or simply angling for a bigger bung from Moscow, he changed his mind at the last minute, took a large loan from Putin and turned his back on the EU.

It was November. Protests began in Kyiv against abandonment of the EU deal. There were calls for Yanukovych to resign. Small, peaceful protests were put down violently by the police. Parliament, then controlled by Yanukovych allies, passed repressive laws against free speech and gatherings. As 2013 passed into 2014, the protests grew, their demands expanded and their base spread. Opposition to Yanukovych and calls for deeper ties to Europe evolved into attacks on the entire corrupt, oligarchic system of business and government.

Young members of the liberal intelligentsia were joined by radical nationalist groups, by small-business owners and by factory workers. Opposition MPs aligned themselves with the protesters. Increasingly violent street battles were waged around Kyivs central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Barricades went up. Weapons escalated from clubs and stones and shields to molotov cocktails, to stun grenades and rubber bullets, to actual bullets. Some police were shot; more than 100 protesters were killed.

In the third week of February, for reasons still mysterious perhaps because the security forces ceased to believe in the president the regime collapsed. European foreign ministers brokered a peace deal with Yanukovych, the Maidan crowd refused to accept it, and Yanukovych fled the country. Parliament voted in an interim government and prepared for new elections.

Barely had the revolutionaries victory sunk in before Russia annexed Crimea in a nearly bloodless coup de main. In Yanukovychs home region of Donbas, on the border with Russia, locals angry at the treatment of their lawfully elected president seized administrative buildings. They were quickly ousted, only to be replaced, in April, by a new wave of rebels helped by volunteers from Russia. Fighting escalated to a full-scale war, culminating in incursions by regular Russian troops. Thousands of people were killed. By 2015, the front lines had stabilised and fighting lessened, with part of Donbas under joint Russian-rebel control. The rest of Ukraine was at peace. In 2017, the association agreement with the EU came into force.

Even before the war in the Donbas began, there were warnings of what the longer term held. In what reads now as an astonishingly accurate forecast of what was to come, in an interview with a Ukrainian paper in March 2014, the former Putin adviser Andrei Illarionov spelled it out, failing only to predict that eight years would pass first. Theres an aim and a plan to attack Ukraine which was put together years ago, he said. It has many different elements Crimea, the south-east and, of course, a change of power in Kyiv. And then there are other things: a new [Ukrainian] constitution, to be written in the Kremlin, disarmament of the Ukrainian people, liquidation of Maidan, and so on.

Liquidation of Maidan sounds different from the current Kremlin programme, until you realise this is simply denazification by another name.

It might seem trivial now, when Ukraine is on fire and hundreds are being killed every day, when all that seems important is how many Russian tanks and planes and soldiers the Ukrainians have to blow up to make Putin stop, to talk about abstractions like nationalism and liberalism. And yet without these forces coming together over the past seven years of semi-peace, would Ukraine have held out this long?

I remember being surprised, when I visited Kyiv at the end of February 2014, to see how focused liberals and nationalists alike were on a European future. The spokesman for one of the most notorious radical nationalist groups, Right Sector, talked to me about Poland as a model for the country. European flags were everywhere. I went for dinner one evening with a friend of a friend, a successful businesswoman. The Maidan was very localised; a huge encampment of brown tents crowded together, wreathed in the smoke of hundreds of stoves, in which exhausted people, who had fought nightly battles in freezing conditions, lived difficult lives away from home. But right next door to it were expensive restaurants with waiters in spotless white shirts serving fine wines and tuna carpaccio. You know, the nationalists were very important, said the businesswoman, sipping her grenache. They did very good work at the leading edge.

Ive always been in two minds about that conversation with someone who had been very kind to me. On the one hand, it had that air of somebody being grateful that somebody else was doing their dirty work; that one person had education, good taste and proper gentle sentiments, and they were grateful that their interests were being protected by another person who risked their life with a petrol bomb and a brick, and whose most conservative, chauvinist views the first person would definitely not want to hear at their dinner table in peacetime. On the other hand, my friends friend was being honest about the realities of a dangerous situation, and resistance towards a nasty, increasingly repressive regime: that she was not one of natures fighters, and she was glad to have people prepared to fight for their country on her side. Nationalist and liberal, after all, are words with an extremely broad range of meanings.

For me, national is what allows me to defend Ukraine as an independent, sovereign nation, said the Ukrainian philosopher Evhen Bistritsky in 2018, at a time when disillusionment with Ukraines post-Maidan failures to get to grips with corruption and institutional inertia was running deep.

I am a liberal, defending the independence of Ukraine. Part of Ukrainian society supports conservative values, linking them to security. If were really only going to preach universal, classical, liberal values we promote discord in the country.

In a country not fighting for its existence, in the US, perhaps, or Britain, or France, in some safe part of the EU, such language would have marked Bistritsky out as a centrist, a moderate, even, more pejoratively, an undemocratic compromiser. In the present Ukrainian context, faced with the Russian killing machine, discord becomes failure to fill the ranks.

Recently the Ukrainian writer Artem Chekh published Absolute Zero, his memoir of service in the Ukrainian army on the Donbas front in 2015. In it he faces up to the strangeness of being a liberal, cosmopolitan, intellectual man serving alongside workers and farmers who see the world in patriotic, if cynical, absolutes. I went around to his flat in Kyiv a few weeks ago for coffee and cake. Now he has taken up a gun again to protect the city against the invader. In an article for the London Review of Books blog, he lists his comrades: a music producer, an owner of a household chemicals store, a teacher, an artist, a bank clerk, a former investigator, a doctor. The ability to write, paint, act, play a musical instrument or dance doesnt matter now. What counts is military experience.

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The power of the new Ukraine - The Guardian

In September,1949, two Ukrainian agents working with the C.I.A. landed near Lviv, in what was then the Soviet Union. They were the vanguard of an operation that would acquire the code name Redsox. Its aim was to connect with anti-Soviet insurgents fighting by the tens of thousands in Ukraine, as well as in smaller numbers elsewhere on Russias rim. Soviet moles betrayed the program, however, and at least three-quarters of the Redsox agents disappeared. By the mid-nineteen-fifties, Moscow had quelled Ukraines rebellion while forcibly displacing or killing hundreds of thousands of people. The C.I.A.s glancing intervention was ill-fated and tragic, an internal history concluded.

Since Vladimir Putin ordered Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, on February24th, the United States has acted as if to redeem itself; the Biden Administration has led its NATO allies to airlift planeloads of Javelin anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukrainian forces, while pledging billions of dollars more in military assistance and imposing punishing sanctions on Russias economy and Putins lite. More than three weeks after the crisis began, the mood in Western capitals remains pugnacious and emotive. Last week, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, appeared by video before Canadas Parliament, and, the next day, he addressed a joint session of Congress. In both venues, politicians rose to applaud and chanted an improbably viral invocation of Ukrainian glory: Slava Ukraini!

Yet NATO has declined to provide Ukraine what Zelensky has repeatedly soughta no-fly zone to ground Russian warplanes or a transfer of fighter jetsfor fear that such actions would bring the U.S. and Russia into direct combat. We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine, Joe Biden reiterated on Twitter recently. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent. The President is, of course, right about that, and yet, as Russian planes and artillery daily pound Ukrainian apartment buildings and hospitals, he can surely understand why Zelensky is pressing for more.

Zelensky has been justly celebrated for his personal courage and his adaptations of Churchillian rhetoric for the TikTok era. His presentation to Congress last week was a study in discomforting moral provocation. He invoked Pearl Harbor and September 11th to describe Ukraines daily experience under Russian missiles and bombs, then showed a graphic video depicting the recent deaths of children and other innocents. Later that day, Biden called Putin a war criminal and announced a new package of military supplies, including anti-aircraft systems and drones. The aid may help, but it cannot relieve Zelensky of the terrible predicaments he must manage in the weeks ahead. Ukraine may be facing a long war costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, a war that may not be winnable, even with the most robust assistance that NATO is likely to provide. In any event, NATOs greatest priority is to strengthen its own defenses and dissuade Putin from attacking the alliance.

Zelenskys alternative may be to pursue a ceasefire deal with Putin that could require Ukraine to forswear future NATO membership, among other bitter concessions. In the light of Putins annexation of Crimea, in 2014, and his years-long armed support for pro-Russian enclaves in Ukraines east, such a deal would be unstable and unreliable. Still, Zelensky appears torn. Even as he asked Congress last week to do more for Ukraines war effort, he pleaded with Biden to lead the world to peace, and he recently signalled his willingness to bargain with Putin on Ukraines relationship with nato. The countrys past failure to win admission to the alliance is a truth that must be recognized, he said.

It has become common to describe Russias invasion as a watershed in history comparable to 9/11 or to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The war in Ukraine marks a turning point for our continent and our generation, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, said earlier this month. Perhaps, but some of this speculation about Europes destiny and the future of Great Power competition may be premature. Certainly, the war has already produced a humanitarian disaster of shocking and destabilizing dimensions. Three million Ukrainians have fled their country. The 1.8million of them who have gone to Poland constitute a population roughly the size of Warsaws. If the fighting drags on and Ukraine implodes, the country will export many more destitute people, and, as happened in the former Yugoslavia during the nineteen-nineties, it may also draw in opportunists, including mercenaries and extremists.

Meanwhile, Russias economy, according to the International Monetary Fund, could shrink by thirty-five per cent this year under the weight of Western sanctions. Putins oligarchs and enablers can endure the loss of super-yachts and private jets, but a sudden economic contraction on that scale would crush ordinary Russians and inevitably cost lives. (Our economy will need deep structural changes, Putin acknowledged last week, adding, They wont be easy.) Russias isolation from large swaths of global banking and trade, and its loss of access to advanced U.S. technologies, could last a long time, too: democracies often find it easier to impose sanctions than to remove them, even when the original cause of a conflict subsides. (Ask Cuba.) When the history of this era is written, Putins war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger, Biden said in his recent State of the Union address.

Still, some introspection may be in order. In his address, the President also declared that, in the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the moment. But Europe is troubled by illiberal populism, including in Poland. And Donald Trumpwho, just two days before Russia rolled into Ukraine, called Putins preparatory moves geniusretains a firm hold on the Republican Party, and appears to be all in for a relection campaign in 2024. As long as Trumps return to the White House is a possibility, Bidens declarations will require some asterisks.

Every night for three weeks now, Zelensky told Congress, various Ukrainian cities, Odessa and Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Zhytomyr and Lviv, Mariupol and Dnipro, have endured attacks. We are asking for a reply, for an answer to this terror. Ukraine is an unlucky country, and the restoration of its independence and security may be a long and costly project, but it is one the U.S. cannot afford to abandon again.

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The Complexities of the Ukraine Dilemma - The New Yorker

KYIV, Ukraine A tall woman with blonde and pink hair and a small dachshund stood out among the crowd of police officers and volunteers at the checkpoint on the edge of Kyiv. She looked as if she were out for a stroll, but she had just survived a dangerous evacuation under mortar fire.

The woman, Sasha Myhova, 21, and her boyfriend, Stas Burykov, 19, were evacuated Friday from their home in Irpin, the northwestern suburb that has become one of the most fiercely contested areas in the three weeks of fighting since Russias invading troops advanced toward the capital and Ukrainian troops blocked their way.

It was dangerous, she said. They were bombing as we drove.

The heavy boom of artillery sounded again as she spoke. Shells were landing right in our yard, she said, pulling out a piece of metal shrapnel she had kept.

As the war in Ukraine settles into its fourth week, the suburbs on the edge of Kyiv have become important if unlikely front lines of the war, where the Russian and Ukrainian forces are stuck in a savage give-and-take at one of the gateways to the capital, in positions that have not really moved.

Blocked and badly mauled, Russian forces have nevertheless established positions around three sides of the capital. Ukrainian forces have successfully stalled them, and on Wednesday mounted a series of coordinated counterattacks to challenge those positions.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine hailed the defense of Kyiv, led by the commander of land forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, saying that Ukrainian forces had regained control of 30 settlements around the city in the counterattack. The enemy suffered significant losses and was driven away from the capital, he said.

Yet the mortar fire and gunfire was so heavy in Irpin that the Ukrainians stopped attempting further evacuations after the one that included Ms. Myhova. The Ukrainian counterattack seems to have been met by a ferocious response from Russian forces. Residents and volunteers helping evacuate them said Russian artillery fire and even machine gun fire had intensified over the last few days.

One man, Vitaliy Kalman, was standing beside his suitcase hoping for a lull in the fighting. He said he had tried to go back into the district to retrieve some clothes from his apartment but came under mortar fire just beyond the ruined bridge that marks the entrance into Irpin. The bridge was destroyed by Ukrainian troops to forestall advancement by Russian troops in the first days of the war.

They are very close, he said of the Russians. I saw the shell explode just near my house, and I ran back here with the evacuation team.

A volunteer member of the Territorial Defense Forces described the street fighting in Irpin as an all-out guerrilla war. On the attacking side are the Russian troops, which Western military analysts say are likely elite airborne Special Forces units.

Defending against them are local volunteers, many of whom had just been handed rifles a few days before the Russians arrived in their town, alongside veteran militia fighters and uniformed troops.

Street fighting had been raging for days, according to soldiers interviewed on the edge of the town on Saturday. As of then, Russians controlled one of the three main thoroughfares, one was contested and the third was under tenuous Ukrainian control.

The locals have been slipping out at night and shooting at Russian positions, said the volunteer, who asked only to be identified by his nickname, Spotter, for security reasons. Its understood that they will be taking no prisoners, he said of the firefights. These are people who have weapons and know the local area perfectly.

A doctor at a nearby hospital said it had received 25 wounded soldiers on Wednesday on the first day of the counterattack.

Ms. Myhova said Russian troops had twice entered her home in recent days. First, two soldiers who seemed to be scouts came into the yard, then three days ago, just before the Ukrainian counterattack, 10 Russian soldiers entered the house.

They searched everything, she said. They said they had picked up a telephone signal from the house.

The soldiers warned the family that if they informed anyone about the location of the Russian troops, they would shoot them. They pointed their guns at us, she said. They said, We can shoot you because we know your location.

When Mr. Burykovs 70-year-old grandfather, the owner of the house, began to remonstrate with them, the Russian soldiers told them that they were securing control over what was Russian land, citing the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus, which Russia claims as its ancestral state.

My grandfather tried to argue, Mr. Burykov said. He said, Its rubbish that its your land. I was born here. Go away.

On Wednesday, the day Ukraine mounted its counter-strikes, residents said the shelling worsened dramatically. There were four explosions around the house that shook the doors, and the sound of gunfire from assault rifles in the yard, Ms. Myhova said.

When they learned that volunteers were evacuating an elderly woman nearby, the couple, along with a sister of Mr. Burykov, asked to get out. But Mr. Burykovs parents, grandfather and other siblings stayed behind.

They want to go when there is a green corridor, Ms. Myhova said, referring to a humanitarian evacuation with guarantees of safety. But there will not be any, she said, since even if one is agreed, they shoot at the cars.

The Ukrainian army and volunteers evacuated about 150 residents from Irpin on Thursday, many of them pensioners who were struggling to survive after the fighting disrupted water, gas and electricity.

They are out of strength, said a volunteer paramedic, Oleh Lutsenko, 32, who was on duty at the entrance to Irpin Thursday. He treated three wounded soldiers, one with severe wounds from artillery fire, among the evacuees, and his team also brought out the bodies of three dead civilians all grandmothers, as he called them. Maybe they died from hunger, he said.

As his team pulled out just before 5 p.m., they came under machine gun fire, he said. Despite two days of counterattack, they were still in range of Russian guns.

While Ukrainian troops had success in stalling the Russian advance as it lumbered down the main highways toward Kyiv, Russian units have continued pushing south on the eastern and western flanks of the capital in an attempt to encircle it, military analysts have said.

The long columns of tanks that had backed up on highways to the north of Irpin have now fanned out into villages and forests outside of Kyiv, according to the volunteer, Spotter, who was interviewed at a gas station in a western district of the capital.

In his mid 50s, with a salt and pepper beard, he carried a walkie-talkie and said he ran an ad hoc intelligence unit, collecting information on the Russians positions in the suburbs and outlying villages.

They are hiding tanks in villages between houses, he said, adding that soldiers were also quartering in homes to avoid the cold.

Their dispersal was complicating the Ukrainian counterattack, since the Russian armor was interspersed in villages, where civilians lived, even if most people have fled the area.

After two major ambushes on Russian positions outside Kyiv, in the suburban towns of Bucha and Brovary, which together left dozens of charred tanks on main roads, the armored vehicles are now avoiding traveling in columns, he said.

They are now digging in, Spotter said of Russian soldiers, as Ukraines artillery has been pounding them from the edge of Kyiv. They didnt expect this resistance.

Volunteers guarding the checkpoint on the main western highway that heads out of Kyiv to the city of Zhytomyr said Russian troops had seized control of the road and vehicles could no longer safely use the highway except to a nearby settlement of Chaika.

It was unclear, Spotter said, how far south Russian troops had moved after crossing the Zhytomyr highway, though it appeared the intention of the Russian forces was to keep encircling the capital and eventually seal off access routes.

The advance was now stalled. They are regrouping, he said.

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What Happened on Day 23 of Russias Invasion of Ukraine - The New York Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally at a packed Moscow stadium Friday and lavished praise on his troops fighting in Ukraine, three weeks into the invasion that has led to heavier-than-expected Russian losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home.

Meanwhile, the leader of Russias delegation in diplomatic talks with Ukraine said the sides have narrowed their differences. The Ukrainian side said its position remained unchanged.

The invasion has touched off a burst of antiwar protests inside Russia, and the Moscow rally was surrounded by suspicions it was a Kremlin-manufactured display of patriotism. Several Telegram channels critical of the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in a number of regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts marking the eighth anniversary of Moscows annexation of Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine. Those reports could not be independently verified.

Elsewhere, Russian troops continued to rain lethal fire on Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and pounded an aircraft repair installation on the outskirts of Lviv, close to the Polish border. Ukrainian officials said late Friday that the besieged southern port city of Mariupol lost its access to the Azov Sea, and Russian forces were still trying to storm the city. It was unclear whether they had seized it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces are blockading the largest cities to create a humanitarian catastrophe with the goal of persuading Ukrainians to cooperate. He said the Russians are preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in central and southeastern Ukraine.

This is a totally deliberate tactic, Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation, which was recorded outside in Kyiv, with the presidential office behind him.

In a rare public appearance by Putin since the start of the war, he praised Russian troops: Shoulder to shoulder, they help and support each other, he said. We have not had unity like this for a long time, he added to cheers from the crowd.

Moscow police said more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium. The event included patriotic songs, including a performance of Made in the U.S.S.R., with the opening lines Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, its all my country.

Seeking to portray the war as just, Putin paraphrased the Bible to say of Russias troops: There is no greater love than giving up ones soul for ones friends.

Taking to the stage where a sign read For a world without Nazism, he railed against his foes in Ukraine with a baseless claim that they are neo-Nazis. Putin continued to insist his actions were necessary to prevent genocide an idea flatly rejected by leaders around the globe.

Video feeds of the event cut out at times but showed a loudly cheering crowd that broke into chants of Russia!

Putins appearance marked a change from his relative isolation of recent weeks, when he has been shown meeting with world leaders and his staff either at extraordinarily long tables or via videoconference.

In the wake of the invasion, the Kremlin has clamped down harder on dissent and the flow of information, arresting thousands of antiwar protesters, banning sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and instituting tough prison sentences for what is deemed to be false reporting on the war, which Moscow refers to as a special military operation.

The OVD-Info rights group that monitors political arrests reported that at least seven independent journalists had been detained ahead of or while covering the anniversary events in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

High above the conflict, three Russian cosmonauts arrived Friday at the International Space Station wearing bright yellow flight suits with blue accents matching the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Video of one of the cosmonauts taken as the capsule prepared to dock with the space station showed him wearing a blue flight suit. It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms were intended to send.

When cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was asked about the yellow suits, he said every crew chooses its own suits, and they had a lot of yellow material they needed to use so thats why we had to wear yellow.

Since the war started, many people have used the Ukrainian flag and its colors to show solidarity with the country.

Back in Moscow, Putin stood on stage in a white turtleneck and a blue down jacket and spoke for about five minutes. Some people, including presenters at the event, wore T-shirts or jackets with a Z a symbol seen on Russian tanks and other military vehicles in Ukraine and embraced by supporters of the war.

Putins quoting of the Bible and an 18th-century Russian admiral reflected his increasing focus in recent years on history and religion as binding forces in Russias post-Soviet society. His branding of his enemies as Nazis evoked what many Russians consider their countrys finest hour, the defense of the motherland from Germany during World War II.

The rally came as Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said that the sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting a neutral status.

That is the issue where the parties have made their positions maximally close, Medinsky said in remarks carried by Russian media. He added that the sides are now halfway on issues regarding the demilitarization of Ukraine.

Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, characterized the Russian assessment as intended to provoke tension in the media. He tweeted: Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulas.

Zelenskyy again appealed to Putin to hold talks with him directly. Its time to meet, time to speak, he said. I want to be heard by everyone, especially in Moscow.

In other developments, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours in a bid by the U.S. to deter Beijing from providing military or economic assistance for Russias invasion.

Earlier Friday, one person was reported killed in the missile attack near Lviv. Satellite photos showed the strike destroyed a repair hangar and appeared to damage two other buildings. Ukraine said it had shot down two of six missiles in the volley, which came from the Black Sea.

The early morning attack was the closest strike yet to the center of Lviv, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or join the fight. The war has swelled the citys population by some 200,000.

Zelenskyy boasted that Ukraines defenses have proved much stronger than expected, and Russia didnt know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.

But British Chief of Defense Intelligence Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull warned that after failing to take major Ukrainian cities, Russian forces are shifting to a strategy of attrition that will entail reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower, resulting in higher civilian casualties and a worsening humanitarian crisis.

In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked. Rescue workers continued to search for survivors in the ruins of a theater that was being used a shelter when it was blasted by a Russian airstrike Wednesday in Mariupol.

Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliaments human rights commissioner, said at least 130 people had survived the theater bombing.

But according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter, Denisova told Ukrainian television. We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.

Satellite images on Friday from Maxar Technologies showed a long line of cars leaving Mariupol as people tried to evacuate, as well as devastation to homes, apartment buildings and stores.

Early morning barrages also hit a residential building in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, killing at least one person, according to emergency services, who said 98 people were evacuated from the building. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 19 were wounded in the shelling.

Ukrainian officials said a fireman was killed when Russian forces shelled an area where firefighters were trying to put out a blaze in the village of Nataevka, in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Two others were killed when strikes hit residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, according to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defense of the region around Ukraines capital, said his forces are well-positioned to defend the city and vowed: We will never give up. We will fight until the end. To the last breath and to the last bullet.

___

Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and other AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Putin appears at big rally as troops press attack in Ukraine - The Associated Press - en Espaol

A bloodied man empties his wallet to his creditor while being mercilessly attacked by an unprovoked assailant. This is the plight of Ukraine, which recently made a scheduled interest payment to private lenders as tanks rolled over its land and missiles struck its cities. Even before Vladimir Putin started bombing apartment blocks and maternity hospitals, Ukraine was Europes poorest country as measured by GDP per capita significantly poorer than Albania. Yet this war-ravaged country is saddled with unsustainable debt and as the piles of rubble grow, so do the repayments. Thats debt for Ukraine, but profits for western hedge funds. War, for some, is the ultimate money-spinner.

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 triggering a conflict in the east that had claimed thousands of lives before the current invasion Ukraine has been forced to borrow $61bn (46bn) from external lenders, according to calculations by the Jubilee Debt Campaign; a small sliver has been paid off, but what remains represents about a third of the countrys total economy. Ukraine was due to cough up $7.3bn this year alone more than its annual education budget. For a rich country blessed with peace, that would be manageable, but Ukrainians are poorer today than when the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago. At least $100bn worth of damage has already been inflicted to infrastructure from roads to bridges, hospitals to schools and, as you read this, that figure only mounts. Yet almost all of the financial assistance being given to Ukraine is in the form of loans. Precious funds will be diverted from rebuilding a shattered country, instead filling the coffers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and private bondholders.

Putins barbaric siege of Mariupol underlines just how urgent debt cancellation is. While the Russian army seeks to starve and bomb it into submission, the city increasingly suffers the fate of Grozny during the second Chechen war: razed to the ground, piece by piece. It is macabre but necessary to state that Mariupols present state may well be the future of other Ukrainian cities. Each day, billions are added to Ukraines reconstruction bill: it would be pure cruelty to expect this to be repaid as debt.

Thats why Ukrainian civil society organisations have launched a petition demanding Ukraines debt is cancelled. They note, too, that much of the supposed assistance given to the country has been accompanied by strict conditions: the IMF calls it economic restructuring, but its more honestly described as the imposition of free-market dogma, resulting, for instance, in a 650% surge in household gas prices since 2014. Previous governments had two options: either to fairly tax the fat cats and bring them out of the shadows, or to borrow from the IMF and others, Ukrainian economist Oleksandr Kravchuk told me. They chose the latter.

The Jubilee Debt Campaign has taken up this demand and begun to lobby MPs in Britain. Like millions of us, executive director Heidi Chow had that gnawing, helpless sense of weve got to do something. For some, that manifested itself in the demand for a no-fly zone. But in practice, she tells me, thats a shoot Russian military aircraft out of the sky zone, which could easily escalate into nuclear war. In contrast, this is a tangible and hugely impactful proposal with no risk of military escalation.

So why hasnt this commonsense demand been taken up by the powerful? In part, perhaps, its because Ukraines own government hasnt officially called for it, although some high-ranking officials have. They were quite keen before the war to pay debts and push forward their standing in Europe and the world, suggests Chow. Applying for any form of debt relief is a complicated and drawn-out process. Any fears that their ability to borrow and their global reputation may be damaged clearly need alleviating.

Yet the grisly fact is that as yet more loans are granted even though now without conditions vast profits are to be made. Ukrainian bonds are trading at about 25 cents in a dollar, and so if repayments continue, hedge funds and banks are set to make profits of more than 300%. That the profit margins of the already obscenely rich are being inflated by the bloody slaughter of civilians should surely be a cause of universal revulsion and sufficient impetus to action.

But if the IMF and World Bank cancel Ukraines debt, critics may ask, doesnt that mean less money in the pot to lend to other poorer countries? But theres a straightforward solution: richer countries, like our own, should contribute more to make up the shortfall. There is a precedent of sorts the G20s debt service suspension initiative suspended or cancelled nearly $11bn of poorer countries external debt because of Covid-19. If a pandemic is reason enough to write off debt, surely a war of aggression is too.

When this all ends hopefully in failure for Putin then Ukraine will need a modern-day Marshall plan, made up of grants, not a reconstruction financed by loans. In terms of the current moment, as the Jubilee Debt Campaign suggests, there should be a mechanism to automatically suspend debt repayments for countries suffering severe external shocks. Ukraine is in the midst of existential crisis as the Ukrainian social scientist Volodymyr Ishchenko told me: Personally, it feels like the country in which I was born may simply disappear. A country battered and bruised by war needs space to breathe. Thats in our power: cancel the debt.

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Theres an easy way to help Ukraine without military escalation: cancel its foreign debt - The Guardian

Recently, at a closed ski resort in Ukraines Carpathian Mountains, Roman Davydov leaned into a microphone and announced the latest news from the war. Kryvyi Rih, in southern Ukraine, was being attacked; a U.S. journalist had been shot; and the British Foreign Secretary had announced new sanctions on Russian oligarchs in London. Davydov, who is forty-three, with dark hair and an oft-furrowed brow, is the voice of Kraina FM, an independent radio station that, after Russian bombing began in Kyiv, relocated to an undisclosed location. (The staff of Kraina FM asked me not to identify the village, for security reasons.) Outside Davydovs improvised booth, a corner office lent to Kraina FM by a local accountant, an odd sense of normalcy reigned. Beyond the ski-rental shop, where a cluster of sandbags had been piled, a man in a blue jacket and ski goggles operated a small lift for a childrens slope in the bright sunshine.

The area, which is several hours south of Lviv, has become a shelter for displaced people, Bogdan Bolkhovetsky, Davydovs colleague, told me. Bolkhovetsky, Kraina FMs station general manager, said that he and Davydov had arrived in the village by pure chance. The west of the country is full of refugees, and there are few places for families to stay as they make their way toward the borders of Europe. We found this place because it was the only place vacant, Bolkhovetsky said. They arrived in the evening on February 27th; just days later they were setting up the station in a sloped-ceilinged, wood-panelled space that barely fit their two desks. They acquired laptops and a mixer from the supply of aid making its way from the rest of Europe to Ukraine. We called our friends in Austria and they were so quick, Bolkhovetsky said. Guys weve never met just sent us the equipment, and a friend of ours brought this equipment in. I mean, they brought us these German laptops and the mixing console and weve never seen these people before.

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Kraina FM is an independent radio station that grew out of a now defunct channel called Radio EU. Until the Russian invasion, the station mainly played Ukrainian rock and pop, although it also featured childrens programming and occasional news flashes that, when the channel was launched, in 2016, Davydov said would be the most independent among Kyivs radio stations. Kraina FM was more funny and easy, Davydov told me later, in an e-mail. Now its mostly just rock and not happy information. Like millions of other Ukrainians who have fled their homes, most of the stations staff left Kyiv after the fighting began. Everyone was scattered for two or three days, Bolkhovetsky told me. You look at Google Maps, you see the name of the city and you just start calling hotels to stay overnight.

Bolkhovetsky, who is forty-nine, had awoken from a terrible nightmare on February 24th, when he saw a news alertPutin addresses the nationand heard the first low thuds of Russian bombs exploding around the capital. I just started packing the bags, throwing everything in, he said. With his wife and nine-year-old son, he fled to a summer house outside Kyiv. Within days, Russian helicopters were attacking nearby. Some flew low enough for him to see the pilots in the cockpit. The faces look like you, he said. Just people on the job, like fucking robots. His son spent most of the day in the basement, still in his pajamas. At one point, when the helicopters flew off, Bolkhovetsky piled his family into the car. Once he had reached a town that was not being attacked, he called Davydov, and together they searched for a safe place to set up the station.

Davydov had fled Kyiv with his wife and three-year-old daughter, heading to his wifes office in central Kyiv, where they thought they would be safe. But Russian shelling forced them to seek shelter underground for days. Davydov had a microphone and a connector in the trunk of his car, a setup that he had previously used to record soccer news late at night for early-morning bulletins. Despite the shelling, Davydov kept the broadcasts going, recording one-man news items and uploading them remotely during pauses in the explosions. For two or three days we broadcast only with my one microphone, he said. In the background of these first recordings, one can hear children and dogsDavydov was recording them in the crowded shelter with his head enveloped in a plaid shirt to muffle the sound.

Both Bolkhovetsky and Davydov have spent most of their careers working in radio. Davydov studied economics, but, when he was eighteen, he started doing humor programs for a station in what is now called Kamianske, a city of more than two hundred thousand people on the Dnieper River, and never looked back. He has worked just about every job on the air sincecopywriter, traffic manager, music director, brand voices, program director. In 2004, he moved to Kyiv. Bolkhovetsky, who was born in Luhansk, an eastern region of Ukraine claimed by Russia-backed separatists, worked as an English and French teacher before going into radio in the late nineteen-nineties. He moved to Kyiv in 2005 and worked at a succession of different radio stations.

Once they got Kraina FM up and running at their mountain location, a representative from the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting in Ukraine requested that they play a national broadcast. Everybody else switched to the national station, Bolkhovetsky told me. It was a continuous broadcast of just one program on TV stations and everywhere. Bolkhovetsky and Davydov decided to continue their own programming. I mean, you tune in to any station and it is the same, Bolkhovetsky told me. Whats the point? Lets have one which is different. They decided to re-create Kraina FM as the station of national resistance.

At the moment, Kraina FM is broadcasting to some twenty cities and online. During the first week, the programming was almost exclusively news about the Russian advance. By the second week, the station had morphed into something profoundly different, cordinating humanitarian logistics and explaining which towns needed what. And a lighter side also crept into the programming. In the first week, we didnt think about something funny, Davydov said. And now its humor about Russiansaggressive humorpoetry, patriotic poetry, some little features about Ukrainians. They broadcast a famous Ukrainian Father Christmas telling childrens tales at night and a psychologist who gives advice for how to care for children during days marked by shelling and air strikestalk to them kindly, show love, listen, and dont contradict what the child says.

A network of around fifteen people, in Ukraine, Poland, and Russia, helps them put out Kraina FMs programs remotely. They use Ukrainian news agencies and the app Telegram to source and put together bulletins. The Internet connection is awful, and theyre often unable to upload stories and recordings. Usually, Kraina FMs programming reaches about a million people, but these days they have no idea how many people are listening. The person who would normally monitor that is likely still in Kyiv, presumably with more urgent matters to contemplate. Perhaps the real measure of the stations popularity has been its drives to locate supplies for the Ukrainian military, first responders, and other humanitarian groups. One day a television producer in Kyiv told them that the military needed a hundred laptops. Davydov and Bolkhovetsky announced the request on air. We made the announcement, like, every fifteen minutes or twenty minutes, Bolkhovetsky said. About two hours later, the military called back; they had enough laptops. Nevertheless, laptops continued to flood in. When I asked why they continued to produce the show, Bolkhovetsky pointed to this experience. What other reason do you need in this moment?

The ski village is something of a transit hub for people fleeing across the border. People come, people go, Bolkhovetsky told me. Thats how it works here.At a certain point, the time came for their own families to leavetheir wives and children had been anxiously spending their days in the resorts hotel rooms while Bolkhovetsky and Davydov got the station running. Both families fled to other parts of Europe. Its better to be by ourselves, Bolkhovetsky told me. They will take care of themselves and well take care of business and ourselves. Still, saying goodbye, he said, was terrible, like never before. Its not compared to anything in my life, to anything.

Under Ukraines current martial law, military reservists between the age of eighteen and sixty have to register to be conscripted into the Army, and all other men in that age group are not supposed to leave the country. Even if Bolkhovetsky and Davydov wanted to leave, they would not be able to. I asked Bolkhovetsky and Davydov whether, if called up, they would fight against the Russians. On one of their first days in the village, Bolkhovetsky told me, We went to the local military station and we said, We are here. What do you want us to do?

What can you do? the local soldiers asked them.

We can do radio, Bolkhovetsky replied.

On hearing this, the unit chief looked at him. So go and make radio, he said.

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Ukraines Radio Station of National Resistance - The New Yorker