
December 29, 2015
The geese in southwestern France would produce what may be the country's most controversial, yet scrumptious, delicacy: foie gras.
The geese in southwestern France would produce what may be the country's most controversial, yet scrumptious, delicacy: foie gras.
UK has called the trial in Russian-occupied Donetsk a "sham" after the death sentences of two UK citizens and a Moroccan who were fighting in the Ukrainian army. Other breaking stories include Putin's Peter The Great comparison and a new post-McDonald's logo in Moscow.
A family attends an exposition of destroyed Russian war vehicles in an Old Town of Kyiv
The U.K. has demanded the release of two British men who have been sentenced to death in Russia-occupied Donetsk. Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinnerreceived the sentence from a Russian-proxy court, along with a Moroccan man, Saaudun Brahim, for fighting on the side of the Ukrainian military. Aslin and Pinner had been living in Ukraine at the time of the invasion. They surrendered in Mariupol in mid-April.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Sign up to our free daily newsletter.British Foreign Secretary Liz Trusscondemned the ruling: “This is a sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy.” She promised to “do everything we can” to support the pair’s families, who have said the men need urgent legal and medical aid. Ukraine and Britain both declared that the “show trial” is in violation of the Geneva Convention.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.K. has promised that the two men will be given priority in a prisoner swap.
Visiting the exhibition "Peter I. The birth of an empire"
It was another “history lesson” from a Vladimir Putin very much focused on the present. Speaking at an exhibition Thursday devoted to Peter the Great, Putin claimed that the emperor’s Great Northern War against Sweden in 1700-1721 had been a “return” of historic Russian land, not a conquest of territory, Moscow daily Kommersant reports.
“Apparently it is our fate too to return (territory) and strengthen ourselves,” he said in an apparent reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s proxies in Ukraine said earlier that the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas and Zaporizhzhia Oblast, as well as Kherson Oblast, may be annexed by Russia. This comes several months after the Kremlin made clear that it’s intentions were not to take territory but to ‘liberate’ it from ‘neo-Nazis’ and the ‘oppressive’ Kyiv regime.
‘Peter I waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, they say he rejected something ... He didn’t reject anything! He returned! Yes, that’s how it was! Where St. Petersburg was founded, when he founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognized this territory as Russia, everyone recognized it as Sweden.”
Mass graves in a cemetery near Mariupol
The independent Russian media Meduza has published a series of stories of those who’ve remained in the destroyed city of Mariupol, where much of the focus is on burying neighbours in the pits left in the ground by weeks of Russian shelling.
Yaroslav Dema, who buried eight people in March in the yard of a neighborhood house, says that Mariupol became a “huge cemetery” during the siege: neighbors everywhere buried the dead civilians themselves, in the street, without any rituals. For "Meduza," journalist Kirill Rukov learned the story of five - out of thousands - buried in the yards, and tracked down those who buried them with their own hands.
Also, according to the latest U.K. Defense Ministry intelligence update, there has been an outbreak of cholera in the southern port city now controlled by Russia, as medical service are “already near collapse.”Young Army cadets take part in an annual parade held by the Moscow cadet movement
A young man from Stavropol, Russia used his required appearance before the national draft board to call the war in Ukraine "a disgusting and criminal phenomenon, which deprives people of the most precious thing - life.”
Moscow daily Kommersant reports that the man in the southern Caucus city is now facing disciplinary action and a fine for “public desecration of the Russian army.”
Russia holds an annual conscription of young men each spring to replenish the national military reserves, though the Kremlin has insisted that those drafted will not be sent to Ukraine.
Ukraine looks set to inch forward on the long road to full European Union membership. The E.U.’s executive arm, the European Commission,is expected to recommend the country’s candidate status next week. The recommendation would still need to be adopted, and is likely to be tied to conditions connected to the rule of law and anti-corruption legislation.
On Friday, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said the EU’s legislative body was firmly behind Ukraine’s bid to join.
Kyiv applied for fast-track E.U. membership shortly after the Russian invasion. Ukrainereceived support from Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, but the special membership process was rejected by Western European leaders.
This time around, the candidate status would need approval by member states. E.U. leaders will discuss the move in a summit later in June. Several countries have already said they are against the move because they believe it is unfair to give Ukraine preference over existing applicants.
Macky Sall President of the Republic of Senegal
Senegal President Macky Sall, the most recent head of state to meet with Vladimir Putin, says he demanded that Russia lift the blockade of the port of Odessa, in light of the growing food crisis in Africa.
In an interview with French daily Le Figaro, Sall recounted his meeting last week with Putin Moscow, along with Moussa Faki, chairperson of the African Union Commission. The pair was received by Putin for about three hours, and discussed the war in Ukraine and in particular, the risks of a global food crisis weighing on the African continent.
Senegal’s President asked the Russian leader to lift the blockade in Odessa to allow Ukrainian wheat exports to resume, which he said Putin was in favor of. He also argued the sanctions implemented by the European Union had aggravated the issue and warned that Africa could face famine if nothing is done. “I told [ Putin] that we wanted this war to end because Africa is a victim of this war,” Sall told the French daily.
New Russian fast food chain logo
handout
A new Russian fast food chain, formerly McDonald’s, has revealed its new logo before reopening its doors Saturday. The new branding shows a circle and two lines with a , representing a burger and fries.
The new name of the chain has not yet been decided, reported Russia’s state-owned news agency, TASS, as 15 restaurants are set to open their doors this weekend. Sistema PBO, now managing the business, explained that, “the green background of the logo symbolizes the quality of products and service that our guests are accustomed to.”
Due to the war in Ukraine, McDonald’s decided last month to leave the country permanently, announcing that Alexander Govor, who currently operates 25 McDonald's restaurants in Siberia, will take on the firm's restaurants and staff, operating them under a new brand.
Under the agreement, McDonald's said it would retain its trademark in Russia and has the option of buying back its restaurants within 15 years.
McDonald’s has been operating in Russia for 30 years, having first opened its doors in Moscow soon after the Cold War ended.
UK has called the trial in Russian-occupied Donetsk a "sham" after the death sentences of two UK citizens and a Moroccan who were fighting in the Ukrainian army. Other breaking stories include Putin's Peter The Great comparison and a new post-McDonald's logo in Moscow.
Israel's vocal support for Iranians protesting the regime will lay the grounds for ties with a future democratic Iran, whenever that may come.
For many countries, the global food crisis has already begun. As enough food to feed the world for several weeks remains trapped in Ukraine, Russia and Turkey met to discuss the problem. But they cannot solve it alone, says independent Russian media Kommersant.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.