October 10, 2011
Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims win Nobel economics prize, AP reported (developping).
Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims win Nobel economics prize, AP reported (developping).
Vadim Shishimarin had confessed to shooting an unarmed 62-year-old man in northeast Ukraine shortly after the invasion began.
Vadim Shishimarin in court
On Monday, Vadim Shishimarin became the first Russian soldier to be convicted of war crimes since the Russian invasion three months ago, found guilty of shooting an unarmed 62-year-old man in northeast Ukraine shortly after the invasion began.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Sign up to our free daily newsletter.Shishimarin, 21, who confessed to the shooting and asked the victim’s wife for forgiveness, was sentenced by a Kyiv court to life in prison.
Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the Kremlin is “concerned” about the treatment of Shishimarin. There is no death penalty in Ukraine, and Kyiv made a point of holding an open trial and following due process court proceedings.
Gazeta Wyborcza front page
Ukraine and Poland agreed on Sunday to establish a joint border customs control as well as a shared railway company to facilitate the movement of people and increase exports coming from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky said in his nightly address: “This will significantly speed up border procedures. It will remove most of the corruption risks. But it is also the beginning of our integration into the common customs space of the European Union. That is a truly historic process.”
This comes after Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit to Kyiv, making him the first foreign leader to address Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada. In his address, Duda emphasizes the strong relationship between Poland and Ukraine: “no one can break our unity”, he said to Zelensky.
Nearly 3.5 million Ukrainian refugees have entered Poland since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Due to this, Zelensky also announced the preparation of a bill that will mirror the law passed in Poland about Ukrainian citizens who were seeking refuge. “It will be the right gesture to pass such a law in Ukraine," Zelensky said. "Let it be so that the citizens of Poland will never have to use such a law. But let us show our gratitude and our respect."
Young men are sitting on Russian tanks in Afghanistan, abandoned during the Soviet-Afghan war
The Soviet military is believed to have lost some 15,000 troops during the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which is considered its worst defeat. Now British defense intelligence estimate that the war in Ukraine, which is reaching its three-month mark, has brought on the same number of casualties for the Russian military.
The combination of poor tactics at low altitudes with limited air cover, lack of flexibility and a team approach that is ready to increase failures and repeat mistakes has led to such a high level of losses, which continues to increase during the Donbas offensive, the UK military said in a report posted online .
Intelligence experts emphasize that the Russian public has in the past been sensitive to the losses suffered during the wars of choice. Therefore, as the number of victims in Ukraine grows, the losses will become more and more obvious, and public dissatisfaction with the war and the desire to voice it may increase.
Garry Kasparov in a chess tournament in Lison
Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov has been one of Vladimir Putin's harshest critics since he took office. In an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza (also translated and reported by Die Welt), he said he believes Ukraine will win the war, and that “the victory of Ukraine and the liberation of Crimea will give Russia a chance to return to normality.”
Kasparov says three overlapping conditions would have to be met to guarantee change: Sanctions against Russia must not be lifted before Ukraine is liberated. Russia must pay reparations for the destruction of Ukraine. And finally, war criminals must be brought to justice. Once these conditions are met, the new beginning will be possible. “The Russians are infected,” Kasparov said. “A military defeat is the antidote.”
Kasparov, who was added to the Kremlin’s list of “foreign agents”, i.e. enemies of the people, on Friday, believes that a new and improved Russian state can be created with the right conditions. “There are millions of Russians abroad who are waiting for Russia to open up. For them it would be something wonderful to return and work for a completely new state.”
Pro-Kurdish protesters in Istanbul in March
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks over the weekend with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, and separately with the leaders of Finland and Sweden, holding to his position that Turkey will block the two Nordic nations’ bid to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
"Unless Sweden and Finland clearly show that they will stand in solidarity with Turkey on fundamental issues, especially in the fight against terrorism, we will not approach these countries' NATO membership positively," Erdogan said, according to his office.
Erdogan has complained that both Finland and Sweden are harbouring “terrorists,” citing groups that he considers political enemies, including the Kurdish organization PKK.
Washington Institute fellow Soner Cagaptay said Turkey may be more ready to accept Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, than Sweden. As details slowly emerge, it’s become clear that Erdgoan is indeed not bluffing.
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A 16-year-old Russian student posted an apology video Sunday after having denounced the invasion of Ukraine at her graduation ceremony: “No to war! Freedom to Ukraine! Damn Putin!,” Zukhra Alibekova had said at the school in Izberbash, in the southern Caucus region of Dagestan.
The telegram channel Dagestanskiye Izvestia published the video with the teen saying she regrets her actions, explaining that she "just wanted to draw attention" to herself. In a second video, the girl's mother also apologizes, and says her daughter was facing "stress" and "home problems." The mother also declared her support for Vladimir Putin and the "special operation," which is what the Ukraine war is referred to in Russia.
Dagestan’s governor Sergei Melikov had personally called the mayor of Izberbash demanding to look into what happened, and administrative protocols have been drawn up against the schoolgirl and her mother.
It is important to note that Dagestan is the region where many of Russian short-term contract soldiers come from to fight in Ukraine.
A sign outside a closed Levi's shop in the Aviapark Shopping and Leisure Centre in Russia
After McDonald’s, another iconic American consumer brand — Levi Strauss & Co — has announced it is halting its business in Russia, in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow-based business daily Kommersant cited anonymous sources for the news of the pullout after 29 years of doing business in Russia.
The jeans retailer had long been banned by the Soviets throughout the Cold War as an object of American culture. It had suspended its business just after the invasion, but now is exiting the country completely.
McDonald’s announced its definitive departure from Russia one week ago.
handout
Anastasiya Tikha (20) and her husband, Arthur Lee (26), fought their way through bombs and gunfire to save the animals in their care including dogs, cats, turtles and more, reports The Guardian.
It all started with a picture of Anastasiya that went viral. She is pictured trying to cross a bridge to travel from Irpin to Kyiv under Russian fire. The couple made seven crossings in total, in order to save as many animals as possible.
“We had too much to do to be worried or scared”, said Tykha, who has run an animal shelter in Irpin for four years. The couple along with their animals were able to flee to a southwestern district of Kyiv, where a disactivated sauna on the side of a house had been made available to them and their animals to stay in.
They are now back in Irpin and their shelter has grown to 30 dogs and 10 cats.
Vadim Shishimarin had confessed to shooting an unarmed 62-year-old man in northeast Ukraine shortly after the invasion began.
The Colombian president recently said that the country had exported one million barrels of carbon-neutral or offset oil. But in an unregulated carbon market, such a claim is pure greenwashing.
The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation suit has become a Hollywood media (sh*t) storm, but there are troubling real consequences in the way domestic violence is being portrayed, when the victim is less-than-perfect.
When the two Nordic countries confirmed their intention to join NATO this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his plans to block the application. Accusing Sweden and Finland of' "harboring" some of his worst enemies may not allow room for him to climb down.
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.