
April 07, 2016
No matter where we went or how long, my wife and I would always take the time to write a couple of postcards to family and friends. And as far as I can tell, there's no fixed rule for how many days it'd take for them to arrive.
No matter where we went or how long, my wife and I would always take the time to write a couple of postcards to family and friends. And as far as I can tell, there's no fixed rule for how many days it'd take for them to arrive.
As NATO leaders meet in Madrid, Finland and Sweden look much closer to joining the alliance after Turkey dropped its objections to their membership. It's yet another momentous change underway since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
International leaders after having their photograph taken before the start of the NATO 2022
A high-stakes NATO summit has kicked off in Madrid, as leaders of the world’s largest defense alliance discuss the war in Ukraine and key decisions that will shape the organization’s future direction. NATO Secretary-GeneralJens Stoltenberg said the Russian invasion of its neighbor had prompted a fundamental shift in its approach to defense.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Sign up to our free daily newsletter.Finland and Sweden look much closer to joining the alliance after Turkey dropped its objections to their membership. The three countries released a joint memorandum that “extend[ed] their full support against threats to each other's security," FinnishPresident Sauli Niinistö said.
British Prime MinisterBoris Johnson reiterated his — and NATO’s — support for Ukraine. However, membership for Ukraineis not likely to be on the agenda. Instead, leaders will discuss increased defense expenditure and a unified message toward China.
Russia will be watching the summit closely. Russian daily Kommersant has already reacted with bemusement to the appearance of “Russian salad,” a common Spanish dish, on the menu.
\u201c\u26a1\ufe0fIndonesian President Joko Widodo has arrived in Kyiv. The program of the visit includes a visit to the city of Irpin and a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy.\u201d— Flash (@Flash) 1656493535
Indonesian President Joko Widodo is visiting Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, before traveling to Moscow later this week.
Ahead of his trip, Widodo said in a news conference on Sunday that his mission regarding Ukraine and Russia is to “build dialogue, stop war and build peace," Indonesian national news agency Antara reported.
The Indonesian leader has invited both Zelensky and Putin to the G20 Summit, scheduled in Bali in November of this year.
Zelensky on the phone with Biden on June 15
Sarsenov Daniiar/Ukraine Preside/Planet Pix/ZUMA
U.S. President Joe Biden has been evasive when asked if he plans to follow European leaders by visiting Kyiv. This week, the war in Ukraine has loomed heavily over Biden’s trips to Germany and Spain for meetings with world leaders at the G7 and NATO summits.
Already on this side of the Atlantic, the staging would thus seem perfect for the U.S. president to reaffirm support for Ukraine by going to Kyiv, following in the footsteps of top European leaders, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and UN chief Antonio Guterres, who have paid recent visits to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
And yet, save a surprise detour this week, it appears that Biden will in fact not be making the much anticipated trip to Kyiv. What's holding him back? Cameron Manley looks further in this Worldcrunch piece.
Kherson
Almost simultaneously, Ukrainian and Russian media reported the declaration Wednesday by the pro-Russian head of the occupied Kherson region that a referendum on joining Russia will be held. And the leader, Kiril Stremousov, left little doubt of the result.
“We are preparing for the referendum, and we will hold it. The Kherson region will make a decision and join the Russian Federation, become a full-fledged subject,” Stremousov said in a video message published on his Telegram channel.
Stremousov said that the return to Moscow’s fold of Kherson, which was occupied by the Russian army in early March and is the closest region to the annexed Crimea, will “will build just that country that everyone dreamed of for a long, long time, in which we once lived, the very principle of the Soviet Union, where every woman on the street was a mother, where the friendship of peoples was not only announced, but also by default.”
Aftermath of Russian attack on mall
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released footage of the Russian strike on the mall in Kremenchuk during his nightly address on Wednesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry continues to deny the attack and claims the target was a factory with a stockpile of Western weapons and ammunition. The death toll has increased to 20.
Zelensky accused Russia of attacking innocent civilians "purposefully" by hitting the busy shopping center and "wanted to kill as many people as possible in a peaceful city."
Ukrainian soldiers surrender to Russia
A top Russian official said that Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered to the Russian army will not be exchanged with Ukraine. In an interview for the Russian news site Fontanka, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, said that a recent influx of more than 2000 Ukrainian soldiers would not be part of intermittent exchanges with Kyiv for captured Russian troops.
Rather than return to their families, the captured soldiers will go to pre-detention centers, and will face trials on charges that they are somehow responsible for the destruction of Donbas following the Russian invasion.
Since the second month of war, though there was no fixed agreement, yet the exchange of imprisoned soldiers was regularly carried out. This is the first time that Russia has refused not only to turn over prisoners (which they are obliged to do according to the Geneva Convention) but prosecute them.
American actor and director Sean Penn visits Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
Hollywood actor Sean Penn paid a visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the second time since the start of the Ukraine war. Penn visited Ukraine on February 24, the first day of the war, and shot footage for his upcoming documentary revealing the unfolding crisis, which he has been working on since last year.
When missiles started shelling Ukrainian cities, the Hollywood actor found himself among tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Poland on foot. According to Variety, Penn is producing the movie for VICE studios. His charity CORE held a fundraiser in support of Ukraine.
\u201cThe all-Ukraine battle between Lesia Tsurenko and Anhelina Kalinina is under way on Court 12. Tsurenko is wearing a blue and yellow ribbon in support of her country in the war with Russia #Wimbledon\u201d— George Sessions (@George Sessions) 1656503584
Two Ukrainian tennis players, Anhelina Kalinina and Lesia Tsurenko, will face each other in a second-round match at Wimbledon on Wednesday. Both players hope they can draw attention to the ongoing war in their country.
After Kalinia defeated tennis player Anna Bondar, she used the prize money to help her family back in Ukraine. “If you go further, you earn more money. Then I’m able to help, and I’m helping as much as I can and not only to my family,” she said.
Tsurenko, like Kalinina, wants to continue to play tennis and use her platform to help her country. “We just want to remind [people] that Ukraine is in trouble and we need help," she said. Tsukenko added that it was great that the two Ukrainian players were meeting in the second round “and so it will be one Ukrainian in the third round.”
Meanwhile, another Ukrainian tennis star, Elina Svitolin, has decided not to participate at Wimbledon, after deciding to take a break from her career to focus on raising funds and awareness for the war in Ukraine.As NATO leaders meet in Madrid, Finland and Sweden look much closer to joining the alliance after Turkey dropped its objections to their membership. It's yet another momentous change underway since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
With an activist Supreme Court creating a gap between democratic rhetoric and reality in the U.S., and Russia and China eager to flex military muscle, the full-force return to hard power looks bound for dominance.
Jobs for Ukrainian refugees, too busy to quit in Hong Kong, the rise of 'asynchronous' work....and more
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.