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TOPIC: war in ukraine

FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

A New Survey Of Ukrainian Refugees: Here's What Will Bring Them Back Home

With the right support, Ukrainians are ready to return, even to new parts of the country where they've never lived.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, millions of Ukrainians fled their homes and went abroad. Many remain outside Ukraine. The Center for Economic Strategy and the Info Sapiens research agency surveyed these Ukrainian war refugees to learn more about who they are and how they feel about going home.

According to the survey, half of Ukrainians who went abroad are children. Among adults, most (83%) are women, and most (42%) are aged 35-49.

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Most Ukrainian refugees have lost their income due to the war: 12% do not have enough money to buy food, and 28% have enough only for food.

The overwhelming majority of adult refugees (70%) have higher education. This figure is much higher than the share of people with higher education in Ukraine (29%) and the EU (33%).

The majority of Ukrainian refugees reside in Poland (38%), Germany (20%), the Czech Republic (12%), and Italy (6%). In these countries, they can obtain temporary protection, giving them the right to stay, work, and access healthcare and education systems.

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A Russian Soldier Confessed To Killing A Ukrainian Civilian — So Moscow Convicted Him Of Spreading Fake News

After Russian soldiers committed multiple war crimes last year during the attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, some confessed to their crimes. But now they are being tried in Russia for spreading misinformation about the military.

Following multiple reports of war crimes in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine, Russian soldier Daniil Frolkin was interviewed last August by Vazhnye Istorii. In the conversation with the reporter for the independent Russian media, Frolkin confessed to the murder of an unarmed civilian who Ukrainian authorities believe was a 47-year-old named Ruslan Yaremchuk.

Now this public act of truth-telling has led to Frolkin standing trial in Russia and being convicted for spreading misinformation about the Russian military.

He was found guilty and sentenced to probation, though the Russian prosecutor had asked for six years of prison. After the court proceeding Wednesday, Frolkin quickly left and refused to talk to journalists.

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Why The Truth On Nord Stream Sabotage Matters

A new report blames the attack last September on a pro-Ukrainian outfit. It is hardly the last word on the case, but a good sign that the truth will come out in the end, which is crucial to maintain support in the West.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Who sabotaged the two Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea?

The famous pipelines, an absolute symbol of Germany's — now, former — dependence on Russian gas, exploded at the bottom of the sea last September. No one claimed responsibility for this act during the war in Ukraine, giving free rein to all hypotheses, speculations, and inevitable conspiracy theories.

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There is new information in the investigation, without providing a definitive answer on the identity or motivation of the perpetrators. Germany, which led the investigation, revealed yesterday that it had identified a ship that could have been used to carry out the operation. This boat had been rented by a Polish company owned by Ukrainians.

This Ukrainian lead was immediately denied by the authorities in Kyiv.

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Alliance Or Annexation: What Are Putin's Ultimate Plans For Belarus?

Putin has stated in the past that Ukraine and Belarus should be a part of the Russian Federation. But his plans in Belarus have been postponed by war on the other neighbor, and the shrinking room for maneuver of Minsk's strongman Alexander Lukashenko

-Analysis-

MINSK — A document was recently leaked to the press that was reportedly commissioned two years ago by the Russian presidential administration: "Strategic Goals of the Russian Federation on the Belarusian Direction."

This plan provides for the complete subordination of Belarus's political, economic, and cultural life by 2030. Belarusian laws are to be brought in line with Russian regulations, the Russian language is to dominate over the Belarusian language, and the influence of "pro-Western nationalist forces" is to be limited.

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A separate section is devoted to "passportization" — that is, the issuing Russian identity documents to Belarusians under a simplified procedure. At the final stage, the plan envisages forming a common legal system, introducing a single currency, total control over the information field, completely unifying the customs and tax space, and creating a common command system of the armed forces.

Interestingly, Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko did not deny the reality of the document, adding that he didn't see anything outrageous in the Kremlin's plans.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

What Happens When A Ukrainian Asks ChatGPT About Crimea

The public version of the Artificial Intelligence-driven chatbot is not yet fully plugged into the real-time internet. But there was an enlightening conversation going back to 2014, when the conflict in Ukraine actually started. ChatGPT’s hedging responses may help explain why the world wasn’t prepared for Putin’s invasion a year ago.

After a year of talking (arguing, pleading, crying) with all sorts of humans about the war between Russia and Ukraine, the time came to have the conversation with ChatGPT.

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The past 365 days, like other Ukrainians, have been consumed by a war that seems drudged up from the 19th century. But I have long been interested in the potential of Artificial Intelligence and the machine revolution, I believe in the three laws of robotics, and have grown up on the new-wave of American science fiction.

Still, I walked into my first contact with ChatGPT carefully. I knew the machine would not have responses about the past year since it is trained on content only until 2021. But I also suspected that its post-2014 view of the situation in Ukraine — following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its war in Donbas — might shed some light on how we got here.

I also knew that the machine’s responses would be strung together sentences and ideas from humans — and as I said, I’ve had my fair share of arguments with them about Ukraine.

Rather than slowly wade into the subject, I started the conversation with a direct question — and yes, all of my questions are those of a Ukrainian human.

The following is our full, lightly edited “chat”:

Let us begin, who owns Crimea?

The ownership of Crimea is a politically contentious issue, it has been claimed at various times in history by different groups, including the Crimean Tatars, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Ukraine.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Boris Grozovsky

The Militarization Of Russia's Economy, And The Demise Of The Oligarchs

By putting the economy on a war footing, Putin risks returning Russia to the days of Stalinist totalitarianism, where there will be no oligarchs or businesses left, only loyal administrators.

-Analysis-

MOSCOW — The war with Ukraine has not gone according to Vladimir Putin's plan. Eleven months have passed, but less than 17% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, is under Russian control.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

And If It Had Been Zelensky? How The War Became Bigger Than Any One Person

Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky was killed Wednesday in a helicopter crash. The cause is still unknown, but the high-profile victim could just have well been President Zelensky instead. It raises the question of whether there are indispensable figures on either side in a war of this nature?

-Analysis-

The news came at 8 a.m., local time: a helicopter had crashed in Brovary, near Kyiv, with all the top management of Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs on board, including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. There were no survivors.

Having come just days after a Russian missile killed dozens in a Dnipro apartment, the first thought of most Ukrainians was about the senseless loss of innocent life in this brutal war inflicted on Ukraine. Indeed, it occurred near a kindergarten and at least one of the dozens killed was a small child.

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But there was also another kind of reaction to this tragedy, since the victims this time included the country's top official for domestic security. For Ukrainians (and others) have been wondering — regardless of whether or not the crash was an accident — if instead of Interior Minister Monastyrsky, it had been President Volodymyr Zelensky in that helicopter. What then?

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Maxim Katz

The Dnipro Massacre, A Perfect Embodiment Of Russia's War

Russian writer Maxim Katz breaks down what it means when a missile is destined for an ordinary apartment block, and death counts start to lose their meaning.

-Essay-

Footage of destroyed buildings, fires and horrified civilians are flooding news feeds this week after yet another Russian missile attack struck a Ukrainian residential building – this time on Jan. 14 in the eastern city of Dnipro.

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Any reasonable viewer would have felt sick to their core.

As of Jan. 17, local authorities have said the strike killed 40 people. Another 34 remain trapped under the rubble.

This war has drastically changed our perception of reality.

What happened to one apartment block could easily be dwarfed by the whole cities that Russian aggression has wiped off the map: Mariupol, Soledar, Bakhmut — all reduced to piles of rubble. These 40 confirmed deaths are on top of a still unknown number of lives, both civilian and military, claimed after almost 11 months of war.

A single human life is no longer a meaningful statistic.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Pierre Haski

Dnipro, A Heinous Attack Sparks Hard Questions About Weapon Supplies — On Both Sides

After Dnipro was left devastated by one of Russia’s deadliest attacks on Ukrainian civilians to date, the problem of arms delivery in a war that keeps escalating has never been more urgent.

The Russian missile that struck a residential building on Saturday afternoon in Dnipro killed at least 40 people, a number that keeps growing as bodies are discovered under the rubble in the central Ukrainian city. It appears to be a war crime with no legitimate target near the neighborhood.

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This bombing is also particularly informative about what’s happening right now on the Russian side of the war: The KH-22 cruise missile used is designed to sink an aircraft carrier, the biggest one in Moscow’s arsenal.

This precision missile was fired from an aircraft hundreds of miles away and has no link whatsoever to the target.

This enormous gap between the type of missile used and its ultimate target might actually reveal a missile scarcity in Russia, after weeks of continuous bombing in Ukraine. Tapping into strategic Russian weaponry (the KH-22 can be equipped with nuclear warheads) can never be justified considering the innocence of the target. Russian arms plants running at full capacity, for the time being at least, cannot keep up supplies.

But this tragic strike is also a clear sign of a progressive escalation in a war that, at this stage, shows no signs it can be stopped.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Victoria Roshchyna

“Everything Was Blown Away” — In Dnipro, Voices Of The Survivors

A Ukrainian reporter on the scene of one of the worst attacks on civilians since Russia's invasion began.

DNIPRO — I met Oleg in one of the hospitals in Dnipro. His body was covered with wounds and scratches.

Oleg was with his wife in their apartment in a high-rise building in this central Ukrainian city on what seemed like an ordinary weekend. Then a Russian missile hit — and they miraculously survived, among the 75 wounded. As of Monday morning, 40 of their neighbors are confirmed dead, and at least 35 still missing.

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Oleg tries to piece together the moment of the strike:

"There was a long explosion. Everything was blown away," he recalls. It is still difficult for him to speak and keep his eyes open for any extended time, because of burns and wounds from the glass.

"We could not leave the apartment by ourselves because the door collapsed. Rescuers got us through the window of the 4th floor. I am glad that I am alive and that my wife is fine. I thank our rescuers, medics, and the Armed Forces. I hope everything will be fine," Oleg says on Sunday, still apparently under shock.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

Why Putin's Choice For New Ukraine Commander Is All About Closing Ranks At Home

The choice of General Valery Gerasimov to replace General Sergey Surovikin is a political defeat for Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov — and a sign that Putin may be getting skittish on the home front.

-Analysis-

Vladimir Putin has once again replaced his supreme military commander in Ukraine, just three months after a previous change at the top. The announcement Wednesday is clearly a sign of Putin's disappointment in the direction of the war – but perhaps more notably, a major political victory for the military establishment over outsiders who had been trying to gain influence.

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Putin’s choice of General Valery Gerasimov to replace General Sergey Surovikin is not expected to affect the immediate course of the war, but it speaks to a change in the Russian president’s mindset. Unsatisfied with the Wagner PMC mercenary group, and its owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, recently tasked with a bigger share of the fighting, Putin has decided to rely on the established military elite again.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Important Stories

Putin's Pet: How Wagner Group Boss Prigozhin Is Gaining Power — And Enemies

Putin used to keep his respectable and criminal circles of friends separate. But the increasing power of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former prisoner and head of the Wagner paramilitary group, has many inside and outside the Kremlin worried.

-Analysis-

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner PMC, has complicated relations not only with the Russian Defense Ministry, but also with the inner circle of Vladimir Putin. But in both cases, his position is increasingly one of power, as Prigozhin's role in the war with Ukraine has become ever more crucial.

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With convictions for theft, assault, and involving minors in criminal activity, Prigozhin spent many years in prison in his youth. In 1981, a court in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) sentenced him to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony, serving nearly 10 years.

One of Prigozhin's cellmates recently circulated a message that said that during his incarceration he belonged to the lowest caste of prisoners — the so-called "offended" who provided sexual services to other prisoners.

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