#they named it as humanitarian aids for ukrainians and russians in ukraine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thezeinterviews · 11 months

Text

The Times: Olena Zelenska: Our fight for the Ukrainian children stolen by Putin

Desperate parents regularly write to the first lady, pleading for help. ‘As a mother, I don’t know how I would cope,’ she says of the kidnappings by Russia’s troops

Maxim Tucker, Kyiv

Friday November 10 2023, 12.10pm GMT, The Times

There is only a hint of fatigue in Olena Zelenska’s steely green eyes to show she carries the weight of a thousand mothers searching for their children on her shoulders.

She remembers the very first child she realised had been taken by Russian troops, a teenager named Serhii, kidnapped from his village in Chernihiv in the first weeks of the invasion. As the war progressed, more and more stories began to emerge.

“In the very first months of the full-scale invasion, reports of terrible incidents with children started appearing,” she recalls, speaking as part of an interview given exclusively to The Times and Channel 4, to be broadcast on Monday night as part of the documentary Dispatches: The Hunt for Ukraine’s Stolen Children.

At first it was individual children being seized and taken from their families, Zelenska says during our meeting in a secure room deep in the bowels of Ukraine’s presidential administration. Then entire schools, hospital wings and orphanages were emptied by the Russians.

“And the longer this terrible invasion lasted, the more these stories were revealed. We began to understand the huge scale of this when the Russians started abducting children by entire institutions.”

Today, Ukrainian law enforcement has been able to identify 19,546 children that it says have been taken by the Kremlin. Their evidence has prompted the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for President Putin and the Kremlin’s top official for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

Russian officials say they have moved many more — some 744,000 children — claiming they spirited them across the border for their own safety. Desperate Ukrainian parents regularly write to Zelenska and her husband pleading for help.

“Behind every one of these statistics is the story of a terrified child,” she says. “Messages from parents, relatives, grandparents, friends who were looking for children nobody could find.” A mother herself to Oleksandra, 19, and Kyrylo, 10, she was moved to act.

“Frankly speaking, as a mother, I don’t know how I would cope if someone took my child away even for a day and I didn’t know where they were. It’s very difficult for me to imagine how one can survive this. This is probably my worst nightmare,” she says, shaking her head at the horror of it.

As President Zelensky fought for the return of Ukrainian territory taken by Putin’s troops on the battlefield, Zelenska decided to fight for the return of Ukrainian children taken by them during occupation.

“I think that everyone who has a voice should spread the information about it, testify. Unfortunately, it is probably one of the most effective ways we can tackle it: to make it public as much as possible so that every person in the world hears about it. It can initiate more powerful actions to make Russia return our children.”

For a woman once assigned as a target for Putin’s special forces, her trips abroad are becoming increasingly frequent as Kyiv leans on her star power to seek humanitarian aid from world leaders. Time has listed her one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Now, she is taking on Kremlin diplomats in the international arena.

“We demand that forced deportations be stopped, that forced assimilation be stopped,” she says. “Children of another country cannot be forced to become citizens of another country. It is necessary to create safe corridors to return the children who are now under occupation and in the war zone.” In September she travelled to the UN general assembly in New York to brief diplomats on the matter.

“The pressure has to be very strong, it has to come from everywhere, not just from Ukraine. We hope that all the conscious people of the world will hear us and will feel this the way I do, the way parents do.”

Dispatches: The Hunt for Ukraine’s Stolen Children reveals how children as young as three have disappeared under Russian occupation, often reappearing in an archipelago of “re-education” camps across border, where they are fed Kremlin propaganda and older children are trained for military service against their own country.

In the film, Artem, 15 recounts how he and his classmates were seized at their school in Kupyansk, in the Kharkiv region, by a company of Russian soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs and taken to a “correctional” boarding school, where they were kept for months and forced to wear Russian uniforms emblazoned with “Z” patches, the symbol used to denote support for the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian television is open in its broadcast of how the Ukrainian children are spoon-fed Russian nationalism. They are forced to sing the national anthem, told that Ukraine does not exist and that no one is waiting for them at home.

The Ukrainian Ombudman’s office, led by Dmytro Lubinets, and charity organisations such as Save Ukraine work to rescue them, but only 386 children — less than 2 per cent — have been returned to date. The film follows their efforts as they try to help the family of three-year-old Max, lost in an ambush when his parents are shot trying to flee Mariupol. His aunt is desperate to find him before memories of his home and his mother, who was killed in the attack, fade for good.

The programme also follows efforts to rescue 13-year-old Anastasia and her 14-year-old sister Vlada who were taken to a camp in Russian-controlled Crimea. Both children were told they would be taking a two-week holiday before being put up for adoption by Russian families, despite having their own family in Ukraine.

Documenting evidence of the abductions is the journalist Maryna Mukhina, who escaped occupied Starobilsk, in the Luhansk region, with her three-year-old daughter to avoid her being taken away, before deciding to become a war crimes investigator examining the disappearances for the International Partnership for Human Rights.

Zelenska is clearly moved by the psychological scars left on the children who are saved, let alone those who stay in Russia.

“One little girl was returned to her parents after about six months,” she says. “She was asking them every day if they loved her. She was told that her parents had abandoned her. That she is not needed. And she tries to reassure herself again and again that it is not true.”

Asked if she is worried the world is tired of the war in Ukraine and distracted by other crises, such as the one in the Middle East, Zelenska says she is “outraged” and that there should be “no place in the modern world to neglect the rights of children”.

“Are we saying that for decades, humanity built mechanisms to protect the rights of the child only to give them up to the aggressor now?,” she asks. “If this can happen now, well, we can already get tired of ourselves. We cannot afford to get tired. If everyone gets tired now and stops fighting, it could be the final rest for the world as we know it.”

Ukraine needs the world’s help to get its children back, Zelenska says, because it has proven impossible for Kyiv to trust Putin in any dialogue.

“We need the help of the whole world to make it impossible for them to keep our children. To create facilities and mechanisms for exchange, so that we simply take them back. But this pressure must be so powerful that they don’t have any other way out but to return the children.”

Every parent should be motivated to take action to help reunite these children with their families, she believes.

“If you are a parent, you know you as an adult are responsible for the little ones. If this was your child, you’d go anywhere, even to hell, to get your child back.”

Maxim Tucker is the producer of Dispatches: The Hunt for Ukraine’s Stolen Children, which airs first on Monday, November 13 at 11pm on Channel 4 and afterwards on Channel4.com

Article

#olena zelenska #olena selenska #ze interview #olena interview #russia #ukraine #war #2023 #interview 2023 #the times interview #the times #zelenska

6 notes · View notes

libertariantaoist · 11 months

Text

News Roundup 11/6/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 11/6/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

Ukraine

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged in comments to The Economist that the war in Ukraine is a stalemate and that there will “most likely” be no Ukrainian breakthrough. AWC

A top Ukrainian official said Kiev is seeking to become one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. The statement comes as the Biden administration has begun pushing Ukraine to engage in talks with Russia on ending the war. Ukraine developing a large weapons industry and selling those arms to the enemies of Russia will likely interfere with any deals to end the conflict. The Institute

The US rolled out its 50th weapons package for Ukraine. The arms shipment will include air defenses, artillery rounds, and anti-armor weapons. The Pentagon will purchase $300 million in arms on behalf of Kyiv, depleting all the funds in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). AWC

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a bill into law that formally withdrew Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). AWC

Israel

During a trip to Israel, America’s top diplomat pushed Tel Aviv to agree to limited “humanitarian pauses” to allow aid into Gaza and facilitate negotiations for Hamas to release prisoners. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said there would not be a temporary pause in the fighting. AWC

Despite the massive bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza, a senior Pentagon official believes Israel has not come close to taking out Hamas’s leadership, The New York Times reported Saturday. AWC

The Pentagon has acknowledged that the US is flying drones over Gaza to help Israel locate hostages, demonstrating deep US involvement in the war. AWC

Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu on Sunday said that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was an option for Israel and claimed there are no innocent civilians in the enclave. AWC

The House on Thursday passed a bill to provide Israel with $14.3 billion in military aid, a strong show of support for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which has killed over 9,000 people so far. AWC

Twenty-seven days into Israel’s brutal bombing campaign, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) became the first member of the US Senate to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. AWC

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), dismissed the idea there are “innocent Palestinian civilians” in a debate on the House floor. AWC

Middle East

The House on Wednesday passed a resolution that suggested the US would use force against Iran in the future in the name of preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. AWC

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Sunday amid a spate of attacks on US troops in the region over US support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. AWC

#kyle anzalone #libertarian institute #news roundup

3 notes · View notes

beardedmrbean · 2 years

Text

KHERSON, Ukraine — First came rejoicing. Now comes the reckoning.

The southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, the only provincial capital captured by Russia since it invaded in February, is back in Ukrainian hands, though Moscow’s forces are still close enough to remain a menace.

The outburst of joy over the reclamation of Kherson — one of the most significant Ukrainian victories of the nearly 9-month-old war — is tempered by punishing hardships that still haunt the city: hunger and shortages of medicine as well as scant electricity, running water and communications.

Criminal and forensics investigators are rushing to document evidence of executions and torture, digging up bodies and coaxing traumatized witnesses to come forward. Already, case files are open on hundreds of suspected war crimes. Victims of torture haltingly recount their ordeals. De-mining teams are fanned out across the city and plying muddy fields in outlying former front-line villages, where wrecked military and civilian vehicles line battered roads.

And in what might be the most insidious iteration of pain, Kherson’s people must now come to terms with the fact that some of their neighbors cooperated with the occupiers.

“I was so very disappointed,” one local man said of learning that a professor from his old university, a onetime mentor, had sided with the Russians. “Well, they can just f— off to Russia, those people who helped them,” spat Iryna Lebid, a 58-year-old nurse.

Still, signs of recovery already dot a city where the first vanguard of Ukrainian troops entered only last week. At hastily created mobile and internet hot spots, people weep into their cellphones as they make contact with loved ones after months of isolation. Humanitarian aid is arriving by the truckload. In streets and squares, kids race up to Ukrainian troops, begging the soldiers to sign their Ukrainian flags.

Onlookers still wave bouquets at the roadside when military convoys pass by — Ukrainian ones now — after months of turning away and averting their eyes at the sight of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbling through their streets.

“We have our city back,” said Denys Bukhorin, wizened but grinning, as he stood in Kherson’s crowded central square with his teenage son, surveying the celebratory scene. “Next comes our country.”

Red-and-white crime scene tape stretched across an entrance to Byskovy Park — named for the lilacs that used to grow there — on Kherson’s southeastern outskirts. That’s because Ukrainian authorities believe this patch of woodland was the scene of a gruesome crime days into the Russian invasion.

Behind the tape, faded bouquets were affixed to trees scarred by large-caliber bullets. It was here, witnesses have told investigators, that Russian troops rounded up and slaughtered at least 17 members of a civilian territorial defense unit in a hail of machine-gun fire on March 1. A local priest later buried the bodies and stealthily notified the slain men’s families if he could locate them, officials said.

“You have to understand, the territorial defense are not professional soldiers, just regular citizens — accountants and such, and lightly armed,” said Meri Akopyan, the country’s deputy interior minister, who was on hand to watch the national police at work. “Absolutely, they were executed.”

In the woods behind her, black-clad investigators moved through the underbrush searching for remains, marking spots where exhumations had already occurred or where bodies — or body parts — were found.

In districts that were occupied earlier this year for little over a month by Russian troops outside Kyiv, investigators have found nearly 1,300 bodies of those killed during that time. Here in Kherson, which spent a full eight months under Russian control, that bleak harvest is likely to be far greater.

With bitter experience gained in places such as Bucha, the commuter town outside the capital where some of the worst of those early atrocities came to light, investigators are proceeding as carefully and methodically as possible, Akopyan said.

“Our big concern is to find and preserve all the evidence that we need to develop war-crimes cases,” she said. “There is a lot to be recorded. We have to be clear-minded and stay focused.”

Like law enforcement authorities and investigators, Akopyan said that she had already visited many scenes of suspected atrocities, including mass graves containing the bodies of civilians, some of whom apparently died under torture or were shot point-blank.

“We are almost past the point of surprise,” she said. “But you come to a place like this, and you find it shocking all over again.”

Few things are worse than knowing that a neighbor betrayed you. But that sickening sensation was experienced by many in Kherson, sometimes more than once.

Amid the revelry in the central square, Bukhorin told the story of a man sought by the Russians who was hiding in his neighborhood — until the occupiers found him.

“The Russians came and took him away, and we didn’t see him again,” said Bukhorin, 42, who was all but certain that someone living a few doors down had turned him in.

Kherson residents said pro-Russia authorities did their best to sow doubt and division among the approximately 80,000 people who remained in the city — about a quarter of the prewar population of more than 300,000. Often enough, they found collaborators.

Over the months, Russia systematically sought to tighten its grip, imposing a pro-Russia school curriculum and trying to force people to discard their Ukrainian passports for Russian ones and pay for goods and services in rubles. Punishment was swiftly meted out for any public expression of Ukrainian patriotism — displaying a flag, singing a national ballad, daubing a bit of blue-and-yellow graffiti.

The attempted Russification came to a head in September, when Moscow-backed authorities in Kherson and three other Ukrainian provinces staged fake “referendum” votes asking if people wanted to be part of Russia. Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin proclaimed that the populace had overwhelmingly assented. On Sept. 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the four Ukrainian regions in question, including Kherson, were part of Russia for all eternity.

Stanislav Borodashkin, 32, a Kherson native, described his deep disillusionment when he learned that a lecturer from his university days had become an overt supporter of the illegal annexation and could be seen online participating in pro-Russia events.

“Before, I’d considered her a good person,” said Borodashkin, an elementary school teacher and part-time tour guide. “To me, it was as if that person had died.”

Lebid, the nurse who cursed the collaborators, said those in league with the Russians “would walk about with the air of noblemen.”

“It’s a moral offense,” she said. “No one forced them.”

Even amid the rejoicing, the mood in the city tilted toward retribution. A government-distributed news pamphlet — filled with helpful practical hints such as step-by-step instructions on canceling state vehicle registration if your car was stolen or destroyed by the Russian forces — devoted its lead headline to a stark warning.

“We can guarantee collaborators one thing,” it said. “Accountability is inevitable.”

Those who defied the occupiers’ wishes earned gratitude. High school student Oleksandr Billii, 17, said every teacher in his school refused to instruct pupils in the Russia-backed curriculum.

“We’re proud of them,” he said. “It was the very best lesson they could teach us.”

Mykola Nehrov, a military veteran, said he spent three hellish weeks in Russian captivity, where he was beaten and subjected to electric shocks, along with other abuse he did not want to detail.

He said the Russians demanded again and again whether he had any connection with Ukrainian special forces they believed were carrying out behind-the-lines attacks in the city.

But he counted himself among the fortunate. At night, he would hear the screams of others being tortured.

“Others, and I am sure of this, did not survive,” he said.

“They worked round the clock,” he said of his captors. “It never stopped.”

Ukrainian authorities say they have uncovered a network of makeshift torture chambers in and near Kherson. The one where Nehrov was held was located in what had been a pretrial detention center in civilian times, on Energy Workers Street. He believes dozens were held at any given time.

“Anyone who had any connection to the military or law enforcement, journalists, activists,” he said, listing the kinds of Kherson residents who were seized from their homes, often in the middle of the night, for detention and interrogation.

From her home across the street behind a blue gate, 60-year-old Ludmyla Medvedeva would sometimes see hooded detainees being hustled into the compound, she said. And a few times, she witnessed the aftermath. She described seeing one disoriented man in his 40s ejected into the street out front.

“He had been broken somehow,” she said. “He couldn’t even say who he was.” Neighbors helped him make his way to safety, but she didn’t know what had happened to him.

In the detention center’s courtyard, a framed portrait of Putin lay face-up with the glass shattered. Passing Ukrainians paused to stomp on it, and one leaned forward to dribble spit.

The interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, said that investigators in Kherson had uncovered 63 bodies bearing signs of torture, but that the search had only begun.

“Many more dungeons and burial places will be uncovered,” he said.

The head of the Kherson prosecutor’s office, Volodymyr Kalyuga, said authorities have identified at least seven torture sites in the city, with more in outlying areas. “I don’t know how many were tortured to death,” he said. “And the counting will be even more complicated, because some people, after they were released, made it home. And died there.”

José Andrés, the white-bearded celebrity chef turned humanitarian, was taking a quick break from his work, gazing about as he leaned against a green-painted wall in the center of Kherson. “People are hungry,” he said.

Andrés’ World Central Kitchen was among the first aid groups to push into the just-liberated city, bringing in truckloads of food and supplies. The main railway station was thronged with people when an 18-vehicle caravan arrived Wednesday morning, carrying food and medicine in the first such mass distribution since the Russian retreat.

On Thursday, 1,000 people lined up for about 6,000 bags of food at eight locations. One bag can feed a family of four for one week.

“The hug you get,” said Andrés, “is worth a billion pounds of food.”

During the occupation, and especially in its final days, conditions in the city became increasingly dire. Russian troops smashed key infrastructure as they fled. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video address to compatriots, promised the government would move as fast as it could to restore electricity, water, communications, financial services and medical care.

But there was optimism that some semblance of normal life could return once the most urgent infrastructure repairs are made.

Kherson in a sense was lucky, with the city suffering little of the large-scale physical destruction of residential and commercial buildings that has taken place in urban battlegrounds of the east. Its recapture involved heavy fighting in nearby villages as Ukrainian forces pressed their offensive, but the city itself changed hands primarily because Ukrainians managed to all but sever Russian supply lines, forcing the pullback.

With the Dnieper River as the new front line, Kherson remains within the range of Russia’s big guns, although Western analysts say the reverse is also true, and Moscow’s forces will now seek to protect themselves by pulling artillery batteries back beyond the range of mainly U.S.-provided Ukrainian rocket systems.

Some of the clearest and most immediate dangers, though, were calculatedly sowed in advance.

“They mined everything,” Col. Bodnar Olexandr, the head of the regional department of emergency services, said of the retreating Russians. “They mined buildings. They mined vehicles. They mined bodies.”

Younger people tended toward optimism that the city could recover from a harrowing occupation.

“It’s not as it was, and it won’t be for a long time, maybe,” said 18-year-old Nazar Bolshedvorski, who expects to enlist in the military soon. “But if we stay united, it’ll get better.”

Yuliya Voitu, 13, wearing a huge smile and earmuffs with spangly kitten ears, had wrapped herself in a Ukrainian flag on which she had already collected the signatures of dozens of soldiers.

“I want to keep this as a memory,” she said.

At the other end of the generational spectrum, 83-year-old Raisa Nikityuk, wearing a tailored jacket and what had once been a fashionable-looking mauve cloche, said she believed Kherson would endure. Of herself, she was less certain.

“I was born in war,” she said, “and I’ve had enough of it for this life and another.”

#nunyas news #time for the lynch mobs to form #sadly

8 notes · View notes

head-post · 17 days

Text

Blinken ends Ukraine tour in Poland amid arms request

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is concluding his three-country European tour centred on Ukraine in Poland amid calls to use weapons to strike deep into Russia.

Blinken travelled to Warsaw on Thursday after spending the day in Kyiv with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. Both senior officials promised to bring Ukrainian requests to their leaders.

President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will meet in the United States on Friday amid signs that both Washington and London may allow Ukrainians to use the weapons without restrictions.

Blinken is expected to hear further requests for easing gun restrictions from Polish President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski.

On Wednesday, Blinken and Lammy announced that the US and the UK pledged about $1.5 billion in additional aid to Ukraine during their visit to Kyiv. Blinken announced more than $700 million in humanitarian aid, while Lammy confirmed that his country would provide another $782 million in aid and loan guarantees.

Speaking for the United States, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed. And I have no doubt that we’ll continue to do that as this evolves.

The diplomatic visit also came amid Russian troops stepping up their offensive in the Donbas (a common name for Donetsk and Luhansk regions). However, Kyiv risks losing international attention as the incursion into the Kursk region has stalled.

Allied concerns also intensified after the crash of Ukraine’s first F-16 and a failed campaign to mobilise conscripted Ukrainians.

Read more HERE

0 notes

thxnews · 1 year

Text

Blinken Addresses UN Security Council Meeting on Ukraine

The Exact Transcript of the Speech

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you very much. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for focusing the Security Council on this critically important issue. And Mr. Secretary-General, thank you for the moral clarity that you’ve shown in dealing with Russia’s war against Ukraine. We’re grateful to have been able to welcome President Zelenskyy to this council table, and we thank him. We thank him for reminding us yesterday, today, and every day what’s at stake in this conflict, not just for Ukraine, not just for Ukrainians, but for all of us. Fellow council members, two weeks ago I was in Yahidne, a small Ukrainian town about two hours north of Kyiv. Russian forces seized the village in the first days of the invasion. They went door to door, rounding up residents at gunpoint, marching them to the local elementary school, where Russian soldiers had set up a command post. Then, soldiers forced more than 300 civilians – mostly women, children, and elderly people – into a basement not fit for human habitation, just a few small rooms, no windows, no circulation, no running water. The soldiers held residents there for 28 straight days, using them as human shields, before fleeing when Ukrainian defenders arrived to liberate the town. In Yahidne, two residents took me into the basement where they and others had been imprisoned. My guide said that they were packed together so tightly that they could barely breathe. There was no room to sit, let alone lie down. When they cried out to their captors that people were sick and needed medical care, a Russian soldier yelled back, “Let them die.” My guide pointed to two handwritten lists of names on the basement wall. One was for the villagers that Russian forces had executed, the other for the people who died in the basement. The oldest victim was 93 years old; the youngest 6 weeks old. The Russians only allowed the removal of bodies once a day, so children, parents, husbands, and wives were forced to spend hours next to the corpses of their loved ones. I begin here because from the comfortable distance of this chamber, it’s really easy to lose sight of what it’s like for Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression. This is what happened in just one building, in one community in Ukraine. There are so many others like it. In the last week alone, Russia has bombed apartment buildings in Kryvyi Rih; it’s burned down humanitarian aid depots in Lviv. It’s demolished grain silos in Odesa. It shelled eight communities in Sumy in a single day. This is what Ukrainian families are living through every day. It’s what they’ve experienced for 574 days of this full-scale invasion. It’s what they’ll endure tomorrow, and the day after that, for as long as Russia wages its vicious war, a war that President Putin openly declared from the outset is aimed at erasing Ukraine from the map as a sovereign country and restoring Russia’s lost empire. In this war, there is an aggressor and there is a victim. One side is attacking the core principles of the UN Charter; the other fights to defend them. For over a year and half, Russia has shredded the major tenets of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international humanitarian law, and flouted one Security Council resolution after another. Let’s review. First, Russia’s invasion itself violates the central pillar of the UN Charter – respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations. Second, Russia’s committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine on an almost daily basis. Third, Russia continues to engage in reckless nuclear saber-rattling, announcing that it’s stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus and continuing to use Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant and its employees as a shield for its aggression, risking catastrophic consequences. Fourth, Russia is weaponizing hunger. Thanks to the Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the secretary-general and Türkiye, approximately 33 million metric tons of grain reached global markets, driving down food prices around the world. Nearly two-thirds of the wheat exported though that deal went to developing countries. Not only did Putin pull out of the deal, but Russia is now mining Ukraine’s fields, bombing its ports and rails, burning its silos. As a result, Ukraine’s wheat exports will likely fall by 2.8 million metric tons this year. That is the equivalent of 5.5 billion – 5.5 billion – loaves of bread trapped in the world’s breadbasket. Russia, meanwhile, on track for a record year of grain exports. The hungrier the world is, the more Moscow profits. Fifth, Russia is using Iranian drones to attack Ukrainian civilians, drones that Russia procured from Iran in violation of Security Council Resolution 2231. Finally, just last week, Russia hosted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Putin said that they discussed ways to cooperate militarily. While Kim pledged the DPRK’s – and I quote – “full and unconditional support,” end quote, for Russia’s war of aggression. Of course, the transfer of arms between Moscow and Pyongyang would violate multiple resolutions of this council. It’s hard to imagine a country demonstrating more contempt for the United Nations and all that it stands for – this from a country with a permanent seat on this council. President Putin is betting that if he keeps doubling down on the violence, that if he’s willing to inflict enough suffering on enough people, the world will cave on its principles and Ukraine will stop defending itself. But Ukrainians are not giving up, for they’ve seen what life would look like if they submit to Russian control. It’s that basement in Yahidne. It’s families having their children torn away from them and deported to Russia, children taken away from their parents and deported far away. It’s the rubble of Mariupol. It’s the mass graves of Bucha. We are not giving up, either. Indeed, since we were last here, a growing number of countries have come together to try to forge a different way forward. In June, over a dozen countries met with Ukraine in Copenhagen to discuss the path toward a just and lasting peace, one that upholds the United Nations Charter and its core principles. Two months later, more than 40 countries, including many members of this council, carried forward that discussion with Ukraine in Jeddah. President Zelenskyy has put forward a 10-point plan for such a peace. President Putin has put forward nothing. Now, some argue that continuing to stand with Ukraine and holding Russia accountable distracts us from addressing other priorities, like confronting the climate crisis, expanding economic opportunity, strengthening health systems. That is a false choice. We can and we must do both; we are doing both. We must work together to tackle the global challenges that are affecting our people, meet the Sustainable Development Goals, invest in a world where all people have an opportunity to reach their full potential. The United States is the world’s leading contributor to these efforts. And as President Biden told the General Assembly yesterday, we will continue to do more than our share to answer the imperatives of our time. At the same time, as President Biden has made clear, we must continue to shore up the pillars of peaceful relations among nations, without which we will be unable to achieve any of our goals. That’s why we must send a clear message, not only to Russia but to all would-be aggressors, that we will stand up – not stand by – when the rules that we all agreed to are being challenged – not only to prevent conflict, instability, and suffering, but to lay the foundation for all that we can do to improve people’s lives in times of peace. I opened by sharing the horrors that I saw in Yahidne. Let me close by telling you what else I saw that day in Ukraine. I saw volunteers rebuilding homes that had been razed by Russian bombs, farmers harvesting fields, people reopening businesses, citizens clearing mines and unexploded ordnance, children returning to schools. In short, I saw a nation rebuilding and reclaiming its future. That is the right of all members of our United Nations. That’s what we defend when we stand up for the international order: the right of people not only to survive, but to thrive, to write their own future. Our people, Ukraine’s people, the people of all nations get to write their own future. We cannot, we will not let one man write that future for us. Thank you. Sources: THX News & US Department of State. Read the full article

#Globalchallenges #Humanitariancrisis #Internationalorder #PresidentZelenskyy #Russia'swar #Russianaggression #SecurityCouncil #Sustainabledevelopmentgoals #Ukraineconflict #UNCharterviolations

0 notes

cyberbenb · 1 year

Text

Controversial cluster munitions to help advance Ukraine's slow counteroffensive

Ukraine has begun using American cluster munitions in the field and is doing so effectively, according to the White House.

“They are using them appropriately,” National Security Spokesman John Kirby said on July 21. “They’re using them effectively, and they are actually having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations and Russia’s defensive maneuvering. I think I can leave it at that."

The U.S. decision to send these weapons was criticized by multiple countries and human rights groups, even by some of the allies.

The use of weapons that cover an area with bomblets is controversial around the world because of the lingering danger they pose to civilians. A total of 111 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions, outright banning the use of such weapons. Ukraine, the U.S., and Russia are not signatories. During the full-scale invasion, Russia used cluster munitions against Ukrainian cities.

The Joe Biden administration defended the decision, saying its military experts confirmed that these munitions will be useful against trenches on the battlefield.

While they are dangerous, Ukraine can make use of cluster munitions now more than ever, with its counteroffensive having a hard time against prepared Russian defenses, plus its shortages of artillery shells, aircraft, and experience fighting large-scale operations, observers said.

On top of being better than conventional rounds at destroying Russia’s defenses, the use of cluster munitions allows Ukraine to reduce its expenditure of shells and artillery barrels without sacrificing pressure. It could also save service members' lives by making the armed forces less reliant on infantry for the bloody job of clearing trenches.

Ukraine has made it clear it is planning to use such weapons strictly on the depopulated battlefield. And by doing so, Ukraine finally has a chance to make tangible advances during its ongoing counteroffensive.

Federico Borsari, a fellow with the Center for European Policy and Analysis, said that using them against military targets away from populated areas is not banned under international humanitarian law. Failing to liberate these areas would keep them under Russian occupation, where war crimes against locals are regular.

Governor: Aid center in Donetsk Oblast hit by Russian cluster munitions

Russian forces hit the front-line town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast overnight with cluster munitions, Governor Pavlo Kyryenko reported on July 23.

The Kyiv IndependentAlexander Khrebet

New old weapons

Washington’s latest $800 million defense aid package includes dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM), which had been developed during the Cold War, with massed Soviet formations in mind.

The specific models are compatible with 155-millimeter artillery and HIMARS. After being fired, they burst and scatter either 72 or 88 submunitions over a wide target area. The selection of submunitions can be tailored for anti-personnel and/or anti-armor use.

Serhiy Zgurets, director at military analysis outlet Defense Express, said that each shell can cover the area of a football pitch.

Ukraine is also interested in the Mk 118 high-explosive, anti-tank submunitions dropped by American cluster bombs, which are effective against armor. Borsari said Ukraine wants to drop these bomblets individually from drones.

Inside Ukraine’s costly mission to grind down Russia near Bakhmut

Editor’s note: The Kyiv Independent interviewed a few dozen soldiers deployed near Bakhmut and visited their positions in late May and early June. The soldiers are identified by their first names or call signs for security reasons amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. NEAR IVANIVSKE VILLAGE, Don…

The Kyiv IndependentAsami Terajima

Questionable failure rate

The U.S. Department of Defense instituted a 2008 policy to not use cluster munitions with a failure rate of over 1%.

But in 2017, the U.S. reversed that decision, declaring cluster munitions “legitimate weapons with clear military utility” and allowing battlefield commanders to use them. Instead, the U.S. would be banned from procuring more munitions with greater than 1% failure rates.

U.S. laws prohibit the export of cluster munitions with a more than 1% failure rate but the president can overrule this law.

In reality, failure rates are higher, especially for munitions that don’t have a self-destruct function.

According to a 2006 document by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, the types of DPICMs that can be carried by a 155-millimeter artillery shell can have a failure rate of up to 14%. A Congressional Research Service report cited mine clearance specialists reporting between 10% and 30% for unspecified munitions.

The failure rate depends on how well the weapons are stored, as well as the terrain they fall into. Marshes, mud, and uneven terrain can greatly raise the chance they don’t explode.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on July 7 that “Russia has been using munitions with a high dud or failure rate of 30-40%” since the start of the war.

“In this environment, Ukraine has been requesting munitions in order to defend its own territory. The cluster munition that we would provide has dud rates far below what Russia is doing, not higher than 2.5%."

It’s currently impossible to independently verify these claims.

Ukraine war latest: Ukraine lacks necessary equipment but still advances, Zaluzhnyi says in rare interview

Key developments on June 30: * Zaluzhnyi: Advances daily despite lack of necessary Western equipment * Ukraine to strengthen northern borders, Zelensky says * EU wants interest from Russian money to help Ukraine Ukraine’s forces advance daily by “at least 500 meters” during the summer counterof…

The Kyiv IndependentAlexander Khrebet

Many critics

Countries including Spain, the U.K., and Germany, as well as organizations like Human Rights Watch, criticized the provision of DPICMs to Ukraine. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for both sides to avoid these weapons.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the U.K. is “signatory to a convention which prohibits the production or use of cluster munitions and discourages their use."

German officials said they understand the reason to provide such weapons but won’t provide such weapons to Ukraine.

Stateside, some Democratic lawmakers, including Jim McGovern, Ilhan Omar, and Sara Jacobs criticized the export of DPICMs. Omar and Jacobs tried to amend the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit the sale of cluster munitions.

However, the majority of Congress members supported the decision to provide such weapons to Ukraine. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Biden “made the right call,"

“These munitions will improve Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian forces and compensate for shortfalls in standard artillery rounds,” he said.

Biden backed his decision by reiterating that “Ukrainians are running out of ammunition."

In response to criticism, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine would not use such ammunition in urban areas, adding, “these are our people, they are Ukrainians we have a duty to protect."

The remains of a Russian cluster bomb on the international airport on Jan. 6, 2023, in Kherson, Ukraine. (Photo: Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

Russia has been using such ammunition, largely targeting densely populated urban areas. It has been used to attack the Kramatorsk train station, Bucha, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv. At least one of the missiles shot down during its most recent strikes had a cluster load.

Russian forces' cluster weapons usually take the form of missiles or rockets fired from MLRS platforms like the Grad, Smerch, and Uragan.

However, Russia lacks substantial tube artillery cluster munitions, a disadvantage that brings Ukraine closer to parity.

Advancing war effort

A month and a half after it began, Ukraine’s counteroffensive is moving quite slowly and cautiously, even though the country is under a great deal of international pressure to show results.

Ukraine doesn’t have all the tools it needs for a quick and smashing offensive operation on this scale, with its shortages of aircraft and artillery shells.

The aircraft that it has are not enough to make a strong impact. Russia can also engage Ukrainian armor from very far away, and Ukrainians have to be careful to avoid losing precious vehicles.

Many Ukrainian brigades don’t have the training or experience of large-scale combined arms operations.

Franz-Stefan Gady, consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote that instead of conducting simultaneous attacks, Ukraine’s units are attacking sequentially, an observation backed up by Borsari and others.

“Ukrainian forces by default have switched to a strategy of attrition relying on sequential fires rather than maneuver,” Gady wrote. “This is the reason why cluster munitions are critical to extend current fire rates into the fall: weakening Russian defenses to a degree that enables maneuver."

Francis Farrell: As the world watches the counteroffensive, a sober hold on reality is Ukraine’s greatest weapon

This June was meant to be all about the great Ukrainian counteroffensive. After months of waiting, dozens of public statements from exasperated Ukrainian officials bound to silence, and even more analyses from experts and commentators in the media, the moment finally came when Ukrainian soldiers on…

The Kyiv IndependentFrancis Farrell

Effectiveness

Russia has built up defenses over many months, with networks of trenches, anti-vehicle ditches, and extensive minefields supported by artillery, tanks, aircraft, and helicopters.

They also have strategic observation points and drone coverage that let them see Ukrainian movements and prepare.

While Russia’s artillery advantage isn’t as overwhelming as it once was, Russian forces are still shooting seven to eight times more shells than Ukraine in some areas, like near Bakhmut and Lyman, Zgurets said.

Ukraine and its allies' ability to provide ammunition to the battlefield is limited. European initiatives to expand production have been delayed due to a lack of political will. Many shells are defective. “It’s not a sustainable trend,” Borsari said.

It takes many conventional high-explosive shells to cause significant damage to Russian positions. Zgurets said that high explosive rounds have to strike within two meters of the trench to kill the personnel inside.

Cluster munitions are a way around these issues. One cluster munition can do the work of eight conventional shells.

This would reduce the number of shells Ukraine needs to use, reducing the strain on its logistics. It’d also cut down on how often artillery barrels, which are specced for 2,000-4,000 shots, have to be replaced, Zgurets said.

There is also a greater chance that the submunitions will go into the trenches, killing Russian personnel and destroying their equipment, opening an opportunity to clear mines and advance.

International law

Though they provoke controversy, cluster munitions aren’t specifically banned under international humanitarian law. Their use is regulated by the three basic principles on the conduct of hostilities.

The targets have to have sufficient military necessity; harm to civilians must be proportional to military objectives; and there must be a clear distinction between combatants and noncombatants.

While they are anchored by populated areas, Russian defensive lines run through the countryside, where Ukraine can meet these conditions with no issue. The country is also fighting a defensive war against an opponent that’s used escalating war crimes as a strategy.

“I think, of course, there is discussion about the ethical aspects of using cluster munitions, but there are ethical concerns for all kinds of weapons,” said Borsari.

“If you use cluster munitions against field fortifications in the Ukrainian backcountry, I don’t see any reason not to do that."

Ukraine’s fight to bring Russian leadership to justice puts legal systems to ultimate test

In pursuit of justice for Russia’s many war crimes, Ukraine is actively seeking the establishment of an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already launched investigations into alleged Russian war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Ukraine. However, the…

The Kyiv IndependentAlexander Khrebet

0 notes

nbmsports · 1 year

Text

Proceeds of $3.1 Billion Chelsea Sale Have Not Reached Ukraine War Victims

It was the biggest price paid for a soccer team, and for a while the biggest price paid for a sports team anywhere in the world. And the enormous proceeds were to create what would be one of the biggest humanitarian charities ever established.But 13 months after the forced sale of Chelsea F.C. after the British government sanctioned its Russian oligarch owner, Roman Abramovich, the charity has yet to be established and not a cent of the $3.1 billion (2.5 billion pounds) has gone toward its intended purpose: providing aid to victims of the war in Ukraine.The person picked to lead the charity, which is so far behind schedule it has yet to be given a name, has described his efforts as being “stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire.”Months of talks with British government officials have so far failed to yield anything approximating a breakthrough even as the war rages on and the need for support has only grown, said Mike Penrose, former executive director of the U.K. Committee for the United Nations Children’s Fund, who was tapped to lead the charity. The government’s permission is required before any transfer of the money from a frozen bank account to the charity, to ensure that none of the money is funneled to Russia, or to Abramovich.At the heart of the stalemate is the government’s insistence that any money can be spent only within Ukraine’s borders, an edict that stems from an agreement with the European Union over how funds can be distributed. Abramovich secured Portuguese citizenship in murky circumstances a few years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Penrose, backed by other nongovernmental organizations, said placing restrictions on spending to victims of the war in Ukraine would not allow the charity to provide support to millions of others affected directly and indirectly by the war, a group as disparate as refugees living in countries bordering Ukraine and those living in the Horn of Africa, in countries like Somalia, who were plunged into starvation because of a shortage of Ukrainian grain.“We couldn’t help them under the current conditions,” Penrose said in a telephone interview.British officials have been wary of seeing any of the proceeds of the sale make their way to Russia, or back to Abramovich, who shortly after Russia’s invasion was deemed to enjoy a “close relationship” for decades with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. The relationship between the men was not a problem for the British when Abramovich first arrived at Chelsea in 2003, or as he spent the next two decades plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into the team, lifting it to become one of the top soccer clubs in the world.Abramovich had first proposed the charity when he put the club up for sale last year.On May 30, when the government issued a license for the sale of Chelsea to an American-led group, it outlined its determination to “ensure that Roman Abramovich does not benefit from the sale of Chelsea Football Club in any way, and that the proceeds of such a sale are used for humanitarian purposes in Ukraine.”“Furthermore, the Treasury will only issue a license which ensures that such proceeds are used for exclusively humanitarian purposes in Ukraine. The United Kingdom will work closely with the Portuguese Government and the European Commission when considering an application for such a license and the destination of the proceeds.”That position undermines not only the spirit in which the charity was conceived, Penrose said, but also the law.“All it would take is a little bit of bravery and a position from the British government that we’re going to do the right thing and help all victims of the Ukraine war, knowing full well we can’t send it to Russians and Russia or anything that people might worry about,” he said.Publicly, the government has been mostly tight-lipped about the holdup. Pressed on the matter, James Cleverly, the British foreign secretary, said recently: “We want to make sure that the money that is released goes exclusively to the recipients it is aimed at. I need full reassurance that is the case.”At the time of the sale last year, some of the bidders for Chelsea also expressed concerns about a stipulation set by Abramovich that the funds go toward setting up the new foundation, which he pledged would be for “all victims” of the Ukraine war.During the months of back and forth, Penrose has communicated with civil servants but not with Cleverly, or any other ministers — the officials that would, he contends, hold the key to breaking the deadlock in a situation that appears to be as political as it is bureaucratic.“This is one thing that I’m a bit annoyed about,” he said. “We’ve asked for even a telephone call with the ministers in charge repeatedly. And they keep saying, ‘yes, yes, yes,’ and we never get it. And I don’t know if it is priorities or they are avoiding the issue.”A spokesman for the foreign office would only say that the funds remain frozen and a new license would need to be issued to release them to the foundation.But it is not only Penrose and staff members linked to the foundation who have been pressing the British government: Potential recipients of the money have, too.“It’s ludicrous that Chelsea can be sold in a matter of weeks but when it comes to releasing desperately needed funds they get stuck in the weeds,” said James Denselow, head of conflict and humanitarian policy at Save the Children in Britain.He supported Penrose’s assessment over where and how the funds should be spent. “The consequences of war in Ukraine don’t stop on its borders,” Denselow said.The comments come during the same week in which London is hosting a high-level international conference to discuss Ukraine’s recovery that will be addressed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain and will include the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken. Penrose said the event could help bring renewed urgency to the release of the stalled foundation’s funds.Denselow warned of the risk that the funds could be subsumed by reconstruction costs rather than the humanitarian needs they were designed for.The global charity Oxfam has also pressed for the impasse to be broken. Pauline Chetcuti, head of policy at Oxfam Britain, suggested the most urgent need was in several African countries reeling from food shortages linked to the conflict in Ukraine.“I really do hope that there are no politics holding up the money voluntarily preventing families in South Sudan or Somalia from buying their next meal,” Chetcuti said. “It would be outrageous and scandalous.” Source link Read the full article

0 notes

terakopian · 2 years

Photo

War Is Never The Answer. 2022 has been horrid. The unbelievable war in Ukraine and the renewed war by Azerbaijan with Turkish support, against Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) and Armenia (a continuation of an attempted Genocide which started in 1915 killing 1.5 million Armenians and the 2020 attacks, which claimed more than 6,500 lives on both sides). I’m thankful that at least the eyes of the world are on Ukraine. It’s absolutely just that so many countries are providing aid, both militarily and humanitarian, even if the same countries are turning a blind eye to the military action by the modern day Ottoman Empire as they commit atrocities, murder and blockade Artsakh, resulting in shortages of food, medicine and fuel for well over 100,000 people. I’ve shed many tears since February, watching the inhumanities committed by Russian troops as Putin seems to try redefining just how inhumane, a person can be. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” - Sun Tzu. 2022 also brought the deaths of so many amazing people in the public eye, from around the world. From Her Majesty The Queen to Olivia Newton-John, Sidney Poitier, Ray Liotta, Vivienne Westwood and Pelé, to name just a few. This is nothing of course when one realises over 17,000 Ukrainian civilians have lost their lives and around 20,000 soldiers on both sides of that conflict. I really do hope that 2023 will bring an end to the madmen who cause war. I really hope that humanity rises up in 2023. I wish for us all, a more peaceful and loving existence on all levels and for the greed of politicians to cease, so society can breath and live again. Happy new year. [caption] Towards The Front. A soldier from the Artsakh army makes his way along trenches to the front line. Martakert, Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh). 1994. Photo: ©Edmond Terakopian/1994. #nowar #peace #nowarinukraine #nowarinartsakh #nowarinkarabakh #newyearsmessage #newyearsthoughts #newyearsmessage2023 #artsakh #nagarnokarabakh #frontline #towardsthefront #soldier #frontlinesoldier #reportage #photojournalism #kodaktrix #leica #leicam6 @leicauk @leica_camera (at Artsakh) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm1ekBBIo-j/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#nowar #peace #nowarinukraine #nowarinartsakh #nowarinkarabakh #newyearsmessage #newyearsthoughts #newyearsmessage2023 #artsakh #nagarnokarabakh #frontline #towardsthefront #soldier #frontlinesoldier #reportage #photojournalism #kodaktrix #leica #leicam6

1 note · View note

kassareo · 3 years

Text

hi everyone!

my name is yeliza, i’m ukrainian, living in kyiv. funny story but currently we have a 150k+ army of russians all over the ukrainian borders, as well as an ongoing shelling from uncontrolled territories that has been averaging more than 1000 strikes daily. more fun facts - we are currently in a state of emergency, and it’s of high probability that russians will start a major invasion pretty damn soon. kyiv will be one of the first to be hit :)

i wanted to use this as an opportunity to spread the information about the whole situation, but also ask you to help me disperse it further: you can get the main points about the russo-ukrainian war and current escalation here. also PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO OUR ARMY - the link is here. any amount would be helpful - even some of your pocket money. we are in the dire need for the global support, truly.

much love and appreciation for your help!

if you have any question regarding the situation, i’ll be glad to answer as long as i’ll be able to! stay safe!

UPD. the national bank of ukraine has also opened a donation account for ukrainian army, the number of the special account: UA843000010000000047330992708. Proof here. PLEASE DONATE

UPD 2.0 - the national bank of ukraine has opened another donation account, this one is for humanitarian aid for ukrainians suffered from russians aggression. the link is here, it’s proof itself; more specifics are mentioned in the link.

please donate!!!!!!!!

#ukraine #russia #donate #donations #help needed #boost this #talks

15K notes · View notes

mariacallous · 1 month

Text

Stay and fight, future clients!

Journalists at Agentstvo Media have learned that the man who appears in a recent selfie video promoted by Z-bloggers urging men in the Kursk region to stay and fight the Ukrainian military is actually the owner of a tombstone and funeral business in St. Petersburg. Four years ago, Kirill Vlasikov changed his name to Suvorov (apparently to boost his tombstone business that bears the Suvorov name — which means "severe" in Russian and is the name of a famous 18th-century Russian general and military theorist). Besides tombstones, Suvorov’s business offers cremation, burial, and transportation services specifically for soldiers killed in combat. He told Agentstvo directly that he believes men living in Kursk should stay and help resist the Ukrainians and said he sends humanitarian aid to Russian troops in Ukraine. He declined to answer when asked if he plans to enlist with Russia’s armed forces.

7 notes · View notes

wind-becomes-lightning · 3 years

Text

#StandWithUkraine - Donations for Stories

As many of you may know, Russia has attacked Ukraine on the 24th of February, an unprovoked, unacceptable invasion of a fellow sovereign country that somehow Russian Rulemakers see as theirs. So as Ukraine, a strong, fighting nation, squares up to defend against the oppressors, all the rest of us in eastern Europe can do is watch and wait if we are next. Well I hate that. I hate it so much I could scream all day. So, instead I thought, at least I could donate (and I did) and also, maybe I could get others to donate.

Here is the thing: Let’s do an exchange of goods! I offer my services as your ghostwriter, write you whatever setting, whatever story, whatever pairing you want. It’s practically a commission for a tailor made fanfiction and all you have to do is donate 10€ or the equivalent to one of the four organisations I will link here and show me the receipt. Easy right? We all win.

Here some corner data of what I have in mind:

You donate to either: Voices of Children (which is an org that specialises on trauma of war in Ukraine) | Vostok SOS (which provides humanitarian aid and helps people evacuate) | Caritas Ukraine (provides support for people in need) & then you sent me the proof via DM (why not other orgs? Why not directly to the Ukrainian army? Because I hear conflicting information about that and I don’t want your money (or mine) to go to scams. So I’m playing it safe)

NO ANON MESSAGES. I need to be able to communicate with you and if you are on anon, I can’t ask questions back. You can however contact me over twitter if you feel better not revealing your tumblr to me (or others). Twitter

You contact me via DM and tell me what kind of couple you want, setting you want. You can also outline the story yourself! If you have no direct idea then I will send you an outline of what I have in mind and you can approve or decline. You are the customer and I’ll write what you want (within reason)

Be understanding, please. There are couples that I do not vibe with at all, that I don’t want to put my name to. If you donate and really can’t think of any other pairing that you love, even if I hate it, I will still write it for you. The donation is worth more. However, I ask you to see me too and maybe meet me halfway. (Yes, I’m looking at people who ship Students with Teachers, even aged up, - please do not make me..)

The story will be at least 1.5k words in lenght, maybe longer! I promise between 1.5 and 2k words for sure though, so it’s not just a drabble. I will spend time on this.

I can adjust my style if you so wish! I have seen that I have a certain way of writing that others do not, but I don’t mind changing things about it if that would be more what you want. After all, I want to make this perfect for you.

Be reasonable with me! I have a full time job and maybe need breaks, I will take a while to get it done. I am a very fast typer (as any of my friends who’ve seen me sprint can vouch for), but I need to know what I want to say to be fast. So if I am still experimenting it might take a bit, but when I have the spark it should be fast.

I’ll send you the finished google doc file for you to check before publishing (or not! depends on you!) and you can look it over to sign it off.

OC’S welcome! I love learning about OC’s. If you have one and want me to use them don’t hesitate to wall of text me in dm’s! I will try my hardest to do them justice.

That is about it. Of course I also encourage you to donate even if you do not like my writing style or do not want anything from me. I’m just trying to give you something back.

I encourage all creators of fanworks that have the time and capacity to do something to join me or do something similar, maybe less time consuming. Let’s help the people in Ukraine in the only way we know we can: Writing about the hot anime men, ehm, I mean, by sharing stories with each other ;) <3

Stay safe out there everyone. I hate this war with a passion. I would like to cry for hours, but alas, this is the world we live in now.

Also, here the proof that I did donate to VORSTOK SOS under cut, name censored.

#i do not know how to tag this because whatever #warning: i will reblog this a couple of times in the coming days (weeks?) just to keep it going #i dont even know #if people will use this #i'm just going to call it #Nisi-DfS #so you can blacklist that hashtag to not see this anymore #alrig

114 notes · View notes

thezeinterviews · 1 year

Text

RBC-Ukraine: Olena Zelenska: We will feel the consequences of the war for another 5-7 years after the victory

youtube

[Note: The following translation is a translation of the transcript of the interview, not the interview video itself. The transcript is an almost 1:1 transcript of the interview, just missing some interjections, unimportant additions, ... .]

Kyiv, Wednesday 28 June 2023

Author: Uliana Bezpalko

In an interview with RBC-Ukraine, First Lady Olena Zelenska spoke about her projects, the consequences of the war for Ukrainians' health, how she sees victory in the war, whether she believes in the Russian uprising, and her role in political processes.

Since the outbreak of full-scale war, Olena Zelenska has faced challenges that are atypical for a First Lady of any country in the world. During her visits abroad, she negotiates military aid and air defence systems instead of focusing exclusively on cultural and humanitarian projects.

Interlocutors in political circles say that few people are aware of Zelenska's real influence. They say that she somehow keeps her finger on the pulse of all domestic political events. The First Lady herself considers this more of a compliment and an exaggeration. She explains that she does not give any advice to Volodymyr Zelenskyy on state processes.

In a long interview with RBC-Ukraine, the First Lady told us what projects she is involved in, whether she sees her future in politics, and what she thinks about Ukraine's victory and a possible revolt in Russia.

- In addition to humanitarian issues, during your meetings in the international arena, you also raise the issue of supplying Ukraine with military equipment and weapons, which is not very typical for First Ladies and Gentlemen. Tell us, how do world leaders react to this? And perhaps you have some interesting cases that you can share in terms of arms negotiations?

- I'll start from the very beginning because it's really an atypical situation for any President's wife, any First Lady in the world, to be inside a country at war and continue to carry out her humanitarian work. Of course, you can't act as if it doesn't concern you.

Because I never talk about offensive weapons. I always talk about weapons only in the context of protecting Ukrainian civilians, protecting our children, mothers. Everyone I speak to is touched by this because it is sincere - I am not making anything up. And, of course, I always consult with our large diplomatic corps and the Presidential Office about what I can say, what I can ask for, and I carry out the tasks that Ukraine gives me. I can only speak on my own behalf.

In fact, all meetings are planned and expected. And there is almost never a topic that your interlocutor does not expect you to talk about. After I spoke in the US Congress and asked for air and missile defence equipment, I think that any of my interlocutors understood that I could address this topic and could talk about it. And I continue to do so.

In fact, I still have more contacts with Presidential wives and other First Ladies. But during every trip abroad, I have certain missions that I have to fulfil, and I meet a lot of people, including heads of state and government, foreign ministers, defence ministers, etc.

I remember my last trip to South Korea. I had a meeting with the President, and yes, there was a really long list of equipment, including military equipment, that we needed. I could not just list the names of weapons, military equipment, etc. So I handed the entire list, translated into Korean, to the President and described in words what I would like them to consider.

Interestingly, during his meeting with the President (of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy - ed.), he also referred to that list, checked it against the one provided by the President, and was satisfied that the lists matched. It turns out that we did such preparatory work with our delegation for the main talks between our Presidents.

But, in fact, there can almost never be any spontaneous things or surprises. Diplomacy, even soft power diplomacy, of which I am a part, perhaps in certain non-humanitarian areas, is a rigorously thought-out process that basically does not give many options for something to go wrong.

- During the large-scale war, Ukraine has become known around the world. Unfortunately, foreigners often associate Ukraine with devastation, with the war caused by Russian aggression. You have launched a cultural diplomacy project that opens Ukrainian bookshelves around the world. Could you tell us if this project is scalable? And perhaps you have data, do you observe whether the popularity of Ukrainian literature has been growing since 24 February?

- It seems to me that it is growing. And this is a growing interest not only in Ukrainian literature but in Ukraine as a whole, in our art and in our history. Because the world is getting to know Ukraine anew. Perhaps it is too late. Unfortunately, perhaps it is indeed too late. But we have to do everything now to give the world the opportunity to know more about us.

Literature is one of the ways. Because books tell everything about us: who we are, what we are, how we live, what we think, our history, culture, art - everything. Indeed, the project is expanding. We have managed to open 39 countries for ourselves for our bookshelves. There are 170 shelves in different libraries. And these are 44,000 books in Ukrainian, as well as in the language of the country where the shelf is located. This is exactly the kind of literature we want to be distributed there.

The bookshelves are not only for foreigners, they are also for Ukrainians who are now living abroad in large numbers. This is a way of coming home in a way, a way of returning, at least in their minds, to their homeland. I see a lot of interest in Ukraine. I can give you an example: recently, there was a large delegation of journalists from South America, including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and they really know very little about us. They were amazed by a lot of things they hadn't heard about us. And it opens up people's understanding of us.

So we will continue. I hope that the number of shelves will grow and more world libraries will join us, such as the London Library, which is one of our latest examples. I saw the eyes of the staff of this library when we showed them Ukrainian publications. It's really beautiful, it's interesting, they are impressed by the quality of Ukrainian publishing, the quality of our publishers, the quality of our writers, what great achievements we have in this area. It was a great pleasure to represent Ukraine from this side.

- Another initiative of yours within the framework of cultural diplomacy is the introduction of Ukrainian-language audio guides in museums and historical monuments around the world. Could you tell us how this idea came about? And do you have any data on how popular this service is?

- I remember exactly how the idea came to me. It was in Berlin. And it was on one of the bus routes that our embassy had introduced a Ukrainian-language audio guide. I thought to myself: how many examples of this have I seen around the world? Almost everywhere I went as a tourist, there were various options, and there was a lot of Russian, but almost nowhere was there Ukrainian.

I began to study this issue and found only a few examples. For example, the Ukrainian Institute has introduced only two, I think, audio guides in Poland. I came across this in Berlin. And I found almost nothing else. I realised that this is a really great opportunity for activity. Firstly, it is the promotion of Ukraine. Where there is the Ukrainian language, there is Ukraine. Where there is our flag in the list of language options, there is Ukraine.

You know, it's just like in the days of the gold rush in the United States: wherever you went, you put your flag, that's your land. We don't want to find land for ourselves - we have our own beautiful land, but we have to put a marker that Ukraine and Ukrainians are here. That's why, as we develop this project, I think it's a success. We already have 65 audio guides, 40 countries (at the time of publication, the project has 67 audio tours in 42 countries - ed.), leading museums, palaces, tourist routes - everything that is interesting to people in each country, we have to open to Ukrainians and those who speak Ukrainian.

Since the full-scale invasion, this has acquired another meaning besides tourism. This is really a helping hand from Ukraine to our displaced people who are now abroad. We have heard from diplomatic missions from different countries that our people want to get involved in art and the history of the countries they are in. And yes, it is better to do this in their native language. That's why it's in demand, and I hope there will be more of it in the future. In general, it seems to me that this is more about positioning Ukraine, that we need to expand our cultural influence, our presence in the world.

Note: As part of the project, Ukrainian-language audio guides are already available in the Colosseum (Italy), Versailles (France), Albertina Gallery and Schönbrunn Palace (Austria), Dolmabahçe Palace (Turkey), the Tower of London, and Charlottenburg Palace (Berlin), The Vasa Museum (Sweden), the National Museum of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania (Lithuania), the Uluwatu Temple in Bali (Indonesia), the Qatar National Museum, on Hop-on Hop-off bus tours to Oslo (Norway), Athens and Piraeus, and in the cities of Vilnius, Lisbon, Porto, Sintra, etc.

- You also pay a lot of attention to the deportation of Ukrainian children and generally keep this issue under control. Do we have a chance to return Ukrainian children? And do we have any mechanisms for this at all?

- I am sure that we should not lose hope and do everything to make it happen. Because this is a really big tragedy for us, these are our children, and we have to get them back. According to our social services, Russia has taken 19,500 children. The Russians say the number is higher. For me, it's really a mystery why they are so focused on increasing what they have done wrong to us.

But in reality, it is very difficult to return (children - ed.). At the moment, Ukrainian ombudsmen and human rights activists have managed to return only 371 children. We understand that this is so little and how much work remains to be done. But this is such a delicate moment. These are not even territories or funds - these are small people who cannot make their own decisions. Therefore, the mechanisms must be very flexible and humane.

At the moment, these mechanisms have yet to be found because all that is happening now around this topic is the recording of offences by Russia. And there are many such records and mechanisms in this regard. For example, the OSCE special commission created the so-called "Moscow mechanism". They recorded all the crimes of taking our children. The UN Special Commission has also recorded numerous violations of children's rights during the war waged by Russia. At the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which took place in May, they also recognised Russia's actions in Ukraine as genocide, which is a big step.

We all know that the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Lvova-Belova. But, again, this is only a fixation and only a reaction. But the mechanisms are very complex, and we all have to create or find them together with our international partners. Because if the aggressor does not enter into any negotiations, if we cannot even get reliable information from them, then we cannot expect them to cooperate and give us our children back - unfortunately, we may not get that opportunity. I am sure that so many adults are working to get the children back that I think we must all work together to find such mechanisms. But, unfortunately, this path will not be easy and will not be quick.

- As far as I know, your daughter is a student.

- Yes, she is.

- What speciality has she chosen? Why, and was it her own choice?

- She chose law. To be honest, we had been talking about her future speciality for maybe five years, constantly returning to this topic. There were various options from her, some suggestions from us, we discussed all this, and we had such long discussions.

In fact, when the time came to choose, of course, we offered her something, she rejected something, but then she accepted something. This was one of the options we offered her. But she applied to several specialities, then had to choose one of them and chose law.

It seems to me that she chose well because I look at her - she likes it, and it "works" for her, as they say. She does it gently, without tension, and she's good at it. So I hope she will continue on this path. But we didn't put any pressure on her. Because I remember how I had almost no choice when I entered the university. And we wanted her to have the opportunity to spread her wings and make her own choice.

- Nowadays, many educational institutions and schools are forced to provide online education. How do you assess the quality of such education in Ukraine?

- There are many factors at play here. I would like to note that the quality of education in Ukraine is still high. We have something to compare it with. Nowadays, I hear a lot from my colleagues abroad, where our mothers and children have gone, about the quality of education of our children, how capable they are, how quickly they adapt and how great they learn.

Let us recall our experience of "Covid". Compared to other countries, we have also gone through this process with dignity. Our teachers have a high level of skills to teach online. So it's great that we have this experience, and we can use it now. Of course, this is a tool that we use when a child cannot physically go to school.

Of course, it is better when children go (to educational institutions - ed.), when children are socialised, when they see their teachers, their friends, when they can communicate. They lose a lot because of the lack of communication with their peers. We understand that there is digitalisation, and the number of hours that children spend at laptop and smartphone screens is also increasing due to their studies.

So there are a lot of negative influences. But we hope that we will gradually reduce the number of children studying exclusively online. We are currently working with the Ministry of Education and other NGOs on proposals to equip schools with the storage facilities that are necessary for children to return to them. I think that this summer, the Olena Zelenska Foundation will implement a project of shelters for schools as one of its projects.

- Your Foundation works in three areas: education, medicine and humanitarian aid. What else is in the focus of your Foundation now besides the shelter?

- Shelter is something we are really interested in. We are also trying to provide an opportunity to continue online learning in cases where it is impossible to go to school. Now the Foundation has found an opportunity to distribute more than 38,000 laptops for our teachers to continue working.

The project lasted several months, during which we received and delivered laptops to Ukrainian regions in batches. The project is now complete, and the Foundation has already started a series of new negotiations with several countries for new batches of gadgets. We hope that by the beginning of the new school year, we will be able to provide thousands more Ukrainian students and teachers with online learning tools.

Speaking about the healthcare sector, we have an ambitious project and are working to create an opportunity to rebuild the Izyum City Hospital. This is really a huge problem for the region. We know that Izyum was under occupation. And the hospital we are talking about served 150,000 local people before the full-scale invasion. There are still doctors there, but the hospital is dilapidated, with almost no medical equipment, in a terrible state.

In order to implement this project, we need a really large subsidy package. That is why the Foundation is now raising funds from foreign donors, philanthropists and organisations to rebuild this hospital. I hope that this year we will be able to start implementing this project.

As for the rest, we have always been interested in children, and in particular foster families and large foster families - the so-called family-type orphanages. We try to help them with various humanitarian aid and everything they need. And now, we are also working on an ambitious project of the Foundation - we are building the first ten houses for such families in different regions of Ukraine. This project has already been funded by our friends from the United Arab Emirates. The first ten houses will be built by the end of this year. We hope that these families will celebrate the New Year in their new homes.

The complexity of this project is that the house is really big because a family can raise up to ten children. The house has to be barrier-free, one-level, so that children with disabilities, who are also many in these families, can move freely. It must be energy-supplied, meaning that it is completely independent of external circumstances. There must be a shelter. That is why the project is really expensive, but we managed to find the funds for it, and the construction of the first houses will begin in July. We hope that everything goes well and we will continue to expand this project.

And by the way, other partners are interested in it. Our colleagues from Estonia have already come to us and want to join the project. We encourage other foundations, funds, and organisations to join us, with our help, and to help this movement, which should enable children to be brought up in families, in families, and not in boarding schools.

- I have also heard about another initiative of yours, which concerns family-type orphanages. Your Foundation organises holidays for these children's homes. How many family-type orphanages will you be able to send on holiday this year, and where are you planning to go?

- We have chosen the Carpathians. We have children from different regions. It is clear that we want to give the children peace of mind first and foremost. The first shift has already been completed, and our children from Kharkiv region have had a rest there.

We have arranged it in such a way that children come to the camp and communicate with their peers, have fun, etc. And their parents also have the opportunity to relax because foster parents don't really have an official holiday as such. And just imagine that when you are raising five, six, seven, ten children, you have to have a break at some point. That's why we made sure that our parents could also have a rest near the camp and with the younger children.

The next shift is about to start (at the time of the interview, the shift had already started - ed.) It mostly included children from the Kherson region. Unfortunately, the tragedy of the dam (Kakhovka hydroelectric power station - ed.) has caused a lot of disaster. We are also planning to send children from Dnipropetrovska and Zaporizka oblasts to this holiday. We are currently planning to send 1,200 children who are being brought up in family-type orphanages. This means about 150 such families.

- What do you think will be the long-term impact of a full-scale war on the mental health of Ukrainians? Sirens, constant shelling at night - how will this affect the mental health of Ukrainians who stay here and, in particular, the health of our children?

- You yourself have outlined the situation we are in. The whole world is now talking about how resilient Ukrainians are. But unfortunately, endurance also has its limits. According to the World Health Organization's research, for example, one in five Ukrainians will be at risk of developing mental health-related diseases in the coming years.

Indeed, we have to think about what will happen to us in the future. We will definitely survive everything, but unfortunately, the human psyche is designed in such a way that everyone experiences what happens to them differently. And our endurance is different. Therefore, the consequences can be too severe for our economy and for our healthcare sector.

Also, according to the World Health Organisation and many other studies, if there is an increase in mental health problems, it can affect the overall level of the economy and reduce GDP by three to five per cent per year. We know that we have to recover. And such losses for the economy will be very difficult. Among other things, we have to think about how we care about each other, how we take care of each other. And resilience is also about how we stay together. That is why the All-Ukrainian Mental Health Programme, which I initiated last year, is designed to help us anticipate and reduce the risks that we may face in the future.

Children are one of the categories of Ukrainians who also feel, and sometimes even more so, what is happening to us. Fortunately, experts say that children and children's psyche can recover faster than adults. But this does not mean that we should not pay more attention to them than we do to adults now.

That is why we are developing pilot projects to rehabilitate children who have suffered psychological trauma from the actions of the aggressor. Among other things, we have to catch up with what our children did not receive in previous periods in various ways. For example, this is knowledge about their own states, their emotions, and how to manage them. Accordingly, the Ministry of Education has a programme that they will implement. I hope that in September, they will be able to start implementing it in schools. We need to review the system of school psychologists, which is currently ineffective, and there are not enough of them. Psychologists must fulfil their function, not just be a school employee.

It is generally said that we will feel the effects of the war for another 5-7 years after the victory. Of course, during this time, some children will grow up and become adults, who ideally should not carry trauma with them all their lives. I believe in post-traumatic growth, and we are putting a lot of effort into this as well. But for this growth to take place, we need to take the necessary steps at all levels now - not only at the state level but, very importantly, at the community level. And to do this, we must also strengthen and improve the knowledge of Ukrainians about health.

There is a stigma attached to this topic in Ukrainian society. And the communication campaign of the All-Ukrainian Mental Health Programme, called "How are you?" is aimed at overcoming this stigma, overcoming ignorance about yourself and your psyche. I would like to note right away that we, Ukrainians, are not unique in this. Most countries that have been paying attention to mental health and the diversity of mental health services in recent years have faced this problem.

People don't admit to themselves that they need to take care of it, they need to think about it, and they don't know that mental health is just a part of overall health, without it, there will be no physical health. I don't want to scare people with the consequences of "not doing anything", as they say, but we hope that the fact that we are already starting to move so actively will give us the opportunity to get less consequences than they could have.

- Talking to people here in Ukraine, many of them are facing depression, apathy, stress. It seems to me that we have been living in a state of constant stress for over a year now.

- It is true.

- And I see that there really is a problem - the further we go, the more people become pessimistic and give up. Tell me, where do you find the strength to keep going?

- I can't say for sure, I guess. But I know for sure that work helps to keep me going. Because when you get up in the morning and know that you have a lot to do, it stimulates you. The fact that I have the opportunity to talk about Ukraine and Ukrainians outside helps me to keep going. I think it's important, and I try to speak to anyone who can hear. I really hope that my voice adds value. I am really inspired by those around me. I've already mentioned the endurance and resilience of Ukrainians - it's inspiring. When you see such examples around you, you can't keep up. You have to somehow be on a par with our people.

- Is there anything that helps you switch?

- I understand that I need to do something sometimes - I won't say sports, but at least some kind of physical training - it helps me to really switch to some other activity for an hour and keep my focus. Recently, I have found a new activity for myself - I went back to study.

- Why?

- This is a field that touches every person. I won't go into details now. But it's interesting to me that it's a different kind of socialisation, it's other people I meet and spend some time with. It's a huge amount of information that is new to me and work that I haven't done in this way for a long time. And that's why it also helps me. I've always been a fan of the theory that the best rest is a change of activity. That's why I try to change my activities from time to time in order not to stand still.

- Now, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the issue of barrier-free accessibility is becoming even more important. Tell us more about your initiative to create a barrier-free space.

- Barrier-free is a broader issue than such spaces. I believe that this is really a philosophy of barrier-free access. But now this topic is becoming more relevant than ever because we understand that even if we take physical barrier-free access, unfortunately, there are more and more people who will need it.

That is why I think that one of the main issues now is to keep barrier-free accessibility in focus during our recovery and reconstruction. We should not rebuild the way it was. We have to rebuild in a way that is useful and universal for all people, including those who have been affected by this war.

We will have more people in wheelchairs. We will have more people with amputations and prostheses. We will have more people with visual and hearing impairments. Therefore, we need to lay the foundation for the future now, we have to think about it. And it is really important if we can convey these messages to the regional authorities. After all, decisions are made at the state level, but they are implemented at the community level. Every community has to take care of its people. They are different. That is why we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that someone cannot move around the city, someone cannot get into the city council building, or in the village, a person with a disability cannot leave the house at all. If we want to recover, we have to recover in the right way.

On the other hand, there are many initiatives within the Programme in different areas, all aimed at making us feel less dependent on our circumstances. And there are a lot of such point projects. I hope that they will all be implemented so that we can change gradually, but we cannot go backwards in terms of taking care of all people, regardless of their capabilities.

- After the war is over, when hundreds of thousands of our military return from the front, we will need to work with them, not only in terms of physical recovery but also in terms of mental recovery and employment. Will the state pay due attention to our military after the war is over? And do you have any initiatives in this area under development?

- I can tell you about what I know is already in development. Just recently, we met with representatives of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, including Yulia Laputina, the Minister. I know that they have projects that will take care of our demobilised soldiers - this is their area of responsibility. Indeed, everyone should have opportunities to resume socialisation. They have projects on rehabilitation, including psychological rehabilitation.

They work with work teams to accept members of these teams who have been at war and returned, perhaps injured or disabled - how to accept them, how to arrange their jobs, how to prepare the team to communicate properly with their employees.

I know that the Ministry of Economy has a project on business for the military and veterans. The Ministry of Youth and Sports also has its own projects on physical activity and physical education for veterans. Each of the departments has priority and pilot projects in development, and let's hope that they will all be implemented. I am sure, as you are, that our soldiers who are now defending our lives deserve to return to peaceful life and to be waited for, to be respected and to have the proper conditions to continue this peaceful life.

- As far as I understand, you receive proposals and requests from international business from foreign philanthropists who would like to help Ukraine in the humanitarian sphere. One example of such cooperation is the creation of a kitchen factory in Bucha with the support of Howard Buffett. Was it his initiative, or was it your idea and he was approached? What was his motivation for participating in this project?

- I'll probably start by telling you who Howard Buffett is. I don't know how it happened, but he is in love with Ukraine. And we are lucky to have such a person as a true supporter of ours, and he just has a fierce desire to help. When we met in Kyiv last year, he had already met with the President and had several humanitarian projects in development. As far as I know, his focus is on humanitarian demining and so on. And he wanted to meet with me because he knew that we had many different ideas. It was his idea to meet. Then we encouraged him to consider our ideas.

We brought him the factory kitchen as an idea, as a project. This is a really interesting option for organising catering for schoolchildren and not only - perhaps for kindergartens and public institutions in general. One factory kitchen, for example, the one in Bucha, will produce 10,000 hot meals a day and can satisfy three surrounding communities.

We presented this project to him. He said that he hadn't thought about it yet, but would think about it. We managed to persuade him, and he is now a very passionate supporter of this project. This project is developing. We already have an agreement with him to build a similar kitchen factory in Lozova, Kharkiv region. This is where we already have his agreement to finance this project. Subsequently, the design stage begins.

I hope that when we have a ready-made, working kitchen factory in Bucha, it will be easier to distribute, and we will have something to show to other investors and our regions. I know that there is a desire to build such enterprises in Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Ternopil regions and Volyn. We are now looking for investors - perhaps not only Mr Howard, perhaps someone else - to finance these projects. Because it is clear that communities will not always be able to implement this on their own.

But it's a great idea, and I think it will work. It saves resources, it saves time, it means trained employees, it means really good standards, which are also much easier to control. Hopefully, the idea will spread. And with Mr Howard, we also have a collaboration on the Superhumans clinic in the Lviv region. This is a rehabilitation and prosthetics clinic for Ukrainians. He has also made a great contribution to making this project a reality. I hope there are more projects ahead - with him and others.

- Are there any other businessmen and philanthropists who are keen to help?

- I can say that, for example, the activities of the Olena Zelenska Foundation are focused on foreign aid for Ukrainians. We cooperate only with foreign patrons, businesses, foundations, etc. We have a great friend of Ukraine, Mr Temerty from Canada, who has already made a fairly large contribution. But he had a specific purpose - he wanted purely humanitarian aid and for one region only. We fulfilled his request, and the humanitarian aid was delivered. It was at a time when there were massive power cuts when people needed generators, everything that provides heat, light, etc. That's why this aid package from him consisted of just such things.

Another example is Mr Andrew Forrest from Australia. I met him in Davos during the World Economic Forum. I shared the Foundation's projects, and now the Foundation is at the stage of agreeing on the details of potential cooperation with his The Minderoo Foundation.

We have contacts among French businesses. There are also people there who are particularly interested in the Izyum hospital. But we will look for more. Because the Izyum Hospital requires large investments. These people are not enough for us. We have made friends, so to speak, with the United Arab Emirates. After all, as I said, ten houses is a large amount of money. They gave it to us in one tranche. It was a really powerful help. But I can say that during each visit, I try to include this component and look for opportunities to meet or continue to meet people who are interested in helping Ukraine.

- Earlier, you initiated the First Ladies and Gentlemen Summit. Can you tell us whether it will be held this year? And if so, will it be held in Ukraine or abroad, and what will be the topic?

- Yes, this year, we are planning to hold the third First Ladies and Gentlemen Summit, and we definitely want to hold it in Ukraine. We have already secured this leadership and do not want to lose it. We hope that it will be held in autumn. We are already inviting experts, First Ladies, Gentlemen, and everyone who can participate.

The theme of the summit will be mental health. This is a topic that concerns not only Ukraine but the whole world. It is a common issue for everyone. But Ukraine really needs to become a leader in this aspect as well because we are now a testing ground for new solutions. No other country has such experience as we do. And I think we will have separate panels on the mental health of adolescents and young people. These are the people who will make decisions in 2-3 years. And this is a really interesting audience that should have the opportunity to speak out, and we should give them that opportunity.

- How do you see Ukraine's victory in this war because it would seem that the answer is very obvious? But looking through the pages of foreign media, statements by foreign leaders, we can see that some in the West interpret the word "victory" to mean not letting Russia win. Some hint that it could be a return to the borders of 23 February. What is victory for you?

- I have to say that this is my opinion: I am sure that it is, first of all, the return of all our territories from '91. Secondly, it is the return of all our people: prisoners, prisoners of war, our children, people who left. We really want our internally displaced people to return, those who want to return, and we really want more of them. We need people in Ukraine.

And the third component is justice. Without the establishment of the International Tribunal, without the work of the International Criminal Court, so that everyone who gave orders and who carried them out receives not only a sentence but also punishment, I will not feel victorious. But I am confident that we will be able to do all this.

- Why do you think Russians do not protest, do not rebel against the war, against their regime? Because there are also many losses and deaths there. There are Russian mothers, Russian women losing their sons and husbands, and we see nothing - zero reaction.

- We don't see anything because, apparently, very little is happening. But I think that there is really fear and powerlessness there. We were also talking about this the other day with my colleagues why this is so. We live in an open society, it's not the 17th year of the last century when you can't get information. Yes, their television is biased, but they have the Internet. Why aren't people interested? Most of them are probably afraid to find out the terrible truth about themselves. Because then you have to tell yourself that you are also a monster, you supported it. But all this is still no excuse for fear and powerlessness. I hear a lot of talk about how soon they will rise up, something will happen soon. I would not hope for that.

- This is just my guess. Probably, if someone does rise up, it will not be ordinary people, but only some elite who will be dissatisfied and only because of some material motives, not because of the loss of people and so on.

- I agree with you.

- Since Volodymyr Zelenskyy became President, your field of activity has also changed. Are you satisfied with your status and role? And if you were given a chance to go back in time to your previous activities, what would you choose?

- Yes, I really did not choose my current status and role. But I can say that I have accepted it, I am following this path and trying to be useful and effective. I don't think about what could have happened if this hadn't happened. I try not to look at the past - it's useless, it distracts from the future. I haven't thought about it.

- From people who know you, I have heard this assessment, this opinion that your influence on state processes is much bigger than that of a First Lady in Ukraine or in any other country in the world and that you are almost the main adviser to your husband. How often do you advise Volodymyr Zelenskyy? What issues do you advise him on, or does he seek your advice?

- I think this is an exaggeration. Someone really wanted to pay me a compliment, I guess. But I definitely do not influence state processes - one hundred per cent. I can initiate some things, I can support them, but this applies only to the humanitarian and social spheres, etc. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not consult me. And I think it's right. Firstly, I could not give him expert advice, there is a huge gap between us in the knowledge that he has now and that I could add to him. And it would be unethical.

I think he has such a big responsibility. A wife cannot advise her husband in matters of public administration. It's not right. We don't even talk to him about such topics. Yes, we discuss something. As part of the discussion, we can discuss issues that concern all Ukrainians, we have many controversial issues in society that we can argue about, we can agree on. But this does not mean that what we say to each other will then become a decision or influence his opinion when making decisions.

- Do you envisage your participation in politics in the future in a capacity other than First Lady?

- No, I don't want to. This is not my area. For some reason, I have been asked this question a lot lately. Someone came up with this idea - I don't know who. But I don't want it, I don't aspire to it. So it will never happen.

- Share your most exciting event, event meeting from 24 February 2022.

- I remember that I didn't know what to expect, and I was worried before meeting my husband, after the first period when we were separated for a month or a month and a half when I had to leave Kyiv, and he stayed here. When I came back, to be honest, I was worried. I had only seen on TV how he was growing a beard and what had happened to him, what he had become, and I was a little worried. Fortunately, nothing extreme happened, but at first, I had a feeling that there was a possibility that we might not meet at all. This is always a possibility during a war. And finally, we met. There was a moment - I won't say it was too emotional. We don't have emotional scenes, tears or anything like that in our family. But I did feel excited.

A very emotional event was the speech in the US Congress when I spoke about weapons for the first time. It was really so responsible that I was very nervous. This is not typical for me, not typical for the role of the First Lady in general. I understood that if I was invited to the Congress, they were giving me carte blanche. But I had to get into the hearts of these people. And I really hope that I did. I was lucky that I spoke (and I always do) from the heart, what I really think, and tried to find the right words for it.

But it was really emotionally difficult because I was also talking about things that were difficult for me. And I gave examples that touched me personally. In particular, the girl Lisa from Vinnytsia who died, whom I personally knew. And this emotional intensity really brought tears to my eyes at some point. I calmed down my state, but it was sensitive, it was difficult.

Article

#olena zelenska #olena selenska #ze interview #olena interview #russia #ukraine #war #translated interview #rbc-ukraine interview #interview 2023 #2023 #rbc-ukraine #zelenska

11 notes · View notes