#we need more direct Ukrainian media out there | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

black-arcana · 10 months ago

Text

WITHIN TEMPTATION's SHARON DEN ADEL: 'Some People Stopped Following Us' Because We Became More Outspoken On World Issues

On April 5, Dutch metallers WITHIN TEMPTATION will release their brand-new song, "A Fool's Parade", which marks a collaboration with the talented Ukrainian producer Alex Yarmak. According to a press release from WITHIN TEMPTATION's publicist, "A Fool's Parade" "highlights Russia's pretense regarding the war, and condemns its lies, ongoing crimes and brutal intentions."

The song, released as a harbinger of the much-anticipated "Bleed Out 2024 Tour", is a powerful expression of what the press release calls "WITHIN TEMPTATION's commitment to continue shedding light on the ongoing existential struggle that Ukraine is facing against Russia's cruel invasion."

For the recording of the accompanying music video for "A Fool's Parade", Sharon Den Adel — the frontwoman of WITHIN TEMPTATION — recently spent time in Kyiv, Ukraine. The music video was directed by renowned Ukrainian video director Indy Hait.

With involvement in initiatives such as the Ukraine Aid OPS foundation, WITHIN TEMPTATION aims to keep drawing attention to Europe's much-needed support for Ukraine's defense.

During her stay in Kyiv, Sharon spoke to Metal Pilgrim about WITHIN TEMPTATION's decision to use its platform to draw attention to a variety of issues, including the plight of women fighting for their rights in Iran.

Sharon said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We never cared about what people wanted us to say or not to say. We always did what we wanted to do. But the older you get and the more confident you get in being who you are and what you stand for, you're more expressive. And I also feel like I have nothing to [lose] — well, of course, you have something to lose when you speak out about things like this, because it can always backlash, of course. And it's very delicate to choose the right words for things. But I try to prepare myself really well. And I hope eventually that pays off, meaning the people get the message. Some people stopped following us because we started supporting [certain causes] and being more outspoken. They say, 'You can't be political as a band.' I don't agree because everybody has an opinion and everybody's loud, and that's also society today. As you see on social media, it's like there's no filter on anything. I'm not saying that I need to overshout other people, but more like I still wanna stand for my opinion and hopefully make people think about it."

Den Adel went on to say that "you also have to choose your battles" in terms of which issues to focus on when coming up with lyrical themes for songs. "[The Russia-Ukraine war] is happening in Europe, and we are a European band. And so we also got a lot of times the question, 'What about this country? What about this situation?' And there's also a lot of awful things happening in different parts of the world. And also in interviews, I will talk about it when people ask me, but I won't do it on the social media because you get in discussion and it becomes one big fight with pro and against certain subjects. For me, in interviews, I do respond to that as well. But I also have to pick my battles. If I take on all the injustice of the world, it will fade away for the thing that I, at the moment, am inspired about most. And the last album that we did, with 'Bleed Out', we have focused on certain parts of the world, like Iran — there's one song, 'Bleed Out', is about that — but a lot of songs, actually, are about the Ukraine, because we're in the same region — it's a two-hours flight from Amsterdam to Kiev. So, I hope people understand that we are picking our battles — something that's closer. Everybody has to do that. But also, like I said, if I talk about every problem in the world, it doesn't come across as authentic and honest either, because it's, like, you're a saint or something, which I'm not."

In a June 2023 interview with James Wilson-Taylor of Rock Sound, Den Adel spoke about the lyrical inspiration for WITHIN TEMPTATION's "Wireless" single: "When the war started in the Ukraine, we were in the studio writing songs, And it's one of the songs that we wrote. And it is about war, of course. It's about a soldier going to war and thinking he's going to liberate people, do good stuff and be a hero and everything, but then he finds out that he's been lied to by media but also government. And then he finds that he can't go back because he's already in his army gear, for instance. You can't go forward, you can't go backward because you have your buddies next to you and you'll all die in the field. And in front of you, you have a mission impossible almost."

The Dutch singer continued: "So that's what we try to do — maybe also shine a light on certain situations within the war. It's just we're storytellers — it's like amplifying a certain kind of emotion that people could feel in this situation."

Asked how she and her bandmates decided to use Russia's invasion of Ukraine as inspiration for one of their songs, Sharon said: "Well, from my point of view, it's not just their war. I really believe what some people are saying — it's really our war as well. Because it's next to us. They already said, they're not gonna stop at Ukraine; they're gonna go further. And a couple of hours flying from my home, it's already Kyiv. So it's also our war. I think we should be aware of the fact that this is a danger for all of us. They won't stop. And hopefully — we wanna keep this a little bit alive in our own small way by writing about it and talking about it and waving a flag on stage about it."

In an interview with Greece's Rock Overdose, Den Adel stated about her band's participation in the event: "For us, it was an honor to be asked for it. I think as a band and as people, we really value freedom of speech and freedom and democracy. I think as a band, people sometimes say, 'Don't be so political,' people say, 'Don't be so expressive and don't take a side on things.' But as a musician, I think it's important to represent who you are, not just in music but really stand for what you make and what you are saying in your lyrics in a way. And things that are happening in the world inspire us to write music, and then you also have to take a stance and what side you are. I think when it's so obvious where there's an aggressor and where there is a country being violated, invaded, you should take a stance and then it makes it much easier even to be very clear about where you stand in this whole conflict. Of course, it's something that we are keeping ourselves updated with every day because we find it very sad to see that a country that wants to be a democracy is invaded this way. So we are very honored to be asked also to play for this event, this marathon, and happy to do it."

Released last October, WITHIN TEMPTATION's latest album, "Bleed Out", signifies a bold leap forward for the band. From contemporary, hard-hitting, and djenty riffs to soaring melodies displaying their symphonic roots, WITHIN TEMPTATION has created a sonic journey that fuses diverse musical styles and thought-provoking themes. This is an album that is as epic as it is unflinchingly outspoken, and now more than ever, this is a band who isn't afraid to make a stand on issues the members care about.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, WITHIN TEMPTATION have shifted their focus from writing about personal emotions and societal subjects to tackling global injustices and reflecting the tumultuous state of the world in a way that other artists seem unable or unwilling to do.

While songs such as "Wireless" and "We Go To War" examine the authoritarian aggression on display in Ukraine and other warzones, the title track itself addresses the plight of women fighting for their rights in Iran after the murder of Mahsa Amini.

The album also grapples with the complex issues around a woman's right to choose in recent single "Don't Pray For Me" and throughout, this impassioned and political focus is reflected in the intensity and heaviness of the music. Embracing a new era of musical exploration and lyrical depth, WITHIN TEMPTATION have pushed boundaries and showcased their artistic evolution, delivering a fist-in-the-air proclamation of both their moral convictions and their fearless approach to music.

youtube

#sharon den adel #within temptation #interview #Youtube

26 notes · View notes

kneedeepincynade · 1 year ago

Text

49 out of 54 African countries join the Russia-Africa summit. The presidential guard of Niger coup pro French president with support of the people.

Hello and welcome to a sov original. Today, we talk about the Russia-Africa summit and what it means in the context of geopolitics.

Let's start with an unexpected star, Uncle Prigozhin is back from Belarus,he appears in good health and comes to reassure Africa that the wagner pmc is here to stay

(Here, Uncle Yevgeny Prigozhin and the director of the publication "Afrique media" on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa Economic Forum, a picture taken from the telegram channel orchestra W)

This star, in rather unformal clothing, has also said his opinion on the Niger coup,wich is as follow:

“The removal of the pro-French president is "in fact a conquest of independence" by the people of Niger. The former colonialists deliberately destabilize the situation in African countries, supporting terrorists and illegal gangs in order to prevent the further development of the former colonies.

(Source:orchestra W)

This is the effectiveness of PMC Wagner: a thousand PMC Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states, ”

With Uncle Prigozhin out of the way,we can start talking about the main event

President Putin has confirmed that the end of the grain deal will not block delivers for Africa and that Russia will offer free grain to countries in need

President Putin has said that Russia is still very much willing to sit on the negotiations table and that it's Ukraine that is refusing compromise. The president added that the African peace proposal is similar in many ways to the one of China

President Putin has forgiven a large debt owed by Somalia,helping the economy of the struggling country.

(Source:Sputnik,intelrepublic)

The African delegates have shown support for Russia and have thanked once again President Putin for the offer of free grain and the deepening of economic partnership between Russia and Africa.

Fun fact: the president of Zimbabwe,during the meeting,was wearing an indument with the face of President Putin

The Eritrean president has maybe been the harsher on Russia,but in the opposite direction that what would be expected,he scolded Russia for not preparing more for the conflict in Ukraine and then re iterated full support for the russian cause

Source:intelrepublic,dd Republic

In Niger, the pro France president has been couped by its personal guard with the support of the people. Many Russian flags and pro Russian slogans were present during the pro coup manifestations,showing once more wich side the African people are on.

Source:Intel republic, DD republic

Once again, the weakness of the Western sanctions and the failure of the policy of isolation are absolutely clear. The west has lost allies,credibility, and an enormous amount of money in its failing anti Russian crusade. The Ukrainian suicide charge is giving no fruits, and Russia has even started its own counter offensive, re taking the no man land that Ukraine was previously able to capture at an enormous cost.

30 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 1 year ago

Text

Morning: day 659 of the full-scale invasion

From early, picket lines are set up near the walls of Kyiv’s city state administration. My friends and acquaintances are protesting, demanding that the capital’s budget be directed not to the repaving of roads, but towards the purchase of drones and FPVs for the battlefield. People close to me are saying: “I don’t want new roads; I want my friends to come back alive.”

A deputy from Kyiv city council has the audacity to suggest that the cities have enough on their plate: let the state take care of the war budget, he argues. Cities need their budgets for maintenance. And this perfectly sums up the widening gap between civilians and the military. Every day the same discussions take place – who should be mobilised? Who is ready to enlist? Can we live our lives for anything other than the war?

We are not even talking about replacing the hundreds of thousands of military personnel who have served in the army for almost two years now. Not to mention those who were already defending the country before the invasion. The latest mobilisation is a question of somehow restoring the military after daily losses.

The night before last, Kyiv was woken up by our air-defence sirens. But they began to sound after the first explosions, which meant that no one had time to run to the shelters. Russia had fired 10 missiles and 10 attack UAVs (drones). Our air defence forces shot down all of them, but the debris fell in four Kyiv districts. Fifty-three people were injured, mostly with lacerations. Nine of the victims are children.

The Russians are targeting infrastructure to deprive civilians of heat and electricity. The harsher the winter, the more missiles we can expect. And this expectation, the psychological threat, has been going on for three months.

Noon: day 659 of the full-scale invasion

A Russian cyber-attack targets one of the major phone networks. About 20 million Ukrainians are left without mobile connection and mobile internet for three days. On social networks Ukrainians post messages of support and gratitude to the network operator for its efforts.

For three days I have been catching a signal in wifi hotspots. I think about those areas where mobile is the only way to access the internet. Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, the phone connection reappears. I call my mother. I ask whether everything is OK, whether she has been worried. She says everything is fine, it is just wartime.

Every day there are reports of the deaths of artists at the front. Friends of friends. Within one week, several members of the film community perish. A cameraman, an actor. Not for the first time, I think: Russia is knocking us out one by one, dozen by dozen. Civilians, military. Cinema, literature, visual arts, agriculture, architecture, education, economics, sports – pick any field, there are irreparable losses everywhere.

The full-scale invasion turns social media feeds into endless obituaries of black-and-white photos. And at any moment in time, when it seems that the heart can no longer contain the losses, there’s another newsflash and another death appears.

Afternoon: day 659 of the full-scale invasion

A broadcast with Vladimir Putin is on at the Kremlin – a media spectacle during which the dictator allegedly speaks to the Russian people live. And while the tsar is talking to his lackeys, he is also sending a message to Ukraine – a MiG-31K is taking off from a Russian airfield, and Kinzhal missiles are flying in our direction. Those missiles will reach Kyiv in three minutes, and Kharkiv in two.

Despair and rage.

A video appears of Russian military using captured Ukrainian soldiers as human shields. The Russians attack Ukrainian positions, hiding behind the Ukrainians.

Despair and rage.

We discuss Oleksii Anulia’s story about his time in Russian captivity. The catalogue of torture inflicted on him is unfathomable. In civilian life, he used to be a kickboxing champion and an elite sportsman. He used to weigh 102kg; he lost 40kg in captivity. Oleksii also lost 6cm in height. Barely a single organ in his body remains intact – the Russians made sure of that.

Among other inhumane punishments, prisoners had to stand still for 18 hours a day. Holding their hands behind their backs with their heads lowered, they had to splay their fingers and were not allowed to move. They cut the tendons on his thumb with a rusty knife, saying: “You were shooting at our military with this finger, killing our soldiers.”

Once Oleksii brought in an earthworm from outside. He put it in the toilet cistern and after a week he had a whole brood of them. This is how he got his first portion of protein in a long time. Another time, he was hunting a little mouse and had to shove the not-yet-killed pest into his mouth and eat it alive so that the guards would not take his nutritious prey from him.

Despair and hatred.

Evening: day 659 of the full-scale invasion

At one of the many new bookstores that, despite everything, have opened in Kyiv this year, a “book of the year” ceremony, awarded annually by editorial staff of BBC News Ukraine, is taking place.

The fifth air-raid alarm of the day sounds. The organisers suggest that in keeping with their security protocols, we should go to the air-raid shelter. To which one of the members of the jury, a respected professor, replies: “Let the BBC be scared, we are not.”

The ceremony carries on uninterrupted, but most of us have phones in our hands. Mobile internet has been restored, and we monitor Telegram channels tracking Russian missile and drone launches.

Just another day of full-scale invasion, packed with pain.

I look around the event; these are my friends and colleagues, representing several literary generations. And as has become a habit in recent months, I simply cannot help but imagine all of us dead. All. At once.

In the rest of the world, hearts are hardening. Attention is divided between conflicts. Activists’ focus is absorbed by the rise to power of populists and rightwing conservatives. But two important things remain constant in the beating of these hardened hearts of ours.

The first: Russia always strives for chaos and for rightwing politicians to be in power.

The second: what Ukrainians have had to accept – is that there will be no other life. This is the way it is. And when you hear the promise of a politician who, instead of fighting for democracy and the future, promises you a return to stability, be sure to check who is financing him. Perhaps this is another Russian puppet.

Late evening: day 659 of the full-scale invasion

News breaks about discussions on Ukraine’s accession to the EU. What started nine years ago on the Maidan is now being decided on the battlefield. The future of Europe, in which the question will be determined: where will Russia stop?

Soldiers’ canteen. Eating with a colleague. It’s the 22nd month of my service in the military. Every time I scoop up the soup, I feel like I’m sipping my own sadness. I tell her about my anxiety before missile attacks, about my anger at those who dodge serving in the armed forces, and those who desperately pretend that the war is not about them.

She listens to me, puts her plate aside, looks me in the eye and says: can you imagine Ukraine without Kharkiv? Without Kyiv? Sasha, we might lose the country. And I will be in the armed forces until this threat goes away.

These are simple, clear words. But someone has to say them out loud. And when I think about the coming year, what 2024 will bring, I realise once again that the issue is not about my personal lack of hope, burnout or my non-existence.

The question is whether my country will still be there.

And when will the F-16s finally soar in our skies.

Morning: day 660 of the full-scale invasion

9am. As it does every morning, the country stands still, for a minute of silence in memory of the dead.

The thought occurs to me that by the end of my life, these minutes of silence will add up to 24 hours of silence for those who are no longer with us.

For those thanks to whom we still exist.

Translated by Maryna Gibson

Oleksandr Mykhed is a writer and member of PEN Ukraine. His book Language of War won the George Shevelev prize on 17 December 2023 and will be published by Allen Lane in June 2024

12 notes · View notes

workersolidarity · 2 years ago

Text

I was hoping in this article The Grayzone would be able to highlight more individual instances of direct and indirect spending in Ukraine, but unfortunately most of that information remains secret.

But The Grayzone was able to audit some detail out of the documented spending by the US Government and it sure doesn't fail to shock with its absurdity.

So US Government debt, as always, is only an problem when the money is being spent on American Workers.

Though Joe Biden likes to pretend to be a big defender of Social Security and Medicare, his history is one of someone waiting eagerly for the opportunity to gut and privatize Social Security, and along with his Republican counterparts, has largely succeeded in Privatizing Medicare. Which is, of course, turning into one big scam where Insurance companies charge the Govt whatever they feel like and being largely reimbursed for it.

At every opportunity, Joe Biden quietly reaffirms to his donors his commitment to cutting Social Security and uses the usual coded language of "adjustments" and "saving" the program, in other words, cutting it.

But when it comes to money for Ukraine, no "adjustments", "changes" or "saving" of the program is necessary, even a year and a half and at least $100 Billion dollars into it.

This is also important to keep in mind. The CIA's "Black Budget" allows the Agency to spend nearly unlimited amounts of money, ammunition, equipment and weaponry with little to no oversight whatsoever.

Even as the infrastructure of the United States falls apart from disrepair, we send billions to Ukraine for their own infrastructure needs.

Just as with Social Security and Medicare, it's okay for Americans to die in large numbers due to accidents related to failing infrastructure.

As a NY Times article from November 2015 describes:

"The Federal Department of Transportation estimates that obsolete road designs and poor road conditions are a factor in about 14'000 highway deaths each year. Research by Ted Miller, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, which receives financing from the Transportation Department, put the medical cost of highway injuries from poor road conditions at $11.4 billion for 2013 according to the latest data available."

"The problem extends beyond roads. Research by the National Transportation Safety Board shows that since 2004, about 77 deaths and 1'400 injuries could have been prevented if railroads had installed a safety system known as Positive Train Control. That includes an Amtrak derailment in May that killed eight people and injured hundreds more in Philadelphia."

But that's okay, we're preventing road deaths in Ukraine. We can always feel good about that!

But we're also suspiciously sending money designated for Ukraine to companies and governments completely unrelated to Ukraine, because literally anything can be tied to this war for Govt Lawyers and bureaucrats

Vast sums are also being spent on various psy-op programs and propaganda efforts through various media organizations, NGOs and think-tanks.

"The funds were earmarked 'to strengthen the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) initiative in implementing international advocacy campaigns to keep high levels of International solidarity with Ukraine' "

AKA Propaganda and psy-ops

Interestingly, much of the funds spent by USAID earmarked for Ukraine seems to have gone to various programs completely unrelated to Ukraine.

It shows us that these organizations are NOT in fact humanitarian organizations, and they have little interest in actually helping real Ukrainians.

Rather, the point of all these "Humanitarian" organizations, NGOs, etc. is wash public funds and put them into the pockets of Western Oligarchs through a web of programs and organizations that always conveniently hire all the well known Washington DC Law Firms and Consulting Firms, big Wall Street investors, Silicon Valley Tech Giants, and huge Western Corporations to get involved in these regime change wars and "Humanitarian" Interventions, as well the "rebuilding" after war.

Wall Street gets to collect public funds in the run-up to wars, during wars, and after the wars they funded are over.

Rinse and repeat in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and now Ukraine.

And then there are some expenditures that will raise eyebrows for another reason, because it very suspiciously looks like the funding for the Nordstream Pipeline terrorist attack and the supplies needed for the operation.

The Pentagon sponsors diving contractor with “history of fraud” to send mysterious explosives to Ukraine

The Department of Homeland Security sent $5.48 million to Gravois Aluminum Boats LLC on June 8, 2021 for the following purpose: “PROCUREMENT OF TWO 38-FOOT FULL CABIN RESPONSE BOATS, FOUR 38-FOOT CENTER CONSOLE RESPONSE BOATS, TRAILERS, SPARE PARTS, AND TRAINING AS REQUIRED UNDER FMS LOA DB-P-LCL FOR THE COUNTRY OF UKRAINE.”

The Department of Defense transferred $4.75 Million to Atlantic Diving Supply Inc. as of February 3rd, 2023 for "PRO SAPPER AND EOD EQUIPMENT [CONTRACTING SQUADRON] UKRAINE" and "Marine lifesaving and diving equipment.

Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) and Sapper equipment is exclusively used to blow things up or clear up explosives. And Atlantic Diving Supply is a military contractor originally founded to provide tactical gear to Navy Seal divers.

When a company like this is tasked with a highly specific delivery of explosives gear to any foreign nation, including Ukraine, it should prompt questions about the mission, particularly when US Intelligence is blaming Ukraine's Military for attacking the Nordstream pipelines without the knowledge of President Zelensky. (The payment does not necessarily correlate with the date of delivery from the vendor; in other words the equipment could have been provided at an earlier date.)

Luke Hillier, the founder of Atlantic Diving Supply paid a $20 Million dollar settlement in 2019 to resolve charges that he defrauded the Pentagon by falsely claiming his company was a small business. Atlantic Diving is consistently listed as one of the top 25 largest military contractors in the country.

In 2021, Hillier raked in a massive $33 Billion dollar contract under the same program, prompting fresh accusations of fraud. The pattern of malfeasance prompted a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to bluntly denounce Atlantic Diving as a "fraudulent company."

Hillier currently owns $13 Million dollar Mega-Yacht in the Cayman Islands, $24 Million worth of beachfront property in Hawaii, and two Bahamas-based companies with murky operations, according to the Project on Government Oversight.

This goes on and on and on and on.

I mean, I'm literally out of room to put more of these expenditures into this post, so instead I will just write out some more egregious examples I haven't yet included:

The Department of Defense has paid $4.9 Million to BAE Systems GCS International as of September 12th, 2022 for "UKRAINE LCS LW 155 SPARES" and "Guns over 155mm to 200mm." In Navy terminology, LCS means "Littoral Combat Ship" while "LW" refers to the Lightweight Gun. And "155mm SPARES" refers to the Gun mounted on the ship's main battery off the bow.

USAID sent $3 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2022 “to improve health outcomes in drought affected areas in Ethiopia.” The description stated, “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine Supplemental Funds.”

USAID sent 30.9 million to Chemonics International, Inc. for the “Ukraine confidence building initiative (UCBI) 4. A private, for-profit aid contractor, Chemonics’ founder said he launched the company to “have my own CIA.” The Grayzone has documented Chemonics’ role in delivering US government funding and supplies to the Syrian White Helmets, which served as the propaganda wing of the Al Qaeda-tied armed opposition. Chemonics previously reaped a massive windfall from the US occupation of Afghanistan, raking in as much as $600 million from USAID.

USAID sent $20.7 million to PACT, INC. for “USAID Ukraine’s public health system recovery and resilience activity and will strengthen the Government of Ukraine (GOU) capacity to address COVID-19 and other public health threats, sustain health services during a crisis, and protect the health of all Ukrainians including vulnerable and marginalized populations. According to its 2022 impact statement [PDF], “In Ukraine, Pact’s work empowers citizens to push for transparent and democratic governance, advances gender equality and human rights for women and girls, and accelerates efforts to achieve HIV epidemic control.” The contractor’s work contributed to “172 people increas[ing] their net income,” according to Pact.

USAID sent 7.6 million to UNICEF IDA for emergency nutrition response in ASALs (Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) in Kenya. The description stated, “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine Supplemental Funds”

USAID sent $1.2 million to University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. located in Atlanta, GA to “support humanitarian information management through geographic information systems, data analytics and visualizations”. Ukraine was listed as the place of performance.

Washington funnels cash to a private equity firm, Georgian finance corporation, a ‘private entrepreneur’ via Ukraine aid

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) sent $25 million to Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV, a “leading private equity firm in emerging Europe, “to back high-growth tech and export-oriented [Small and Medium Sized Enterprises] succeeding globally, based on platforms in Ukraine and Moldova.”

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) sent $1.5 million to the Gazelle Fund LP, another private equity firm, to relocate Ukrainian businesses to Georgia. Georgia does not border Ukraine, nor is it a primary location for Ukrainian refugee resettlement.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent $882'291 to a single individual described as an “private entrepreneur” in exchange for “overseas technical assistance program support services.” The private entrepreneur listed, Igor Lavreniuk, serves as the Program Coordinator for USAID’s Competitive Markets Program according to his LinkedIn.

The National Science Foundation sent 1.3 million to University of Illinois for faculty and curricular development in remote sensing. The place of performance is listed as Ukraine.

The Department of State has paid 8.3 million to Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to help “refugees from Ukraine meet their essential needs during initial displacement.” According to SpendingUS.gov, Catholic Relief Services is listed as having received a total of 657 million from the State Department in 2021, 5.7 billion since 2008 and 670 million during the last 12 months.

As the war drags on, lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham have marketed military aid to Ukraine in increasingly grim terms. As the senator boasted during a recent trip to Kiev, “The Russians are dying…it’s the best money we’ve ever spent.” Meanwhile, Congress has rejected any mechanism that would guarantee transparency on the billions sent to Kiev, and shunned a war powers debate over the US military’s presence on the Ukrainian battlefield.

President Joseph Biden, for his part, has pledged that official Washington will support Kiev “as long as it takes.” As the potential for blowback grows from Western pressure to push Ukraine into NATO, and a nuclear-armed Moscow is backed into an existential fight for its survival, while economic powers including China gradually decouple from the Western financial system, Americans can only wonder how much will this war cost them when it is finally over.

Of course this is nowhere near a full accounting of Washington's Proxy-war in Ukraine which is surely costing in the hundreds of Billions by now between the direct financial aid listed above, to weapons systems and ammunition deliveries, to the training of Kiev's Forces taking place in secret locations across Europe and the US.

And for all we can see, our Country's oligarchs and politicians seem satisfied to continue on the gravy train until they can no longer suck one more penny of wealth out of US public coffers.

30 notes · View notes

eleanorfenyxwrites · 1 year ago

Text

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks for tagging me, @omgpurplefattie!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

78 😅

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

864,062 - this is apparently just a bit more than Gone With The Wind....twice. I don't know how to feel about this.

What fandoms do you write for?

The Untamed (I have also written a handful of fics for Word of Honor and a very tiny one-shot for Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but I'm definitely a CQL/MDZS author lol)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

You Need Tending - A very young, tiny Wangxian meet as children in Yunmeng and canon diverges sweetly from there.

Unexpected Solutions - LXC POV - What if the other sect leaders got to see the Burial Mounds instead of taking JGS's word for it that WWX was raising an army?

You Are Of Their Ilk - Sequel to You Need Tending, a LQR-centric fic examining what it's like to actually raise the Jades (and WWX) when he's got a Sect to run and parenting insecurities to overcome.

Plans To Make - A Wangxian-centric Time Travel Fix-it AU, technically the prequel fic to my first 3zun fic (in which the fixings-of-it have already been done and the post-canon, 5-years-in-seclusion Lan Xichen wakes up in the altered timeline wondering how the hell he has two husbands who are definitely not dead).

Professor Lan, Babysitter Extraordinaire - Modern AU Professor!LWJ spends an afternoon minding A-Yuan for Mature Student!WWX and is instantly charmed.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Sometimes! I used to respond to every single comment I got when I first started posting, but then I just got really overwhelmed and had to stop, and I've never picked up the habit again. If I feel particularly strongly about a comment or have something specific to say I'll try to respond, but otherwise I bask in them all silently (sorry, and I love y'all, I really do read every single comment I swear).

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

The Shadow's Call - An extremely depressed Lan Xichen is violently dragged out of his seclusion in the Hanshi 8 years post-canon by fierce corpse NieYao, who definitely aren't sentient at all but still somehow feel incomplete without their third.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Aside from The Shadow's Call all of my fics end happily!! I just can't do the depressing ones most of the time 😅 I think some of my favorite happy endings for various reasons, though, are The Sculptor, After Each Midnight Begins A New Day, anything in the Orville Peck Cinematic Universe, and anything from the 90's Strip Mall AU, Tales From Jianghu Shopping Center. (Everything in the last two especially is just pure feel-good fluff, not only the endings haha)

Do you get hate on fics?

Not anymore! The XiYao troll must have found something better to do so we can now like JGY in peace 😌

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do! I don't know what kind though 😅 the smutty kind? I don't really delve too deeply into kink or BDSM, and I don't write omegaverse or tentacles or anything all that creative; I just write what I would consider bog standard 'I'm ace and I understand people like doing this, I really hope the allos find this enjoyable to read' kind of smut. (Usually for me it's more about the emotional impact/character development use of it rather than the porn-y-ness of it, if that helps??)

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Nope! I like writing AU's of my favorite ships blended with other media I like, but not direct crossovers.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Hope not!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have! Вони — це ми/ They Are Us is a Ukrainian translation by sandbranco of 'They Are Us', El escultor By Eleanor_Fenyx is a Spanish Translation by ellieffect and KabiBaali of 'The Sculptor', and another Spanish Translation of 'The Sculptor' by GabyObando13. I'm always so flattered when someone likes something of mine enough to do such an incredible labor of love as translating it ❤

What's your all-time favorite ship?

3zun, my beloveds

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Plans To Make - In an ideal world I would finish this soon so I can stop being eaten up with low-simmering guilt about it (along with several other projects, let's be real), but the fact of the matter is that I never actually wanted to write the full fix-it for this universe in the first place. I started Lan Xichen's introduction into this universe after the fix-it has already happened partially because I find that dynamic of a depressed Lan Xichen suddenly partnered with a happily married NieYao really interesting, but also because I don't like all the tangled threads of a universe-wide fix-it and I knew I'd get way too bogged down in details to really enjoy it. That's exactly what's happened, and that's partially why the fic has been sitting so long without an update. I do really want to finish it one day, though.

What are your writing strengths?

I occasionally get comments praising my characterization/character voices, so hopefully that's one. I also like to think that I do a decent job with accurately communicating both relatable and not-quite-as-relatable experiences - queerness of various flavors, neurodivergence, strangely specific life experiences...I usually try to write what I know, and I'm always happy when it resonates with people in the ways that I'd hoped for while writing them.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I feel like I can get sooo long-winded, and I'm also kind of bad for setting up plotty bits in my longer fics that I never actually follow through on.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

The furthest I'll go is honorifics that I'm confident with using, I absolutely do not trust myself or any online translator to attempt whole lines of dialogue.

First fandom you wrote for?

BBC Sherlock - those fics are all orphaned now, though

Favorite fic you've written?

I'm going to choose three just because I can: After Each Midnight Begins A New Day (3zun), The Sculptor (Wangxian), and Main Objective : Destroy Yiling Laozu (Breath of the Wild AU, my beloved)

I'm going to tag: @little-smartass, @wei--wuxian, @scarlet-gryphon, @wishthatiwasnessiesgirl, @threephasebird, and anyone else who writes who wants to play!

#the untamed fanfic #personal #tag game #3zun #Wangxian #<- they're not the only ships I write for of course but they're definitely the two most popular so they're the only ones really in the list

10 notes · View notes

nicklloydnow · 8 months ago

Text

“Comparing 2024 to 1938, Timothy Snyder, a Yale University history professor specializing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union said Ukraine was comparable to a Czechoslovakia "that has chosen to fight."

(…)

"If the Ukrainians give up, or if we give up Ukraine, then it's a different Russia making war in the future," Snyder said during a conference in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

"It's a Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers, from a different geographical position," he added. "Then we're in 1939. We're in 1938 now. In effect, what the Ukrainians are letting us do is letting us extend 1938. They're helping us to stay out of 1939."

(…)

Kyiv has warned that, should Ukraine fall to Russian forces, other nations in Europe will be next on Russia's hit list.

"I would like you to come out on the streets and support Ukraine, support our efforts and support our fight because if Ukraine will not stand, Europe will not stand," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said shortly after Moscow's troops poured into Ukraine in February 2022. "If we will fall, you will fall."

Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said "everything is possible" when discussing whether a wider war could break out between Russia and Western countries backing Ukraine.

The globe is "one step away from a full-scale World War III," Putin said in mid-March.

"I think hardly anyone is interested in this," he added during a media session.”

“Benjamin Haddad—a member of parliament for Macron's Renaissance party and considered a leading voice in French foreign policy discussions—told Newsweek on the sidelines of the Lennart Meri Conference in Estonia last week that NATO and the European Union need to "turn the tables" on Russian President Vladimir Putin after more than two years of full-scale war.

Macron is seeking to re-establish Western strategic ambiguity and knock Moscow off balance, with the deployment of NATO forces inside Ukraine in non-combat roles among his recent proposals. Though immediately dismissed by the U.S., the idea has won backers in Europe, particularly in nations that sit along Russian frontiers.

Momentum for deeper NATO commitments—including troop deployment—in Ukraine is "clearly" building, Haddad said. "It was interesting to see that in the first couple days, everyone said, 'It's an isolated position by France.'"

But since then, leading European figures expressed their support for the proposal—or at least for an open debate about it—Haddad noted. Among them are Czech President Petr Pavel, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.

(…)

"Right now, a lot of Ukrainian troops are stationed at the border with Belarus to prevent a potential invasion from the north," he said. "Western forces could be deployed along the frontier 'as a 'tripwire'—as you have troops in in the Baltic states or in Poland—to be able to liberate some of these Ukrainian troops to go to the front.

(…)

Russia has consistently warned its Western adversaries against providing any kind of aid to Ukraine while simultaneously framing its war on Kyiv as a direct confrontation with the U.S.-led "collective West."

This month, in response to a Ukrainian petition urging NATO to deploy forces, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: "We have repeatedly said that direct intervention on the ground in this conflict by the military of NATO countries potentially carries enormous danger, so we consider this an extremely challenging provocation, nothing less, and, of course, we are watching this very carefully."

(…)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is again pushing Western allies to do more to bolster Kyiv.

"It's a question of will," he told Reuters this week. "But everyone says a word that sounds the same in every language: everyone is scared of escalation. Everyone has gotten used to the fact that Ukrainians are dying—that's not escalation for people."

Haddad said the latest developments are concerning.

"It's been concerning for a while," he said. "We see a Russia that's ramping up aggression, that's turned its industry to complete war economy footage, and I think we've been lagging in our response, both in Europe in the United States."”

#russia #ukraine #nato #france #wwiii #ww3 #world war #putin #zelensky #trump #timothy snyder

6 notes · View notes

famouscenes3 · 1 month ago

Text

Kremlin Praises Trump, Pounds Ukraine in Massive Attack

The Kremlin said Friday that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's opposition to Ukraine's use of U.S. weapons to hit Russia "fully aligned" with Moscow's position, hours after it launched a massive aerial barrage on Ukraine.

The nearly three-year conflict is escalating ahead of Trump coming to power in January, with both sides seeking to gain an upper hand on the battlefield amid mounting speculation of ceasefire talks.

Russia launched one of its largest missile attacks ever in the early hours of Friday, targeting Ukraine's energy grid as temperatures dropped below freezing, in what Moscow called a retaliatory strike for Kyiv firing U.S. weapons on a southern Russian airfield earlier this week.

The Kremlin had warned it would respond to Kyiv's use of ATACMS missiles and then praised Trump, who said using the weapons to hit deep into Russia was a "foolish" idea.

"The statement fully aligns with our position, with our view on the reasons for escalation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"That impresses us. It is obvious that Trump understands exactly what is escalating the situation."

Moscow has repeatedly raged against Western arms supplied to Ukraine and said the use of Western weapons makes NATO countries direct participants in the nearly three-year conflict.

"In response to the use of American long-range weapons, a massive strike was carried out by the Russian armed forces... against critical facilities of Ukraine's fuel and energy infrastructure," Russia's defence ministry said in a post on Telegram.

The attack "severely damaged" some Ukrainian power plants, the DTEK power provider said, and knocked out electricity to thousands of people.

Russia fired 94 missiles in the barrage — including cruise and ballistic missiles — and almost 200 drones, according to Ukraine's air force. It claimed to have shot down 81 of the missiles.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack showed Moscow had no interest in peace.

"This is Putin's 'peace plan' — to destroy everything. This is how he wants 'negotiations' — by terrorising millions of people," he said in a post on X.

He called for more Western air defence systems to protect Ukraine's skies and harsher sanctions on Moscow, to limit its ability to wage war.

The attack hit some thermal power plants belonging to Ukrainian energy provider DTEK.

"The massive attack severely damaged thermal power plant equipment," DTEK said without specifying how many facilities were hit.

There were reports of explosions in several regions, and damage to infrastructure in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Half of the western Ternipol region was left without power, officials said.

"As Ukrainians wake to the coldest day of the winter so far, the enemy tries to break our spirit with this cynical terrorist attack," DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko later said.

Energy workers were assessing the damage and had already started work on restoring power.

Ukraine, which had already been implementing hours-long outages, announced increased restrictions on Friday.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly denounced the attacks on its energy system as attempts to break the population's morale.

"Russia aims to deprive us of energy. Instead, we must deprive it of the means of terror," Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said on social media after the latest strike.

He said Ukraine needed 20 NASAMS, HAWK or IRIS-T air defence systems.

In his interview with Time Magazine, which named him person of the year, Trump insisted he would not abandon Ukraine.

But his repeated remarks boasting he could end the war in hours have raised fears he might force Ukraine into a deal on Russia's terms.

The outgoing Joe Biden administration is racing to bolster aid to Kyiv before Trump's inauguration in January.

Western leaders are also stepping up their diplomatic efforts, with growing talk of the possible deployment of peacekeeping troops.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussed the possibility of stationing foreign troops in Ukraine in case of a ceasefire, in a meeting in Warsaw on Thursday, Tusk said.

But the Kremlin has pushed back on the idea that the two sides can be brought to the negotiating table easily.

"We don't want a ceasefire, we want peace, after our conditions are met and all our goals are achieved," Kremlin spokesman Peskov told reporters on Friday.

He said that right now Moscow's "prerequisites for negotiations" were not in place.

https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/russia-trump-ukraine/2024/12/13/id/1191544/

0 notes

scardecourcier · 1 year ago

Text

Notes from ODI's event 'Gaza: Politics of Narrative' this evening.

(Obviously these are in note form and in no way comprehensive, but I thought some of you who weren't able to attend might be interested. Any mistakes, misattributions, misunderstandings or misinterpretations are my own.)

Panelists: Afua Hirsch, Udi Raz, Yasmeen Daher, Mohamed Hassan.

Chair: Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou.

In order for a country to remain colonised, it needs more than just a military presence; it also requires the colonised subjects to buy in to the idea that they are inferior. -- AH

Feeling of Palestinians that they "must" die; that their lives are not seen as worthwhile (cf. "If I must die, then you must live" poem by Refaat Alareer). Palestinians seen as disposable; dispossessed. -- YD

In Germany, Palestinianness has been criminalised in order to protect Jews; but that is not what it is really about. The vast majority of Jews do not live in Israel, and the concept of Jewishness has to become disentangled from the state of Israel in people's minds and public narratives. -- UR

Difficult to even know if we should talk about 'narratives,' because it's not like this is one version of truth vs. another. But it is helpful to reflect on how different narratives come into being. -- KND

Hierarchy of empathy: Israelis are 'children,' Palestinians are 'people under 18,' etc. -- AH

Historically in journalism there are rules around not showing the most graphic depictions of e.g. dead children, people grieving those who have just died, etc. But think about how many bodies of Ukrainian children you have seen, versus how many bodies of Palestinian children you have seen.

The Palestinians have had to show their most vulnerable moments over and over again, until the narrative began to shift. Those in power require the direct humanisation of colonised or oppressed people over and over again in order to begin to care. -- MH

The status of traditional media as trusted / trustworthy is under threat. This is generally how we have presented legal evidence of e.g. war crimes in the past. What is happening now with the (lack of) media narrative around Palestine will have huge implications in times to come.

However, it is easy to be overly optimistic about social media. It is still being censored; for example, Meta has been censoring and shadowbanning Instagram accounts that call for a ceasefire.

Generational differences: younger people who don't rely solely on mainstream media tend to think more critically, apply their own values, and humanise Palestinians.

This situation will rapidly accelerate the drift away from traditional media towards social media and personal narratives. -- AH

*** SOME QUESTIONS FROM THE Q&A ***

- Narratives of saviourism; is humanitarian aid actually a solution to the problem? Or do we require something more structural on a societal level?

- How do we get around the shadowbanning on social media and the targeted ads from places that have the money / power (e.g. if you googled 'ICJ' throughout most of today, the top link was not the International Court of Justice but an Israeli ad).

- How do we call on employers to not adopt the non-legally-binding and incorrect definition of 'antisemitism' that is currently implying that anyone who is anti-Zionist is an antisemite?

- What do we say to people who are afraid of speaking out for fear of backlash?

- Is there any accountability for the onesidedness of the so-called 'reputable' media?

- Is Palestine decolonising our brains?

*** RESPONSES FROM THE PANEL ***

Judaism needs to be decolonised from Zionism. -- UR

We now have an opportunity to understand the narrative from a political, rather than humanitarian, standpoint. -- YD

We owe very little of what we know about Gaza to mainstream media; this is a damning indictment of current media. There are no consequences for silence, which puts all the onus on individual journalists to speak up, which has potential risks for them. Why are most journalists not covering the deaths of their Palestinian colleagues? -- MH

Media accountability; often, suppressed narratives within media are a sign of a failing democracy. The UK opposition has not been holding the government accountable. This is not how our political system is supposed to work.

Having such a huge focus on humanitarian angles flattens / ignores the historic and colonial context. The agenda has been to cover this in a way that obscures the colonial history, because that would require an existential reckoning which people are unwilling to engage with. -- AH

Again, this is in no way comprehensive but I thought it might be of interest to anyone who couldn't go along. It was a brilliant event and apparently there will be more, and a recording will be available to watch, so keep an eye on ODI for more info.

#free gaza #palestine #free palestine #landback #gaza

1 note · View note

summeroffice · 2 years ago

Text

youtube

43:30 In recent months an analysis comes to me about what is happening. I see a significant increase in attempts by Russians to provoke in other direction or another. And they do it correctly from their point of view. We have enough people who know exactly how everything should be, they are experts in everything and they are always against the state as such. It seems to me that there was only one period in this war when everything was practically perfect from the point of view of the fact that everyone sat quietly and worked and listened for the first three months.

After that, gradually when it became clear that Russia left the Kyiv region, after 'Well, we resisted, yes, everything is great', we found out that a lot of people played a fundamentally important role in all this. We simply didn't see it, but they were the most important. Many people absolutely understood exactly what happened at the beginning, who did what where, and what they did wrong. There are many different negatives, Russians see all this, they look at what triggers the society, what society actively responds to with reposts and likes, what it perceives negatively.

Negativity is generally perceived as very cool. You're such a cool guy and here's someone doing something bad. And you know exactly how it should be done. What on earth is he doing? And Russians start to scale it up. A lot of publicity, a lot of accounts, anonymous accounts, reprints and so on. This is scaling up and this goes on all the time. They take these nuances and throw them into media spaces: the Ukrainian society has doubts that the state is effective. The Ukrainian society has doubts that the state effectively manages military support. There's corruption. They constantly talk about it. The state tolerates corruption, the state gives the official the opportunity to loot. This is an information campaign that Russia leads against us. It is more difficult for us today, that's why I'm addressing things.

50:09 There's always a complaint against you that you speak about everything, you comment everything [I love his reaction, he thinks, thinks, and smirks?, you can hear it]. The question of Ukrainian journalists is, why are there few commentators? You are against me commenting on something? [smiles] I can reduce it. Ask my assistants, they know that I always go: "But can we reduce my presence somewhere in the media?" You cannot take somebody and just make him a speaker. It must be inherent in him, he must be a natural speaker, it sells if he's charismatic, passionate, deep in the subject, ready to discuss, not afraid of difficult questions, constantly studying, because you do not give him a темник (YouTube translates this as 'dungeon'), these are my favourite, well, you don't give him some theses that he will read and after that he'll speak spectacularly. This is not what public discussion should be about. We just have a few of those people, very few.

[A темник in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine are closed instructions or directives on the coverage of current events in non-state media, which were issued to the heads of these media by the administrations of the presidents of these countries, starting with Boris Yeltsin in Russia and Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine.]

We only have a few effective speakers. We have very passionate people but they are poorly educated, not erudite, they sell only charisma. They speak beautifully but it is very superficial. Or we have people who are very deep in the material and they reflect a lot when they speak because they want to fit a lot of their knowledge into a short period of time and this doesn't work either. This is a very difficult story when you need to be able to speak well and speak structurally, understand what and how to say so that it would be understandable for the audience because you are not talking to yourself in front of the mirror, right, where you are so smart and charming. You are talking to an audience that has a different level of knowledge, and then you have to understand…

You know what's missing? That's my favourite thing in general. People always, if they become speakers, if they become more or less successful, if they become stars, they lack critical attitude towards themselves. They begin to fall in love with themselves.

Does it apply to Arestovych? (Sighs) This applies to anyone, I am generally saying that this happens all the time to many people. It is very difficult to control yourself, it is very difficult to say to yourself, look, you woke up in the morning, all right, I said everything yesterday but today is a war, today people will die and I have to understand that I am at war, I am the same as them, I do my job. I have to talk to people because it is my job. But I don't have to love myself in this work. A person who is fighting today in a trench somewhere in the Bakhmut direction, he does not love himself in this work. He wants to destroy the enemy and he gives everything for this. That's why when you come to speak, you should give, and not take people's love for you.

53:35 A year has passed. Looking back, what are some steps in the information policy that you would now do differently? Of course I would do a lot of things differently. We always look back at what we did and definitely there are things that could have been done better. But I will tell you what you already said. I would have concentrated more on speakers. At first, it should have been possible to conduct psychological training with them, teach them rhetoric, maybe I should have done this more but it was the first days of the war and then you just had to quickly do it yourself. There was no choice. If there were such a choice I would definitely like to train a dozen people who could effectively comment on economy, social issues and not be afraid to talk about it, mobilisation and what else. We still made a mistake in that we should have expanded our presence in Europe not only through president Zelenskyy but also through other politicians of Ukraine.

Do you know when conflicts and compromising evidence [in the sense of spy articles] appear? When there is no professionalism, when you want to attract interest at the expense of the compromising evidence. I am not a supporter of any conflict or intrigue and compromising evidence. It seems to me that much more can be achieved if you just speak frankly about everything, speak professionally, are not afraid to talk. You will get any results.

56:36 The government speaks to Ukrainians like children. (Podolyak sighs again) I believe that it is necessary to speak harshly, to speak frankly, not to be afraid but on the other hand, it's psychologically difficult for people. Not everyone will understand your frankness, not everyone. A lot of people will speculate on your frankness, will provoke again. When you just take some fiction and start using emotional images, this breaks the state as such because you cannot respond to insults, there are no facts there.

#mykhailo podolyak #Yulia Galushka #Youtube #interview

1 note · View note

ukrainenews · 2 years ago

Text

Daily Wrap Up September 11, 2022

Under the cut:

The much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said

Russia targeted infrastructure facilities in central and eastern Ukraine on Sunday evening in a response to a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv province that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling

In a statement Sunday, the Ukrainian military's general staff said that Russian forces had abandoned the town of Svatove in Luhansk region, a town that until Saturday was still 40 kilometers (25 miles) beyond the known front line of the Ukrainian advance

A backup power line to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) inside Ukraine has been restored, providing it with the external electricity it needs to cool its reactors, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Sunday

Ukraine says its forces are within 30 miles of Russian border north of Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces have advanced north from Kharkiv to within 30 miles (48km) of the border with Russia and are also pressing to the south and east in the same region. Ukrainian troops have retaken more than 3,000 sq km of territory this month.

Map source: https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5 (this map seems to be updated pretty often, so the link may change)

“The much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said.

Ukrainian forces are continuing to make unexpected, rapid advances in the north-east of the country, retaking more than a third of the occupied Kharkiv region in three days. Much of Ukraine’s territorial gains were confirmed by Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday.

“[It] was a big special disinformation operation,” said Taras Berezovets, a former national security adviser turned press officer for the Bohun brigade of Ukraine’s special forces.”-via The Guardian

“Russia targeted infrastructure facilities in central and eastern Ukraine on Sunday evening in a response to a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv province that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling.

The mayor of Kharkiv city, Ihor Terekhov, said a strike had knocked out power and water to much of the city, in what he described as an act of “revenge” by Russia for Ukraine’s recent battlefield successes. There were reports of blackouts in Dnipro, Poltava and other eastern cities, potentially affecting millions of civilians.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed “Russian terrorists” for the blackouts. “No military facilities [were attacked],” the Ukrainian president said in a statement on social media. “The goal is to deprive people of light and heat.”

In an early evening update on the military situation, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukrainian forces, said Ukrainian soldiers had regained control of about 3,000 sq km of territory since the start of September, and were approaching the border in the country’s north-east.

“In the Kharkiv direction, we began to advance not only to the south and east, but also to the north. There are 50km to go to the state border [with Russia],” Zaluzhnyi said.

The Ukrainians have retaken the rail hub of Kupiansk, 60 miles east of Kharkiv, and are in the process of seizing Izium, which was being abruptly abandoned by the Russians whose defence ministry said their forces were regrouping.

Then on Sunday night, the country’s military said it had seized checkpoints due north of Kharkiv city, on the Russian border, in an area separate from the breakthroughs of the past week, south-east and east of the industrial city.

In an attempt to hit back, Russia launched strikes targeting the power grid on Sunday that plunged Kharkiv and other areas into darkness. Ukraine’s leadership has long feared that attacks on the grid could take place in the run-up to winter.

In Sumy province in the north-east, the governor urged residents to unplug electrical devices. “Electric tension has fallen in the network through the region,” Dmytro Zhyvytsky wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “I recommend disconnecting electrical devices as much as possible.”

Officials in Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions said power was restored shortly after, but Kharkiv was still in darkness as midnight approached. Mykhailo Podolyak, a top Zelenskiy aide, said the city’s CHPP-5 electricity station had been hit.

The Russian strikes come after several days of striking Ukrainian gains. According to the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, Ukraine has retaken more territory in five days than Russia had taken since April in the lightning counteroffensive, whose success has alarmed vocal supporters.”-via The Guardian

“In a statement Sunday, the Ukrainian military's general staff said that Russian forces had abandoned the town of Svatove in Luhansk region, a town that until Saturday was still 40 kilometers (25 miles) beyond the known front line of the Ukrainian advance.

Svatove has been an important hub on Russian resupply routes to the front lines further south - along the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"The occupiers have abandoned Svatove in Luhansk region," the general staff's office said in a Facebook post. "They rushed away in four Kamaz trucks, twenty Tigr AVs [armored vehicles] and stole over 20 cars of local residents."

CNN cannot independently verify the Ukrainian account.

The general staff's office also claimed that "as a result of the successful counteroffensive of our troops in the Kharkiv direction, the Russian troops frantically leave their positions and flee with the loot deep into the temporarily occupied territories or into the territory of the Russian Federation."

It referred to one alleged episode in which, it said "150 service members of the armed forces of the Russian Federation left in a convoy from Borshchova and Artemivka of the Kharkiv region on two buses, one truck and 19 stolen cars."

Borshchova is to the north of Kharkiv city, just a few kilometers from Ukraine's border with Russia.”-via CNN

“A backup power line to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) inside Ukraine has been restored, providing it with the external electricity it needs to cool its reactors, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Sunday.

“After yesterday’s restoration of [the] power line ... #ZNPP operator this morning shut down its last operating reactor, which over past week had been providing ZNPP w/ required power after it was disconnected from grid,” the IAEA said on Twitter.

“This power can now come from the grid instead.””-via The Guardian

“Ukraine says its forces are within 30 miles of Russian border north of Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces have advanced north from Kharkiv to within 30 miles (48km) of the border with Russia and are also pressing to the south and east in the same region, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said on Sunday.

Ukrainian troops have retaken more than 3,000 sq km of territory this month, he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, adding: “Ukraine continues to liberate territories occupied by Russia.””-via The Guardian

#Daily Update #Ukraine #Russia #War in Ukraine #Zaporizhzhia #kharkiv

25 notes · View notes

black-arcana · 10 months ago

Text

WITHIN TEMPTATION Shares Preview Of New Single 'A Fool's Parade'

On April 5, 2024, WITHIN TEMPTATION will release their brand-new song, "A Fool's Parade", which marks a collaboration with the talented Ukrainian producer Alex Yarmak. According to a press release from WITHIN TEMPTATION's publicist, "A Fool's Parade" "highlights Russia's pretense regarding the war, and condemns its lies, ongoing crimes and brutal intentions."

A preview of "A Fool's Parade" is available below.

For the recording of the accompanying music video for "A Fool's Parade", Sharon den Adel — the frontwoman of WITHIN TEMPTATION — traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine. The music video is being directed by renowned Ukrainian video director Indy Hait.

With involvement in initiatives such as the Ukraine Aid OPS foundation, WITHIN TEMPTATION aims to keep drawing attention to Europe's much-needed support for Ukraine's defense.

In March 2022, WITHIN TEMPTATION was one of the artists who took part in a telethon concert in support of Ukraine. "Save Ukraine - #StopWar" united more than 20 countries and bring together more than 50 participants. The marathon was broadcast from Warsaw on the Polish TV channel TVP. In addition, broadcasters from many countries around the world, including Estonia (EBR),Lithuania (LTR),the Czech Republic (ČT2),Georgia (GPB / First),Albania (RTSH 2),Montenegro, Slovenia, Latvia (LTV),Croatia (HRT),Slovakia (RTVS),Austria (Puls 4),Cyprus, Canada (OMNI) and others, rebroadcasted the marathon on their local channels.

youtube

#sharon den adel #within temptation #a fool's parade #Youtube

25 notes · View notes

torillatavataan · 2 years ago

Text

BBC podcast HARDtalk: “Stephen Sackur is in Helsinki for an exclusive interview with Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö. After decades of pragmatic coexistence with Moscow, Finland has made a big strategic decision: to join Nato, back Ukraine with weapons and reinforce their border with Russia. Are Finns ready for potential tension with their giant neighbour to the east?”

The interview began with Niinistö discussing playing ice hockey with Putin.

President Niinistö points out that Finland has always had an “open doors” policy with NATO, and that most Finns weren’t against joining per se, but didn’t see it necessary.

Sackur asks if Finland can afford to be an enemy of Russia in today’s world with the energy crisis and looming power outages in winter. To this Niinistö asks “are you sure?” and explains that Finland’s situation is better than Central Europe’s.

Sackur talks about the Russian draftees seeking refuge abroad and how Finland among other nations has made it significantly more difficult for Russians to cross the border into Finland. He questions whether Finland may have made a mistake as France and Germany especially have questioned this decision.

“France and Germany don’t have a common border [with Russia]. It’s easy to shout a bit further away,” Niinistö replies and reminds Sackur that Finland follows international agreements and legislations for asylum seekers.

Sackur says that Finland’s material military aid to Ukraine is minimal compared to the USA’s and that Ukraine needs the armament now. Niinistö replies: “We happen to have this long border*, too. What about if we give up our armament? After the end of the Cold War, we have been building up our military resources and I would say we are proportionally one of the strongest if not the strongest in Europe. We never gave up and we have understood all the time to be cautious - but continue to be cautious. It’s also important.

“And you have to keep in mind that I have been talking to President Zelenskyy often. He expresses very clearly what they want. There are very few elements we haven’t given them, but most of their needs we have fulfilled."

Niinistö also says that Finland supports international organizations which do not show in Finland’s direct support for Ukraine.

When asked if his vision is total Ukrainian victory with every Russian soldier gone from Ukrainian soil, Niinistö emphasises that Finland will listen to Ukraine’s wishes rather than make its own decision about what the vision for the end of the war is. He says he supports war crime investigations on Putin and believes him responsible for what has been happening in Ukraine.

When it comes to peace negotiations with Russia, Niinistö says he is a strong supporter of negotiations if they were to save human lives, but that he does not see such a possibility existing at the moment.

They speak about the Arctic Region and Niinistö says these days he sees more threats than opportunities. “If we lose the Arctic, we lose the globe.”

Sackur asks him about Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s leaked party photos to which Niinistö says he has not discussed it with her and that all politicians are treated harshly by the media. He does not believe it has done any damage to her or Finland’s reputation.

Niinistö says he’s overall very worried because there is a daily discussion of nuclear weapons now which would have been unimaginable a year or two ago.

Article in Finnish by Iltalehti

* Finland’s border with Russia, 1 340 km (830 mi), is the second longest border with Russia in Europe after Ukraine’s and is the longest EU border with Russia.

#suomi #finland #sauli niinistö #war in ukraine #ukraine #*

11 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 2 years ago

Text

Who, exactly, is the enemy Russia has targeted in its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine? Not Ukrainians, who, as the Russian media continually remind us, don’t actually exist. Not NATO and the “collective West,” however much they might fit the bill; Russian television has been demonizing them for more than a decade, but there is little appetite for a direct confrontation. Throughout most of the war, the “Kyiv Junta” has been labeled a band of homosexuals, drug addicts, and, most prominently, Nazis. Yet somehow even Nazis are not quite evil enough. So, who is the true enemy? Could it be … Satan?

Apparently, yes.

On November 4, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who just 15 years ago was the gadget-happy, reformist president on whom the country’s liberals pinned their few remaining hopes, gave a speech worthy of a wannabe suicide bomber:

We listen to the words of the Creator in our hearts and obey them. These words give us our holy goal. The goal of stopping the supreme leader of hell, whatever name he might use — Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis.

As Artem Efimov notes in his excellent contribution to Meduza’s “Signal” Russian-language newsletter (all the Satanic news fit for pixels, if not print), it was Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov who, while apparently moonlighting as a demonologist on his Telegram channel, called for the “desatanization” of Ukraine. This is the sort of language we have come to expect from Kadyrov, who rails against “shaitans” so often that they may as well be one of the odd filler words that notoriously pepper most of his sentences. We not only expect Satan from Kadyrov — we’re disappointed if he forgets to mention him.

If both the Muslim Kadyrov and the Russian Orthodox Medvedev are warring against Satan, then this isn’t simply a matter of the ongoing mind meld between the Russian (Orthodox) Church and State. One need not believe in God to worry about Satan (although it certainly helps).

The U.S. has been beset by waves of demonically-inflected hysteria since the infamous Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when a confluence of concerned parents, “experts,” and media personalities turned a few unhinged accusations of so-called “satanic ritual abuse” into a threat that stalked America’s schools and daycare centers. The officially atheist Soviet Union was spared this particular wave of hysteria, but, as Efimov points out, the moral panic over new religious movements (“cults”) in the 1990s brought satanism into the Russian popular consciousness.

By the 2000s, activists associated with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) were ferreting out Satanists left and right. And they involved the government whenever possible. When the Moscow Education Department banned Halloween in the city schools, it claimed that the holiday promoted a “cult of death” and pointed to concerns about “rituals of Satanically oriented religious sects.” The popularity of the Harry Potter franchise put the morality police into overdrive. In December 2002, a woman filed a complaint with Moscow Prosecutor’s Office against Rosmen, the publisher of Harry Potter, for “occult propaganda” (the prosecutors declined to charge Rosmen, due to a lack of evidence).

Something was spreading throughout Russia since the collapse of the USSR, but it was not Satanism: it was the crusade against Satanism.

This was a movement that crossed church and state boundaries long before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The demonization of “cults” in the 1990s was an important step, but it was only in the past decade that both scholars and state actors indulged in a crucial slippage between the religious and the political. The Center for Combating Extremism, founded in 2008, fights both political opposition and unrecognized religious organizations, tacitly making them equivalent “threats.” In 2020, Roman Silantev, one of the leading experts combating new religious movements, published a book called Destructology, which provides the ideological justification for the Center’s work. For Silantev, undesirable political and social movements such as pyramid schemes, “fascist” and “antifascist” groups, and even the pensioners who insist that the USSR still exists, are structurally exactly the same as “totalitarian cults.” From here to Satanism is just a small step.

Since February 24, disaffected Russians have been asking themselves the grimly ironic question: “So, are we North Korea now, or Iran?” If the country is going to be explicitly fighting Satan, then Iran seems like the better bet. But the irony goes even deeper. There’s something about looking for Satan around every corner that is suspiciously …American.

The rise of the Russian anti-cult movement and the fundamentalist fight against secular culture are part of an ideological pipeline that leads back to the Great Satan itself, with American far-right and evangelical organizations taking a strong interest in the post-Soviet space even before Fox News became Russian television’s favorite American channel.

All of which suggests that we should not take the Russian state’s anti-Satanic zeal at face value. And yet something about Russia’s war in Ukraine has repeatedly activated theocratic, reactionary forces. In November 2014, one of the military leaders of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” announced plans to forbid women from entering bars, when they should be sitting at home practicing their cross-stitching. (“It’s time to remember that you’re Russian! Remember your spirituality!”)

It’s highly unlikely that Medvedev, Putin, or anyone high up in the Russian government believes they are fighting Satan, but their beliefs matter only so much. They are providing a permission structure for fanatics who are only too happy to stamp out the devil’s work wherever they might find it. Just as Putinism has always been a delicately calibrated mix of top-down initiatives and responses to the more belligerent sentiments in Russian society, so too is this Satanic vocabulary both the logical outcome of decades of mild moral panics and the latest (and possibly last) rhetorical ploy on the part of a regime that has backed itself into a corner.

The escalation from gays to Nazis to Satan follows a kind of video game logic: keeping the players engaged means finding ever-bigger bosses for them to fight. But where can you go after Satan? One hopes that the leadership of the Russian Federation is not charting a deliberately apocalyptic course, despite the disturbing chatter about nuclear warfare and Russians “going to heaven, while their enemies just croak.” But when your enemy is Satan, there is little room for negotiation, retreat, or surrender.

All of which scares the hell out of anyone paying attention. Still, there is one cause for hope: If there is any world leader who must have vast experience in making deals with the devil, it’s Vladimir Putin.

10 notes · View notes

laundryandtaxes · 2 years ago

Note

Ukraine is not only holding Russia off but taking back territory, whilst 'Putin's War' is becoming increasingly unpopular at home as conscripts are given Airsoft scopes and have to buy their own body armour and tents. Russia's logistics have failed. Biden definitely never foresaw this scale of incompetence but why are you phrasing this as a failed American imperial gambit instead of a surprisingly successful Ukrainian self-directed war of liberation?

Any conflict can and frankly usually does have more than one way in which it can be accurately characterized. For instance, I agree that Ukraine has put up a surprisingly effective fight against remarkable odds. But I absolutely don't think this war has been self-directed in any meaningful sense. The reason Ukraine was able to do such remarkable damage to the number of Russian brass alive is because NATO (the US) helped them locate and kill those targets- that doesn't mean use of open communications by Russian troops and the fact that Russian brass was so close to the battlefields weren't major factors, but NATO intervention is the deciding factor in those assassinations. The reason Ukraine has been able to push back Russian offensives is because NATO is pumping weapons into it, and NATO has all but admitted to having its own boots, if not on the ground, very very close to the ground. NATO is absolutely running this show, and without its weapons and intelligence and, frankly, probably more, I think this war goes very differently and is a whole lot shorter. While I don't have a crystal ball I think the conflict is growing rather than shrinking, and while it is unfortunately very likely to end in direct contact between NATO troops and Russian troops what we are currently looking at is, in my opinion, a proxy war in which NATO is feeding Ukrainians into a meat grinder to nip at Russian military capability while Putin tosses young Russian men into his own meat grinder because he clearly does not really care how many conscripts he loses. One fundamental question is who can keep this up for longer. Americans don't like paying for war, even if their leadership does, and the only way these weapons shipments continue to happen is with US taxpayer money for a war many Americans have all but forgotten about, and Europeans are tightening their belts for a cold winter and considering holding their weapons for protection in the event of further Russian advancement West. Zelensky wouldn't spend so much time courting Western military support if he didn't think he needed it, and he wouldn't speak nearly so boldly if he didn't think NATO was backing him up. But at some point the importation of a war effort will either dry up, effectively ending the war (this is what I suspect would happen with more limited media coverage of the war as people decided they just didnt care enough about a war overseas to pay for it, but media and politicians and their respective propagandists lean war hawkish here, even if the people again do not) or it will explode as NATO officially steps into the fray. Either way, the difference is having NATO heavily involved, or not.

In terms of whether the war has been a "failed gambit" I think it is far too soon to tell, but the majority of wars do not see one actor only ever winning and one actor only ever taking losses, and that means it is very easy to create any narrative you want out of wins and losses but very little reason to put much stock on any one of them until all the dust has settled. For instance, the US won a number of military and non military conflicts in Afghanistan, perhaps culminating in the installation of its own government there, but it was only as long as the US was actively propping that government up that it stood any chance of survival and ultimately the war was a failure and destined to be a failure almost from the outset. So perhaps Ukraine can be said to be taking back some territory. It can also be said to be losing some territory. I suspect this means news media will be able to paint Ukraine as "winning" for quite some time, but that doesn't mean I have much reason to believe that's what's actually happening any more than I have reason to read Russian news of their great advancements and think they're definitely "winning" at this exact moment. So talk of conscription, for instance, is like reading tea leaves right now. Conscription is not at all an unusual choice in war, and Russia sent conscripts to war well after Ukraine prevented any of its fighting age men, many of whom absolutely would have preferred to go to Poland and live a full life with their wives and children, from leaving. But the point is I don't think this war last nearly this long and costs nearly so much human life without NATO intervention.

10 notes · View notes