Notes

Ukraine war: Why so many Russians turn a blind eye to the conflict
About 10 civilians are believed to have been killed, including six in an air strike in Brovary near the capital Kyiv. That unreality is now the law of the land across Russia, with media being officially barred from using words including "war" and "invasion" in any reference to the "operation" in Ukraine. Anyone accused of spreading "false information" about the military in Russia now faces up to 15 years in prison. After https://www.openlearning.com/u/michaelsenbishop-s2dhzs/blog/UkWillNotLookAwayFromRussiaInvasionInUkrainePm0 had ended, I made a visit to Kyiv that coincided with a Russian missile-and-drone barrage that heralded the start of Putin’s extensive campaign on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.


Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left Russia, including me and my BBC Russian colleagues. But for the majority who have stayed in Russia, life outwardly is pretty much the same as it always was. An unspoiled and peaceful part of the city, for me it embodies Russia's complex present and past. "I think all we can do now as Russians is say sorry - and protest against Vladimir Putin," Anastasia says. "Because Putin personally is the reason for what's going on. Why so many people are dying." As well as the call-up, there is his threat of annexing more Ukrainian land and another nuclear warning for the West.

More than a year of fighting
A new curfew is set to take effect for residents in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, starting tonight and lasting until Thursday morning at 7 o'clock. According to city officials, people will only be allowed to go outside to head to bomb shelters. As the brutal war in Ukraine continues, many people inside Russia are hearing and seeing a very different narrative, one where words such as war or invasion do not exist. Moscow recently made it a crime to spread what it calls false information about Russia's armed forces or to denigrate Russian soldiers in any way.


On Wednesday, one week after the invasion began, the first Russian official resigned from his position at a global organisation in protest. Boris Lvin was a senior advisor to Russia’s representative at the World Bank and had worked at the institution for 24 years. "No one thinks the UK-led Battle Group [in Estonia] by itself would deter the second most powerful nuclear country in the world," he says. "This is a tripwire that would trigger the might of all Nato, including the US, UK and France." But President Putin, who has all but squashed any opposition in his own country, will have taken note of how his autocratic neighbour in Belarus effectively crushed the protests there over the last two years. Many were so badly beaten and abused in detention that this acted as a major deterrent to further protest.

Putin orders attack
The Ukrainian General Staff says its forces have repelled Russian attacks near Avdiivka itself, as well as from settlements to the north west, south west, and directly west of the town. Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. Though dissent has been effectively outlawed, thousands of people have taken the risk to express their opposition to the invasion.

There has been a raft of sanctions imposed on Russia and on Russian citizens in the past week in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The fate of Ukraine has enormous implications for the rest of the continent, the health of the global economy and even America’s place in the world. I asked him how he felt about the notion of justifiable hatred in the context of Ukraine. The plant, on the north-western outskirts of the town, dominates the main road into Avdiivka and, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) believes if Russian forces were to secure it, resupplying the town would "become increasingly difficult for Ukraine". Ukrainians are said to shell their own cities, and Russian troops are presented as liberators.
This week's call-up has confirmed that belief, as videos of men saying tearful goodbyes to their families pop up all over the country. "I think the West should ramp-up military assistance to Ukraine, that's the only option," Mr Gudkov says. So at a recent gathering in Vilnius, a slogan on stage called on those abroad to "be brave, like Ukraine", but the mood was subdued with a hint of helplessness. Mr Gudkov left Moscow well before the war, saying he was warned to go - or go to jail. Today, all prominent Russian opposition figures are either in custody, dead or in exile. "Of course, we feel this responsibility. We should have used the opportunity to change our country," former opposition MP Dmitry Gudkov accepts.

Russia Has Suffered a Crushing Moral Defeat. And Russians Know It.
Mr Zelensky has requested more help from European countries and said they still need more weapons to help them fight the war. Russian forces were bombarding Kharkiv, and they had taken territory in the east and south as far as Kherson, and surrounded the port city of Mariupol. The city of Bakhmut, which has endured some of the heaviest fighting of the war, has been under Russian control for several months and, although Ukraine gained some ground in the surrounding areas over the summer, the battles continue.


Further east in Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donetsk region, the BBC's Eastern European Correspondent Sarah Rainsford said people did not expect such a full-on assault. The Ukrainian armed forces said they had shot down five Russian planes and a helicopter - which Russia denies - and inflicted casualties on invading troops. BBC correspondents heard loud bangs in the capital Kyiv, as well as Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

Recent assessments by the ISW show Russian forces have made advances north of Bakhmut. Nato defence chiefs have re-examined his lengthy speech of July 2021 and concluded they urgently need to reinforce Nato's eastern borders lest Putin is tempted to make a move on countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Elena Kovalskaya, formerly the artistic director of the state-owned Meyerhold Theatre and Cultural Center, resigned from her role last week in protest. Russia was unnerved when an uprising in 2014 replaced Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president with an unequivocally Western-facing government. Boris Lvin was a senior advisor to Russia’s representative at the World Bank and had worked at the institution for 24 years.
Some see even the most persecuted Russian activists as cowards, because the risk they face for resisting President Putin is nothing compared to being bombarded by his military. Ukrainians have no sympathy with those now protesting against the draft, if those same people did not come out against the killing of Ukrainian civilians. Since we spoke, Vladimir Putin has declared a partial mobilisation of Russian reservists - the first real test of support for his invasion. When Russia invaded its neighbour, she was serving a suspended sentence and one wrong move, even an anti-war comment, could have put her behind bars. The move has raised concerns among Russian opposition activists already abroad. "What this means, in short, is that the presumption against the use of force - which was the basis for the post-WWII world order, for anything other than defence - has been lost.


They worked at great risk to their personal freedom and their lives, and they did this right up to the end. And now, because of things like Visa and Mastercard pulling out of Russia, they can't even access their own funds. So some of them are still doing this work from abroad, but just completely cut off from their previous lives and any financial support. For Ukrainians, the looming first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of their country is a historic milestone within an ongoing tragedy of unprovoked bloodshed, one which seems to be escalating again. But the war’s relentless destruction also poses a more existential question, one which fuels an urgent need to resist and prevail. A short respite came with the country’s independence, but then, in 2014, Vladimir Putin’s aggressions began in Crimea, and carried on afterward in the Donbas.

Russian air defences have prevented a drone attack on an oil refinery in the city of Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, the regional governor has said. That’s the response of many Russians to the sight of rockets and artillery shells hitting Ukrainian tower blocks that in their concrete uniformity could easily be in Moscow. Ukraine has declared martial law - which means the military takes control temporarily. Some see even the most persecuted Russian activists as cowards, because the risk they face for resisting President Putin is nothing compared to being bombarded by his military. Before the war, Russia made demands including a promise that Ukraine would not join a group of countries called Nato. But in the east of Ukraine where the country borders Russia, military troops are still fighting over territory and many places are still too dangerous for school of any kind.
There is more variety of opinion in the press, but it still largely sticks to the Kremlin line. A stalwart of independent reporting for almost 29 years, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, suspended operations on 28 March after receiving warnings from Russia's media watchdog Roskomnadzor. "Iran's allies and proxies have been undeterred by the huge show of US force in the region - if anything the warships and aircraft carriers have acted as a magnet for attack. Meanwhile in the Middle East, UK and US forces have launched airstrikes on Yemen in response to the Iranian-backed Houthis' attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. More than 6,400 Russian have been arrested in anti-war protest in the past week, offering a considerable an overt opposition to Putin’s rule. By Tuesday morning a Russian-language Change.org petition calling for an end of war in Ukraine had surpassed one million signatures.

My Website: https://www.openlearning.com/u/michaelsenbishop-s2dhzs/blog/UkWillNotLookAwayFromRussiaInvasionInUkrainePm0