Notes

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 702 Russia
He has worked in both London and Moscow, where he became an expert on Russian propaganda. Now a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Pomerantsev shuttles between Washington, D.C., and Ukraine. I asked him how he felt about the notion of justifiable hatred in the context of Ukraine.


There are, however, Russian independent media who still defy government restrictions. For example, Novaya Gazeta blurred out the anti-war poster held up by a protester who interrupted a live news bulletin on Russian state TV. "Nothing is inevitable, but the Ukraine invasion in particular has shown that Russia sees war as an instrument of policy, as a tool to change the world order in its favour, and not simply as a means of defence. "In one sense the situation now is far more perilous than it was in 1914 and 1939 because the major powers all have nuclear weapons. "Washington's impulse after the Hamas attack was to provide Israel with unequivocal support but also to do everything it could to contain the fires that atrocity started - what we are now seeing are the limitations of that policy.

How Do Ukrainians Think About Russians Now?
The Ukraine government is working with other nations, including the UK, to try to help young people continue their education as much as possible. Ukrainian forces were also quick to deploy Western supplied arms such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved highly effective against the Russian advance. Russian ground troops moved in quickly and within a few weeks were in control of large areas of Ukraine and had advanced to the suburbs of Kyiv. Recent assessments by the ISW show Russian forces have made advances north of Bakhmut.

And it’s not just the usual suspects, the malcontents already known to the Kremlin. This is because many countries are no longer using gas supplied by Russia, so there is greater demand and a higher cost for gas supplied from other places. It is estimated the UK has spent £2.3bn on military assistance, making the country the second biggest military donor behind the US. Eastern European countries, who fear they may be next in Putin's sights, are watching nervously for any Russian manoeuvres close to their borders.
Monitoring groups say more than 13,000 people have been detained at anti-war protests in the country since the start of the invasion. That the Kremlin was right to block the majority of independent media sites they used to read. Was hatred a natural and ultimately inevitable response to the atrocities Ukrainians were being subjected to? Does it change anything to know that many Russians oppose Putin’s war but are powerless to stop him, or to understand that others have been duped into supporting it through his hyper-nationalistic discourse? A few weeks after my trip, I contacted Peter Pomerantsev, who had accompanied me from Lviv to Kyiv. He had been born in Kyiv in 1977, when Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union, but was brought up and educated in the United Kingdom, after his parents went into exile there.

How are children being affected by the war?
There are some prominent Russians who are willing to speak out against the invasion of Ukraine. Elena Kovalskaya, formerly the artistic director of the state-owned Meyerhold Theatre and Cultural Center, resigned from her role last week in protest. 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. Western powers are unwilling to send troops to fight in the conflict but have sought to make the Kremlin’s actions unsustainable with tough economic punishments.

Russia has also made advances north east of Kupiansk, north of Bakhmut, and south west of Avdiivka, according to the latest ISW assessment. The towns through which Russian armored vehicles are rolling, captured in shaky videos and accompanied by howls of horror, could be Voronezh or Krasnodar or any Russian city. But later on Thursday President Zelensky said Ukraine had suffered losses and a lot of aircraft and armoured vehicles had been destroyed. Even so, the messages made for some jarring moments for some of those present, featuring as they often did ultra-patriotic and sometimes militaristic declarations. The biggest prize for Russia is Kyiv, the capital city and seat of President Zelensky's government - a city where fighting has already been taking place.
The biggest prize for Russia is Kyiv, the capital city and seat of President Zelensky's government - a city where fighting has already been taking place. Before the war, Russia made demands including a promise that Ukraine would not join a group of countries called Nato. Earlier https://gilliam-albrechtsen-4.technetbloggers.de/why-did-russia-invade-ukraine-faqs-about-the-conflict-that-has-shocked-the-world , Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian attacks are increasing again in some parts of the country but they have not yet had any significant impact. Despite towns and cities suffering heavy shelling, Ukraine has been successful in slowing Russia's troops down considerably and have even taken back control over the previously captured city of Kherson. 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. It follows a series of similar drone raids on Russian energy infrastructure in recent weeks, some of which have disrupted fuel production.


And it’s not just the usual suspects, the malcontents already known to the Kremlin. Major public figures, prominent journalists and artists have spoken out against the war. In mid-March, Aleksei Miniailo, a former social entrepreneur and current opposition politician, oversaw another telephone survey with the aim of trying to capture the effects of fear and propaganda on survey data. And that figure came from among those who agreed to participate at all; Miniailo suspected that the polls were not capturing a majority of the real antiwar sentiment, whatever its size.

Then, as now, except for a few missile attacks, Lviv is probably one of the safest places to be in Ukraine, far from the front lines in the east and the south. Putin would ideally like to see the Zelensky government quickly capitulate and surrender, to be replaced by a Moscow-leaning puppet government. He called Fox News to say that he didn't believe that Putin "wanted to do this, initially". The struggle for identity is further complicated by the fact that many Ukrainians grew up in Russian-speaking households.
There are reports of attacks on Ukrainian military infrastructure across the country, and Russian convoys entering from all directions. You can argue that it isn’t realistic or human to force all Russians into a black-and-white response—either oppose the war or you are complicit. People have young children to look after, cancer and other illnesses to manage, aging parents to care for. It’s easy to imagine that they feel they can’t—or don’t want to—get arrested for opposing a distant war because of these kinds of responsibilities, even if it is being waged in their name.

If the US abandons the military alliance, it will fall to European countries to ensure a Ukrainian victory, Mr OBrien says. 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. On Wednesday, one week after the invasion began, the first Russian official resigned from his position at a global organisation in protest. We visited schools where air raid sirens and sheltering in underground classrooms are now a part of children's everyday lives.
It is this that makes the anti-war protests against the invasion of Ukraine so telling. Russia's invasion plan has not gone entirely to plan - Britain's Defence Intelligence says hundreds of Russian troops have been killed and resistance is stiff - but it is progressing. Russia's forces outnumber Ukraine's by more than three-to-one, and there are questions about the quality of Ukraine's military leadership and how long its forces can hold out. A spate of Ukraine-linked attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure have reportedly led Moscow's energy ministry to propose restricting flights over energy facilities. And what I'm really torn up about is that there are hundreds of phenomenal Russian journalists who are working so hard to tell Russians the truth about their own country. These are people who made very small salaries when they could have made much more by going over to the Kremlin side.


"The regional war in the Middle East, with its epicentre in Gaza, is unlikely to escalate into a World War. Currently it's not a flashpoint between the major world powers. "Certainly, the time we are living in is enormously dangerous. And the killing of three US troops in Jordan has increased the likelihood for the crisis in the Middle East deepening considerably. The head of the British Army said UK citizens should be "trained and equipped" to fight in a potential war with Russia, describing those living today as the "pre-war generation". Last week, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps warned the world could be engulfed by wars involving China, Russia, North Korea and Iran in the next five years, and said we are moving "from a post-war to pre-war world". The defence secretary has warned we are moving to a "pre-war world", top military brass are talking about conscription and tensions in the Middle East show no signs of abating. While dissenting voices to Putin’s invasion are minimised in Russia, the scale and the intensity of the feeling of support for Ukraine means that the opposition cannot be entirely silenced by the Kremlin.


The town is sometimes described as the gateway to the city of Donetsk, which has been occupied by Russia and its proxy forces since 2014. Taking Avdiivka - which lies close by - would allow Russia to push the front line back, making it harder for the Ukrainian forces to retake the territory. Only aircraft deployed to protect energy facilities, or those carrying top Russian or foreign officials, will be allowed to fly with special permission in the designated zones, according to the Vedomosti daily newspaper.

Website: https://gilliam-albrechtsen-4.technetbloggers.de/why-did-russia-invade-ukraine-faqs-about-the-conflict-that-has-shocked-the-world