Notes

How Do Ukrainians Think About Russians Now?
"You will not silence us," Meduza said in a defiant statement. "We need independent media to stop the war and then try and improve life in Russia at least to a degree." There is more variety of opinion in the press, but it still largely sticks to the Kremlin line.

The US sees both men as wrongfully detained and Mr Gershkovich's detention was extended on Thursday until 30 January. "The connotations are not positive, you know? Especially if fish is a big resource for you, you're going to be very skeptical of someone who comes in and dams up fish-bearing streams." She had been putting up posters that said “No to war” around the city.
The decline in manufacturing means there are far fewer factories that can be converted to make arms, as happened in the Second World War, when car makers churned out Spitfire parts. And in a globalised world, many industries that are key in wartime rely on imports. As fighting intensifies, cross-Channel shipping is attacked by Russian submarines, and long-range conventional missiles strike Dover and Southampton. Permafrost is the permanently frozen ground found across the Arctic. As it thaws, it creates massive problems for infrastructure built on top of it, causing roads to buckle, building foundations to crack and pipelines to break. "The connotations are not positive, you know? Especially if fish is a big resource for you, you're going to be very skeptical of someone who comes in and dams up fish-bearing streams."

Ukraine war: Three ways the conflict could go in 2024
Since Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backed militants in the eastern Donbas region in 2014, there's been no real let-up in fighting, cyber-attacks and misinformation. But 66 percent of Russians aged between 18 and 24 have a positive or very positive attitude toward Ukraine. That’s despite a backdrop of unceasing vitriol directed toward Ukraine on state television, and the persistent, oft-repeated idea that it is external attacks that require Russia to take defensive measures.


Meanwhile, Putin’s repeated claim that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” left no room for a Ukrainian identity other than that of “little Russians” in his Eurasian Union. Putin’s total control of the Russian media mobilized anti-Ukrainian hysteria among Russians in the decade leading up to the Kremlin’s 2014 aggression. "The rouble (Russia's currency) will fall and people will have it really bad. So this must be avoided. It is not people's fault, but it will be ordinary people who will be hit," he said.

Opinion
Examples of Yugoslavia and Libya, two states bombed by NATO forces, are used to drive fears that Russia may be next. The day before the start of the war, Putin told the nation of WWII-era promises not to expand NATO eastward and said those promises had been broken five times. Ukraine's flirtation with NATO membership pushed those fears into overdrive.

I want peace, but my grandmother thinks our military is needed to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine. The EU's decision to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova is more than just symbolic. “If I watched different channels, I would probably have a different opinion, but I don’t watch them,” she said. By that, he means that those who were most connected to the outside world might have been less inclined to support Putin's military operation, but now find themselves cut off from the West.
"We're having a meeting at the end of February," he says, "and it's basically Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia. There's no one from Russia coming." 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. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been serving prison time since 2021 after leading street protests and starting a nationwide opposition movement, was recently moved to a penal colony in Russia's far north. Earlier today, a Russian official said air defences had thwarted a drone attack on the Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in the city of Yaroslavl.

What the ruthless new commander of Russia's military in Ukraine signals for the war
Also, prices for some ordinary things, like cosmetics and food, have doubled, but in many cases, we have no alternative because there are no factories here that produce those products. When I think about the conflict, I feel anxious, sad, and frustrated. Mostly because I don’t understand how anyone could take this step – to send people to fight, to kill others. The war in eastern Ukraine broke out in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea. Next, two separatist regions in Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, declared their independence from Kyiv. It sparked a conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists, which has seen casualties on both sides.

"A frank and constructive dialogue is expected to improve relations between states," the Ukrainian president's office said on its official channel on the Telegram messaging app alongside a photo of Mr Szijjarto, Mr Kuleba and Mr Yermak. Mr Putin has a long record of masterfully manipulating public sentiment. As a result, researchers estimate that the core group of war supporters numbers around 30% to 35% of the total number of survey respondents. And on the other hand, I understand that we could be hurt if we did something to try and change it.
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