Notes

How Do Ukrainians Think About Russians Now?
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.


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.

Europe
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 https://diigo.com/0ve9gt 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.

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. Yet Volkov added that this tolerance, however passive, is likely to remain quite stable, even strong. Though dissent has been effectively outlawed, thousands of people have taken the risk to express their opposition to the invasion.
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.

What has been the impact of the Ukraine war on the rest of the world?
You can be horrified by what Russia has done and is doing—as of course I am—and, at the same time, be concerned about dehumanizing a whole group of people in response. But, at the same time, I can understand why this might seem like sophistry to Ukrainians who have lost their homes, their friends, and seen their fellow Ukrainians tortured and murdered. Mr Navalny's team have been trying to undermine support for the war via YouTube. "No-one attacked Russia, no-one needed these separations and these deaths," Mr Volkov wrote on Twitter. "It's strange to ban people for being Russian, whether or not they support Putin's regime," argues Anastasia Shevchenko, an activist who spent two years under house arrest for protesting against the Russian president. This week Lithuania - together with Latvia, Estonia and Poland - banned all Russian tourists, arguing they should not be enjoying democracy and freedom in Europe while their government attacks those very values in Ukraine.

On 24 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his army to forcefully cross the border and invade neighbouring Ukraine. 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. While queues to enter Finland are growing, Latvia and Estonia both say escaping enlistment is not grounds for asylum.
"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.


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.


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.

"Four months later the theatre of war is expanding with the US and its allies being drawn deeper into the region. Hungary has now signalled its readiness for a compromise ahead of an emergency EU summit on Thursday. My uncle, for example, is Ukrainian and my wife’s grandmother, born in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, survived the Nazi occupation of Kyiv. He says Europe is rich enough to do so if it has the political will, pointing to a recent report from the Estonian Ministry of Defence suggesting that committing 0.25% of GDP annually towards Ukraine would provide "more than sufficient resources".
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