Ukraine

KHARKIV, UKRAINE — In the trendy shisha bar in the center of Kharkiv where they’re taking a quick break from work, Valery Neyman and his co-worker look slightly out of place, even in post-invasion Ukraine: clad in full camouflage military attire and bulletproof vests, assault rifles resting against the wall.  “Work” for the pair is providing first response to a shelling: They secure the area after a missile or artillery shell hits the city to then remove shrapnel and any unexploded ordnance. Valery is expecting me and gets up to shake my hand. 

Les responsables américains viennent d’admettre qu’ils ne savent pas où aboutiront réellement leurs livraisons d’armes à l’Ukraine, et qu’elles pourraient tomber entre des mains dangereuses. Source : Jacobin Mag, Branko MarceticTraduit par les lecteurs du site Les-Crises

Les pays occidentaux sont coincés entre la nécessité de condamner la Russie et celle d’obtenir la coopération de Moscou. Source : Responsible Statecraft, Gabriella GriciusTraduit par les lecteurs du site Les-Crises

The civilians who may be the last to make it out of the bombarded Mariupol steel plant alive arrived in the first major Ukrainian city beyond the frontlines.  

Eighty-seven-year-old Alla arrived in Moldova on the night of March 22 wearing her grandson Vova’s hoodie and sweatpants, and something else less familiar.    She’d had no presence of mind to pack before the Russians started bombing Mariupol on February 24. During the following three weeks she and her family spent sheltering in a basement — in which their home was bombed, a fact Alla’s family hid from her — Vova threw away his grandmother’s only clothing: a pair of pants, a shirt, and a sweater.     

Even amid great battle victories for the Ukrainians over the Russians, the war is far from over. The desperation and brutality of Russia seems to be without end. And over and over again, we hear threats from the Russians about the use of tactical nuclear weapons.   But what are these weapons? Just how deadly are they? How widespread could their potential damage be, and how might their use escalate? David Shlapak, our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, has been studying these issues since the Cold War.    

Bien que l’Ukraine soit accablée par la dette due à ses créanciers internationaux, le soutien du Canada à ce pays n’inclut pas d’allégement de la dette. Il prévoit toutefois des armes et plus de prêts encore. Source : Jacobin Mag, Yves EnglerTraduit par les lecteurs du site Les-Crises

Un échec en Ukraine pourrait bien signifier la désintégration de l’UE et de l’OTAN, écrit Alastair Crooke. Parfois, les changements révolutionnaires s’insinuent furtivement dans nos vies ; nous ne prenons conscience de la bifurcation majeure que lorsque nous la remarquons, dans le rétroviseur. C’est particulièrement vrai lorsque ceux qui ont été les premiers à appuyer sur la gâchette n’ont pas pleinement conscience – par eux-mêmes – ce qu’ils ont fait.

Il semble que le partenariat « sans limites » récemment déclaré par Pékin et Moscou rencontre quelques limites. Source : Responsible Statecraft, Nathaniel SherTraduit par les lecteurs du site Les-Crises

L’invasion de l’Ukraine par Vladimir Poutine a ouvert les vannes d’un déferlement d’hystérie nationaliste et de haine contre un supposé peuple russe ennemi. Même dans les pays éloignés de la ligne de front, la guerre pousse à une abominable déshumanisation. Source : Jacobin Mag, Laboratoire du FuturTraduit par les lecteurs du site Les-Crises

Watch: Ali Abunimah and Rania Khalek discuss Israel’s attacks at al-Aqsa and the war in Ukraine.

Video shows anti-tank missile used by Azov Battalion.

With explosions rattling her windows, it was difficult for Alexandra Makoviy to keep her hand steady as she drew on her two-year-old daughter’s back.   “I was so badly shaking since the first sounds of the bombing. I couldn’t control it. Just shaking,” Makoviy said.    She wrote her daughter’s name, “Vira Makoviy,” her birthday, as well as her and her husband’s phone numbers on her toddler’s back. Whether anyone could decipher the handwriting, she still isn’t sure. “It’s so horribly written,” she said.   

When residents of Velyka Dymerka, a village of approximately 10,000 people 18 miles northeast of Kyiv, returned home after fighting near the Ukrainian capital subsided earlier this month to see the state of their homes, some were greeted by new semipermanent lawn ornaments: Russian tanks.   

I’d never had a disagreement with my Russian workout buddy Julia, an accountant in her early 30s who immigrated to the US nearly a decade ago.    When we met in 2016, I was a food and culture journalist in San Francisco, CA. She was settling into a role as an analyst at a tech company in San Jose. We bonded over our love of the great outdoors, memories of strict Soviet-era ballet classes, and our language. (I was born in Odesa, Ukraine, before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and still speak Russian fluently.)   

It was the close encounter with death that finally compelled Alina, a 33-year-old mother of two, and her family to flee the war in Ukraine. Near the end of March, a Russian cluster bomb hit their village near Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. The bomb destroyed part of their house while they were in the basement hiding, said Alina, who declined to provide her last name for security reasons, recounting the story as she and her family waited for a train back home at the railway station in Lviv after less than a month as internally displaced refugees.

You can learn more about Maksym Zubkov’s project, Support Ukraine With Us, by visiting his website; you can also support the project at this donation page.   

Responding to mounting atrocities in Ukraine, Russian media continues to claim that the rising death toll is all part of an elaborate Ukrainian hoax.   On April 7, the Russian-run media outlet Russia-24 released a video entitled “Ukrainian fake films.” The video clip allegedly reveals Ukrainian soldiers positioning a battered mannequin as a prop for faking civilian deaths.   

What is it like to be on the street in Moscow right now?   Two Russian men talk about their lives in the city today. The first is a Russian tech worker living in Moscow.    Right now in Moscow the “a few months theory” reigns supreme.  

This week on the New World Next Week: the world government globalists say the quiet part out loud when talking about the CBDC monetary shift; whatever happened in Bucha can only be seen in light of the admitted info war; and Biden reaffirms the ongoing cybersecurity emergency.

WhoWhatWhy has obtained audio of Russian soldiers in Ukraine speaking on mobile phones to each other and in some cases to family back home. These come to us from reliable sources and we have done our best to verify their authenticity.     

IRPIN, UKRAINE — After weeks of Russian onslaught, the Ukrainian army has finally liberated the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, offering the elderly and disabled a chance to evacuate.   While thousands had already fled Irpin, a town of about 60,000, many didn’t dare leave during the attacks — which resulted in the deaths of a yet unknown number of civilians.  

This story by Tim Lydon originally appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.   

While you’re here enjoying Jon Richards’s latest cartoon, please take a moment to read these articles on related topics: 

• With Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, the Iranian Nuclear Deal Hangs in the Balance

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on and raises fears of nuclear escalation, negotiations in Vienna continue in a desperate bid to avert another nuclear crisis from erupting — in the Middle East.   After almost a year of talks, officials say that an agreement to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is close, but political issues continue to stand in the way, including controversy over the terrorist designation of an Iranian military branch and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

Watching the brutish Russian invasion of Ukraine and the West’s reaction, I cannot help but think about my childhood in the United States post 9/11, growing up as a Muslim Iranian American girl.   I remember this feeling, even as a child, when my rows of Barbie dolls included none that looked like me. As a teen, I hid my ethnic origin because even the faintest mention of Islam or Iran ignited contention rather than celebration of my beautiful culture. 

 

Watch: Joseph Massad discusses the history and Western responses to the war.

Did Russia’s President Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine to distract attention from his own political weakness at home? Sure, he was unhappy about NATO and obsessed with restoring the glory of the Russian empire. But the timing of this war and Putin’s expectation of a quick victory may be rooted in his own domestic political failures.  

Western governments don't want their people to know they are supporting Nazis.

A leaked March 3 memo revealed this week that the Kremlin instructed Russian media outlets to “use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson.” Carlson is the only Western “journalist” mentioned by name.  While you’re here enjoying Jon Richards’s latest cartoon, please take a moment to read these articles on related topics: 

It’s been less than three weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, and things couldn’t be going better… well, unless you are one of the 44 million Ukrainians whose country is getting shelled. But let’s forget them for a moment (as the world will in a few weeks). On the face of it, Russia’s performance justifies the giddiness of military experts (both real and on Twitter).

A reporter for a major Chinese media outlet covering the war in Ukraine is deliberately assisting the Russian war effort by helping to solicit intelligence on Ukraine troop movements on social media, WhoWhatWhy has learned.   

After banning imports of Russian oil following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the US is looking for friendlier sources of energy as fuel prices rise.   

When the news gets bad, the bad kill the news.    While you’re here enjoying Jon Richards’s latest cartoon, please take a moment to read these articles on related topics: 

• Ukraine on the Line: Phone Calls During Wartime

Smear campaign derails effort to shed light on ties with anti-Palestinian groups.

How did the breakaway territories of Ukraine — the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” — gain their independence? The story behind Russia-backed Ukrainian regions explained. 

Background

Why is Hillary Clinton pushing for a repeat of the Afghanistan calamity in Ukraine?

Unlike Moscow, the US faced no sporting sanctions after it invaded Iraq.

Western publics are being primed for another bloody calamity.

Now, you know me. Here at The Corbett Report, I like to go deeper than the simplistic, binary narratives you get in the establishment press or much of the so-called alternative press. So let's go deeper today and look at the third side of the Ukraine crisis story.

[audio mp3="https://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/qfc084-ukraine.mp3"][/audio] Today on Questions For Corbett, Thomas writes in to ask James about the unfolding events in Ukraine. James gives his answer as things stood at 10 AM JST on February 23, 2022.

New European Citizens Initiative would halt trade with colonial settlements.