Matthew Kupfer
@Matthew_Kupfer
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Investigative journalist, @VOANews . Mostly #Ukraine & #Russia . Ex: @SFStandard @OCCRP @KyivPost @MoscowTimes . Opinions mine, not VOA's. Retweets ≠ endorsements.
Washington, DC
Joined January 2012
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Pinned Tweet
NEW: You may have heard of
#Russia
's "Doppelganger"
#disinformation
campaign targeting the US, EU,
#Ukraine
& Latin America.
I dug into the background of the man allegedly behind it, political consultant Ilya Gambashidze.
Here's what I found. 🧵
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A friend in the
#Netherlands
tells me: He had several Ukrainian handymen doing renovations in his house. The other day, they apologized to him, left all their tools, & headed back to
#Ukraine
to defend their country from
#Russia
.
This is what military analysis couldn't predict.
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🧵Many in
#Ukraine
are calling for a no fly zone. Previously, I've viewed this as risking nuclear war. Now, I think it would make sense to use NATO troops to secure the Western half of Ukraine and establish a no-fly zone there.
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Seems that every person I know in
#Ukraine
has stopped speaking Russian. Some friends in Central Asia are also trying to avoid it.
Great job defending the Russian language and Russian speakers, Putin! Brilliant planning there, mate. 🤦♂️
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This week, my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary. My parents ordered us a very practical, thoughtful gift on Amazon: a crockpot and a crockpot cookbook.
We're thrilled. There's just one minor issue: I'm pretty sure the cookbook was written by an AI... 🧵
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More Russian troops, captured in Kharkiv, say they were told it was a training mission.
One says that when they found out the true purpose of the mission, they didn’t want to go, but were told they could be executed by shooting because it was “wartime.”
#RussiaUkraineWar
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P.S. Signora Florence, if you're out there and not the hallucination of an LLM, I'm really sorry for suggesting you're an AI, but you aren't doing a great job of sounding human. 🙏
/END
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But then you open the book and it doesn't seem like it's... written by a human.
"What is Crock pot?" it asks.
"This electrical cooking equipment is used to make meals, particularly when you want to leave your cooking uncontrolled for hours."
Sadly, I always cook uncontrolled.
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3)
#Russia
's main advantage is that it understands the West does not want to fight. Add some uncertainty to their calculation.
The assumption that Russia is ready for nuclear apocalypse is, in my opinion, overstated.
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This got me to wondering about the author, "Luisa Florence." I looked her up and, lo and behold, there is hardly a trace of her outside Amazon.
Here's her photo. Looks like an AI-generated GAN image to me — note the divergent earrings, weird background, & missing left shoulder.
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2) Hear me out: This doesn't mean nuclear war. It would show that the West is serious about defending
#Ukraine
. More importantly, it would serve a humanitarian purpose, guaranteeing continued Ukrainian statehood & ensuring that 40 million people don't become stateless overnight.
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Boris Romanchenko was a survivor of Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps.
On March 18, he was killed when
#Russia
shelled his apartment building in Kharkiv,
#Ukraine
.
He survived one fascist regime, only to be killed by another.
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Wie wir von Angehörigen erfahren haben, wurde unser Freund Boris Romantschenko, der die KZs
#Buchenwald
,
#Peenem
ünde,
#Dora
und
#BergenBelsen
überlebt hatte, am vergangenen Freitag bei einem Bombenangriff auf sein Wohnhaus in
#Charkiw
getötet. Wir sind zutiefst bestürzt.
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Her bio is also a tad...suspicous? She is 60 (eternally?) and lives in Philly.
"Her origins are Italians, she left Tuscany when she was only 12 years old because of her parents’ jobs."
So she's from Tuscany and her surname is the Tuscany regional capital? A tad on the nose...
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It has a brief history of the crockpot in stilted English:
"In the 1940s, when women were required to work in locations that were further away from their homes, it was the first time it was used in the United States..."
Very eusphemistic way of describing WWII, but okay...
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Actually, most of Signora Florence's cookbooks get good reviews. Except for one: her anti-inflammatory cookbook.
People are pointing out typos, a chickpea and quinoa recipe that doesn't list chickpeas and quinoa in the ingredients.
Someone even says it looks like AI writing!
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In any case, I'm looking forward to trying some AI-generated recipes.
And lest you think this is a unique situation, it is not.
Welcome to the future!
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"At that time, women were required to prepare dinner in the morning before they left for work so that when they returned in the evening, they can successfully complete the food preparation."
Why finish cooking, when you can "successfully complete the food preparation" instead?
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So how is the cookbook itself? Hard to believe, but it has great reviews!
Granted, many of them look like someone asked ChatGPT to make multiple versions of the same review: working professional, new crockpot, health food for family, great beef recipe, blah blah blah...
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Here's the book: "The Complete Crockpot Cookbook for Beginners" for 2024 (gotta keep up with crockpot innovations) by Luisa Florence.
All looks good — except for 2,000 days, which seems kinda arbitrary and a few to many for one year. But no big deal.
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So Elon Musk is going to reinstate accounts banned for harassment & threats, but Twitter has suspended
@SpaghettiKozak
, someone who is fighting on the front line for
#Ukraine
.
@elonmusk
, is saying the n-word a more protected right than speaking out against genocide?
mass erasure of ukrainian voices on western social media platforms continues.
@SpaghettiKozak
is actually fighting on ukraine frontline against russian colonialism and fascism but gets suspended thanks to russian mass reporting. is anyone left at
@TwitterSupport
to fix this?
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In April, a video of Alisa saying she wanted to be evacuated made the rounds on social media. Then journalist Nataliya Nagorna encountered her on the evacuation bus and was shocked to find she was alone.
Ukrainians online are demanding her mother be freed. #повернітьАлісімаму
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Principled statement by
#Russia
's Sakharov Center:
"Today our country is experiencing perhaps the most shameful days of its history... What happened means the moral bankruptcy of our society."
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Medvedev says 800,000 citizens of
#Russia
live in Donbas. "Not just people who speak Russian, but citizens of our country."
Remember, Russia specially handed out Russian passports in order to create this situation.
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This is so unbelievably tragic. And it was the last story produced by RFE/RL journalist Vira Hyrych, killed in a missile strike on Kyiv last week.
#Ukraine
87-year-old Elvira survived the Holocaust and the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
She told
@radiosvoboda
that what she witnessed in Mariupol was worse.
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🧵Lots to parse here, but it seems significant.
"
#Kazakhstan
respects the territorial integrity of
#Ukraine
. We did not recognise and will not recognise the Crimea situation and neither the Donbas situation because the UN does not recognise them."
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Stay strong,
#Ukraine
🇺🇦!
“Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.”
– Taras Shevchenko
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Imagine getting sanctioned by your own country for being a nutcase who simps for war crimes. That’s what Graham Phillips has accomplished. So, yes, he’s not a journalist and more a combatant, but that actually overstates who he is. Many terms of invective do a better job.
Only British citizen sanctioned by UK, here's Graham Phillips looting a Ukrainian property. This whilst with Russian forces attacking
#Ukraine
held town of Bakhmut. He's wearing Russian flag insignia in the form of a Z & his car also has a Z symbol on it.
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Remember,
@realDonaldTrump
, if the Great Wall of Amurrica isn't visible from space,
#China
wins – no matter who pays!
The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!
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So a country tries to invade & capture it’s neighbor in 3 days, fails, then employs mercenaries to continue the war. Mercenary leader gets pissed at how bad it’s going, turns around & captures a city overnight.
This is Shakespeare-level shit — not sure whether comedy or tragedy.
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Some links:
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If you enjoyed this thread and want to support writers who are not AIs, consider making a donation to my good friends at the
@KyivIndependent
,
#Ukraine
's leading independent, English-language news outlet.
They are real people doing real, important work!
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Insane footage reportedly from Kharkiv,
#Ukraine
.
An (old?) man engages in hand-to-hand combat with an armed Russian soldier while other people, including men with guns, look on from a high-rise balcony.
Extremely brave. Russian soldier clearly shocked.
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Imagine taking part in a protest that changes your country's future as a teenager and then losing your life 8 years later defending your country against a Russian invasion in response to that protest.
This is the tragic, heroic story of
#Ukraine
.
Rest in peace,
@ratushnyi_r
. He was 24. Roman was among the students dispersed by Berkut police on Maydan on Nov 30, 2013. He led the initiative against illegal construction in Kyiv. Fought for Kyiv, in the Sumy region, & near Izyum. Died heroically defending Ukraine /1
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Shameful lies! 1) Podgurskaya's Instagram shows A) she's from Mariupol & B) her husbanded posted a photo in January where she is visibly pregnant.
2) Evgeniy Maloletka is a well-known photojournalist from
#Ukraine
who was covering the war in Mariupol.
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@goddammitbrain
@NataliaAntonova
It could just be poorly translated (I have my doubts), but they’re definitely using AI in promoting the book (author photo, some of the reviews).
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Almaty, Chelyabinsk, Baku, Kyiv, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga, Sochi, Tashkent, Tbilisi
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Cutting
#Russia
off from SWIFT isn’t a panacea, but the unwillingness to do it worries me. I would love to hear a sanctions expert’s thoughts on this package.
REUTERS: U.S. and European officials are finalizing an extensive package of sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine that targets major Russian banks, but does not include banning Russia from the SWIFT financial system, according to U.S. and European officials.
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Interesting.
@JoshKovensky
reports that Trump met at least twice w/ Ukrainian-Russian oligarch Pavel Fuchs (a Giuliani client) over Trump Moscow franchising deal in late 2000s. (Also explains why Giuliani was cavorting around Kharkiv,
#Ukraine
last year).
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#Russia
's Novaya Gazeta reports Chechnya launched anti-gay crackdown to prevent pride parades. 100+ detained, 3 dead
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In cheeky "New Year" statement, Putin declines to expel U.S. diplomats as retaliation for sanctions. Touché.
#Russia
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More on Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas and now Energy Secretary Rick Perry: they reportedly wanted to replace the board of
#Ukraine
’s state-owned Naftogaz energy company to funnel LNG contracts to Trump allies.
Corrupt to the core.
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Reyhan Inandi, wife of disappeared Turkish educator Orhan Inandi, says she received info that her husband is being held in the Turkish Embassy, where they are trying to force him to renounce his
#Kyrgyzstan
citizenship so they can deport him to Turkey.
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In Tbilisi, I saw a lot of big demonstrations in support of
#Ukraine
this February, but nothing even remotely as huge as this. Wow.
One of the largest demonstrations in Tbilisi of last 30 years, in support of EU aspirations and against the government at home.
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Don't let
#Russia
's war against
#Ukraine
become a faceless tragedy. This is one of the Ukrainians Putin killed today.
Russian rocket killed her.
Kateryna Hula went to the private clinic in Vinnytsia in the morning not knowing that the Russians would pick it as their target.
She was just 24. A sister of my my colleague, a TV journalist Yura Hula.
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Erdogan has announced that Turkish security forces kidnapped educator Orhan Inandi, who disappeared in
#Kyrgyzstan
in May, and delivered him back to Turkey.
My questions: Did Sadyr Japarov sell him out? Did Kyrgyz security agencies help Ankara?
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It's incomprehensible for anyone who has ever been to Kharkiv,
#Ukraine
.
@natachabut
An Al Jazeera team was able to enter the devastated city of Kharkiv in Ukraine after Russia announced a pause in fighting to allow people to leave.
Reporter
@stratfordch
was shocked by what he saw ⤵️
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#Russia
’s cynicism knows no bounds.
Russian MFA spokeswoman Zakharova said Ukrainian "national battalions" had expelled staff and patients from the Mariupol’s maternity hospital and set up firing positions there. This was a few hours before the Russian airstrike and as we saw there were no «national battalions»
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"After a fierce battle, our control over the Chernobyl site was lost. The state of the former
#Chernobyl
nuclear power plant, confinement and nuclear waste storage facilities is unknown." –
#Ukraine
presidential advisor Mykhaylo Podolyak via
@ukrpravda_news
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Rather damning account of how journalist
@Tomthescribe
tried to warn Amnesty International's Donatella Rovera that the organization's
#Ukraine
report would "land like a lead balloon" and omit important context. AI didn't listen.
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Between Kanye and Trump, this is a very worrying time for American Jews. Both of these people have huge audiences and major platforms online. And they're using them for baseless smears and vague threats against a community that is just over 2% of the population.
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The drag queens have been a big hit so far, and the march hasn't even begun.
#KyivPride2017
#Ukraine
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I lived in
#Ukraine
for nearly 5 years. Never could I have imagined that cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv would become war zones, that Ukrainians would be beating back the Russian army, and that all of Europe would unite to impose the severest sanctions.
We are in uncharted waters.
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I can't speak highly enough of this video message to the people of
#Russia
, which probably accomplishes more than any US politician can.
There's a lot more to Arnold than most of us recognized at the peak of his stardom.
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State Department has reportedly revoked the US visa of Giuliani fixer and
#UkraineGate
narrative promoter Andriy Telizhenko, despite pro-Trump media and even GOP senators Johnson & Grassley going to bat for him.
#Ukraine
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🧵
#Ukraine
is using the Telegram messenger very effectively to communicate with the public during this war. Throughout the day, multiple official channels send out updates: warnings of imminent airstrikes, news on curfews, calls for public vigilance against saboteurs...
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@ProfJeffKenner
I suspect that will be Russia's endgame regardless. So the choice is between adhering to an ideological idea and taking pragmatic stance to protect Ukrainian statehood and Ukrainians.
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Steep competition, but I think we have a new contender for "dumbest statement in the history of American politics."
Greene: We had five million people cross our border illegally.. and let’s compare that to how many Russians invaded Ukraine. 82 thousand Russians have invaded Ukraine.
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At this point, no one can reason with Putin. The West must give
#Ukraine
the arms it needs to defend itself from
#Russia
's assault on Donbas (and, potentially, beyond).
Austria's chancellor says his 75-minute meeting with Putin left him “pessimistic” about the future of the war.
Of Russia’s renewed assault in eastern Ukraine, he says “the attack being threatened cannot be underestimated in its violence.”
By
@antontroian
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3) She is no more a "beauty blogger" than millions of other young women online.
#Russia
wants to imply that she's a crisis actor. In reality, she's an ordinary victim of the bombing.
@Twitter
Why do you allow the Embassy's tweet to stay up? It's vile
#disinformation
.
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I reported on a pro-Trump election-watching party in Moscow in 2016.
You would be surprised how openly the politicos and propagandist types in attendance expressed views like this: that Trump would destabilize the US and free up space on the global stage for
#Russia
.
@JuliaDavisNews
Russian state propagandists praise Trump for creating “the mess that has been happening there since 2016” and for undermining the trust of all America’s allies.
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Particularly crazy because Lolita was one of the novels Nabokov originally wrote in English.
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The scope of human suffering in
#Ukraine
is so great, it's difficult to fathom. And
@EMaloletka
&
@mstyslav9
document it every day.
Don't forget this. It's not a civil war. This is purely the result of one country's brazen desire to conquer territory.
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Man who believes the US election was stolen unironically "seeks asylum" in
#Belarus
, where the election was actually stolen. FFS.
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It is difficult to comprehend the scope of this tragedy. People are being killed in the suburbs of a European capital, and it seems like Europe (and most of the world) is wringing its hands.
#Ukraine
Photo 1: A Ukrainian woman called Marina Met and her son Ivan, photographed on a summer night in central Kyiv.
Photo 2: Their graves in Irpin, where they lived and were killed on March 5, according to the date on the makeshift crosses.
Before Russia vs after Russia.
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Obama got intel of Putin's direct involvement in election interference. But punishing
#Russia
proved a struggle.
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Historically,
#Ukraine
often had a negative reputation in Jewish communities.
So it's kind of amazing that "Shabbat" is trending right now in the US and many of the tweets are wishing the *Jewish president of Ukraine* and the country's people "Shabbat Shalom."
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Ouch. The election committee website in
#Russia
's Tula region accidentally published voter turnout data almost a month before the presidential election!
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Genuinely believed this story was a wartime myth. Turns out, it may be true — only they were pickled tomatoes, no cucumbers!
#Ukraine
found the woman who knocked down a Russian drone with a jar of pickled tomatoes. She wants to set the record straight: those were NOT picked cucumbers. The gist of her story is in this thread 1/
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If you wanted to make an argument for NATO intervening in
#Ukraine
, “
#Russia
is about to cause a disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear plant” is probably among the strongest…
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Plant spokesman says Russian troops have begun shelling Europe's largest nuclear power station in Ukraine.
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Here’s the thing: If
#Ukraine
’s military intelligence believed there was any chance of this happening, why make it public?
⚡️Ukraine’s military intelligence claim that Russia’s elites scheme to overthrow Putin to restore economic ties with Western countries.
Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of FSB security agency, is allegedly being considered as Putin’s successor, according to Ukraine's intelligence.
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If the Academy rejected an Oscars address by Zelensky because it would be "political," but had Navalny's family and this guy, I don't think they know what political means.
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A lawmaker in
#Ukraine
has just released audio excerpts from Poroshenko-Biden phone calls. Naturally, he thinks they reveal a grand conspiracy theory involving — you guessed it! — George Soros.
I explain why almost nothing he says is true.
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Repeat after me:
— Speaking Russian does not make you pro-Kremlin or anti-
#Ukraine
.
— Opposing bans on Russian TV shows or artists does not inherently make you pro-Kremlin.
— Being anti-Kremlin does not make you a Ukrainian nationalist.
FFS people!
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A friend in Kyiv got a text from her mom:
– “They downed a cruise missile over our house.”
– “You okay??”
– “Yes. It exploded beyond the city. I was watching how it flew toward me.”
– “Damn…”
…
– “You get used to everything. Soon there’ll be peace…”
– “God willing.”
#Ukraine
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It's difficult to stress how patently untrue this is. No one in
#Ukraine
is talking about war except because of the buildup of Russian troops on the border and in Crimea. This is a totally
#Russia
-manufactured narrative.
Leading Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov on his weekly show last night:
"There's bad news from Ukraine. The talk in Kyiv is increasingly about war".
The studio caption behind him reads:
"A second fratricidal [war]?"
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Can't make this up. Rudy Giuliani just arrived in Kharkiv,
#Ukraine
for a meeting on security in the city. He was greeted by mafiaoso-turned-mayor Gennady Kernes and women in folk costumes bearing the traditional Slavic welcoming gift of bread and salt.
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#Ukraine
needed more weapons and quicker. I hope now it isn’t too late.
I just spoke to a Ukrainian commander on the frontline near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, who said their positions are being hit by Russian airstrikes and heavy artillery 14 hours a day. They are "desperate" for more help, he said, outgunned, and running low on ammunition.
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I must imagine that
#Russia
's forces in Kherson are worried. This is a provincial capital in
#Ukraine
's southeast and people are strongly against the invasion. What will the response be in other cities?
Huge turnout at a protest against the Russian occupation in Russian-occupied Kherson.
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You could also make a donation to this very good cause and help the family of a friend and colleague.
From my daughter... My name is Olivia and I am Juny Gow-Smith's sister. I am creating a GoFundMe because Juny was hit on 03/11 riding her bike. A car hit her hard enough to inflict severe brain injury, and she hasn't awakened yet....
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As expert Mykhailo Minakov told me when I was reporting a story on the weakness of left-wing candidates in
#Ukraine
’s 2019 presidential race, these parties aren’t truly left. Rather, they are “Soviet conservative.” They mix USSR nostalgia, pro-Russia views & social conservatism.
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Very brave, and not so surprising this would happen in one of the ethnic republics:
#Russia
is disproportionately mobilizing ethnic minorities like Yakuts, Buryats, and Tuvans.
Hundreds of women in Russia's Far Eastern city of Yakutsk protested against mobilization by surround the police and performing the osuokhai (Sakha folk dance) chanting “No to genocide!” and "No to war!"
(via
@mediazzzona
)
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Some news: On Saturday, shortly before new quarantine measures were announced in Kyiv, Karolina and I tied the knot (alone w/ a bureaucrat, no guests allowed). Now we’re ready for whatever comes next w/
#coronavirus
.
Despite this craziness, we are very happy.
#KyivCoronaJournal
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