The people of Ukraine need our solidarity. But not just because they’re ‘like us’

Kenan Malik
Sun, 6 March 2022


The outpouring of sympathy and help for Ukrainian refugees has prompted debate about European attitudes to identity and ethnicity

In 1857, the English poet and Chartist leader Ernest Jones wrote a series of articles in the People’s Paper about the “Indian Mutiny” of that year. It was, he observed, no “mutiny” but a “national insurrection” that Britons should support as much as they had supported similar struggles in Europe. Britons were “on the side of Poland” when it “struggled for its freedom against Russia”. If Poland was “right”, Jones insisted, then “so is Hindostan”.

I was reminded of his argument as I read and listened to some of the commentary about Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. The invasion is brutal and unacceptable, an assault on democracy and sovereignty. We should oppose it just as we should oppose the Saudi assault on Yemen. We should support the people of Ukraine just as we should the people of Syria.

Not so, says the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley. On BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day slot, he insisted that Ukraine moves us more than Syria or Yemen because it is “a European country” and “the young men volunteering or being conscripted could be our sons or fathers”. Apparently, it’s so much more difficult to imagine what a father or son must feel facing the prospect of war in Yemen or Iraq.

For the Tory lord and former MEP Daniel Hannan the Ukraine conflict is shocking because “they seem so like us”, living in “a European country” where “people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts”. “Civilisation itself is under attack in Ukraine,” he concluded. Unlike in the destruction of Syria or Afghanistan.

Many others on both sides of the Atlantic have proffered similar views. What is expressed here is not simply the shock of witnessing a brutal conflict in a relatively peaceful and prosperous continent like Europe (though it’s barely 30 years since the Balkans were ripped apart by an even more vicious conflict). It is, rather, the belief that our capacity to empathise with people’s hopes, fears and suffering is defined by whether they are “like us”. It’s an argument that circumscribes solidarity along lines of identity. One of the ironies of much rightwing criticism of identity politics is the obliviousness to their own wallowing in the swamp of identity.

There is an irony, too, in that the place of eastern Europeans and of Russians in the western imagination has always been ambiguous. Today, Europeans might embrace Ukrainians as “one of us”. It has not always been so. There is a long history of bigotry towards Slavs, of viewing them as primitive and “Asiatic”.

For the influential 19th-century German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, “hatred of Slavs… is deep in our blood” because the Slav is “a born slave”. Edward Ross, one of America’s leading sociologists at the turn of the 20th century, called for Slavic migrants to be barred from America because they “belong in skins in wattled huts at the close of the Great Ice Age”. “A Slav can live in dirt that would kill a white man”, he wrote.

The 1917 Russian Revolution was cast by many in racial terms. The prominent white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard viewed the Russian population as “made up chiefly of primitive racial strains… which have always shown an instinctive hostility to civilisation”. Another American writer, Clinton Stoddard Burr, saw Bolshevism as “fundamentally an Asiatic conception which is repugnant to the western mind”. For Hitler, the “real frontier” was not between Europe and Asia but “the one that separates the Germanic world from the Slav world”. He saw Ukrainians as the “redskins” of Europe: “We’ll supply the Ukrainians with scarves, glass beads and everything that colonial people like”, he contemptuously remarked.

Such sentiments still find expression. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal published an article on Putin’s diplomacy headlined “Russia’s Turn to Its Asian Past”.

The issue is one not of numbers but of political will and of the social and imaginative boundaries we draw

The boundaries of those who are “like us”, of those who are European, of even those who are considered “white”, are not fixed but shift according to political and social need. And those ever-changing boundaries are defined as much by those deemed to be not like us as by those whom we acknowledge are.

This is most noticeable in discussions about refugees. In the space of a week, a million refugees have fled Ukraine, half of them to Poland. That figure could rise in the coming weeks to four million. There has been much chaos and desperation in the rush to leave Ukraine. But in the receiving countries, the refugees have been met with great generosity, with open arms and open borders. (A notable exception is Britain, where the public supports a liberal policy but the government continues to drag its feet.)

Compare this to the debate on the “refugee crisis” of 2015 when Europe was apparently overwhelmed by an “invasion”. That year, Europe received 1.3m asylum applications, a sharp jump in numbers because of the Syrian war. The figures before and since have been much lower. Yet that one year, in which the total number of asylum seekers was barely more than that in a week from Ukraine, has become totemic of an overwhelmed continent, the reason for strengthening Fortress Europe and for holding hundreds of thousands inthe most appalling conditions on both sides of the Mediterranean.

The issue is one not of numbers but of political will and of the social and imaginative boundaries we draw. The EU president Ursula von der Leyen last week insisted that Ukraine “belongs in the European family”. One of her first acts on becoming EU president in 2019 was to move responsibility for immigration into a new portfolio for “Promoting Our European Way of Life”, the task of which included protecting it from “irregular migration”. Refugees from Ukraine are part of the “European way of life”. Those from beyond are not. That is how boundaries are marked to delimit empathy and solidarity.

In 1857, an editorial in the People’s Paper acknowledged that “we have avowedly shown ourselves on the Indian side” because support for “democracy must be consistent”. Anyone who says: “‘I am for Hungary, and against India’”, it observed, “ lies against himself, against principle, against truth, against honour.” Ernest Jones and the People’s Paper understood that solidarity means little if it is constrained by race and identity. There are many today who still need to learn that lesson.

• Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

Doesn’t Russian oil smell of Ukrainian blood, Kyiv minister asks Shell

Aine Fox, PA
Sat, 5 March 2022


Ukraine’s foreign minister has criticised Shell for buying oil from Russia and called on the public to demand big companies cut all business ties with Vladimir Putin’s country.

The oil giant confirmed it made a purchase of crude oil on Friday but said it had “no alternative” in this instance and described the decision as “difficult”.

Dmytro Kuleba hit out publicly, asking the firm on Twitter: “Doesn’t Russian oil smell Ukrainian blood for you?”

It comes after Shell announced on Monday plans to sell its stake in all joint ventures with Russian partner Gazprom, calling the Ukrainian invasion “senseless” and a threat to European security.

Mr Kuleba tweeted: “I am told that Shell discretely bought some Russian oil yesterday. One question to @Shell: doesn’t Russian oil smell Ukrainian blood for you?

“I call on all conscious people around the globe to demand multinational companies to cut all business ties with Russia.”

A spokesman for Shell confirmed to the PA news agency it had bought a consignment of Russian crude oil on Friday but said the company is trying to maintain supplies of essential fuels and in this case it had no alternative crude supplies which would reach Europe in time.

In a statement, the firm said it remains “appalled by the war in Ukraine” and said it has stopped most activities involving Russian oil but added that the situation with supplies is “highly complex”.

A spokesman said: “Our refineries produce petrol and diesel as well as other products that people rely on every day.

“To be clear, without an uninterrupted supply of crude oil to refineries, the energy industry cannot assure continued provision of essential products to people across Europe over the weeks ahead.

“Cargoes from alternative sources would not have arrived in time to avoid disruptions to market supply.

“We didn’t take this decision lightly and we understand the strength of feeling around it.”

The company said while it will “continue to choose alternatives to Russian oil wherever possible” the change “cannot happen overnight because of how significant Russia is to global supply”.

The spokesman added: “We have been in intense talks with governments and continue to follow their guidance around this issue of security of supply, and are acutely aware we have to navigate this dilemma with the utmost care.

“We welcome any direction or insights from governments and policymakers as we try to keep Europe moving and in business.”

Shell has vowed to commit profits “from the limited amount of Russian oil we have to purchase” to a dedicated fund and work with aid partners and humanitarian agencies to “determine where the monies from this fund are best placed to alleviate the terrible consequences that this war is having on the people of the Ukraine”.

On Monday, the company said it would sell its 27.5% stake in a Russian liquefied natural gas facility, a 50% stake in an oilfield project in Siberia and an energy joint venture.

It will also end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, which has been put on hold by ministers in Berlin.

Far right and far left alike admired Putin. Now we’ve all turned against strongmen

Nick Cohen
Sat, 5 March 2022

Photograph: Sputnik/Reuters

After the Ukraine invasion, his former defenders are rushing to distance themselves


The worst people in the west were pro-Putin. They excused his imperialist ideology and crimes against humanity and never paid a price for bootlicking a dictatorship. On the contrary, they took Britain out of the European Union and took over the Labour party. They won the presidencies of the United States and the Czech Republic and seized control of politics and the media in Hungary.

The savagery of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukrainian democracy has sent them into headlong retreat. Nothing better illustrates their panic than Marine Le Pen having to deny that she had ordered the destruction of 1.2m election leaflets that featured pictures of her giving Putin a firm handshake, as if to thank him for all the money he had loaned her


Another French far right leader, Éric Zemmour, announced his affinity with the fascist tradition by defending Vichy’s collaboration with the Nazis and the persecutors of Albert Dreyfus. With the first round of the French presidential election opening on 10 April, he returned the support the Kremlin has given him by saying that the French should not treat Putin’s victims as refugees because they would “submerge” France under a wave of immigration.

Cheeringly, Zemmour’s image of Ukrainians pushing French heads under water, as if they were aggressors rather than victims, did nothing to stop the decline in his support. In Hungary, the victory of the Putin wannabe Viktor Orbán in the elections on 3 April no longer seems the certainty it once was.

In the UK, the Labour leadership ordered MPs from the rump of the Corbyn left to disassociate themselves from a letter blaming Putin’s war on Nato or lose the whip. Even Donald Trump and Nigel Farage are backing away from Putin now and when rats that size abandon ship we know we are in uncharted waters.

Writers have struggled to find a label for the movements that have transformed the west. “Populist” is too vague. “Nationalist” works well until you remember that they hate large numbers of their fellow citizens and are more than willing to ally with their nations’ enemies. “Racist”? Certainly in some cases but how does that oft-repeated insult cover the religious sectarianism of a Modi or Erdoğan? “Fascist?” In the rhetorical echoes and common heritage, of course, but not in goose-stepping fact.

But they have all been “Putinist”, and not only because they have flattered the Kremlin.

The appeal of the Russian empire to parts of the far left remains both a cause of outrage and a pitiable demonstration of moral and intellectual decay. From Karl Marx to Oscar Wilde, every 19th-century liberal and socialist knew imperial Russia was the greatest fortress of European reaction. (Wilde was so moved by the struggle against it he wrote Vera; or, The Nihilists, a forgotten and truly terrible play to honour an attempt to assassinate the tsarist governor of St Petersburg.)

Boris Johnson also likes to pose as a strongman, who can get Brexit done

The appeal of Putin’s revival of tsarism to the modern far right may be grotesque but at least it makes sense. Putin is anti-democratic and so are they, as Orbán’s quasi-dictatorship and Trump’s attempts to overturn elections show. Putin despises human rights and so do they. Putin trades on a dark nostalgia and so do they. Above all, Putin is a strongman and it is as the tough guys who make their countries great again through a sheer act of will that they have sold themselves to tens of millions of voters.

Did I call them the “far right”? Forgive me, for “far right” doesn’t quite cover it. As I said, the Labour mainstream used the invasion to move against the tyrannophile left. We have seen nothing comparable on the supposedly mainstream right.

No pieces in the Mail or Telegraph agonising over how they ever came to be fooled by Farage and Arron Banks. No speeches from Boris Johnson warning against the seductions of tyrannical thinking and power worship. The silence shows that the border between the centre right and the far right has fallen into disrepair.

For Johnson also likes to pose as a strongman, who can get Brexit done. He too wallows in nostalgia for the past rather than hope for the future and defines himself against a large portion of his fellow countrymen: the remoaners, the naysayers, the libtards and the woke.

In the most desperate of circumstances, Ukraine cries to be allowed into the European Union, that same European Union a generation of unforgivably trivial Tories have dedicated their lives to destroying. Putin shows his fear of Russians learning the truth about his war by blocking their access to the BBC, the same BBC that Johnson underfunds and promises to ruin whenever he needs to toss red meat to the Tory right.

Predicting anything in this hellish week is a fool’s endeavour but of one thing I am sure: Putin has destroyed the appeal of strongman politics in the 2020s as effectively as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin did in the 1930s.

The career of Volodymyr Zelenskiy explains why. He has not played the Putinist game of divide and rule or created a personality cult. At his inauguration, he asked government workers to end the Soviet practice of putting pictures of the ruler on their office wall. “Hang your kids’ photos instead and look at them each time you are making a decision,” he said.

Just before Putin’s forces attacked, Zelenskiy appealed to Russians in their own language to reject Putin and emphasised his determination to protect Russian minorities in Ukraine. The broad appeal of his leadership helped create the broad resistance to invasion.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, told me there was nothing soppy about leaders doing all in their power to seek national unity. A nation’s resilience depends on governments seeking to avoid needless dividing lines. “We must unite the country in peacetime so we can defend ourselves in an emergency.”

We are now in an economic war that will send fuel and food prices ever higher. The poorest will hurt the most and in the name of national unity they deserve emergency help. Worse may be on the way than inflation and recession. As things stand, the most fitting epitaph to the Trumps, Farages and Le Pens who prostrated themselves before Putin is that if economic war is all he brings down on us, we can count ourselves lucky.

• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

BREAD RIOTS CREATE REVOLUTION

Russian war in world’s ‘breadbasket’ threatens food supply

By JOSEPH WILSON, SAMY MAGDY, AYA BATRAWY and CHINEDU ASADU

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A worker collects Egyptian traditional 'baladi' flatbread, at a bakery, in el-Sharabia, Shubra district, Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. The Russian tanks and missiles besieging Ukraine also are threatening the food supply and livelihoods of people in Europe, Africa and Asia who rely on the vast, fertile farmlands of the Black Sea region. That could create food insecurity and throw more people into poverty in places like Egypt and Lebanon, where diets are dominated by government-subsidized bread.

 (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)


BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Russian tanks and missiles besieging Ukraine also are threatening the food supply and livelihoods of people in Europe, Africa and Asia who rely on the vast, fertile farmlands of the Black Sea region — known as the “breadbasket of the world.”

Ukrainian farmers have been forced to neglect their fields as millions flee, fight or try to stay alive. Ports are shut down that send wheat and other food staples worldwide to be made into bread, noodles and animal feed. And there are worries Russia, another agricultural powerhouse, could have its grain exports upended by Western sanctions.

While there have not yet been global disruptions to wheat supplies, prices have surged 55% since a week before the invasion amid concerns about what could happen next. If the war is prolonged, countries that rely on affordable wheat exports from Ukraine could face shortages starting in July, International Grains Council director Petit Arnold told The Associated Press.

That could create food insecurity and throw more people into poverty in places like Egypt and Lebanon, where diets are dominated by government-subsidized bread. In Europe, officials are preparing for potential shortages of products from Ukraine and increased prices for livestock feed that could mean more expensive meat and dairy if farmers are forced to pass along costs to customers.

Russia and Ukraine combine for nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports. Ukraine also is a major supplier of corn and the global leader in sunflower oil, used in food processing. The war could reduce food supplies just when prices are at their highest levels since 2011.

A prolonged conflict would have a big impact some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) away in Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer. Millions rely on subsidized bread made from Ukrainian grains to survive, with about a third of people living in poverty.

“Wars mean shortages, and shortages mean (price) hikes,” Ahmed Salah, a 47-year-old father of seven, said in Cairo. “Any hikes will be catastrophic not only for me, but for the majority of the people.”

Anna Nagurney, a professor of supply chains, logistics and economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said, “Wheat, corn, oils, barley, flour are extremely important to food security ... especially in the poorer parts of the globe.”

With Ukrainian men being called on to fight, she said, “Who’s going to be doing the harvesting? Who’d be doing the transportation?”

Egypt’s state procurer of wheat, which normally buys heavily from Russia and Ukraine, had to cancel two orders in less than a week: one for overpricing, the other because a lack of companies offered to sell their supplies. Sharp spikes in the cost of wheat globally could severely affect Egypt’s ability to keep bread prices at their current subsidized level.

“Bread is extremely heavily subsidized in Egypt, and successive governments have found that cuts to those subsidies are the one straw that should be kept off the camel’s back at all costs,” Mirette Mabrouk, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote in a recent analysis.

War-ravaged Syria recently announced it would cut spending and ration staples. In nearby Lebanon, where a massive explosion at the Beirut port in 2020 destroyed the country’s main grain silos, authorities are scrambling to make up for a predicted wheat shortage, with Ukraine providing 60% of its supply. They are in talks with the U.S., India and Canada to find other sources for a country already in financial meltdown.

Even before the war threatened to affect wheat supplies in sub-Saharan Africa, people in Kenya were demanding #lowerfoodprices on social media as inflation eroded their spending power. Now, they’re bracing for worse.

African countries imported agricultural products worth $4 billion from Russia in 2020, and about 90% was wheat, said Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist for the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa.

In Nigeria, flour millers believe a shortage of wheat supplies from Russia would affect the price of products like bread, a common food in Africa’s most populous country.

“All of us need to look elsewhere” in the future, said Tope Ogun with Honeywell Flour Mills Plc, one of Nigeria’s biggest flour milling companies. “We might not get what we need to, and there is likely going to be an increase in the price.”

Nigeria has taken pains to reduce its reliance on Russian grains, with farmers moving to plant more wheat fields to try to meet 70% of the country’s demand in five years, said Gambo Sale, national secretary of the Wheat Farmers Association of Nigeria.

“We have the land, we have the people, we have the money, we have whatever we can need in Nigeria” to grow wheat, he said. “All we need now is time.”

The disruption can be felt as far away as Indonesia, where wheat is used to make instant noodles, bread, fried foods and snacks.

Ukraine was Indonesia’s second-largest wheat supplier last year, providing 26% of wheat consumed. Rising prices for noodles, in turn, would hurt lower-income people, said Kasan Muhri, who heads the trade ministry’s research division.

Ukraine and Russia also combine for 75% of global sunflower oil exports, accounting for 10% of all cooking oils, IHS Markit said.

Raad Hebsi, a wholesale retailer in Baghdad, said he and other Iraqis are bracing to pay more for their cooking oil.

“Once the items stored are sold, we will see an increase in prices of these items,” he said. “We will likely purchase alternatives from Turkey, and Turkey will no doubt take advantage of the situation in Ukraine and raise its prices.”

Farmers in the United States, the world’s leading corn exporter and a major wheat supplier, are watching to see if U.S. wheat exports spike. In the European Union, farmers are concerned about rising costs for livestock feed.

Ukraine supplies the EU with just under 60% of its corn and nearly half of a key component in the grains needed to feed livestock. Russia, which provides the EU with 40% of its natural gas needs, is similarly a major supplier of fertilizer, wheat and other staples.

Spain is feeling the pinch both in sunflower oil, which supermarkets are rationing, and grains for the all-important breeding industry. Those imported grains go to feed some 55 million pigs.

Jaume Bernis, a 58-year-old breeder with 1,200 swine on his farm in northeast Spain, fears the war will further increase the pain his business is facing because of climate change and drought.

Since October, Spanish pork products have been taking a loss from high costs, Bernis said. Those costs are driven by China stockpiling feed for its pigs as it claws its way out of a devastating outbreak of African swine fever.

In the first two days of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, the price of grain for animal feed jumped 10% on the open market in Spain.

“We are facing a moment of very elevated costs, and we don’t know what lies ahead,” Bernis said. “This is another cost of waging a war in the 21st century.”

___

Batrawy reported from Dubai, Magdy from Cairo and Asadu from Lagos, Nigeria. AP reporters Paul Wiseman in Washington; Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad; Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya; Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia; and Roxana Hegeman in Belle Plaine, Kansas, contributed.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the tensions between Russia and Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

‘War destroys everything’: Russian culture workers denounce war in Ukraine

From high-profile musicians to museum staff, thousands of arts workers are taking a public stand against the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine. New Russian laws mean speaking out puts their livelihoods, freedom and safety at even higher risk.

© Kirill Kudryavtsev, AFP

Joanna YORK 

As the war in Ukraine has entered its second week, more than 17,000 Russian culture sector workers have signed an open letter demanding Russia's withdrawal of troops and calling the war “senseless and pointless.”

“The reasoning behind this so-called “special military operation” is a construct made entirely by the representatives of the Russian state. We are in opposition to this war being carried out in our name,” they wrote.

High-profile Russian figures on the international arts scene have also denounced the Russian invasion.

On February 25, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Kirill Petrenko described Vladimir Putin’s actions as an “insidious attack on Ukraine”.

Artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva withdrew themselves from the Venice Biennale with a statement on Instagram saying, “there is no place for art when civilians are dying under the fire of missiles”.

And almost 20 musicians gave statements against the war to classical music magazine Van. “How do I feel now? Pain, devastation, shame,” wrote pianist Polina Osetinskaya.
'The stakes are high'

Such outspoken opposition to decisions made by the Russian president is rare and dangerous. According to the independent monitoring group OVD, more than 8,000 people had been detained for attending anti-war protests in Russia as of March 4, nine days after Putin invaded Ukraine.

On March 4, the Russian parliament upped the ante by passing a new law with harsher punishments for public dissent. Russians who are seen to discredit the armed forces, spread ‘fake information’ or call for unsanctioned public action, could now face a variety of punishments including lengthy jail terms.

“The stakes are high,” Amnesty International’s Russia researcher Natalia Prilutskaya told FRANCE 24. “The problems they could face go from losing their job to administrative prosecution but also criminal prosecution, which now involves 15-years' imprisonment in the worst-case scenario and very heavy fines.”

At the same time, increasing media restrictions in Russia make it unlikely that counter-narratives about opponents to the regime will be able to surface. Some high-profile opponents have already been the subject of online messages sharing their image with words such as “traitor” or “enemy” scrawled across them.

“It's not clear who's behind these, it could be just one person or the Telegram channel,” Prilutskaya said. “What is really worrying is that there are groups in society that do support the war and we can expect that there would be acts when some of those people might want to attack those who speak out.”

Most of the 17,000 signatories of the letter are museum curators or art critics working in the culture sector, who are not high-profile enough to be the subject of such messages. This does not mean they are safe. “Ordinary people are risking a lot, especially those who live in smaller towns. There are all sorts of dangers that they're facing,” said Prilutskaya. “But still they found it was necessary to speak out on this.”
‘War destroys everything’

Meanwhile, western countries are rapidly removing Russian culture from their schedules.

As well as being barred from international events such as the Eurovision Song Contest, the Cannes, Glasgow and Stockholm film festivals have likewise announced a boycott of Russian delegations.

In New York and London, opera houses and classical music venues have cancelled performances of Russian music and ballets. New York’s Metropolitan Opera added that it would no longer work with performers or institutions that support Putin’s policies.

In the Netherlands, the Hermitage Amsterdam, which is a branch of Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, has cut ties with the Russian institution. “War destroys everything. Even 30 years of collaboration,” it said in a statement on March 3.

A global rejection of Russian art and culture poses its own risks, said Prilutskaya. “If this goes on, there is a fear that those people [in Russia] who are speaking out and those people who want to be heard would be effectively imprisoned in their country.”

“And Russian propaganda is also quite skillful in terms of perverting what is going on, so they can say, ‘We've been telling you for ages. The West is against Russia as a whole. It’s not against Putin, or against any one of the oligarchs, it's against Russia.’”
'An act of cowardice'

Some Russian artists have already found themselves caught between the demands of western cultural institutions and Russian authorities.

The Munich Philharmonic sacked renowned conductor Valery Gergiev on March 1 for refusing to denounce Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Gergiev has known the Russian president for three decades and has a long history of supporting him. He was also fired from his position as honorary conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.

Opera star Anna Netrebko has also lost engagements in Germany, Switzerland and the US due to her ties to Putin. The soprano celebrated her 50th birthday by singing at the Kremlin, and publicly supported the president’s 2014 election campaign.

In a Facebook post she has since said she was “opposed to this war”, but stopped short of mentioning Putin by name. She added, “I am not a political person. Forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right.”

Even so, given her strong ties to Putin, The Metropolitan Opera in New York has said it is “hard to imagine a scenario” in which she would ever perform at the venue again.

“One argument is that art and politics should be separate, but not speaking out in this particular situation is about whether you support the war and absolutely brutal, useless, senseless killing,” said Prilutskaya.

“Some very high-profile artists have for a long time enjoyed a closeness to the top leadership in Russia. It could be their position, that they are fine with what is going on [in Ukraine]. Or, is it an act of cowardice from people who are probably in a better position that many of those 17,000 people that signed the open letter?”

While the balance of power may be stacked against them, the culture workers who have denounced the war are not alone. Russian medical professionals started their own open letter that had gathered 15,000 signatures by February 28. Some 30,000 Russian IT workers and 600 scientists have also done the same.

In a country of 144 million people, these acts are still what Prilutskaya calls “little shoots” of resistance that need support to grow stronger. But, she added, “there is hope. The bigger the anti-war movement, the more there's a chance that Russian aggression will at least diminish.”

“And the scale of the protests and the fact that there are all these letters from different parts of society is unprecedented.”

PHOTO ESSAY

At Ukraine's largest art museum, a race to protect heritage

APTOPIX Russia Ukraine War Saving Heritage
Workers move the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum as part of safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia’s war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. 

(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

BERNAT ARMANGUÉ
Sun, 6 March 2022

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The director of Ukraine's largest art museum walked its hallways, supervising as staff packed away its collections to protect their national heritage in case the Russian invasion advances west.

In one partially empty gallery of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum, employees placed carefully wrapped baroque pieces into cardboard boxes. A few meters away, a group walked down the majestic main staircase carrying a giant piece of sacred art, the 18th century Bohorodchany iconostasis.

“Sometimes the tears are coming because a lot of labor has been put in here. It takes time, energy. You are doing something good, you feel pleased. Today you see empty walls, so it feels bitter, sad. We didn’t believe it till the last minute that this could happen,” museum General Director Ihor Kozhan said Friday.

The doors of the museum in the western city of Lviv have been closed since Russia's war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. Korzhan said he receives daily calls from other European cultural institutions offering to help as he and his staff race to preserve the museum's works.

Anna Naurobska, the head of the rare manuscripts and books department, said she still doesn’t know where to safely store the collection of more than 12,000 items being packed into boxes.

The relocation process and the fear that the collection is in danger in the event of an attack on the city overwhelms her.

“This is our story; this is our life. It is very important to us,” Naurobska said.

She walked into another room and held up a massive tome, tears forming in her eyes. “It’s a Russian book," she said, putting it back on the shelf. "I’m so angry.”

Like the museum, other sites in Lviv are rushing to protect works of artistic or cultural importance. The display cabinets at the Museum of the History of Religion are almost empty. Workers are assembling metal containers in the patio to safely store the remaining items before placing them in basements. At the Latin Cathedral, the sculptures have been covered with cardboard, foam and plastic to protect them from possible shrapnel.

Amid the bare walls and shrouded statues, Kozhan lamented the empty museum, which has survived two world wars.

“Museum has to live. People have to be there, and first of all children. They have to learn the basics of their culture,” he said.

A sheet covers a sculpture of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia's war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Workers move a baroque sacred art piece in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum as part of safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia’s war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



A woman walks past the Museum of the History of Religion in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. Workers are assembling metal containers in the patio at the museum to safely store the remaining items before placing them in basements in case the Russian invasion advances west. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



A worker of the Museum of the History of Religion builds a box to protect artifacts in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Cabinets in a hallway of the Museum of the History of Religion sit empty in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. Workers are assembling metal containers in the patio at the museum to safely store the remaining items before placing them in basements in case the Russian invasion advances west. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



The glass of a display cabinet containing human remains of the Vysotska culture is reinforced with tape at the Museum of the History of Religion in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. Workers are assembling metal containers in the patio at the museum to safely store the remaining items before placing them in basements in case the Russian invasion advances west. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Workers and volunteers of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum store Baroque pieces in cardboard boxes as safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Workers move the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum as part of safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia’s war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Busts of Soviet iconography are stored in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia's war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Workers move a piece of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum as safety preparations in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia's war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Ihor Kozhan, Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum general director works in his office in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia's war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24. "We didn’t believe it till the last minute that this could happen,” Kozhan said. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)




Workers at the rare manuscripts and old printed books department of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum store them in cardboard boxes to reduce the risk of damage in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia’s war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)



Old books rest on shelves at the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia’s war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)


Workers at the rare manuscripts and old printed books department of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum store them in cardboard boxes to reduce the risk of damage in the event of an attack in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Friday, March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)


Lenin sculptures are placed on the patio of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv, western Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. The doors of the museum have been closed since Russia’s war on Ukraine began on Feb. 24, and heritage sites across the country face danger as the fighting continues. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Anti-feminist conservative or foul-mouthed liberal? South Korea to pick new president

Author: AFP|

Update: 06.03.2022

Former prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol and maverick ex-governor Lee Jae-myung (pictured) are in a neck-and-neck race to become the next leader of South Korea / © AFP

South Korea will elect a new president Wednesday and voters face a stark choice: a feminist-bashing conservative or a scandal-plagued liberal? So far, it's a dead heat.

The two frontrunners, dour former prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power party and the incumbent Democratic party's maverick ex-governor Lee Jae-myung are trapped in a neck-and-neck race to become the next leader of Asia's fourth largest economy.

And what propels one of them to victory will not be their populist campaign promises or North Korea policy, analysts say. Instead, it's what the papers have dubbed a "cycle of revenge" in South Korea's famously adversarial politics.


"This election is a battle between two opposite forces -- the progressives and conservatives," said political analyst Park Sang-byoung.

South Korean presidents are allowed by law to serve a single five year term, and every living former president has been investigated and jailed for corruption after leaving office.

Newspapers say South Korea's famously adversarial politics are trapped in a "cycle of revenge" / © AFP

Outgoing President Moon Jae-in himself swept to power in 2017 after his disgraced predecessor Park Geun-hye was impeached over an influence-peddling scandal that also put a Samsung heir behind bars.

Now, Park's conservatives are eager for revenge.

Ironically, their candidate Yoon was chief prosecutor under Moon and pursued Park when she was impeached -- an experience that boosted his profile and popularity and pushed him to enter politics.

- Realpolitik -

South Korean politics has seen a "deepening division" in recent years, with elections more focused on party rivalry than policy, analyst Yoo Jung-hoon told AFP.

"Many conservatives still hold a grudge over the impeachment of Park Geun-hye," he said.

Yoon is appealing to these disgruntled voters, offering a chance at "revenge" for Park's ousting -- even going so far as to threaten to investigate Moon for unspecified "irregularities".

"We should do it," Yoon said last month, referring to prosecuting Moon and his administration.

His comments earned a rare rebuke from the presidential Blue House and the ruling Democratic party's candidate Lee said they indicated his rival was not fit to lead the nation.

But analysts say it's just political business as usual in Seoul.

Dour prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol is appealing to disgruntled voters angry about the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye / © AFP

"The Moon administration has prosecuted many former officials in the name of rooting out deep-rooted corruption," Shin Yul, a political science professor at Myongji University.

"I expect the same standard to be applied under the Yoon government should wrongdoings be found," he said.

Yoon's wife in January gave an unwitting insight into the realpolitik to come, claiming enemies and critics would be prosecuted if her husband won because that's "the nature of power," according to taped comments released after a court battle.

- Where's the policy? -

Polls show that voters' top concerns this election cycle are skyrocketing house prices in the capital Seoul, stagnant growth, and stubborn youth unemployment -- but campaigning has been dominated by mud-slinging.

Lee, a former mayor and provincial governor, has a slew of fresh policy offerings -- from universal basic income to free school uniforms -- but they've been overshadowed by media coverage of his scandals.

He is being scrutinised over a suspect land development deal, with two key witnesses to the case having killed themselves.

He was forced to start his campaign by apologising for a profanity-laden family phone call, his wife was accused of misappropriating public funds, and he's been dogged by rumours of mafia-links.

Lee, a former mayor and provincial governor, has a slew of fresh policy offerings -- from universal basic income to free school uniforms -- but they've been overshadowed by media coverage of his scandals / © AFP

His rival Yoon has himself made a series of gaffes, most recently having to delete a "tone deaf" tweet on Ukraine which included a tangerine with an angry face drawn on -- a bizarre reference to that country's Orange Revolution.

Moreover, Yoon's most memorable policy is an offer to abolish the gender equality ministry, on the basis that -- despite voluminous data to the contrary -- South Korean women do not suffer "systemic gender discrimination," he says.

Yoon is more hawkish than Lee on North Korea, threatening a pre-emptive strike on the South's nuclear-armed neighbour if needed.

But, despite a record-breaking seven weapons tests in a month in January, North Korea is not a major deciding factor in the vote, analysts say.

"The North's launches have minimal impact in elections because South Korea's competition for supremacy with the North is long over," said analyst Yoo.

"South Korean elections have revolved around political rivalry rather than policy issues for many years."

ALBERTA TOO
America is finally cleaning up its abandoned, leaking oil wells




Oil leaks from equipment at the Placerita Oil Field, in Santa Clarita, California on February 22, 2022, where the state is plugging 56 abandoned wells

 (AFP/Robyn BECK)

Chris Stein
Sat, March 5, 2022

Bill Suan bought his family's cattle farm in the mountains of West Virginia a decade-and-a-half ago with little thought for the two gas wells drilled on the property -- but then they started leaking oil onto his fields and sickening his cows.

After taking the operator to court, Suan was successful in plugging one well, but the company has since disappeared, leaving him to contend with a small-scale environmental disaster that's a symptom of the larger problem of orphaned oil wells across the United States.

"It's shocking to think that it was like that for decades," Suan said.

From rural areas in the east where modern oil production began to cities in southern California, where pumpjacks loom not far from homes, the United States is pockmarked with perhaps millions of oil wells that are unsealed, haven't produced in decades, and sometimes do not have an identifiable owner.

The detritus of lax regulation and the petroleum industry's booms and busts, many states have struggled to deal with these wells, which can leak oil and brine into water supplies as well as emit methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

In a first, Washington is making a concerted effort to plug these wells through a $4.7 billion fund, passed as part of an expansive overhaul of the nation's infrastructure.

"The money available to the states (has) never been commensurate to the scale of the problem, and now for the first time it will be," said Adam Peltz, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) nonprofit.

The funds will likely not be enough to solve the problem entirely, though, and environmentalists warn that the patchwork of state laws governing oil production include many loopholes that could allow companies to continue abandoning wells.

- Disappearing owners -

Since the first commercial barrel of oil was extracted in Pennsylvania in 1859, the United States has been at the center of global petroleum production.

But in many US states, it took more than a century to pass regulations governing record-keeping for wells and their sealing, or plugging.

Today, the exact number of abandoned wells nationwide is unknown, but the Environmental Protection Agency this year estimated it to be around 3.5 million.

The EDF estimates around nine million Americans live within a mile of a well that's considered orphaned, meaning that it's neither operating, nor has a documented owner.

In southern California's Kern County, the Central California Environmental Justice Network has received reports of abandoned petroleum infrastructure leaking oil next to schools and homes.

"A lot of the infrastructure that was built, that was now abandoned... is very much centered around poor communities," said Gustavo Aguirre Jr., the network's director in the county.

States have largely been left to their own devices when it comes to addressing these wells.

California plugs a few dozen per-year, according to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), and is currently in the process of sealing 56 near the city of Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles, some of which date back to 1949.

The bulk of America's orphaned wells are thought to be in eastern states where the industry was born, and where more than 160 years later, it's not unheard of for landowners to find a hole in the ground or a pipe protruding from the earth that's leaking oil or brine.

Pennsylvania, which is thought to have the most, plugged 18 orphaned wells in 2020, according to the IOGCC. In the same year, West Virginia, which has thousands of documented orphaned wells, plugged one.

"It's been decades of neglect, just letting them get away with it, not forcing the plugging regulations," said Suan, who has had to fence off the unplugged well on his land to keep cattle from getting into the leaked oil.

"And now we're stuck with all of them."

- 'Every slice' -

The federal infrastructure bill Congress approved last year will likely allow a chunk of these wells to be sealed, said Ted Boettner, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, which studies energy in the eastern region where oil production began.

However, he warned that in some states there aren't enough inspectors or financial requirements to keep drillers from continuing to walk away from their wells.

"This is just a drop, then, and the bonding coverage is so inadequate," Boettner said.

A McGill University study published last year ranked abandoned wells as the 10th greatest methane emitter in the United States, far below industries like cattle and natural gas production.

But with President Joe Biden's administration trying to curb the country's emissions where it can, and as estimates of future damage by climate change grow increasingly dire, Peltz characterized the plugging investment as a start.

"If we have to give every slice of the pie, which we do, we have to get this slice of the pie," he said.

cs/des/md

WHITE MALE ANGER
Whitmer plot underlines growing abuse of women officials

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announces the first round of Michigan Mobility Funding Platform grants on Sept. 15, 2021, at the GM Mobility Research Center at Kettering University in Flint, Mich. The plot to kidnap Whitmer represents a growing anger in U.S. politics, and violence – both physical and non-physical – that is disproportionately aimed at women elected officials and candidates, and particularly women of color. (Jake May/The Flint Journal via AP, File)

Angry over COVID-19 restrictions such as the closing of gyms, people from several states met in Ohio in June 2020 to plot ways to overthrow government “tyrants,” prosecutors say. Within a week, they chose Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a target.

The plan, as outlined in a federal court indictment, was to kidnap Whitmer at her family’s northern Michigan vacation home and take her to Wisconsin for a “trial.” Over several months, they held training exercises and conducted surveillance on Whitmer’s home in preparation for what a group leader called “a snatch and grab.”

“Just grab the bitch,” Adam Fox was recorded telling a confidential informant working with the FBI, prosecutors say. “Because at that point, we do that, dude — it’s over.”

Though it was interrupted by authorities, the alleged plot — for which four men will face trial in a Michigan courtroom beginning Tuesday — represented an increasing level of anger and violence in U.S. politics. That violence disproportionately targets female elected officials, and particularly women of color.

While criticism of public officials is healthy and expected in a democracy, researchers say women are dramatically more likely than their male counterparts to face threats and violence. As more women are elected, the hostility grows, ranging from death threats to armed people gathered outside homes, or attacks on social media that go beyond policy positions to include gendered or racial slurs and insults about intelligence or appearance.

That could have longer-term effects by pushing women to leave public office or deterring them from running, potentially reversing the progress women have made in diversifying who represents the country at City Hall, on school boards and in statehouses and other offices.

Whitmer appears to have been among the women lawmakers targeted in part due to gender. The men who prosecutors say participated in the plot came from different states, and she was not the only U.S. governor to impose pandemic-related restrictions.

In transcripts of recorded conversations, hours of which prosecutors are expected to present at trial, the use of gendered slurs and men discussing things like “taking” Whitmer indicate their rage goes beyond her policies, said Rutgers University Professor Mona Lena Krook, who authored a 2020 book on global violence against women in politics.

“It’s like ‘Who does she think she is trying to tell us what to do?’” Krook said. “There is a sense they’re trying to delegitimize her because they don’t feel like she has the right, that she’s allowed to be there because she’s a woman ... I think they take it very personally.”

Several studies have shown the disparity between how men and women are treated. Researchers for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue measured online abuse of congressional candidates in the 2020 election, including direct or indirect threats and promoting violence or demeaning a person based on identity such as race or gender. They found female Democrats received 10 times more abusive comments on Facebook than their male peers, while Republican women received twice as many as their male counterparts.

Women lawmakers who are also ethnic minorities are particularly likely to face abuse, the study found. Among those targeted most often were Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who called out a culture of “accepting violence and violent language against women” during a 2020 House floor speech after a GOP lawmaker’s verbal assault.

GOP women also are targets. The study found that during a two-week period, nearly one-third of the tweets directed at Sen. Susan Collins of Maine were abusive. With the exception of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who received a higher-than-usual percentage of abusive tweets, between 5% and 10% of tweets directed toward men studied were abusive.

A State and Local Government Review survey of mayors in communities with over 30,000 residents found 79% of mayors reported being a victim of harassment, threats or other psychological abuse, and 13% reported instances of physical violence. Gender was the biggest predictor of whether mayors would be victims, with female mayors more than twice as likely as male mayors to face psychological abuse, and nearly three times as likely to experience physical violence.

Illinois state Sen. Deb Conroy has experienced such abuse firsthand. The Democrat from suburban Chicago received death threats after a conservative blog last month misrepresented a bill she is sponsoring, reporting inaccurately that it could lead to quarantining people who test positive for COVID-19.

Conroy started receiving voicemails with people calling her gendered slurs and saying things like “get back in the kitchen” and “you’re going to get what you deserve.” A commenter on Facebook said he hopes she sleeps with a gun under her pillow so she’s ready for what’s coming.

Conroy, who had to close her office, work with authorities to remove her address from the internet and cancel public events, said the vitriol in politics “exponentially changed” when Donald Trump became president.

“All of a sudden, it was OK to say the most hateful things that you normally would keep to yourself,” she said.

The vitriol also intensified during the pandemic, and as some Trump supporters believed the lie that he won the 2020 election.

Amanda Hunter, executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, traces much of the change to the rise of social media. Years ago, if someone wanted to verbally attack a lawmaker, they had to track down their address and perhaps mail a letter. Today, it’s relatively easy to reach someone via Twitter, Facebook, email or other methods — often in their homes or on their phones.

That’s created another structural barrier to running for office, particularly in lower levels of government where the jobs don’t come with a security detail or budget, said Hunter. The Barbara Lee Family Foundation works to increase women’s representation in politics.

“This is now another decision that women have to factor in when deciding whether or not to run for office, if they want to contend with weighing potential security threats against them or perhaps even their families,” she said.

Lawmakers and advocacy groups have urged social media companies to do more to crack down on the online abuse. They also say there is power in drawing attention to the attacks — something some women once worried made them appear weak — and in calling out the attackers.

For Whitmer, the abuse continued even after federal charges were filed against the six men in the kidnapping plot in October 2020.

After one of the men pleaded guilty last year, she told a judge in a victim impact statement that she has seen herself hung in effigy during a protest and heavily armed people near her home. At one protest there was a sign calling for “burning the witch.”

“Things will never be the same,” she wrote.

___

Burnett reported from Chicago.

Putin says sanctions over Ukraine are like a declaration of war

IMAGE SOURCE,EPAImage caption,
Mr Putin was meeting Aeroflot flight attendants near Moscow

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described sanctions imposed by Western nations over his invasion of Ukraine as "akin to a declaration of war".

"But thank God it has not come to that," he added.

Mr Putin also warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine would be seen as participation in the armed conflict.

And he rejected suggestions that he would introduce a state of emergency or martial law in Russia.

Mr Putin made the remarks while speaking to a group of women flight attendants at an Aeroflot training centre near Moscow.

Since the start of Russia's invasion 10 days ago, the West has imposed a raft of sanctions on Russia, including the freezing of Mr Putin's foreign assets and the exclusion of a number of Russian banks from the Swift international payments system.

In addition, many multinational firms have ceased operations in Russia, On Saturday, Zara, Paypal and Samsung became the latest global brands to suspend trading there.

The economic measures have already caused the rouble to plunge in value and forced the Russian central bank to double interest rates.

In his latest comments, Mr Putin sought to justify the war in Ukraine, repeating his assertion that he was seeking to defend Russian speaking communities there through the "demilitarisation and de-Nazification" of the country.

Responding to Western defence analysts' allegations that the Russian military campaign was going less well than expected, he said: "Our army will fulfil all the tasks. I don't doubt that at all. Everything is going to plan."

He added that only professional soldiers were taking part in the hostilities and there were no conscripts involved, despite reports to the contrary.

The Russian leader said efforts to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be considered by Russia to be a step into the military conflict and those responsible would be treated as enemy combatants.

"The current leadership needs to understand that if they continue doing what they are doing, they risk the future of Ukrainian statehood," he added.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned Nato for ruling out the no-fly zone. However, Western leaders say introducing the measure would be an escalation.

Mr Putin also said he had no plans to declare martial law in Russia. adding that such a step would only be taken in "instances of external aggression, in defined areas of military activity".

"But we don't have such a situation and I hope we won't have one," he said.



There had been rumours that Mr Putin was planning to declare martial law, which is when normal civil law is suspended or the military takes control of government functions.

He said there were other special emergency states which could be used in the case of a "large-scale external threat", but that he had no plans to introduce these either.

Meanwhile, diplomatic moves have continued on the sidelines of the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met Mr Putin in Moscow on Saturday and had a three-hour discussion on the war.

Mr Bennett then headed to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. As an Orthodox Jew, he broke Shabbat in order to travel, which is allowed under Jewish law if human life is at stake.

Although Israel is a key ally of the US, Mr Bennett has tried to preserve a good relationship with Russia. Ukraine's President Zelensky, who is Jewish, has called on Israel to mediate in the crisis.

And the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has met Ukraine's Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, telling him he was in awe of his courage in standing up to Russia.

The two men met on the Polish-Ukraine border. Mr Kuleba reiterated his desire and optimism for more military backing from Nato, including a no-fly zone.

'Bayraktar!': Ukrainian army shares song celebrating Turkish-made drone fighting back at Russian invasion

The New Arab Staff
02 March, 2022
#BayraktarTB2 trends on social media platforms as the official page of the Ukrainian army shared a song celebrating the Turkish-made drone in their fight against the Russian invasion.


The Bayraktar TB2 drone is produced by Turkish defence company Baykar [Anadolu via Getty]

Ukraine’s armed forces have shared a song dedicated to the Bayraktar TB2, a Turkish-made armed drone that has been a key weapon in Ukraine's fight against the invading Russian army.

The catchy song was shared on the official Facebook page of the "Land Forces of Ukraine".

The lyrics include the promise of “Bayraktar's punishment in the name of Ukrainian children, Georgians, Syrians, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars”. This likely refers to Russia's long list of military invasions and operations against various countries and communities in recent years.

The song is going viral on social media, with dozens of users sharing the song alongside the hashtag #BayraktarTB2.

Many of the tweets include footage of the drones purportedly destroying Russian targets as Moscow tries to take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 armed drones at work. The Russian BUK was destroyed in the area of Malina Zhytomyr region. — Ukrainian military

Bayraktar TB2 were supplied by Turkey. And they are working very smoothly against the Russian weaponry
pic.twitter.com/n5uzsyJGbK — Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) February 27, 2022

Ukraine and Turkey have been close defence partners over the past few years. Baykar, the company that produces the TB2 drones, has close ties to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and was meant to build a plant to produce these weapons within Ukraine.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said Wednesday that it had received and deployed a new batch of the drones but did not say how many it had received.

Ukrainian drone enthusiasts sign up to repel Russian forces

By MATT O'BRIEN

In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun. Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion.

“Kyiv needs you and your drone at this moment of fury!” read a Facebook post late last week from the Ukrainian military, calling for citizens to donate hobby drones and to volunteer as experienced pilots to operate them.

One entrepreneur who runs a retail store selling consumer drones in the capital said its entire stock of some 300 drones made by Chinese company DJI has been dispersed for the cause. Others are working to get more drones across the border from friends and colleagues in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

“Why are we doing this? We have no other choice. This is our land, our home,” said Denys Sushko, head of operations at Kyiv-based industrial drone technology company DroneUA, which before the war was helping to provide drone services to farmers and energy companies.

Sushko fled his home late last week after his family had to take cover from a nearby explosion. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone and text message Friday after climbing up a tree for better reception.

“We try to use absolutely everything that can help protect our country and drones are a great tool for getting real-time data,” said Sushko, who doesn’t have a drone with him but is providing expertise. “Now in Ukraine no one remains indifferent. Everyone does what they can.”

Unlike the much larger Turkish-built combat drones that Ukraine has in its arsenal, off-the-shelf consumer drones aren’t much use as weapons — but they can be powerful reconnaissance tools. Civilians have been using the aerial cameras to track Russian convoys and then relay the images and GPS coordinates to Ukrainian troops. Some of the machines have night vision and heat sensors.

But there’s a downside: DJI, the leading provider of consumer drones in Ukraine and around the world, provides a tool that can easily pinpoint the location of an inexperienced drone operator, and no one really knows what the Chinese firm or its customers might do with that data. That makes some volunteers uneasy. DJI declined to discuss specifics about how it has responded to the war.

Taras Troiak, a dealer of DJI drones who started the Kyiv retail store, said DJI has been sending mixed signals about whether it’s providing preferential access to — or disabling — its drone detection platform AeroScope, which both sides of the conflict can potentially use to monitor the other’s flight paths and the communication links between a drone and the device that’s controlling it.

DJI spokesperson Adam Lisberg said wartime uses were “never anticipated” when the company created AeroScope to give policing and aviation authorities — including clients in both Russia and Ukraine — a window into detecting drones flying in their immediate airspace. He said some users in Ukraine have reported technical problems but DJI has not disabled the tool or given preferential access.

In the meantime, Ukrainian drone experts said they’ve been doing whatever they can to teach operators how to protect their whereabouts.

“There are a number of tricks that allow you to increase the level of security when using them,” Sushko said.

This 2022 aerial image provided by Ukrainian security forces, taken by a drone and shown on a screen, shows a blown-up building near the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. The exact date and time of the image are unknown. In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun. Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion. 

(Ukrainian Security Forces via AP)

Sushko said many in the industry are now trying to get more small drones — including DJI alternatives — transported into Ukraine from neighboring European countries. They can also be used to assist search-and-rescue operations.

Ukraine has a thriving community of drone experts, some of whom were educated at the National Aviation University or the nearby Kyiv Polytechnic University and went on to found local drone and robotics startups.

“They’ve got this homebuilt industry and all these smart people who build drones,” said Faine Greenwood, a U.S.-based consultant on drones for civic uses such as disaster response.

Troiak’s DJI-branded store in Kyiv, which is now shuttered as city residents take shelter, was a hub for that community because it runs a maintenance center and hosts training sessions and a hobby club. Even the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, once paid a visit to the store to buy a drone for one of his children, Troiak said.

A public drone-focused Facebook group administered by Troiak counts more than 15,000 members who have been trading tips about how to assist Ukrainian troops. One drone photographer who belongs to the Ukrainian Association of Drone Racing team told The Associated Press he decided to donate his DJI Mavic drone to the military rather than try to fly it himself. He and others asked not to be named out of fear for their safety.

“The risk to civilian drone operators inside Ukraine is still great,” said Australian drone security expert Mike Monnik. “Locating the operator’s location could result in directed missile fire, given what we’ve seen in the fighting so far. It’s no longer rules of engagement as we have had in previous conflicts.” In recent days, Russian-language channels on the messaging app Telegram have featured discussions on ways to find Ukrainian drones, Monnik said.

Some in Ukraine’s drone community already have experience deploying their expertise in conflict zones because of the country’s long-running conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Monnik’s firm, DroneSec, has tracked multiple instances just in the past year of both sides of that conflict arming small drones with explosives. One thing that Ukrainians said they’ve learned is that small quadcopter drones, such as those sold at stores, are rarely effective at hitting a target with explosive payloads.

“It would seem somewhat short-sighted to waste one,” said Greenwood, the consultant based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I assume the chief goal would be recon. But if things are getting desperate, who knows.”

DJI also has experience in responding to warfighters trying to weaponize its drones and used so-called “geofencing” technology to block drone movements during conflicts in Syria and Iraq. It’s not clear yet if it will do the same in Ukraine; even if it does, there are ways to work around it.

Small civilian drones are no match against Russian combat power but will likely become increasingly important in a protracted war, leaving drone-makers no option to be completely neutral. Any action they take or avoid is “indirectly taking a side,” said P.W. Singer, a New America fellow who wrote a book about war robots.

“We will see ad-hoc arming of these small civilian drones much the way we’ve seen that done in conflicts around the world from Syria to Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan,” Singer said. “Just like an IED or a Molotov cocktail, they won’t change the tide of battle but they will definitely make it difficult for Russian soldiers.”

——

AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.