'Who, if not us, should stop them?': The stories of Ukrainian women on the front lines



Natasha O'Neill
CTVNews.ca Writer
Updated March 19, 2023 

For over a year, women fighting on the front lines of the war in Ukraine have done so without proper equipment, a Ukrainian charity says.

Since Feb. 24, 2022, about 60,000 women have joined the fight against Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the founders of Zemliachky, a charity aiding female soldiers on the front lines, told CTVNews.ca.

Their military uniforms do not fit properly, their helmets cover their eyes as they slide off their heads, and their boots are too big.

"The most important thing is a military uniform," Karina, a deputy commander on Ukraine's front lines, said in an email to CTVNews.ca. "The uniform that is issued is not always of the right size and as it gets colder, you need to dress in warm and high-quality clothes."

Access to menstruation products are another difficulty these women are facing. Pads and tampons are hard to come by and even more difficult to change when the bathroom is a hole dug in the ground. Here's what Canada is doing to help Ukraine

For three women who emailed CTVNews.ca, the honour of serving their country in its time of need far outweighs the difficulties of daily life on the front lines.

To protect their families, CTVNews.ca has agreed to keep the women's last names private. The quotes below were taken from emails to CTVNews.ca, edited for clarity and translated from Ukrainian.

VERONIKA: 'FIND HAPPINESS IN THE LITTLE THINGS'

'I got here by accident, but now I can't even imagine myself anywhere else', Veronika told CTVNews.ca (Contributed)

The moment when the war felt real for Veronika was when she was handed a grenade after the Russians made a breakthrough in the Ukrainian defensive line.

"This is instead of captivity," she was told.

The 26-year-old was born in Dnipro and lived in Kyiv when the war broke out. She had just completed an internship and was preparing to become an anesthesiologist.

Each morning she started her day with a cappuccino in a "beautiful cafe" she told CTVNews.ca. However, working on the front lines as a combat medic, Veronika’s morning ritual looks very different.

"Instead of a cappuccino from a cafe in a beautiful cup, I have instant coffee, if I'm lucky, even with cream or milk," she said.

Veronika works in the Azov Division of an artillery unit on the eastern side of Ukraine.

"I provide assistance to soldiers in the field and send them to the hospital if necessary, and teach the basics of tactical medicine," she said. "That's why I went to study to be an anesthesiologist because I like situations where you need to make a quick decision."

Her decision-making skills were needed when she was called to the battlefield to help an injured soldier with a suspected fracture in his neck.

"I ran to him with a stretcher, put on a collar (neck brace), and he was quickly taken to the hospital," Veronika said. "I talked to him all the way. He asked if he was moving his hand, and I said: 'There is a little, come on, you can do it,' although there were no movements at all."

Each day is different for Veronika, but she says she tries to "find happiness in the little things."

The young Ukrainian soldier is stationed outside of the battlefield waiting to be called on for assistance in evacuation and treatment. She is lucky to have an outdoor shower and a hot meal cooked by nearby volunteers.

KARINA: 'I WAS SCARED, BUT I MANAGED'

'The war in (Crimea in) 2014 motivated me to join the ranks of the Armed Forces, as my home was on the demarcation line,' Karina said. (Contributed)

The reality of war for Karina is much different. She has been fighting in the Ukraine military since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

"I've been here for a year without a rotation, I miss hot water and a normal toilet more than anything," she told CTVNews.ca in an email.

Karina, 26, is a deputy commander for her unit which moves around a lot in the war. The battery, made up of 48 men and two women, build everything: Showers, toilets and structures to sleep in.

Each time the group moves, they abandon the structures and start over.

Karina said she has gotten used to her new reality, but still struggles with taking care of herself. Cystitis, the inflammation of the bladder often caused by a bladder infection or an untreated urinary tract infection, is common among her comrades, she says.

The helmets given to the women are "3 sizes bigger" she said, and the underwear they use are for men.

Karina joined the division when she was 23 years old. The commander of the unit left shortly after, leaving her with about 50 men as her responsibility.

"I was scared, but I managed. I am respected and obeyed," she said.

Her main job is to tell soldiers' loved ones when they have been killed.

"It is tough, and I have to find strength, compassion, and sensitivity," she said.

In August, Karina had to make a difficult phone call to the family of a 23-year-old soldier.

"I called his dad — he didn’t believe me at first," Karina said. "There is a deep pause and it hurts a lot, it's scary. Because you understand what the person on the other end feels."

Karina finds motivation from her unit who she calls her second family. The soldiers working with her are all very different, she says, but still sincere, friendly, bright and cheerful.

She looks towards the future and imagines after the war how she will buy a new home since hers was destroyed on March 15, 2022.

LISA: 'MANY OF THEM DIED DEFENDING MY HOMETOWN'

'I worked, studied, walked around the city with friends and enjoyed life. And from February 24 (2022), I immediately began to help, first to civilians in her area, looked in basements, and bought food,' Lisa said. (Contributed)

In a different unit, Lisa, a 21-year-old artillerist, says she is fortunate when she has warm water.

"(There is a) lack of light, water, heat, internet," Lisa told CTVNews.ca in an email. "The toilet is a dug hole, and the shower is water heated over a fire. Often there is no place to wash."

When she is out in the field she packs pads, tampons and pain relief medication in case she is away from camp for a while.

"At first, my fellow soldiers offered me something sweet during my periods, but I said I don’t eat sweets, so now they bring me pickles and tomatoes," she said.

The winter has been bitterly cold. Lisa wears four pairs of socks and sleeps under four summer sleeping bags at night.

She lived in the eastern district of Mariupol, one of the first areas in Ukraine to be shelled. On Feb. 24, 2022, Lisa was woken up at 5 a.m. local time by an explosion and immediately contacted her boyfriend who works in the military.

By April, she had joined the force and knew she wanted to work with mortars, following in her boyfriend's footsteps. She finds motivation from her friends in Azov (a small town north of Mariupol), who instilled in her a love for their country and books.

"Now, many of them died defending my hometown," Lisa said. "Russians destroyed my hometown, killed many civilians, ruined my life so far. Every day, they kill children, women (and) make genocide of my nation."

"And who, if not us, should stop them?" she said.

'THAT'S WHY WE EXIST': HOW ZEMLIACHY IS HELPING

Zemliachky formed a month after the war broke out and posted its first Instagram story showcasing a female soldier.

"Mental health is actually so important, because we communicate with 7000 female soldiers, and it was pretty clear for us that all of them, they need this mental support," Andrey Kolesnyk, co-founder of Zemliachky said. "It's not like you join the army, and you are training somewhere. It's actually war, and all the tragic and awful things that you will surely meet, you will feel and all these deaths, all these murders… It gives you a scar on your mental health."

The organization was created by Kolesnyk and Ksenia Draganyuk who both have ties to aiding women—specifically in the military. Kolesnyk's younger sister and her husband signed up for the military just before the war broke out.

Draganyuk used to be a TV journalist who covered stories of women across Ukraine who held employment in male-dominated fields such as firefighters, police or pilots.

"So we decided to combine the idea of helping and the idea of her (Draganyuk's) show before the war, and we wanted to tell stories about women at the front," Kolesnyk said.

Through short questionnaires, the pair were able to understand who the women at the front lines are and what they need. The organization started sending packages of items the soldiers needed like menstruation products, food and messages of encouragement.

At the start, Zelmiachky sent about 40 packages a month—now it has grown to 50 to 100 parcels a day.

"We do not send the equipment based on just our thoughts, in every box, there are specific items that we know that specific person needs," Draganyuk said in Ukrainian. "We also send them like small things to keep their moral spirit up so they know that back there, there are people that care about them."

As the charity grew so did the demand for female-specific equipment and uniforms. The organization is handling thousands of female soldiers and their needs with a team of 11 people. The demand is constant as the war continues to drag on.

With help from partners around the world, Zemliachky in July started sending female soldiers equipment that fits them.

"Not only (did) society not expect so many women to join the army (but) the government also did not expect that so many females would join the army, that's why it just did not have any possibility to get ready with the female uniforms, the smaller sizes of boots with like lighter equipment," Kolesnyk said. "That's why we exist."

(Left) Lisa, Veronika, Karina are all female soldiers fighting on Ukraine's front lines. (Contributed)

Are Russian transfers of Ukrainian children to re-education and adoption facilities a form of genocide?

Yvonne Breitwieser-Faria
THE CONVERSATION

Published: March 18, 2023 

Throughout Russia’s war against Ukraine, there have been countless reports of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now, there are also allegations of genocide involving the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The International Criminal Court has just issued two arrest warrants in connection with the transfer of Ukrainian children for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights.

While this is a significant legal milestone, the warrants might not necessarily lead to an arrest – due to a lack of enforcement mechanisms and the likely reluctance of the Russian state and potentially other states to cooperate.

Re-education and forced adoptions

There have been many reports on the forced transfer of Ukrainian children, ranging in age from infants to teenagers, to various locations in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea. These transfers date back to the beginning of February 2022; in the case of occupied Crimea, transfers of orphans and children without parental care commenced as early as 2014.

Russia is now believed to be operating a large-scale, systematic network of at least 40 “recreational” re-education camps for thousands of Ukrainian children. The primary purpose of most of these camps appears to consist of pro-Russian indoctrination and, in some instances, military training.

While Russia does not deny the evacuation of children or that they are now in Russia, the government claims it is part of a humanitarian project for war-traumatised orphans.

However, not all of these children are orphans. According to an investigation by Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, children with living relatives in Ukraine have been “recruited” to attend camps in Russia for ostensible holidays. Consent from families is given either under duress or routinely violated.

Once the children are in Russia or Crimea, their communication with family members is either restricted or nonexistent. Most children have been unable to return home.

Troublingly, Putin’s “patriotic patronage campaign” is also strongly encouraging Russian families to adopt purported Ukrainian orphans. There have been legislative changes to expedite the adoption of Ukrainian children and financial incentives for Russian families who do this.

The exact number of Ukrainian children being sent to Russia is unclear. The Ukrainian government has officially identified 16,221 deported children as of early March.

Other estimates suggest the real number may be as high as 400,000.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba recently said the forced transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children constituted “probably the largest forced deportation in modern history” and “a genocidal crime”.

Is the forced transfer of children an act of genocide?

International law dictates what types of crimes constitute an act of genocide. These acts are exhaustively listed in the Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948. The legal definition of genocide has not changed in 75 years, and is accepted by and applicable to all states worldwide.

Article II of the Genocide Convention lists the forcible transfer of children of a group to another group as one of the acts which may amount to genocide if it is done with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Read more: Civilians are being killed in Ukraine. So, why is investigating war crimes so difficult?

Ukrainian children would be protected under this legal definition as a national group. The evidence, to date, also suggests the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia for the purposes of potentially “integrating”, or indoctrinating, them into pro-Russian culture has taken place.

While definite proof of this specialised intent is required, the removal of children from their families, homes and culture suggests the purpose of Russia’s “evacuation” of children may be to erase Ukraine’s identity.

Whether or not Russia succeeds is irrelevant; the attempt to commit genocide is also a crime.

Russia’s actions are comparable to the Nazis’ “Germanisation program” in the second world war, in which hundreds of Polish children were transferred to Germany and subsequently adopted by German families.

In addition to being a potential act of genocide, the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia may also be a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as a crime against humanity.

Russia is a party to all of these international instruments and is therefore legally obligated to adhere to them.

Who is investigating this?

To date, separate investigations into the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia are being carried out by:

the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, whose report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on March 20

Amnesty International

Yale’s Humanitarian Research lab, in collaboration with the US State Department

the Ukraine-based Regional Centre for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.

The arrest warrants just issued by the International Criminal Court are the first related to alleged crimes committed during the Ukraine war. The judges of the responsible chambers agreed there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Putin and Lvova-Belova bore responsibility for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.

Why evidence is crucial

Successful criminal proceedings would require proof that the alleged perpetrators have committed genocide beyond a reasonable doubt. Conclusive evidence to this end will be crucial; the court will not be satisfied with a lesser standard.

The types of evidence that could support a prosecution could include everything from witness testimonies to satellite imagery or video recordings. Any evidence must meet international standards and protocols for criminal prosecutions.

Importantly, prosecutors would also have to demonstrate that not only did the transfer of Ukrainian children take place, but also that the perpetrators acted with the intent to destroy Ukrainians as a national group.

This evidence, in particular, will be difficult to collect – but not impossible with modern technology. This allows for the collection of evidence in real time and the preservation of otherwise perishable evidence through, for example, social media.

Author  

Yvonne Breitwieser-Faria
PhD Candidate and Academic in Law, The University of Queensland

Read more: I am a Ukrainian American political scientist, and this is what the past year of war has taught me about Ukraine, Russia and defiance

‘We had to hide them’: how Ukraine’s ‘kidnapped’ children led to Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant


Thousands have been taken to Russia for ‘adoption’ or ‘re-education’, but the international community is seeking justice


Ed Vulliamy in Kherson

THE GUARDIAN/OBSERVER

Sat 18 Mar 2023 

Sipping his tea at one of the few cafes still open in the battered Ukrainian frontline city of Kherson, Volodymyr Sagaydak shows a video of the day four thugs from the Russian FSB security services arrived at the city’s main orphanage, where he is a staff member. Kherson was liberated in November after eight months of occupation, but is pounded every day and night by Russian artillery from the visible left bank across a narrow stretch of the Dnieper River.

We meet just a few days before the international criminal court issued warrants for the arrest of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights, for directly supervising the atrocity of kidnapping Ukrainian children for “adoption” and “re-education” in Russia.


The armed Russians who arrived at the orphanage – two masked in camouflage, two in black – were captured on CCTV; once inside, the camera shows one keeping guard outside the room where records are kept, while the others go inside to search through files. This was 4 June 2022, and the orphanage was by now empty – thanks to a mixture of courage and ingenuity by the staff. But that was not the end of the story.

Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his commissioner for children’s rights, have been issued with warrants by the international criminal court.

 Photograph: Sputnik/Reuters

This is more than just a military frontline: this orphanage is one of many stories in this outrage – among the many in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and now an unprecedented matter at international law, reaching to a head of state. According to the Ukrainian government, 16,226 children have been deported to Russia, of whom 10,513 have been located, and 308 have returned.

A report last October by Yale University Human Rights Lab, citing a vast range of open sources in Russia and Ukraine, traces many reasons for their abduction: including so-called “evacuation” from state institutions such as that at Kherson, transfer of children to camps – often in Crimea – sometimes with parental consent, whether coerced or not.

Interviewed by the Observer in Kyiv, the government ombudswoman for abducted children, Daria Gerasimchuk, adds further “scenarios”: “They kill the parents, for whatever reason, and kidnap the child. In other cases, they just grab the child directly from the family, perhaps to punish that family. Others go through the appallingly named ‘filtration camps’ – collected, indoctrinated and prepared for ‘adoption’ of the kind that commissioner Lvova-Belova has herself boasted.”

When Kherson was occupied in February 2022, says Sagaydak, “we had 52 children here – 17 actual orphans, and others here for different reasons – troubled families or some such.

“We knew the Russians were taking children, and had to hide them, like conspirators running a clandestine operation. Even some of the neighbours didn’t know they were here.”

The children were fed by runners, some of whom were arrested, and allowed into the courtyard for 15 minutes a day.

“Staff hoped for three months that our army would somehow evacuate them,” Sagaydak continues, “but when it became apparent this would not happen, we made arrangements for those with living relatives to be slipped out to grandparents, friends or neighbours.” This left the 17 actual orphans, who were spirited out and taken home by staff. One lady, a teacher, took three, aged three, seven and eight. “It took all we had,” says Sagaydak. “We had to falsify documents and stories to go through the Russian checkpoints.”

The silent playground of the regional children’s home in Kherson, southern Ukraine. Russian authorities have been accused of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia to raise as their own. 

Photograph: Bernat Armangué/AP

It was tense, high drama: “Another woman here, aged only 30, took five, which could not possibly have been hers, so we made up a legend that she was helping her pregnant sister while she gave birth. We had to invent all the medical records, and worried when a driver turned up who was not the one we had planned. But when they were stopped, and the untrustworthy driver even told the true story, the kids managed to outwit the occupying soldiers.”

Our conversation is punctuated by shells landing in the city. Exhausted soldiers in heavy combat gear come into the cafe for a break and coffee.

When the Russians came to the orphanage, continues Sagaydak, “all the documentation leading to the children had been hidden”, though they took other materials. But then, on 15 July, the Russians returned, with 15 more children to be cared for, brought from the then ferocious frontlines between Kherson and Mikolaiv to the north. There were 11 boys and four girls, aged seven to 16, “with various mental disorders”, who were duly taken in.

Come 19 October, the Russians began preparing for their retreat from Kherson, “and the so-called evacuation of children. There was no way I could hide 15 children, under supervision.” Sagaydak protested: “If I don’t know their destination, I cannot let them go. They lied to me; they said they were going to Genichesk, on the Azov Sea. But when I asked the driver where he was going, he replied: ‘Crimea’.”

Some days later, contact was made with the director of a special school in occupied Novopetrivka, towards Mariupol, who had “accompanied the children for three days, and had traced them to the town of Anapa, in the Krasnodar region of Russia”. At that point, “volunteers” were called in to try to get the children returned.

The Ukrainians are understandably secretive about the networks helping to locate the children. Diplomatic sources suggest an ingenious involvement by some western government agencies, rival Ukrainian and Russian branches of the Orthodox church and evangelical missionaries and volunteers working astride the frontlines and Russo-Ukrainian border. So far, the International Committee of the Red Cross appears not to be directly involved. Gerasimchuk denies any cooperation with the ICRC.

Sagaydak inevitably declines to reveal who he dealt with, but says that the children were transferred to Tbilisi in Georgia, and “returned to Ukraine 10 days ago – they are back in Mikolaiv”. An undisclosed number of other children from Kherson, says Gerasimchuk, “are still being sought”.

Children on a train in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP

In one case under investigation, the Observer learned that in Kherson, 28 children hidden in the crypt of a church were revealed by local collaborators and abducted.

Gerasimchuk’s office is in a former centre for deaf children surreally located behind a dinosaur theme park on the outskirts of Kyiv. There, she elaborates on the taking of children to supposed “camps for health and rest”, to which parents sometimes consent, whether coerced, or just to keep their children safe from relentless shelling. “They’re taken to occupied Crimea or Russia,” says Gerasimchuk, “sometimes passed from camp to camp, and the date for their return passes, with no sign of them being released.”

She adds: “We believe that some of them are not camps at all, but psychiatric institutions.”

As territory was ruthlessly occupied in February 2022, she explains, “The Ukrainian government was able to rapidly evacuate children from the east and south. But of course not everyone. This is an old story with Russia: all this was a chaotic situation, but they had a plan, to be executed – and they did so. We still do not know how many children were abducted from Donetsk and Luhansk during the occupations of 2014.


ICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes

“The numbers are not final,” Gerasimchuk adds. “They are the best estimates we can make.” She plays a widely circulated video of a 12-year-old called Olesandr, abducted from Mariupol to a filtration camp to the east, who was told his mother did “not need” him, and that he would be placed with foster parents in Russia. For obvious reasons, she says, “the children themselves are not ready to talk to the press”. Now they are witnesses in an international criminal investigation.

After the warrant was issued, I returned to see Gerasimchuk, who said that she “had held one or two meetings” with representatives from the ICC, and that the government’s position was to push for the cases of abducted children to be “part of a case for genocide, though we are aware of the higher burden of proof”. The government and her agency were, she said, “working out how the configuration of co-operation with the ICC will proceed”.

It is notable that the ICC’s first warrants concern children and damage to civilian infrastructure, rather than massacres at, say, Bucha or Mariupol. Among the most effective independent experts investigating Russian war crimes, Nataliya Gumenyuk of the Public Interest Journalism Lab in Kyiv, says: “This is probably to do with establishing the chain of command. It’s harder to make the connections from this crime to that commander, up the ladder. But with children, there it is: ‘filtration’ camps – filtering who? The Russians have condemned themselves from their own mouths on this.” But on genocide, she cautions: “As any good lawyer knows, that is the high bar.”

Trump’s Faltering Cash Machine Can’t Rely on Facebook for a Fix

Bill Allison and Madeline Campbell, Bloomberg News

,

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s back on Facebook, but the technology giant’s data changes are hobbling his ability to wring cash from its users as effectively as he did during his astonishing rise to the White House.

Trump, who has raised more money online than any other politician, no longer can directly target his tens of millions of Facebook followers with fundraising appeals, nor can he find users who have similar political views, making it harder and more expensive to prospect for contributors. While these changes affect every grassroots campaign that relies on Facebook to raise money — including progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2018 upset a veteran New York congressman — the former president needs to grow his army of small-dollar donors more than ever.

On Friday, Trump’s “I’M BACK” post on the platform was his first since 2021 and followed the lifting of his suspension in January. Facebook’s parent,  Meta Platforms Inc., had barred him from his accounts for two years for encouraging his supporters to march on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  It's a sign that he's reaching for a familiar and once-potent tool as he plans his 2024 comeback.

But the terrain has changed, and the 2024 race will be the first time presidential campaigns will grapple with the loss of Facebook’s political data. Trump, who’s also facing a possible indictment by New York prosecutors over hush payments to actress Stormy Daniels, spent 91 cents to raise each dollar in the roughly six weeks after he declared his third presidential run, an unsustainable return on investment. And he needs to find millions more contributors who give $10 or $20 at a time, since many deep-pocketed GOP donors, including Interactive Brokers Group Inc. founder Thomas Peterffy and Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, have said they won’t support him this time. 

Other once-loyal donors, like billionaire Miriam Adelson, said they plan to sit out the nomination battle, where Trump faces several likely challengers, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as well as his former vice president, Mike Pence, who enjoy the support of wealthy benefactors.

The ad-targeting options, which first began to disappear in January 2022, were gone by April. Already as a result of the changes, partisan ad spending on Facebook has plummeted, a Bloomberg News analysis of NYU Ad Observatory data shows. Spending by incumbent House candidates decreased by 40% in 2022 from 2020, and there was less political ad spending on Facebook at the start of this year than any other on record.

“Campaigns and the industry associated with it got very dependent on Facebook ads,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist. “Those times are gone, just like 0% interest rates.”

The elimination of these options to locate ideal targets is particularly stinging for Trump, who since 2015 has raised more than $1.2 billion from small-dollar donors, much of it with the help of the social media platform. Many of those donors give only once, and of those who give multiple times, more than half stop giving within 90 days of their first contribution, a Bloomberg analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows.The Trump campaign didn’t comment for this article.

The predicament for candidates underscores the immense power Facebook — which 52% of US voters log into daily— can wield through the trove of data it collects on its users and how it chooses to share it. Because political ad revenue makes up only a tiny fraction of Facebook’s overall take, campaigns aren’t a key market segment for the tech giant.

“They don’t react to the small, almost granular needs of any kind of campaign, and especially a grassroots campaign,” said Chris Nolan, founder of Spot-On, a bipartisan ad-buying firm.

A spokesman for Meta Platforms Inc. declined to comment. In November 2021,  a company blog post announced the changes, citing user expectations as well as concerns raised by civil rights experts, policymakers and others on “preventing advertisers from abusing the targeting options we make available.”

A win for privacy advocates is raising the costs for those hoping to be the next Ocasio-Cortez, who built a grassroots movement online and trounced a 10-term member of the Democratic leadership. In her 2018 primary challenge, Ocasio-Cortez raised more than $568,000 while spending just $76,750 on Facebook ads— her only fundraising expenditure, an analysis of federal records shows. It cost her less than 14 cents to raise a dollar.

The Squad Victory Fund, which frequently runs ads on Facebook and raises money for Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive colleagues, saw its fundraising cost increase by a third, to 50 cents a dollar in 2022 from 2020. Representatives for the fund didn’t return a request for comment, and Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign declined to comment.The loss of political targeting information will make it harder for political campaigns, including Trump's, to raise money, said a person familiar with the former president's fundraising operation. 

Trump’s campaign has been trying out alternatives such as YouTube and even Snapchat, the app known for disappearing photo messages, federal records show. The campaign is also focusing more on email and text messages as it retools its voter outreach, said the person close to the campaign, who asked not to be named when discussing internal matters.

Before the Facebook changes, campaigners could target users based on their interactions with political and social issues, and then show them ads in line with their leanings, digital fundraisers said. And they could reach people who were more politically engaged than the average Facebook user. They could also direct appeals to, say, supporters of the National Rifle Association, or of Planned Parenthood. It’s why campaigns spent $885 million on the platform in 2020.

Having lost access to political data, campaigns can only tap less pertinent metrics on users, such as age, location, gender and general interests, fundraisers said. But most are unlikely to be sufficiently passionate about politics to donate to any candidate.

With targeting now more akin to broadcast television ads, prospecting for donors on Facebook is much less efficient, said Kari Chisholm, founder and president of Mandate Media, a Democratic online advertising and fundraising firm.

“We’re wasting our money on people who don’t care about politics and don’t want to see these ads,” Chisholm said.

Other factors have contributed to the declining effectiveness of finding donors on Facebook, digital ad buyers said. The company imposed a temporary ban on almost all political advertising in the aftermath of the 2020 election. That was later extended to March 2021 following the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters whipped up by his false claims of election fraud. And in the wake of the 2016 election, Facebook, which was accused of letting disinformation foment on its platform, downplayed political posts in users’ timelines.

On Friday, Trump tried to rekindle the feelings of that campaign, when Facebook provided most of the $250 million he raised online. In the 12-second video he posted on the platform from his 2016 election night victory speech, he said, "Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business.”

--With assistance from Laura Davison.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

Florida GOP bill would ban girls from talking about their periods in school

Ken Tran

USA TODAY

As local bills on gender, sexuality and diversity make their way through Florida’s state legislature, new legislation would ban any discussion of menstrual cycles in school before sixth grade.

That breaks from the advice of medical providers who recommend talking to children about puberty and changes in their bodies before they occur.

First periods typically start between ages 10 and 15, but can begin as young as 9 years old. That means a student could likely be in third grade up to tenth grade, or later, when a period begins.

During a subcommittee hearing in the Florida House on Wednesday, Republican state Rep. Stan McClain said his bill would include restrictions on girls talking about their menstrual cycles.

Related:The fight for African American studies in schools isn't getting easier, even after 50 years

Bill would ban discussion of periods before sixth grade

House Bill 1069 would only permit “instruction in acquired immune deficiency syndrome, sexually transmitted diseases, or health education” only in grades 6 through 12.

Democratic state Rep. Ashley Gantt noted that young girls could start their periods earlier than sixth grade and asked for clarification on whether the bill would ban those girls from talking about them.

“Does this bill prohibit conversations about menstrual cycles because we know that typically, the age is between 10 and 15,” Gantt asked. “So if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in fifth grade or fourth grade, would that prohibit conversations from them since they are in a grade lower than sixth grade?

McClain confirmed that the bill’s language would do exactly that: “It would” McClain responded.

Legislation against 'woke ideology'

The bill is one of the latest in a series of bills expected to be signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he seeks to transform Florida’s education system in his fight against what he calls “woke ideology.”

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The legislation that DeSantis has signed so far has included barring transgender student athletes from participating in school sports and new restrictions on discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in school classrooms.

It's a strategy also being used by Republicans in Congress, with the House this week expected to vote on the "Parents Bill of Rights," a legislation effort in direct response to parents who sought more authority over their children's education during the pandemic.

In wake of Florida law, additional states

seek to restrict certain LGBTQ discussions

in schools


By Shawna Mizelle, CNN
Sat March 18, 2023

Revelers celebrate during the Tampa Pride Parade on March 26, 2022 in Tampa, Florida.Octavio Jones/Getty Images
WashingtonCNN —

Bills similar to Florida’s controversial legislation that bans certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools are being considered in at least 15 states, data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union and reviewed by CNN shows.

Some of the bills go further than the Florida law, dubbed by its critics as “Don’t Say Gay,” which sparked a furious nationwide discussion about LGBTQ rights, education policy and parental involvement in the classroom.

The debate reflects the sensitive forces of LGBTQ rights becoming increasingly ascendant at a time when some parents are seeking greater input in their children’s education, especially in the wake of the tumult wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Republicans, arguing that discussions around gender identity and sexuality are inappropriate for young children, have used the banner of “parental rights” to push for a curtailment of such conversations in schools, even though opinions on the matter vary widely among parents. LGBTQ rights advocates see a conscious decision to stigmatize a vulnerable slice of American society and a potential chilling effect on what they believe to be urgently needed discussions.

“These bills are predicated on the belief that queer identities are a contagion while straight, cisgender identities are somehow more pure or correct,” Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the ACLU, told CNN. “In truth, every student has a right to have their own life stories reflected back at them and every student benefits from stories that serve as a window into the lives of people different from them. Censorship and homogeneity benefit no one while denying all students an equal chance to learn, grow and thrive.”

The ACLU has tracked a total of 61 bills across 26 states, though efforts in several states, including Mississippi and Montana, have already failed. Earlier this month, Arkansas approved restrictions against such discussions through the fourth grade.

Ultimately, it’s unclear how many of the bills will be enacted. A Human Rights Campaign report released in January said that of 315 bills that they viewed as anti-LGBTQ that were introduced nationwide last year, only 29 – less than 10% – became law.
Efforts resemble Florida law

Florida’s law, titled the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” It also requires districts to notify a student’s parent if there’s a significant change in their mental or emotional well-being, which LGBTQ rights advocates argue could lead to some students being outed to their parents without the student’s knowledge or consent.

“We will continue to recognize that in the state of Florida, parents have a fundamental role in the education, health care and well-being of their children. We will not move from that,” Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said when he signed the bill in March 2022.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that advocates for issues including LGBTQ rights, Florida’s law was the catalyst for the bills currently under consideration in other states, which include:
An Iowa bill that passed the state House last week that would prohibit instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten through sixth grade.
A bill in Oregon that would prohibit any discussion on sexual identity for grades kindergarten through third grade without parental notification and consent.
Legislation in Alaska that would require parental notification two weeks prior to “any activity, class or program that includes content involving gender identity, human reproduction or sexual matters is provided to a child.”

Multiple bills in Florida that seek to double down on last year’s legislation, including one that requires instruction that “sex is determined by biology and reproductive function at birth” and another that prohibits requirements for employees to use pronouns that do not correspond with a student’s sex.

A recurring theme in the legislation is a requirement that school employees notify a parent if a child expresses a desire to be addressed by a pronoun that matches their gender identity if it differs from the one assigned at birth.

“We’re not saying that you can’t do this,” Washington Republican state Sen. Phil Fortunato, who introduced legislation that would limit instruction on gender and sexual identity for kindergarten through third grade, told CNN. “I mean, I disagree with it, but, you know, if the parents and the child agree with it, that is their decision. But they shouldn’t be doing it behind the parent’s back when their kid goes to school. And that’s the point of the bill.”

Missouri’s bill is uniquely far-reaching: no employee at a public or charter school would be allowed to “encourage a student under the age of eighteen years old to adopt a gender identity or sexual orientation,” though what the law means by “encourage” is not explained. School officials would be required to immediately notify parents if their child confides in them “discomfort or confusion” about their “official identity” and teachers would not be allowed to refer to a student by their preferred pronouns without first securing a parent’s approval.

The bill specifically calls for whistleblower protections for school employees who report violators, who would then face “charges seeking to suspend or revoke the teacher’s license to teach based upon charges of incompetence, immorality or neglect of duty.”

In a blog post entitled “Evil perpetrated on our children,” Missouri GOP state Sen. Mike Moon, who sponsored the legislation, called it a “lie that boys can be changed into girls and girls can be changed into boys.”

“One thing we must agree on, though, is that parents are responsible for the upbringing of their children,” he continued. “To that end, parents must be involved in the education of their children.”

Legal challenges likely

The measures are likely to face swift legal challenges if enacted, though at least two efforts to block Florida’s law have so far failed to take it off the books. One of those lawsuits, brought by a group of students, parents and teachers in Florida, was thrown out last month by US District Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, who said the challengers were unable to show that they’ve been harmed by the law.

“Plaintiffs have shown a strident disagreement with the new law, and they have alleged facts to show its very existence causes them deep hurt and disappointment,” Winsor wrote in his order. “But to invoke a federal court’s jurisdiction, they must allege more. Their failure to do so requires dismissal.”

At the heart of opponents’ concerns is the vagueness in the laws’ language as written. LGBTQ issues are not generally a formal part of public school curricula, they point out, leaving educators with the prospect of having to determine where legal fault lines are drawn with nothing less than their careers at stake.

“What counts as classroom discussion? As classroom instruction? Does it just include the curriculum for the class?” asked Alice O’Brien, the general counsel for the Alice O’Brien, in an interview with CNN. “For example, does it include teachers’ lesson plans, or does it sweep so broadly as to include classroom discussion? A teacher answering a student’s question, a teacher perhaps intervening in an incident where one student is bullying another student because of that student’s prestige, sexual orientation or gender identity? It’s very unclear what is prohibited and what is not prohibited.”

There are other concerns. Naomi G. Goldberg, the deputy director of MAP, worries about a “chilling effect on teachers themselves in terms of their ability to support students in the classroom as well as the students themselves in the classroom.”

A similar point was made in a CNN op-ed last year by Claire McCully, a trans mother who is outraged over Florida’s law.

“Like any other parent, I expect my family to be welcomed and accepted by others at the school,” McCully wrote. “And of course, this acceptance might be more likely if some of the children’s stories read in classrooms feature two dads, two moms or even a trans mom.”

Cathryn Oakley, the state legislative director and senior counsel of the Human Rights Campaign, told CNN that using a student’s preferred pronouns is harmless to other students but deeply meaningful to trans children themselves. She urged a cautious approach that recognizes the need for schools to be a safe space for vulnerable children, particularly if there is a risk that outing a child before they are ready could lead to “family rejection or even violence.”

“No one is suggesting that this is information that won’t be relevant to parents,” she said. “But what we are saying is that young folks should be able to have this conversation on their own terms with their parents and not have a third party be forced to broker a conversation that could put that child in danger.”

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.

Florida beaches could be dealt a one-two punch of red tide and giant seaweed blob


BY MANUEL BOJORQUEZ

MARCH 17, 2023 /  CBS NEWS

Some of Florida's most popular beaches could be in for a one-two punch of trouble as thousands of spring breakers flock to the Sunshine State.

A toxic algae bloom known as red tide is already killing fish along the Gulf Coast, causing a stench. Now, a massive blob of seaweed twice as wide as the United States is drifting across the Atlantic and could wash ashore in the coming weeks, creating an even bigger mess.

"It could be two problems turning into a bigger one," said Mike Parsons, a marine science professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

The algae bloom has essentially choked some sea life, producing a foul smell as dead marine animals wash ashore.

It's not the only effect. The ocean breeze can carry a toxin released by the red tide algae ashore, which can cause health problems for people including coughing, irritated throat and itchy eyes, as well as difficulty breathing and asthma attacks.

The algae occurs naturally. But professor Parsons and a team from the water school at Florida Gulf Coast University are looking into whether pollution is making the blooms worse.

Bad red tides have occurred in the past, Parsons said, including in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

"The big concern is: now that our coastlines are more developed and there's a lot more people in Florida than there used to be, how are we affecting water quality and how is that affecting red tide?" he said.

"There is evidence that we are influencing red tide through discharges," he said. "Any of the nutrients that get into our water bodies – Lake Okeechobee, Caloosahatchee, other rivers – those nutrients can come down into the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and they may be feeding red tide."

In other words, while pollution is "definitely" not the cause of the problem, according to Parsons, "it may be aggravating the problem."

Red tide originates dozens of miles offshore when there are high amounts of the algae known as Karenia brevis. Parsons said that based off of data his team has collected, the belief is that red tide sits in deep water, then rises to the surface after moving inshore, where it becomes concentrated and causes a traffic jam at the coastline.

Red tide can have an impact on tourism, as businesses along the Gulf Coast are still recovering from Hurricane Ian last year. But a lingering stench didn't stop some tourists recently, like Melanie Coulter of Wisconsin, whose vacation ended up including a snapshot of a dead horseshoe crab.

"As we were walking from our car, I thought, 'Oh what's that stench,' but then once you get on the beach the wind makes it not so bad," Coulter said.

Parsons advises beachgoers to leave a stretch of beach where they see dead fish, or start getting a scratchy nose or watery eyes.

"But the good news is that red tide is really patchy, so you can probably just move a couple miles down the beach and find a perfectly clean, safe area to be," he said.

Still, another problem now looms: a 5,000-mile-wide patchwork of seaweed clumps in the Atlantic that is making its way toward the Caribbean and Mexico – and Florida beaches.

The mass is known as sargassum, a brown seaweed that floats in large masses, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"There are really big blooms of sargassum out there right now," Parsons said. "They've been washing up on beaches in the Caribbean, in Miami, and it looks like it's our turn now. And that's not going to be a positive thing."

As the biomass degrades, it releases gases like hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs and is harmful, he said.

Li Cohen and Caitlin O'Kane contributed to this article.

Third COVID anniversary: Docs say it’s not done damaging society

One of the lingering unwanted effects of the pandemic is that so many people are suffering from long COVID and people are still dying said medical experts

Len Gillis
Mar 16, 2023 

Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

On the third anniversary of the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario doctors said while we might think we are done with that disease, COVID-19 is not done with us.

That was one of the key messages from the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) which held an online news conference Wednesday.

Several physicians spoke to outline their concerns with COVID and the possibility of future pandemics and how society in general, and the medical community in particular, needs to be better prepared.

But the COVID problem persists, said Dr. Allison McGeer,  a professor of Laboratory Medicine and pathobiology at the clinician-scientist with the Sinai Health System in Toronto.

She said COVID persists in our society and as much as we would like to think the pandemic is over, it is not.

"And it's really nice to see things returning to normal," said McGeer. “But there are two sets of people we need to be worried about. And one of them is the people who are suffering from long COVID. There's a really large number of them, we need to be paying attention to that, we need to be making sure that we're delivering the care and support they need.

"The second thing is that there are still more people dying of COVID, than die of influenza in a regular year."

McGeer said large numbers of COVID patients are being admitted to hospital and are still dying in significant numbers.

"So even though we think it's over, there's still a very large number of hospitalizations and a much larger number of deaths than one would like. And so trying to keep us paying attention to the fact that we may be finished with COVID. But COVID is not finished with us," she said.

Another lingering effect of the pandemic, according to the OMA doctors, is long COVID which is a problem that is not going away and there is no cure at the moment.

Dr. Angela M. Cheung, a clinician-scientist at the University Health Network, a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, said the long COVID problem is made worse by the fact not everyone believes it is real.

"The most common symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, palpitations, brain fog, and there are up to 200 symptoms that patients have complained of,” Cheung said. “What we do know is that it affects more women than men. And it's not only affecting health, it's affecting society.

"It's affecting our ability to work, and also relationships between family members and friends, because there's a lot of disbelief in terms of whether long COVID is real. In terms of treatment strategies, we really don't have a cure right now for long COVID. What we have been doing is using strategies to manage the symptoms." 

The issue of pandemic misinformation was also addressed during the news conference. 

In responding to a question from Sudbury.com about the spread of misinformation during a pandemic, McGeer said it was important for public health officials to have the trust of citizens at large. 

"And so what we need when we go into crises is an existing trust developed between physicians, other health care providers, public health systems, and the general population and making sure that we don't allow the current spread of misinformation on social media to erode that trust in our public health," said McGeer.

"I think it was a surprise to everybody that there was so much misinformation that spread so quickly on social media. And so it will take time for us to build the defenses against that and to understand how we can have people know where they're getting their information from, know what information to trust and believe in the system. So it's a long-term question," she added.

Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.

How the Battle for Bakhmut Has Exposed Russia’s Fault Lines

By James Horncastle

Updated: 2 days ago

Ukrainian service members fire a howitzer M119 at a front line near the city of Bakhmut.

Oleksandr Ratushniak / Reuters


The fight for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which started in the summer of 2022, continues unabated. The battle has morphed from one of dubious immediate strategic benefit to Russia into one that has come to symbolize its war efforts. It also highlights the current deficiencies in Russia’s Armed Forces.

Symbolism is not new to warfare. The Battle of Stalingrad, although it had strategic calculations, was also important due to Hitler’s fixation on its symbolic value.

Furthermore, symbolic acts can have strategic impact beyond their immediate military concerns. The problem is when symbolism overtakes sensible strategy.

Bakhmut, from a strictly military standpoint, does not significantly change the war. For Ukraine, however, Bakhmut’s defense is aligned with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s arguments that he will accept nothing less than the full restoration of his country.

Russia, despite superior military capabilities, has so far failed to take the city.

Urban warfare favors defenders because they possess an intimate knowledge of the terrain that aggressors don’t. Furthermore, when an army relies on artillery and tactical bombing to the extent that the Russian army does, it risks creating new enemy defensive positions in the rubble of the others they’ve destroyed.

This is a lesson the Russian army has had to relearn multiple times, especially in Chechnya, and forgotten once more.

To overcome these problems, an army must rely upon its infantry and its officers’ initiative to carry the day. In the case of the Russian Armed Forces, with their centralized command system, plummeting morale, and abysmal equipment standards, this isn’t possible.

NEWS
Bakhmut's Capture Key to 'Further Offensive' in Ukraine – Russia

Nevertheless, Bakhmut has become the focus of Russia’s efforts.

Russia’s arguments for the war in Ukraine — including whether it actually considers the conflict a war at all — have shifted over time. A consistent thread, however, is that the invasion was aimed at protecting Ukraine’s ethnic Russian-speaking population.

Bakhmut is in what Russia considers the Donetsk People’s Republic, an area of Ukraine with a significant ethnic Russian population.

For Russia to claim victory, it must control the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk at the minimum. These two regions together make up the Donbas, a region that is of cultural significance to Russian identity. Soviet propaganda from the 1920s, in fact, identified the region as the heart of Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a result, cannot easily suffer setbacks in the region.

Studies on how the war is affecting Putin’s popularity are admittedly problematic. What is known, however, is that Putin relies on the support of Russian nationalists to maintain his position, and taking the Donbas is crucial for that base.

That’s why Russia continues its efforts in Bakhmut and the surrounding region despite Ukraine alleging that between 10,000-20,000 Russian troops have already died there.

These casualties are magnified by the divisions within Russia’s political establishment.

Putin succeeded in establishing a system where overlapping responsibilities mean that he ultimately acts as the arbiter of power. While that system is effective in maintaining Putin’s position in Russian politics, it has some severe disadvantages.

In Photos: Russian Forces Inch Forward in Bakhmut at Terrible Human Cost

This is most notably evident in the case of the Wagner Group, the country's main mercenary organization, which was created to allow Moscow to embark upon military action abroad while maintaining plausible deniability.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, the Wagner Group has become a de-facto branch of Russia’s regular Armed Forces.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, recognizes that the organization’s success will bring him personal power within Russia, and in order to achieve this goal, he has reduced a former highly trained force to one that relies on human wave tactics and employs former prisoners.

Human wave tactics involve an army sending large numbers of soldiers to overwhelm an opponent’s defense, and by their nature cause the attacker to suffer significant casualties.

The rapid increase in the Wagner Group’s size, however, means that it needs considerably more resources than in the past.

The Wagner Group’s need for supplies brings it into direct competition with the Russian army. Prigozhin has publicly condemned Russian army officials, alleging that they are not adequately supplying his forces. The Russian Armed Forces understandably resent this argument given their own supply problems.

The result of this competition is two nominally allied armies rapidly trying to achieve success in a battle that requires patience and precision.

One is liberally using explosives and the other soldiers’ lives to achieve victory. The lack of efficacy of both tactics has furthered the mutual loathing between the parties.

The Battle of Bakhmut, as a result, embodies Russia’s ill-planned adventure in Ukraine. Even if Russian forces succeed in taking Bakhmut, the losses they have suffered and the divisions they have created within the Armed Forces will hang like a specter over their efforts for the remainder of the war.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

James Horncastle is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.