A friend of mine told me yesterday that he didn’t realise how much Ukraine meant to him until now. I posted yesterday about the time we spent there, and we’re all getting super pre-occupied about the invasion. As I said in that post, I can’t get our waitress out of my head. I can sort of remember what she looked like now. She had an undercut. I think maybe her hair might have been blue? But - I will never know if she lives through this, and it’s driving me very slightly mad.
So naturally, my husband spent all day yesterday obsessively researching everything he could about it with the help of his journalist friends, as a way to help me process it.
This post is me putting it all in order, as a way to try and process my own emotional response as much as anything else (I freely admit there is an element of self-indulgence here). Please don’t take me as the spokesperson for Ukraine right now, nor as a solid reliable news source. But, I haven’t seen this stuff except in bits and pieces on Tumblr, so here we go.
(This is also not about whythe invasion has happened. This post is solely about whathas happened, and how the invasion is going.)
So, Putin and the rest of the world believed that this invasion would take 1-4 days. The plan was to push through fast, take Kyiv, and force Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, to surrender. Given Russia’s military might, it really looked likely.
Here is the conclusion of all that’s happened so far:
Ukraine is absolutely nailing this??? Actually???
They managed to defend every single city overnight, including Kyiv. They started rolling out and using these WW2-style anti-tank thingies that look a bit like angry gabbions, look, here’s a picture of one being delivered:
A bunch of spare iron girders turned into a hefty octopus of Russian misery, basically.
But it’s not just tanks they’re taking down, oh no. Ukraine successfully shot down a transport plane 20km from Kyiv. That is, I shit you not, the single biggest hit to the Russian military since the Second Chechen War. Volunteers from Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan and Israel are all entering Ukraine to help fight and bolster the anti-Russian forces, which is probably illustrative of how Eurovision voting is going to run for the next decade. Most countries have banned Russian planes from their air space. To help stop the Russian advance, Ukraine has made and installed new road signs, like this one:
I can only say a handful of sentences in Ukrainian, Tumblrs, but as I understand it, from top to bottom, it says:
“Fuck off”
“Fuck off again”
“Fuck off Russia”
Meanwhile, it turns out the Russian military might we feared is… possibly not quite as advertised?
They’re underfunded and badly trained. Ukraine captured 200 soldiers in one go, and most of them were confused 19 year olds with no training. The equipment is shite. The tanks keep running out of fuel. Russian soldiers keep abandoning their tanks and handing them over to the Ukrainian army. Putin’s plan was to take Kyiv fast and move on, and he didn’t have a plan B - hence these kids, playing soldier. Here is an image of a Russian tank receiving roadside assistance from Russia’s finest, an old Lada.
No one expected Zelenskyy to survive the night; but he did. America offered him asylum in the White House.
But he said no.
Zelenskyy remains in Kyiv, with his people.
And Putin, in his desperation to be adored, has turned Zelenskyy into a global icon and hero.
Here is something you may not know about Volodymyr Zelenskyy - he used to be a standup comedian. Was he any good? No idea - but what he IS good at is producing funny short videos he can put on Twitter and that, which are absolutely fantastic for Ukrainian morale. And morale is vital in an invasion like this, and Ukraine are smashing it out of the park there.
They are utilising the internet to its fullest extent. In addition to Zelenskyy’s videos, they’ve made sure that the final words of the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island are known and now echoed around the world: “Russian warship, go fuck yourselves.” A video has gone viral of Ukrainians mocking a group of Russian soldiers whose tank had broken down and who didn’t know the way to Kyiv anyway, presumably because of all the new road signs. They have created a website that lists every single Russian death they can identify, partly so Russian mothers can have closure (thus also painting themselves as the defenders of decency and humanity), and partly for the enormous morale boost of the world knowing, categorically, that they’ve already killed 3700 Russian soldiers (over 100 of which were from that transport plane.) Not one word has leaked of Ukrainian casualties. I’m sure they’re devastating, but for morale purposes, they’re being kept quiet until the dust settles. Ukrainians have started setting up fake Tindr profiles to catfish Russian soldiers for intel, and they’re all 19 and lost, so it’s working. Plus, they’re using Grindr to actually track where the soldiers are, because it turns out Putin was not entirely correct about there being no gays in Russia.
So, Russia wants to cut their internet access. Can the Ukrainian Minister for Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, shame a billionaire into providing aid?
This is crucial, remember. Atrocities happen best in the dark, and the world is watching - because of the internet. Morale is vital to maintain. Can they convince Elon Musk to help?
Yep.
Ukraine now has the fastest internet service in the world. The fastest, most stable internet service in human history, in fact. Russia cannot now disable it. The world watches.
Which is just as well, because then Anonymous decided to get involved, and have leaked the website database of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Lol. Also this happens:
And then the Russian propaganda channels started broadcasting the truth of what is happening in Ukraine. Double lol.
So what is the political response?
Well, in addition to closing airspace to Russian planes, loads of countries are sending weapons to Ukraine. Those that can’t are offering asylum. They’re also offering asylum to any Russian soldiers who surrender or defect, which is startlingly good tactics, and there are rumours of around 5000 Russian soldiers who have done just that. Germany, of course, has long had a block on lethal weapons transfer; but Germany recognise this shit for what it is. They’ve lifted the block, thus allowing the Netherlands to send weapons. Efforts are now underway to fast-track Ukraine into the EU. I presume they will consider the lack of pint glasses with crowns on to be a worthwhile price to pay.
So what about Russia’s supporters?
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka helped Russia with this invasion. Now, this has happened:
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was actually elected president, but some wild nonsense kept her out of power. She’s now running a government in exile. I have literally no idea what this means or will mean! But my god. She has a spine of steel, and this is not a good time to be happening for Putin.
And it’s really, really not, because then intel on a meeting of Putin and assembled Oligarchs LEAKS (hello Anonymous, probably). The highlights:
This war is costing Russia $15bn a day
He expected it to take ONE TO FOUR DAYS TO WIN
It’s been two days and he is losing very badly, currently
They will run out of rockets by day 4, maybe sooner
After that they will be down to rifles and ammo
It will take 3-4 months to make more significant weapons, except they need raw materials, and the countries that can provide them… have cut supply lines
If the war lasts 10 days, Russia will have completely run out of money and weapons
It’s only day 2, and Russian soldiers are knocking the doors of random Ukrainian homes begging for food and water because they’ve already run out
So, out of desperation, Putin turns to his greatest, closest and most trusted ally for help: Kazakhstan.
And Kazakhstan
SAYS NO
And then Ukraine shoots down a second Russian plane.
Anyway, I’m going to finish off with a final point. Morale is vital in this situation, so here is the message from the Ukrainian government at the minute, to everyone watching around the world:
Be VERY SUSPICIOUS of any negative news about Ukraine. Russia uses misinformation and propaganda. They will want to damage Ukrainian morale.
Use your social media to spread news of Ukrainian victories.
Don’t give oxygen to negative stories. Especially since they might not be true.
That’s genuinely something we can do to help. Every victory of Ukraine, blast it far and wide. So on that note, I’ll leave you with this:
Congrats to Natalia Antonova’s cousin’s son.
The street signs are photoshopped in that specific picture, but Ukrainians have been taking down street signs to confuse Russian soldiers.
Like most popular “norse” symbols, there’s a lot of ambiguity around the Helm of Awe. It is mentioned in old Norse text like the ‘Poetic Edda’, but no visual description or illustration is given. The symbol we now equate to the Helm of Awe comes from the ‘Huld Manuscript’ a book of Icelandic magical staves, which was written/compiled in 1847—well after the Viking age had ended and Scandinavia had been Christianized.
Its ultimately not possible to be certain that the symbol we use today under the name “the Helm of Awe” is the same one described in old Norse texts, but it’s likely not. Many experts point to the similarities of the Helm of Awe (and the visually similar Vegvísir) to symbols from ‘The Key of Solomon’.
The Helm of Awe—regardless of what it may have originally looked like—is said to be a magical symbol that, when worn (usually on the forehead, between the eyebrows) would give you strength tantamount to invincibility in battle.
A good hint at where Redfish has truly sat with its ‘anti-imperialism’ and 'condemnation’ of the Russian invasion is that 'informative’ Redfish maps on instagram etc. consistently, since 10 days ago when the attack begun, showed Krim/Crimea - the peninsular region of Ukraine first occupied in 2014, the first stage of Putin’s cooled-down imperial war that has now reached a new boiling point bordering on a nuclear crisis - as a part of Russia, not Ukraine. Unfortunately I didn’t get a screenshot back when I left them a comment about it.
Is it a glaring mapmaking error? Maybe not from across the pond, but it’s a blindingly bright neon sign for everyone here next to the Russian border. 2014 my whole spring was spent doing school assignments on news reports about the Crimean invasion - Crimea, a part of Ukraine, where Putin’s Russia attacked because of the same senseless excuses it has now amped up to a hundred.
You could, and you wouldnotice these things if you learned of the crisis (and other world crises) through actual studying and reporting from international journalists, not quick social media infographs posted by whoever.
You really do have to learn about what Russian information warfare is and has been. It does NOT look like obnoxious flashy loud 'Russia is the best!’ *flag prints* *bears flying* blasts. It looks like something that online activists - who strongly oppose the 'USA is the best!’ *flag prints* *eagles flying* rhetoric - would want to believe and share, because they’ve grown up in an Anglo-American system of either/or political binaries and immediately think that an apparent opposite of whatever is bad is the good option.
That’s what’s effective disinformation.
And for heavens sakes PLEASE SCROLL BACK UP AND READ THAT ARTICLE NOW. PLEASE. Spend ONE moment away from tumblr and read a short easily digestable news article on Russian imperial propaganda.
[Whataboutism] is a tactic that Russia routinely rolls out, according to Idrees Ahmad, a lecturer in digital journalism at the University of Stirling and author of a forthcoming book about the war of narratives in Syria. Ahmad told VICE News that what Redfish is doing is tapping into people’s desire to have their preconceived notions about how the world works reinforced.
“What skillful propagandists do is find people’s prejudices and leverage them to advance their own message,” Ahmad said. “In most cases, the propagandized individual is an inadvertent carrier of such messages. But even where they know, they are often willing to be dupes, because they think they are sharing something that they believe anyway.”
Andwhat makes this tactic so successful is that the injustice it refers to is often not imagined. “The hypocrisy being alluded to is often real, and can trigger righteous fury in the audience,” Ahmad said. “But they are duped because the aim is not to generate greater sympathy for a different conflict but to deflect attention from the one at hand.”
Everyone here loves the Garfield meme and no one understands what it means. That bit I quoted out of the article to make sure that you read it is what this means:
Mikhail Dianov.He is 42.Because of some reasons he looks older now.That reasons should not be exists in 2022.Occupation of Mariupol.Mass murders of civilian people.Azovstal…..This man from Azovstal.Almoust 3 months they were in inhumane conditions.This man one of the Heroes.He was injured.Now he in captivity.But heroes have to be Free
A friend of mine told me yesterday that he didn’t realise how much Ukraine meant to him until now. I posted yesterday about the time we spent there, and we’re all getting super pre-occupied about the invasion. As I said in that post, I can’t get our waitress out of my head. I can sort of remember what she looked like now. She had an undercut. I think maybe her hair might have been blue? But - I will never know if she lives through this, and it’s driving me very slightly mad.
So naturally, my husband spent all day yesterday obsessively researching everything he could about it with the help of his journalist friends, as a way to help me process it.
This post is me putting it all in order, as a way to try and process my own emotional response as much as anything else (I freely admit there is an element of self-indulgence here). Please don’t take me as the spokesperson for Ukraine right now, nor as a solid reliable news source. But, I haven’t seen this stuff except in bits and pieces on Tumblr, so here we go.
(This is also not about whythe invasion has happened. This post is solely about whathas happened, and how the invasion is going.)
So, Putin and the rest of the world believed that this invasion would take 1-4 days. The plan was to push through fast, take Kyiv, and force Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, to surrender. Given Russia’s military might, it really looked likely.
Here is the conclusion of all that’s happened so far:
Ukraine is absolutely nailing this??? Actually???
They managed to defend every single city overnight, including Kyiv. They started rolling out and using these WW2-style anti-tank thingies that look a bit like angry gabbions, look, here’s a picture of one being delivered:
A bunch of spare iron girders turned into a hefty octopus of Russian misery, basically.
But it’s not just tanks they’re taking down, oh no. Ukraine successfully shot down a transport plane 20km from Kyiv. That is, I shit you not, the single biggest hit to the Russian military since the Second Chechen War. Volunteers from Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan and Israel are all entering Ukraine to help fight and bolster the anti-Russian forces, which is probably illustrative of how Eurovision voting is going to run for the next decade. Most countries have banned Russian planes from their air space. To help stop the Russian advance, Ukraine has made and installed new road signs, like this one:
I can only say a handful of sentences in Ukrainian, Tumblrs, but as I understand it, from top to bottom, it says:
“Fuck off”
“Fuck off again”
“Fuck off Russia”
Meanwhile, it turns out the Russian military might we feared is… possibly not quite as advertised?
They’re underfunded and badly trained. Ukraine captured 200 soldiers in one go, and most of them were confused 19 year olds with no training. The equipment is shite. The tanks keep running out of fuel. Russian soldiers keep abandoning their tanks and handing them over to the Ukrainian army. Putin’s plan was to take Kyiv fast and move on, and he didn’t have a plan B - hence these kids, playing soldier. Here is an image of a Russian tank receiving roadside assistance from Russia’s finest, an old Lada.
No one expected Zelenskyy to survive the night; but he did. America offered him asylum in the White House.
But he said no.
Zelenskyy remains in Kyiv, with his people.
And Putin, in his desperation to be adored, has turned Zelenskyy into a global icon and hero.
Here is something you may not know about Volodymyr Zelenskyy - he used to be a standup comedian. Was he any good? No idea - but what he IS good at is producing funny short videos he can put on Twitter and that, which are absolutely fantastic for Ukrainian morale. And morale is vital in an invasion like this, and Ukraine are smashing it out of the park there.
They are utilising the internet to its fullest extent. In addition to Zelenskyy’s videos, they’ve made sure that the final words of the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island are known and now echoed around the world: “Russian warship, go fuck yourselves.” A video has gone viral of Ukrainians mocking a group of Russian soldiers whose tank had broken down and who didn’t know the way to Kyiv anyway, presumably because of all the new road signs. They have created a website that lists every single Russian death they can identify, partly so Russian mothers can have closure (thus also painting themselves as the defenders of decency and humanity), and partly for the enormous morale boost of the world knowing, categorically, that they’ve already killed 3700 Russian soldiers (over 100 of which were from that transport plane.) Not one word has leaked of Ukrainian casualties. I’m sure they’re devastating, but for morale purposes, they’re being kept quiet until the dust settles. Ukrainians have started setting up fake Tindr profiles to catfish Russian soldiers for intel, and they’re all 19 and lost, so it’s working. Plus, they’re using Grindr to actually track where the soldiers are, because it turns out Putin was not entirely correct about there being no gays in Russia.
So, Russia wants to cut their internet access. Can the Ukrainian Minister for Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, shame a billionaire into providing aid?
This is crucial, remember. Atrocities happen best in the dark, and the world is watching - because of the internet. Morale is vital to maintain. Can they convince Elon Musk to help?
Yep.
Ukraine now has the fastest internet service in the world. The fastest, most stable internet service in human history, in fact. Russia cannot now disable it. The world watches.
Which is just as well, because then Anonymous decided to get involved, and have leaked the website database of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Lol. Also this happens:
And then the Russian propaganda channels started broadcasting the truth of what is happening in Ukraine. Double lol.
So what is the political response?
Well, in addition to closing airspace to Russian planes, loads of countries are sending weapons to Ukraine. Those that can’t are offering asylum. They’re also offering asylum to any Russian soldiers who surrender or defect, which is startlingly good tactics, and there are rumours of around 5000 Russian soldiers who have done just that. Germany, of course, has long had a block on lethal weapons transfer; but Germany recognise this shit for what it is. They’ve lifted the block, thus allowing the Netherlands to send weapons. Efforts are now underway to fast-track Ukraine into the EU. I presume they will consider the lack of pint glasses with crowns on to be a worthwhile price to pay.
So what about Russia’s supporters?
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka helped Russia with this invasion. Now, this has happened:
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was actually elected president, but some wild nonsense kept her out of power. She’s now running a government in exile. I have literally no idea what this means or will mean! But my god. She has a spine of steel, and this is not a good time to be happening for Putin.
And it’s really, really not, because then intel on a meeting of Putin and assembled Oligarchs LEAKS (hello Anonymous, probably). The highlights:
This war is costing Russia $15bn a day
He expected it to take ONE TO FOUR DAYS TO WIN
It’s been two days and he is losing very badly, currently
They will run out of rockets by day 4, maybe sooner
After that they will be down to rifles and ammo
It will take 3-4 months to make more significant weapons, except they need raw materials, and the countries that can provide them… have cut supply lines
If the war lasts 10 days, Russia will have completely run out of money and weapons
It’s only day 2, and Russian soldiers are knocking the doors of random Ukrainian homes begging for food and water because they’ve already run out
So, out of desperation, Putin turns to his greatest, closest and most trusted ally for help: Kazakhstan.
And Kazakhstan
SAYS NO
And then Ukraine shoots down a second Russian plane.
Anyway, I’m going to finish off with a final point. Morale is vital in this situation, so here is the message from the Ukrainian government at the minute, to everyone watching around the world:
Be VERY SUSPICIOUS of any negative news about Ukraine. Russia uses misinformation and propaganda. They will want to damage Ukrainian morale.
Use your social media to spread news of Ukrainian victories.
Don’t give oxygen to negative stories. Especially since they might not be true.
That’s genuinely something we can do to help. Every victory of Ukraine, blast it far and wide. So on that note, I’ll leave you with this:
Russians Looted Priceless Artifacts From Museums in Mariupol and Melitopol
The heist started when a mysterious man in a white lab coat showed up at the museum.
A squad of Russian soldiers stood behind him, with guns, watching eagerly.
Using long tweezers and special gloves, the man in the white coat carefully extracted scores of special gold artifacts more than 2,300 years old from cardboard boxes in the cellar of a museum in Melitopol, a southern town in Russian-occupied territory, Ukrainian officials said. The gold items were from the Scythian empire and dated back to the fourth century B.C.
Then the mysterious expert, the Russian soldiers and the gold disappeared.
“The orcs have taken hold of our Scythian gold,” declared Melitopol’s mayor, Ivan Fyodorov, using a derogatory term many Ukrainians reserve for Russian soldiers. “This is one of the largest and most expensive collections in Ukraine, and today we don’t know where they took it.”
This was hardly the first attack on Ukrainian culture since the war began.
In Mariupol, the town that has been hammered for weeks by Russian forces, officials said that Russian agents broke into an art museum and stole masterpiece paintings, a famous sculpture and several highly valued Christian icons.
Across Ukraine, officials said, dozens of Orthodox churches, national monuments and cultural heritage sites have been destroyed. In one town near Kyiv, Borodianka, Russian soldiers shot the bust of a famous Ukrainian poet in the head.
On Saturday, Ukrainian officials said that more than 250 cultural institutions had been damaged or destroyed.
But perhaps no cultural heist has been as brazen as what unfolded in Melitopol just a few days ago.
According to Leila Ibrahimova, the director of the Melitopol Museum of Local History, the trouble started in late February, when Russian forces shelled the airport and took over the city. Soldiers went on a rampage, smashing into supermarkets, stores and homes.
Most of the city’s residents hid inside their houses. But a few museum workers, including Ms. Ibrahimova, made their way back to the museum.
It is an elegant, three-story, stone building in the old part of town, home to 50,000 exhibits, from Soviet-era medals to old battle axes. But its prized collection was a set of rare gold ornaments from the Scythians, a nomadic people that founded a rich, powerful empire, centered in the Crimean Peninsula, that endured from around the eighth century B.C. to the second century A.D.
It was the Scythian gold that Ms. Ibrahimova was most worried about.
She and other staff members secretly hid it and some other historic artifacts in cardboard boxes, stashing the boxes in a dank cellar where they didn’t think anyone would find it.
“We knew that any second someone could come into the museum with a weapon,” she said. So they worked fast, she said, because “the collection is priceless.”
In mid-March, Ms. Ibrahimova said Russian troops burst into her house with assault rifles, threw a black hood over her head and kidnapped her. After several hours of intense questioning, they let her go. Two weeks later she left Melitopol for an area not under Russian control.
But on Wednesday, she received a call from a caretaker at the museum. The caretaker said Russian soldiers, along with intelligence officers and a Russian-speaking man in a white lab coat, had come to her house in the morning and ordered her, at gunpoint, to go with them to the museum.
They commanded her to take them to the Scythian gold.
The caretaker refused, Ms. Ibrahimova said. But the man in the white coat found the boxes anyway with the help of a Ukrainian, Evgeny Gorlachev, who was appointed by the Russian military as the museum’s new director, she said. A Russian crew filmed part of the robbery.
“We hid everything but somehow they found it,” she said.
What was stolen: at least 198 gold items, including ornaments in the form of flowers; gold plates; rare old weapons; 300-year-old silver coins; and special medals. She said many of the gold artifacts had been given to the Scythians by the Greeks.
In an interview on Russian television, Mr. Gorlachev said the gold artifacts “are of great cultural value for the entire former Soviet Union” and that the previous administrators of the museum “spent a lot of effort and energy” to hide them.
“For what purpose, no one knows,” he said. “But thanks to these people and the operational work carried out, residents of the city of Melitopol — and not only Melitopol — will be able to observe again a large collection of Scythian gold.” He did not say when or where the artifacts would be displayed.
Ms. Ibrahimova, who spoke by phone, sounded despondent as she spoke about the Russian invaders.
“Maybe culture is the enemy for them,” she said. “They said that Ukraine has no state, no history. They just want to destroy our country. I hope they will not succeed.”
Scythian gold has enormous symbolic value in Ukraine. Other collections of the artifacts had been stored in vaults in the capital, Kyiv, before the war broke out. But Ms. Ibrahimova said events unfolded too fast for her museum to spirit out their collection.
For years now, Ukraine has been locked in a complicated dispute with Russia over collections of Scythian gold that several museums in Crimea had lent to a museum in Amsterdam. After Russia seized Crimea in 2014, Ukraine pleaded with the Amsterdam museum not to return the gold. Russia demanded the museum do just that. A court has ruled in Ukraine’s favor and the gold remains in Amsterdam.
But historians said the looting of the artifacts in Melitopol is an even more egregious attempt to appropriate, and perhaps destroy, Ukraine’s cultural heritage.
“The Russians are making a war without rules,” said Oleksandr Symonenko, a fellow of Ukraine’s Archaeology Institute and a Scythian specialist. “This is not a war. It is destroying our life, our nature, our culture, our industry, everything. This is a crime.”
The caretaker who refused to help the Russians was released on Wednesday after the gold was stolen. But on Friday she was taken away from her house at gunpoint again, Ms. Ibrahimova said, shortly after the mayor, who is also in exile, announced the theft.
