Links

[selenak]

This weekend I had two antivaxxers trying to enlist/convert me, one of whom was also a Putin defender going on abouto how the "mainstream media" was reporting it all wrong. But at least I'm related to neither of them; a friend of mine has to put up with his own daughter insisting that covid does not exist. Meanwhile, I, alas, had it (with symptoms) last month, despite having been vaccinated because of the new Ommicron variant, and I can tell you, fun this was not. Have some Ukraine related links:

Ukrainian demonstrations in Russia-occupied Kherson

Article about Natalya Sindeya, the founder of Dozhd, one of the last independent Russian media which was just shut down.

Profile of Volodymyr Zelensky, one of several to be published in the last ten days; this one in the New Yorker

Comments

[ratcreature]

It really makes you wonder whether these people have ever talked to anybody from there who wasn't some disinformation Twitter or Facebook bot.

You know, I've been in a Russian language course for a few years now. I just for fun, but many are learning for family because they married a Russian speaker or are enganged and want to raise their children bilingual, talk with in-laws etc. And that includes some with family from Ukraine, but Russian speakers obviously, this being a Russian course, not Ukrainian.

So through that I have met somebody with in-laws in Eastern Ukraine, and over the years (all post-2014) they mentioned them every now and then, and they were actually "pro-Russian" in that they would have rather liked to keep close integration and open-borders with Russia, not the EU, if it was binary. They were close to the separatist area but not quite in it, but a bit to the North. It was impacted, but my classmate could still visit and she went there for their honeymoon when she eventually married her Ukrainian boyfriend and it was all "normal" despite the war nearby. As of last week her in-laws were now hiding and their area being bombed by the Russian army. They hadn't wanted to come to Germany when their family here tried to convince them that Russia planned to invade and they should get out "just in case" (though my classmate and ger husband didn't really believe it would be *this* bad either). They didn't believe anything bad would happen to them, are older and didn't want to abandon their place etc.

Our teacher (a Russian from St. Petersburg) has a cousin living in Kyiv, as of last week hiding in some bomb shelter with his young family, while the teacher's (anti-war, all internet savy) friends in St. Petersburg are now fearing arrest, and his parents (currently living in Moscow) fear for their savings...

Our course last week was half taken up by just catching up with what horrible new reality people are suddenly finding themselves in now.