“Ukraine – Russia”

Scarred yet defiant, Mykolaiv will decide the future of the war

Mykolaiv, Ukraine

The lady burrows into the earth. Swathed in blue plastic to protect her against the rain, she pats the soil and digs into it with her hands. She won’t speak to me, but allows me to watch as she tends to her plants and flowers in a patch of soil outside a block of flats in central Mykolaiv.

Dasha smirks at the camera and says in a baby voice: “Hi, I missed you all.” It is 11 March, a few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, and the blond 19-year-old Moscow-based influencer with 126,000 Instagram followers is posting to her stories. “I wasn’t on social media for over a week and I want to talk about my news and the news of the world,” she says.

After taking a weekend trip to a friend’s dacha in the countryside, Dasha posts videos of her friends laughing, making pancakes or playing party games. The atmosphere is warm, the alcohol flowing. The next tile shows Dasha looking solemnly at her phone. “I was constantly watching the news to understand what was going on in the world and one thought wouldn’t escape my mind …” she writes. Next tile: “Maybe I should leave Russia?” in bold red letters. In smaller black text underneath, she elaborates: “At least for a little bit of time, until the situation calms down and we have a better understanding.” There is a question box for followers to answer: “What do you think about this?”

As Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, members of a Ukrainian special forces unit deployed to defend the strategic Hostomel airport outside Kyiv were stunned by what they saw as dawn broke: some 30 Russian attack helicopters coming over the horizon, speeding toward the airport.

An added surprise was that the helicopters were moving on their own toward Hostomel, without supporting ground forces or barrages of long-range missile fire to weaken the Ukrainian defences. It was as if they expected no resistance at all.

Go incognito

Video footage has emerged from the city of Mariupol in Ukraine showing the bodies of more than 20 civilians lying along a main road.

The graphic videos, posted on social media in recent days, come as the United Nations has confirmed that it is investigating hundreds of allegations of killing of civilians during the invasion of Ukraine.

The southern port city of Mariupol has been the scene of weeks of intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces attacked a steel plant in the shattered Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, apparently seeking to eliminate the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic city the Kremlin claims its military has otherwise seized.

The assault was reported by an advisor to Ukraine’s presidential office as an estimated 1,000 civilians sheltered in the Azovstal plant alongside the remaining Ukrainian fighters, while Russian forces pressed their offensive elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region amid fierce Ukrainian counterattacks.

Video of Russian T-80BV tanks conducing a tank carousel firing on Ukrainian positions in Mariupol from a few days ago.

Video: Rob Lee#Mariupol #UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/us2HVR2EEd

— Qinglian Jushi (@catminh17) April 23, 2022

Alexander Dugin has endowed Putin’s brutal imperialism with an almost spiritual significance.

In 2014, a Foreign Affairs article described Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin as ‘Putin’s brain’.

At the time, it seemed a fitting epithet. The then 52-year-old Dugin was championing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and urging on the further conquest of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. Superficially, at least, he seemed to be uncannily in tune with the Kremlin.

It’s a huge, hangar-like building, disused and decrepit, on the outskirts of Lviv. But for Mykola Piddubnyi and his colleague Irina Gavrilova, the local entrepreneur’s gift was a godsend, allowing them to move their expanding wartime supply operation out of Gavrilova’s tiny apartment. The day I visited, there were dozens of wooden pallets spread out across the big space: one cluster—maybe 40 cardboard boxes—for baked goods, another for large plastic buckets filled with dumplings, still other areas for canned food and toiletries, even a pallet piled high with crutches and wheelchairs.

Police across Canada are investigating alleged acts of vandalism, theft and even arson against Ukrainian Canadians or those showing their support amid Russia’s invasion of the neighbouring country.

Alexandra Chyczij of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress said these kinds of incidents across Canada are “a growing phenomenon.”

“It’s a very troubling tendency and has frankly a lot of people frightened,” Chyczij told CTV National News’ John Vennavally-Rao.