The Long War #19
Some polls
Ukraine’s most trusted figures are President Volodymyr Zelensky (83,5%), head of the Mykolaiv administration Vitaliy Kim (63%) and comedian-activist-politician Serhiy Prytula (56%). The least trusted are former prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko (80% do not trust her), head of the now-banned Opposition Platform party Yuriy Boyko (77%) and former president Petro Poroshenko (73%) (June, Center Razumkov).
Asked about post-victory political changes, 23% of Ukrainians said they would like to see a new president, 69% a new parliament, and 47% a new government (June, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology).
84% of Ukrainians do not think Russian-speaking citizens are oppressed because of the language they speak (June, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology).
73,7% of Ukrainians do not consider themselves part of any religious communities or parishes (June, Razumkov Center).
44% of Ukrainians feel “neutral” towards LGBT+ members of the Ukrainian military, while 27% feel “positive” and 25% “negative” (June, Rating agency).
Something to read (in English)
(Foreign Policy published a story I wrote a few weeks ago about farmers in the Kherson region who resorted to demining their fields by themselves, as the staggering amount of mines and unexploded ammunition is leaving the country’s sappers overwhelmed.)
Reuters / Counting central Ukraine’s military losses, with a spreadsheet (Ukrainian military losses remain a very tightly kept secret, making this rare effort undertaken by a local outlet in the Poltava region to aggregate and tally open sources reports about local soldiers killed in the war all the more valuable. “These days” writes Reuters, “the reserved 33-year-old fills a spreadsheet with the names of Ukrainian soldiers from Poltava region killed since Russia's full-scale invasion began – 1,072 at last count – which is used in regular round-ups that typically contain between 10 and 40 names.”)
Wall Street Journal / How We Told the Story of One Russian’s Surrender to a Ukrainian Drone
Artnet / The Louvre Has Displayed Sacred Treasures Rescued From Ukraine as Part of Its Partnership With Local Museums & The Metropolitan Museum Is Helping Train a New Class of Monuments Men Headed to Protect Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage
Canadian Slavonic Papers / Russophone literature of Ukraine: self-decolonization, deterritorialization, reclamation
Swedish Defense Research Agency / Russia᾽s War Against Ukraine and the West: The First Year
Something to read (in Ukrainian)
Poltavshyna / There were last week reports about the death of 14 soldiers from the Poltava region (this is one of the articles mentioned in the Reuters story about the counting of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war. It makes for reading that is both somber and painfully routine: 36 years-old combat engineer Roman Khiramonov, killed in March of last year, his body only found in September during the Kharkiv counter-offensive and his death finally confirmed recently by DNA identification; 24 years-old Mi-8 pilot Vladyslav Zozulya, killed on June 9 in the crash of his helicopter; 50 years-old tank driver Serhiy Arzhanov, killed in April in the Kharkiv region; and 11 other names).
Zmina / The "shark syndrome" on Ukrainian social networks: dehumanization, psychotherapy or belief in spontaneous justice? (a fascinating debate on the recent controversy about the (sometimes joyful, often joking) way Ukrainian social networks reacted to the news that a Russian man had been eaten alive by a shark in Egypt. Is it a sign of a society becoming more radicalized and dehumanized, or dark humor to help cope with the war? No clear answer of course, though psychologist Maryna Didenko says “both”: “is this a process of dehumanization? Yes, but it is situational and short-term, as a manifestation of a certain protective mechanism.”)
Hromadske / How many Ukrainians? War is killing us faster than demographers can count (The demography of Ukraine is one of those long-standing problems that the war has made catastrophic. And of course, one subset of that problem —we didn’t really know how many Ukrainians lived in Ukraine— has also been made much, much worse by the invasion, as millions of Ukrainians fled the country, millions more were displaced, and countless fell under Russian occupation. This piece is a really good look at the challenges behind the arithmetic, on an issue that will be absolutely crucial for the reconstruction of Ukraine.)
Something to watch
Kharkiv-born Ukrainian freediver Nataliia Zharkova beating the Constant Weight Bifins world record with a depth of 93 meters, back in 2019.