The Long War #2
PARIS, France—To take her final exam from Enerhodar, a city on the bank of the Dniepr river occupied by the Russian military since early March, Olga (not her real name) had to grab her laptop, walk through a wooden park and find a quiet spot on a nearby sandy beach— one of the city’s few remaining areas where locals could still get a signal. There, the 21 years-old student managed to connect to the university's online classroom and start taking the exam. “It was very difficult and I was constantly getting disconnected, but in the end it worked out and I got the highest grade,” she wrote to me on a secure messaging app.
I first got in touch with Olga in early April, but hadn’t heard from her in over a month. Internet service had been down pretty much the entire period, while Ukrainian mobile networks remain very patchy. Currently, she says, “only Russian [phone] numbers work well”.
Her bachelor’s degree in hand, Olga now watches nervously as the war gets closer. Despite the surreal condition behind the Russian occupation of the nearby nuclear power plant (Enerhodar was built by the Soviet Union to house the plant’s workers), there had been little fighting inside or near the city. Now however, “we can hear gunshots every night” she says. “Facing us across the river is the Ukrainian-controlled city of Nikopol, and they [Russian soldiers] have begun to actively shoot at it from our shore. It’s really stressful… and from time to time, missiles fly over the city and are being shot down by the occupiers”.
While thousands of Ukrainians fled the territories now controlled by Moscow, Olga and her parents have stayed put. Back in April, it was because the city remained quiet and she was “afraid of the unknown, of what would happen after the evacuation.” Staying seemed like the safest option. Now, Olga doesn’t know anymore.
Something to read
🔶 (Associated Press) 'The mouth of a bear': Ukrainian refugees sent to Russia (This detailed, thorough investigation about the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have found themselves in Russia since the beginning of the invasion is the best story I’ve read on the topic. It’s a complex story, as there’s little doubt at least part of those Ukrainians voluntarily went to Russia — the AP story acknowledges this, but also points out how much of a false choice this can be when faced with the most brutal European war since 1945. It also highlights the treatment of those refugees by the Russian authorities, between grueling filtration camps, confiscation of Ukrainian documents, or just being sent to remote towns thousands of kilometers away)
🕛 (The New York Times / Op-ed) Putin Thinks He’s Winning (Tatiana Stanovaya remains one of the most astute analysts when it comes to Kremlin thinking, and makes a series of crucial points here. While Vladimir Putin entered the war with the utterly delusional view of the Ukrainian state as a rotten tree ready to crash down to the slightest breeze, he has now adjusted its thinking. Putin still believes Ukraine to be essentially a fake state propped up by the West, but now thinks it will need to be grinded down over the long term. Putin’s objective, Stanovaya claims, still is Kyiv’s capitulation, meaning “Kyiv accepting Russian demands that could be summarized as the “de-Ukrainianization” and “Russification” of the country [...] to deprive Ukraine of the right to build its own nation”). As for Western support, while Moscow might have been surprised by its initial scale, it is now convinced that it will be gradually reduced over the coming months. Putin sees this war as a civilisational one, and is now fine with the idea that it might last years.)
🎤 (Detektor Media / in Ukrainian) Ukrainians are born, Russians are killed. Monitoring of Ukrainian information channels from June 27 to July 3 / Google-translated version (Detektor Media is a Ukrainian ONG focused on the monitoring of the country’s media space. It’s been doing these weekly recaps of TV news channels for years now, and it’s always a fascinating way to take the pulse of the Ukrainian media space - all the more so in war time. In this issue, analyst Yaroslav Zubchenko blasts the Russian-language state project “Freedom” for going a bit too far with the propaganda, and TV channel Pryami for puff pieces about former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko (Pryami is in fact owned by Poroshenko). It also praises “Espresso” for being one of the rare TV channels to present in a daily show the recent military developments without too much editorializing)
Something to look at
Something else to check out
🔓 (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) Responsiveness and preparedness in addressing drug-related needs of displaced Ukrainians in EU countries bordering Ukraine. “Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it is estimated that around 8 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, of which an unprecedented 5 million people have crossed the borders into the European Union. An unknown proportion of those displaced will have established drug-related problems and will require medical care for opioid dependence, in particular OAT, as well as for prevention and treatment of drug-related infectious diseases. In order to investigate the responsiveness and preparedness in addressing drug-related needs of displaced Ukrainians in EU countries, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction instigated a mixed-method trendspotter study to assess the initial service response to the needs of displaced Ukrainians in neighbouring EU countries”