Ukraine today: A fresh poll shows Ukrainians’ interest in negotiations; and Zelensky tells Ukrainian reporters he’s “not afraid” of Trump 2.0, and signals more govt shakeups likely ahead. (Rumors of PM Shmyhal’s departure, etc. have swirled for months.) 🧵
A new poll by @RazumkovC for @zn_ua found that 44% of Ukrainians believe it’s time for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia (35% say not yet; 21% undecided). That's a big shift compared to last year, when 64% of Ukrainians opposed talks with Moscow. zn.ua/ukr/UKRAINE/44…
@RazumkovC @zn_ua But vast majority of Ukrainians – 83% – disagree with Putin's conditions, which would include the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from beyond the administrative borders of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia regions just to start talks. zn.ua/ukr/UKRAINE/44…
NEW: Our @FT team identified and located four Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia and are now advertised as up for adoption on a Russian government-linked adoption website, including one child under a false Russian identity. on.ft.com/3KLKm85
.@FT confirmed the children’s IDs with help of Ukrainian Child Rights Protection Centre. We are awaiting further confirmation on two more children located by the FT who we strongly believe are Ukrainian. The children’s guardians and Ukraine’s authorities had previously been unaware of their whereabouts.
The four Ukrainian children were abducted from state care homes and separated from their guardians and relatives in towns across the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that fell under the control of Russia’s invading army in 2022. on.ft.com/3KLKm85
NEW: US is close to signing new security pact with Ukraine in signal of support to assuage Kyiv after “tense” relations that some officials say have hit their lowest ebb since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Story w/ @JamesPoliti @HenryJFoy. More in 🧵below. ft.com/content/966970…
Zelensky’s frustration with Biden was laid bare when the Ukrainian prez rebuked his US counterpart in blunt terms, saying Biden’s plan to attend a Democratic fundraiser rather than Ukraine’s peace summit on June 15-16 was “not a strong decision”. ft.com/content/966970…
One Zelensky-appointed senior government official who spoke to the @FT about the US-Ukraine relationship said: “We are farther apart than ever since the war started. It is very, very tense.” ft.com/content/966970…
Russia’s occupying forces in Bakhmut just published on one of their Telegram channels new video footage and photos of the eastern Ukrainian city almost a year after it was destroyed and captured. The photos are stomach-churning and I admit they fill me with rage. I’ll post them below beside my own photos from when I lived in Bakhmut in 2010-2012, when it was a vibrant, peaceful city that 80,000 called home.
These images show the central square fountain and city hall — or where city hall stood before it was blown up. The first two were taken under Russian occupation. The other two are mine from 14 years ago.
This was the Bakhmut Ferris wheel in the city’s upper central park. It usually operated on holidays and was a meeting place for families. Left: under Russian occupation this month. Right: my photo from 2011.
This is one of the locally famous historic central Bakhmut buildings. My second apartment in the city was in the adjacent building on the left and just out of view. Catty corner was the city hall building and across the road was the central park and fountain from the first tweet above.
Left: today under Russian occupation. Other three photos are mine: from December 2022; summer 2010; and winter 2011.
The Russian air force is stepping up its use of Soviet-era weapons that have been retrofitted for 21st-century warfare and are pounding Ukrainian forces, pulverising towns and giving Moscow an advantage on the battlefield.
My piece for @FT on the Russian "glide bombs" targeting Ukrainian towns and troops positions on the frontline: ft.com/content/0d6612…
Russian glide bombs are wreaking havoc on Ukrainian positions.
“For [Russia], it is much cheaper than using hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, when one of these bombs will demolish several buildings,” said Vlad, a 27-year-old soldier serving in the eastern Donetsk region.
“They are very scary, very lethal,” said Bohdan, another soldier in Donetsk region. “Even a kilometre away, the blast rips the doors of buildings off their hinges.”
Ukrainian foreign minister @DmytroKuleba told @FT that his country’s soldiers “are being massively and I would say even routinely attacked by guided aerial bombs that wipe out our positions”. ft.com/content/0d6612…
Hidden cameras in hotel rooms. Months-long surveillance. Leaked footage on a murky black PR website. Highly disturbing incidents targeting Ukraine’s top investigative journalists in recent days has many in Kyiv concerned about a re-emergence of bad-old-days-type antics.
Unsurprisingly, supposed chief editor of "Narodna Pravda," bogus black PR website that has gone after Ukraine's top investigative journalists who've been critical of govt, has no publicly available social accounts and her image appears to be AI-generated.
This situation stinks of Yanukovych-era attacks on journalists in Ukraine. And "Narodna Pravda" looks like merely the latest version of "Ukrainska Kryvda" back in 2013. Here's my report from back then. Lots of similarities. theworld.org/dispatch/news/…