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Olga Tokariuk

@olgatokariuk

13 Jan

@RaiUno

For the last three days, Italian public TV @RaiUno has been broadcasting reports from occupied Donetsk. In these reports, Russia is praised for rebuilding the city, war is described as between Russia and the US, and Ukrainians are called fascists

https://twitter.com/Tg1Rai/status/1480985488542601223?t=CrCdYgUsrf56M00NWPcQ-w&s=19

Reporter says things such as "Up to 2014, Donbas was the most productive and richest part of Ukraine. Today is keeps afloat thanks to the help from Russia, the great mother of this piece of land'

In the latest report, Russian proxies in the trenches said they were combatting against 'Ukrainian fascists' and mentioned the Stalingrad battle. None of these outrageous things are contested or balanced by the reporter. Italian viewers who pay for public TV deserve better

Read 6 tweets

Olga Tokariuk

@olgatokariuk

12 Jan

@EvelynNFarkas

"We must not only condemn Russia’s illegal occupations of Ukraine and Georgia, but we must demand a withdrawal from both countries by a certain date and organize coalition forces willing to take action to enforce it."
A strong take by @EvelynNFarkas
defenseone.com/ideas/2022/01/…

"The horrible possibility exists that Americans, with our European allies, must use our military to roll back Russians—even at risk of direct combat. But if we don’t now, Putin will force us to fight another day, likely to defend our Baltic or other Eastern European allies."

"I believe Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is even more likely after watching Russian forces quell the current round of demonstrations in Kazakhstan. The demonstrations in Almaty and throughout the country likely only intensified Putin’s alarm for democratic uprisings"

Read 5 tweets

Olga Tokariuk

@olgatokariuk

12 Jan

OTD 50 years ago, in 1972 (the year of 50th anniversary of the USSR creation), 19 Ukrainian artists, poets and writers were arrested for their participation in a Vertep, or Ukrainian Christmas caroling performance. KGB charged them with treason and they were jailed for 5-7 ys:🧵

Soviet authorities saw this religious/folk performance as a manifestation of 'Ukrainian nationalism' and a threat to the regime. These arrests marked a start of the crackdown on Ukrainian artists, poets and dissidents, known as 'Shistdesiatnyky (Sixtiers), in the 1970s.

Arrested dissidents were threatened with executions, physical torture, harm to their loved ones. The system of “punitive psychiatry” was used: some who were difficult to accuse of violating the relevant articles of the penal code were declared insane and imprisoned in hospitals

Read 4 tweets

Olga Tokariuk

@olgatokariuk

3 Jan

'Every year, Ukraine becomes more confident, more united, more European. [It] inches a little bit closer to democracy and prosperity. What if it gets there? The idea of a flourishing Ukraine right on Russia’s doorstep is, for Putin, personally intolerable'
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

'One Russian analyst, Vladimir Frolov, notes that the costs of an invasion are steadily rising—because of Ukrainian economic growth, national consolidation, and military investment—and suggests that the price could rise more in the future, which is why Moscow should act now'

'even the most fanatical Russian military planner must realize that once an invasion begins, events will spin out of control: “You don’t know how many people you are going to lose [...]. And you will certainly have trouble keeping control of anything you have invaded.”

Read 6 tweets

Olga Tokariuk

@olgatokariuk

29 Dec 21

By going after human rights organisations, such as Memorial, Putin's Russia recreates the worst Soviet practices.
In 1970s, thousands of human rights defenders were jailed in the USSR. Here's a story of one of them: Mykola Matusevych, co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group🧵

He and nine other activists (only two are still alive) created the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG) in 1976, a year after the USSR signed the Helsinki Final Act, committing to defend human rights.This was also the goal of the UHG. But there was more: to speak openly about Holodomor

Matusevych, born in 1946 in Kyiv region, listened to terrible accounts of Stalin's artificial famine, which killed at least 4 million Ukrainians just a decade ago, whispered into his ear by mother, who survived it. That was the moment when he realised how evil the USSR regime was

Read 13 tweets

Olga Tokariuk

@olgatokariuk

8 Dec 21

'If for Putin the collapse of the USSR is the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, for Ukrainians it is our greatest achievement', Leontiy Sanduliak, co-author of Ukraine's declaration of independence, tells me. 30y ago Belovezha accords put an end to the USSR:🧵

Sanduliak, now 84, was one of those who played a crucial role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was not a dissident or a human rights activist, but a doctor of medical sciences, a university professor in the western city of Chernivtsi and member of the Communist Party

Sanduliak’s opposition to the USSR was rooted in environmental issues. The Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in April 1986 was one of the main events that made him question the regime. Another one was a strange disease in 1988, when children in Chernivtsi started losing their hair

Read 15 tweets

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