Ilya Lozovsky Profile picture
Mar 8 8 tweets 3 min read
A bit more on that UN story. Earlier today, @NaomiOhReally reported that UN staff had been instructed not to use the words "war" or "invasion" to refer to Russia's invasion of, and war on, Ukraine. irishtimes.com/news/world/uni…
This is obviously problematic because, in the name of trying to be impartial, they're adopting the Russian narrative. The New York Times pulled out of Russia today, in part because it's now punishable by up to 15 years in prison to describe what's happening as a war. Which it is.
So, while Russians and journalists risk long prison terms to speak the truth, the UN is instructing its staff not to.

MOREOVER, in response to the story, an official UN account @UN_Spokesperson smeared @NaomiOhReally as a liar, calling the story "fake" and baldly denying it. Image
They then deleted the tweet and reposted, this time without the word "fake." But note the sleight of hand. As "evidence" that the story is false, they cite a senior official using the word "war." But this doesn't contradict the claim that (lower-level?) staff were told not to! Image
Moreover, the claim "it is simply not the case that staff have been instructed" is a lie, considering the email Naomi obtained. Here's a screenshot. It has capital letters on the word "NOT"! That's not an instruction, @UN_Spokesperson? Image
Naomi showed me the unredacted email. It's real. And when she challenged the UN spokesperson on it, they said:
"All I can tell you is that no email went out from NY to staff with these instructions. I don’t dispute the validity of that email but it can not be considered official policy to staff."
Ok, so it didn't come from New York. And it's "not policy."

You be the judge of whether that's a fair defense — and whether it's fair grounds on which to publicly insult a professional journalist.

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More from @ichbinilya

Mar 8
I'm not sure how to tell you this.

But, apparently, there's a trend on Russian TikTok to film yourself panicking about the difficult economic situation in the country... set to a track called "vile Jewish music."

...yeah. Short thread.
Here's a Russian aggregator explaining the trend. (This site, online since 2014, seems to get most of its material from social media posts.) medialeaks.ru/0503mlv-txt-po…
Here's one example. This girl bought an iPhone just before prices went up, and now she doesn't know whether to open it or to sell it.
Read 10 tweets
Mar 8
About Ukraine's EU aspirations — which I fully support, as do most Ukrainians! — important to understand how arduous the process is, and for good reason. Read this whole story, but key bits in next tweets:
nytimes.com/2022/03/04/wor…
"There are 35 chapters of accession negotiations, each relating to a policy area in which the candidate country is being asked to make changes — both judicial and practical — to align itself with the European Union standards."
"Work on specific chapters can stall for years, and any progress is subject to a constant monitoring of the standards of the candidate country’s court and judicial systems, as well as the quality of its democratic institutions."
Read 8 tweets
Mar 7
Just got this giant banner on Twitter, inviting me to look at @TwitterMoments' list of curated Ukraine experts. Lots of great accounts listed there, but also...
...this controversial "debunking" site, which smeared independent journalist @leonidragozin as a "Kremlin agent," has been accused of far-right ties and shoddy journalistic practices...
...and this site, which grew in influence after covering Belarusian protests last year but has been publishing unverified (and sometimes obviously fake) information on Ukraine in recent days.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 4
A short thread that's very difficult to write.

Those of us with friends, loved ones, or colleagues in Ukraine — or who are simply in love with the country — have been in a state of continual heartbreak for weeks, and especially in the last few days as Russian atrocities mount.
We want to do everything we can to support the people we care about, and the millions of people who we don't know, but for whom our hearts are breaking.

Those of us who are journalists face the additional, somewhat orthogonal role of trying to help people get at the truth.
Broadly speaking, there is no conflict there. Telling the truth about Russia's unjust, criminal, unprovoked assault on a peaceful country is a service to that country. We do this work, in part, because it is an act of love.

But there is a tension.
Read 11 tweets
Mar 3
Just a few hours after Echo Moskvy, Dozhd is halting its work, "temporarily" for now. They say it's because of the law, about to be passed, criminalizing publication of "fake news" — eg, that there is a war in Ukraine. In one day, two of Russia's top independent outlets close.
they're letting viewers thank them and say goodbye, live on the air
Read 8 tweets
Mar 3
I live-tweeted the Russian Propag--- excuse me, Education Ministry's "Russia-wide online lesson" about the situation today. You can read that thread here. In this thread, a few thoughts.
Speaking as an editor, I thought it was pretty shambolic. They didn't set the context, there was no narrative arc. It was very haphazard. By *far* the most effective part was when they interviewed residents of the self-proclaimed eastern Ukrainian republics.
Some genuinely moving moments there. Mothers talking about their children killed in Ukrainian shelling, etc. They hammered this home again and again— peaceful civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk were being shelled for years. They said 14k civilians had been killed.
Read 11 tweets

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