Something I've noticed over the past week or so here: almost every Ukrainian I spoke to has made it clear that they blame not only Putin, but the average Russian as much (or more) for this war. The view is: we overthrew our corrupt government, and they accept their murderous one.
The amount of animosity from the average Ukrainian towards the average Russian is already huge and growing more with every single new airstrike, every new civilian death. The effects of this war will last for generations.
And I'm saying this from Kharkiv. I think I saw more virulently anti-Russian views here than anywhere else in the country. The sense of betrayal here, of 'how could they possibly do this to *us*', is incredible.
The people we watched crawl out of the rubble today told us their relatives in Moscow didn't believe them. Videos of their destroyed home were met with 'it's a fake' or 'Nazis did it.' *Every* bond between Ukrainians & Russians - familial, cultural, historical - is being broken.
Honestly Kharkiv is crazy. Everything from the center going northwards, just street after street is blown out. Every street littered with glass and burned-out cars and broken buildings.
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Yesterday I had the rare opportunity to speak with infantry from Ukraine's 14th Brigade. They had just returned from a 90-day posting in Novoekonomichne - one of the hottest parts of the entire front. Their commander, 'Bobruk,' had some very interesting insights.
Thread:
1. Bobruk and his team had just completed 90-day rotation, basically on the zero line/gray area the entire time. Surviving this was almost a miracle. They now had just five days off (mostly still in Donetsk oblast) before heading back - the lack of manpower is that bad.
2. Units are all tiny now, on both sides. Bobruk's team deploys mostly in pairs, and Russians come in ones or twos. 'Even three soldiers together is already enough to almost guarantee a (FPV) drone strike,' Bobruk said.
Yesterday, I was blocked from entering the Republic of Turkey. I flew into Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen Airport from Yerevan, Armenia, for purposes of a tourist visit. At passport control, I was taken aside, informed 'you are on the blacklist,' detained for 16 hours and deported back.
I was provided no details on why I am banned from Turkey aside from what's on this form, which merely indicates 'entry ban' with no further details. I have visited Turkey many times, most recently in summer 2022, and never had a problem before this.
I am certain that this ban has something to do with my work as a journalist, although I'm not sure what: I rarely ever report on Turkey, and not on Kurdish or Gulenist issues, the normal cause of foreign journalists having problems there.
Clip of the day for Georgia's election: a Georgian Dream shoving a big handful of ballots into a ballot box. Irregularities and open fraud all over the place, as well as violence and intimidation by pro-government actors.
The current shift to a pessimistic narrative around Ukraine following the failure of the counteroffensive reminds me of so many previous seemingly then-infallibly true narratives around the war. A quick thread:
1. Before the war, the expectation in many quarters was that if Russia would invade Ukraine, it would quickly crushed organized Ukrainian resistance by its superior quantity and quality of men and materiel. For many reasons, this didn't happen, but it felt incredibly likely.
2. Then, as Ukraine successfully defended Kyiv and Russian troops bungled everywhere, the narrative shifted again, to an incompetent Russian army that stood no chance and would quickly fall apart everywhere. This euphoria dominated from April for a few months last year.
Almost five full months into Ukraine's counteroffensive, with action winding down, I think it's safe to say it has been a serious failure. The overarching goal was to liberate a large amount of territory, including the cities of Tokmak and Melitopol, and this has not happened.
There's obviously a million caveats and context/explanations you can add, but if you showed the above map of the next five months of gains to someone on June 1, they would undoubtedly regard it as a serious failure
There's a lot of people responding to this who don't seem to understand that Ukraine needs to liberate its territory in order to win. There were a ton of resources compiled for this offensive with this goal in mind. It hasn't succeeded. Don't know what else to tell you.
Extremely worrying news from Russia. Evan is a professional and excellent journalist. It looks like the Kremlin is thinking about making him a hostage.
Russian MFA spox Zakharova echoes the spying allegations and implies there are other foreign journalists they'd like to arrest. Evan was the first, but unlikely to be the last. t.me/MariaVladimiro…