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Neil Hauer Profile picture
Neil Hauer
@NeilPHauer
Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya), Russia, Ukraine, Syria, heavy metal. Stories @CNN, @CBC, @NYMag, @guardian etc. 🇨🇦 neil.hauer@gmail.com. Eng/рус/հայ.
10 subscribers
Oct 3 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
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.

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Image 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.
Nov 24, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
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. Image
Oct 26, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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. Good commentary here by Hans, who is one of the best on Georgia, on what to expect and GD's likely calculus today:
Dec 4, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Oct 30, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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. Image 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
Mar 30, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
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…
Mar 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Concluding that Russia's offensive on Bakhmut is "culminating" becomes kind of meaningless when you use the term every 48 hours for three months straight Have Ukrainian lines in Bakhmut more or less stabilized in the past week? It certainly seems so! But I'm not sure how insightful one's analysis is when you simply continue to repeat the same phrases until they're eventually correct.
Mar 21, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Just chatting with a journalist friend here about how abysmal @amnesty's work from Armenia/Karabakh and Ukraine has been. Pretty incredible that @DRovera and @AgnesCallamard are still in their positions. Still remember describing to @DRovera an incident the previous day where we saw a van cut up with small arms fire. She insisted that we were wrong and it 'had to be mortars.' *She wasn't there.*

Why anyone still donates to this organization, I'll never understand.
Mar 7, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Georgia's ruling party, having rammed through the first reading of a Russian-style 'foreign agents' law in parliament this afternoon, is now preparing to violently disperse demonstrators protesting the bill with water cannons Just about every Western partner of Georgia, from international organizations to states, has warned that passing the law will do massive damage to Georgia's relations with them. Ruling Georgian Dream party does not seem to care, and draws closer to killing Georgia's EU bid.
Sep 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Five days into Russian mobilization and flight and it already feels like social tensions in Armenia are hitting the boil. Can only imagine what it's like in Georgia. The number of times I've heard some Russian guy here tell someone (in the only non-Russian words he knows) to 'speak Russian' is absurd
Sep 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Those people in favour of banning all Russians entering the EU should consider that they are basically forcing the entire burden onto small, vulnerable states like Georgia and Armenia, which have seen tens of thousands of arrivals According to official statistics only (earlier numbers + flights) about 2% of Armenia's entire population of just three million is now Russian emigrants. Georgia is probably more. The socioeconomic consequences (cost of living increases, esp. rent) are huge.
Sep 18, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Some of the numerous pointed and forceful comments made by Pelosi in Yerevan today:

"[There were] illegal and deadly attacks by Azerbaijan on Armenian territory. We strongly condemn those attacks. This was initiated by the Azerbaijanis and there has to be recognition of that." "At the beginning of our country President Benjamin Franklin was asked what we would want – security or freedom. He said you cannot have either unless you have both. So, let’s work to strengthen both, when it comes to the relationship between the United States and Armenia."
Sep 17, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The NYT's inimitable Carlotta Gall, writing yet another article riddled with basic mistakes on Armenia, including failing to even locate where the latest fighting is happening nytimes.com/2022/09/17/wor… Why send a correspondent or commission someone in the area to do actual reporting when you can just file garbage from London and call it a day
Aug 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Related to the author of the disastrous Amnesty report. I was in the room and it was an absolute sight to behold - a level of condescension, hubris and arrogance that would be difficult to reproduce. At one point we described a van we had seen that same day that had clearly taken small arms fire and was pockmarked with bullet holes. @DRovera *insisted* that we must have been mistaken and that it was mortar fire instead. She wasn't even there! Absolutely bizarre.
Aug 5, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Amnesty released a bad and false equivalency war crimes report being used by a dictatorship to justify its brutalities, you say? Just disgusting, shameful shit from @amnesty as per norm. Cancel your donations, folks.
Aug 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
There are some people justifying this assault by saying that it was against 'illegal Armenian armed formations.' These are local Karabakh Armenian units. They are not mentioned in the Nov 2020 agreement and are not a violation of anything. Any such mention is misleading. What is *supposed* to happen in the 2020 ceasefire agreement is that all sides stop in their places and a political process takes place to determine the future of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has violated this at least three times so far, including today.
Aug 3, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
❗ Renewed fighting in Karabakh as Azerbaijani forces reportedly attempt to advance near Lachin corridor, region's only link to Armenia. Karabakh Armenian side reports 7 injured. Azerbaijani side using mortars and UAVs. Karabakh Armenian side reports additional casualties amid Azerbaijani assault: 1 dead, 15 wounded total so far
Jun 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Reports that Russian forces have entered or taken the village of Tetianivka, near Sviatohirsk north of Sloviansk. We were close enough last week to get a picture of the wooden church on the hillside beside it. That church was since hit by Russian artillery fire and set alight
Jun 1, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
I left Ukraine this morning. After almost a month in Donbas, an overwhelming but vital experience in so many ways, my present trip has come to an end. A few thoughts below. Image Ukrainian troops are fighting for every inch of land in Donbas. They are giving everything trying to repel a foreign invader set on destroying them as a people. The courage and sheer force of will of the men (and women) I saw on the frontlines amazed me. ImageImageImage
May 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Russian forces pressing hard to take Severodonetsk now, pushing into the city from several directions Deepstate map marks half the city as taken or contested
May 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
We're now at about three months of various claims (given weight by serious publications) about Syrians heading to Russia/Ukraine without any actual evidence ever surfacing theguardian.com/world/2022/may… When Syrian fighters were deployed by Turkey to Azerbaijan/Karabakh in 2020, the hard evidence came pretty quick: geolocated photos and videos of those fighters within a week or two. If they were in Russia/Ukraine by now, we'd probably know it.