I’m excited to announce a new feature-length documentary project I’m working on with my co-director @apoolos about Russia’s efforts to eradicate Evangelical Christians from the map of Ukraine to impose Russian Orthodoxy as the state religion. Please support this film by donating paypal.com/paypalme/simon… Not many people know about the holy war being waged within the larger war in Ukraine, but Russian forces have methodically destroyed, expropriated and closed Christian churches representing the “wrong” denominations in the territory they have taken control of. They’ve also kidnapped and tortured hundreds of clergy and killed many priests and pastors.

I was in Crimea in 2014 when Russia sent troops to take over the peninsula. I meticulously documented the war they started in Ukraine in over 100 episodes & several documentaries for VICE News. Russia has been lying about its involvement from the start. youtube.com/playlist?list=… After Moscow finally admitted Russian soldiers had carried out the Crimea operation Russia started denying it was taking part in the war in eastern Ukraine. So I made this documentary explaining how it was sending forces across the border in secret:

Why is Russia trying to mask its use of North Korean troops in its war against Ukraine? My sources in Ukraine have provided me with the first hard evidence of DPRK casualties, killed on December 18th in fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.
It includes Russian military IDs recovered from the bodies of the soldiers that state that they are from the Tuva region of Russia, not the DPRK, however the IDs are purportedly issued in 2018 yet somehow look brand new and one of them bears a signature in the Korean language.

“Human rights activist perishes tragically” “Restauranteur dies in aviation mishap”

“Putin’s Chef” Prigozhin recruiting mercenaries for the war in Ukraine in a prison. “In 1/2 a year you go home with a pardon… there’s no way you end up back in prison. Those who arrive on the first day and don’t like where they’ve ended up are considered deserters and get shot.” “We’re very careful with those who are serving time for sexual crimes. But we understand that mistakes happen.”

This week Azerbaijan conducted strikes in Armenia killing 49 troops. This represents a serious escalation because until now the conflict between the two countries has been mostly limited to Karabakh which is inside Azerbaijan. Russia has a NATO-style pact with Armenia in which an attack on one is supposed to be seen as an attack on all. Russia was not obligated to intervene when fighting was centered on Karabakh but now Armenia’s PM has officially asked for Russian assistance.

Dozens of Ukrainian troops died in a July 17 Russian missile strike on Mykolaiv, unconfirmed by Ukraine’s military. I travelled to the city last week to produce this report for @NewsHour and saw first-hand the devastating toll Russia’s missiles are taking. While much reporting lately has focused on the havoc American HIMARS missiles are surely causing to Russian forces, Russia’s own barrage of missile attacks against Ukraine appears to be well targeted and very damaging not just to civilians, but also to its war effort.

Our @nytvideo team went to Estonia to interview a dozen Ukrainian refugees who survived the siege of Mariupol & were then forced to resettle in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly removed & pressured to take Russian citizenship.
nytimes.com/video/world/eu… Everyone we spoke to had been subjected to intrusive interrogations known as “filtration” before being put on evacuation trains to remote locations around Russia. They described seeing men who didn’t pass the screening being led away without explanation.

Hey @Twitter, you are doing a terrible job policing your platform when it comes to Ukraine. You are failing. Hundreds of sock puppet accounts attack every tweet that counters the Kremlin narrative, meanwhile you fall for coordinated campaigns to suspend genuine accounts. This war has been going on since 2014. Figure it out. Get the expertise, get the damn bots out of our replies. I don’t care how. We are reporting on atrocities over here. We don’t need manufactured sarcasm about people who were murdered in cold blood populating our feeds.

Aiden Aslin (right), a Brit who has been fighting to defend Mariupol with Ukraine’s marines and posting about the war on the @cossackgundi Instagram account (which appears to have been taken down) has surrendered to Russian troops, a former member of his squad just told me. We interviewed Aiden in 2019 but at the time he was worried about being identified because of a British legal investigation so it wasn’t run. The picture is a cutaway from a story we did on an American in his unit for @newshour which you can view here:

.@tvrain just cut into its broadcast of Putin’s security council meeting to say that the defense minister’s watch is 5 hours behind the current time. Putin is really running this meeting with all of Russia’s top officials like a reality TV show: As you know, I’ve gathered you all here without speaking with you or asking your counsel ahead of time…

Since Russia has started throwing around words like “genocide”, let’s revisit this story we filmed in 2014 about the mass grave that was filled with the bodies of people executed by men loyal to Russian citizen and ex-FSB officer Igor Girkin in #Ukraine Russia’s Girkin held a vast territory where banditry, murder & carjackings became commonplace. I know this firsthand because his men kidnapped and threatened to kill me. Girkin told @RolandOliphant he questioned me himself while I was blindfolded. They also stole my car.

I think all this talk of imminent invasion is Biden finally calling Putin’s bluff. He’s basically saying “we’re not going to give you what you want on NATO. Your move. You want to be seen as next Hitler? Be my guest.” Only a credible threat of all out war could potentially force the collective West to give Russia what it wanted on Ukraine and NATO. Hence the very real troop buildup around Ukraine over the last several months.

As I head back to the United States tonight from Brazil after two weeks reporting on the country’s disastrous second Covid wave for @NewsHour I feel extremely alarmed. What happened here is not just a lesson about the past but a lesson to take heed of right now. I was one of those people who thought requiring people to continue restrictive social distancing practices after they’ve been vaccinated was overkill that would just lead to more pandemic fatigue and obnoxious rule flouting.

I had a really weird night on Election Day 2016. I was working on a documentary for Insight TWI, the TV production company where Jon @Ossoff - who just won the Senate run-off in Georgia - was managing director. Jon had asked us to interview Chris Hill, the leader of the Georgia chapter of the III% militia because they were planning to march on DC with guns the next day to protest against Hillary Clinton (who they thought would imminently nix the 2nd amendment).

In north Philadelphia this afternoon where voter activity doesn’t seem very high but there are lots of volunteers in the area to make sure voters feel safe because of the rumors that have been swirling about the potential for voter intimidation here #Election2020 Lots of police in downtown Philadelphia this afternoon. #Election2020

Have you ever wondered why there is a list of banned foreign terrorist groups but no domestic one? Especially since homegrown right wing violence is killing more Americans than ever? I try to answer that question in this report for PBS @NewsHour Weekend. Fresh figures from Maryland University's START program, which tracks ideologically-driven violence shows that right wing extremists killed 201 people in the years since 9/11 vs 140 killed by Islamist extremists.

Protest outside the 114th Precinct in Queens Police have blocked the street now and an officer just went up to every individual officer and said “we are holding this line.” Protesters are chanting “we are peaceful.”

Just listened through the leaked conversations between Biden and ex-Ukrainian president Poroshenko. There's nothing in there that goes beyond what Biden has already publicly stated himself about the conditions for the $1billion loan guarantee to Ukraine. The 2015-2016 recordings, which all appear to be made from Poroshenko's end, have Biden telling the Ukrainian president he's "prepared to do a public signing" of the loan guarantee once Ukraine's prosecutor general is dismissed. No mention of his son Hunter.

Tune in to your local @PBS station where @NewsHour is broadcasting the impeachment hearings. First up, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent who worked at the embassy in Kyiv for years before overseeing the region from DC. Now giving his opening statement is William Taylor, the top US diplomat currently serving in Kyiv. He served as ambassador there once before during the W. Bush administration. Brought in again after Trump summarily dismisses his predecessor Yovanovitch earlier this year.

My latest for @NewsHour. Spoke with key players in the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s dismissal to find out if Trump’s theory - that Biden wanted him fired to protect his son’s business interests - holds any water. Full story here: Ukraine’s former president Poroshenko, who faced Biden’s pressure at the time, told me they only discussed reforms to the prosecutor’s office, not Burisma, the company Hunter Biden worked for.