U.N. Human Rights Council: Russian forces are raping and torturing children as young as four in Ukraine.
nbcnews.com/news/world/rus… Rape and sexual assault attributed to Moscow's forces in Ukraine are part of a Russian "military strategy" and a "deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims."
--UN envoy Pramila Patten.
france24.com/en/live-news/2…

My whole life I’ve encountered Russians who on first meeting were happy to tell me that Ukraine doesn’t exist & that Ukrainian is a stupid bad form of Russian….
On a ferry, at the airport, in a office elevator.
This is what we mean by Russian imperialism & it’s not just Putin.

https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1650133874913992707

Admittedly, the fellow in the elevator was not Russian, but a Polish Minister from PIS. I imagine he’s changed his tune.

But Russian imperialism… how does one change that ingrained culture?

This lady wants to dominate & subjugate peoples. She feels it her natural right.

Put the term "Russification" in any academic database and you'll get well-documented histories of the same tactics that Russia uses today: Invade, kill, Russify/forcefully assimilate, occupy the territory and hope people forget their own history. Rinse & repeat. Incredible that they think they can keep doing this. But here we are in 2023.
Take Crimea as an example. In the 1785 Census, Crimea was 84% Tartar (Qırımtatarlar), 2.2% Russian & others. Today its around 13% Tartar, 68% Russian & < 16% Ukrainian.

Together with @john_tomaney, we have guest edited a volume on the governance of land use in the journal @Land_MDPI . We've just published our introduction to the Special Issue that articulates the Governance of Land Use Conceptual Framework.
mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/3… At the OECD I had the absolute pleasure of co-leading a programme of research on the Governance of Land Use with my colleague @AbelSchumann under the leadership of @RudigerAhrend & @Garcilazo_Enri.

Somehow, the notion of Russia 'civilizing' its colonies persists in many quarters. I took classes in Uni where profs argued this. The reality is however colonization and persistent social stratification.
Take for example what happened in Kyrgyzstan... Kyrgyzstan became an ‘internal colony’ as a result of Imperial Russia’s conquest of Central Asia--Kyrgyz were given the status of ‘aliens.’ By 1912, 87,000 armed colonists held 4.5 million ha of arable & pasture lands, leaving 780,000 Kyrgyz with 3.7 million ha.

I'm sorry to report that my University has really let Ukrainian students down. Sharing here a note from @uvic's Ukrainian Students' Society on the escalating harassment and hate that they 've faced from the Young Communist League - a ratified club.
instagram.com/p/Cn3ECXCpJZr/… Young Communist League members have been spreading hate against Ukrainian students--@UVSS didn't take this seriously. Now Ukrainian students have been verbally assaulted and had their spaces vandalized -- YCL calling them "Nazi" etc.

Colonialism is many things--brutal, grotesque, hatful--but it's also a blindness. Discounting the knowledge and worldview of peoples who have/are facing colonization leads to blindness in understanding and decision making of colonial powers. The ongoing ignorance and discounting of the knowledge & worldviews of diverse Indigenous peoples worldwide is a very obvious example. Societies as a whole are far worse off for it.

I wonder what most Westerners understand of Russia’s war. As Yale Historian Timothy Snyder noted, it’s rare that a country pre-announce that its intention is to commit genocide—but Russia did just that. And it’s carrying this out now. Russian soldiers were instructed areas like Bucha & Irpin to kill everyone. Russian tv pundits casually discuss how many Ukrainians should be killed—4 or 6 million—to bring the population to submission. Putin recently made any crimes committed by soldiers in Ukraine legal.

My brother in law is from Donetsk. He fled when Russia invaded in 2014 but his parents remained. They’re there now. Won’t say more about them. Don’t want to identify them.
But among this very tiny sample, what do they think about the situation? All they really want is for this all to be over. Life in occupied Donetsk has been dreary and regime prevented them from ever seeing their grandchildren. They are simple people. They just want peace and are quite apolitical when it comes down to it.

This has been a really hard year. I remember when Russia first invaded in 2014 and Ukraine’s army had been gutted by Yanukovych. We were fundraising for everything. A real Peoples’ Army. The way Ukraine defended was incredible—truly David vs Goliath. But the response from the west was so weak. Russia got away with yet another land grab. Ukraine kept out of NATO.
And then the dehumanization of Ukrainians started to ramp up on Russian airwaves. They were preparing their population to commit genocide.

Interview with my father, Bohdan Krawchenko, about how Russia uses Famine, Terror, and Deportation to Suppress Ukrainian Nationhood on the Silicon Curtain. Thank you so much @jonathanfink!! Great conversation!

https://twitter.com/CurtainSilicon/status/1604902762684506113

Includes a discussion of the how the Soviet Union’s wasteful model of industrialization in a command coming was fuelled in part by stealing surplus from the peasantry (hence mass starvation—later purposefully intensified to control/murder population).

I recently gave a public talk on just #EnergyTransitions through @uviccontinuing. One of the attendees made the argument that Canada shouldn't bother decarbonizing because we're not a large net GHG contributor. There are a lot of ways to respond this this argument - it's a common one for sure. Canada is a large per capita and historical GHG contributor. One can obviously argue that on moral/ethical grounds we should do the right thing.

My father, Bohdan Krawchenko, wrote his dissertation on the Holodomor - here is an excerpt from one of his articles: The Man-Made Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine (Conflict Quarterly, 1984). How many died? How many millions perished? Harry Lang, editor of the left-wing Jewish daily Forward, published in New York, visited Ukraine in 1933 and was told by a high-ranking state official: 'Six million people perished from the famine in our country . . ..'

Nine years ago Ukrainians took to the Maidan in Kyiv fed up with the Kremlin's hold on politics and disgusted by the violence and corruption of the puppet Yanukovych regime. They proved the power of the people and Putin was so scared. Russia then invaded eastern Ukraine, took Crimea and has been murdering Ukrainians ever since. At every turn they've tried to pervert and undermine the Revolution of Dignity because it embodies People Power. The greatest threat to sick authoritarian regimes.

The videos of Ukrainian forces asking captured Russian forces what they think they are doing on their land… why they killed their parents, or raped their family or destroyed their towns. These deeply personal confrontations. It’s brutal. 1 Someone who was living their life, a math teacher or a driver… to have these invaders rip apart their lives… having to go to war. Ukraine is losing its best. This is just so unfair and wrong. 2

🧵The Kremlin pushes the idea that #Ukraine is corrupt. This is wrong. Let me share here the high level findings of the 5th Round of Monitoring Under the OECD Istanbul #AntiCorruption Action Plan. Link to full report ▶️
oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/ant… ▶️#Ukraine's National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP) developed a draft #AntiCorruption
strategy in 2020.
▶️Ukraine’s conflict of interest legal framework is comprehensive and the NACP is assigned to oversee its implementation; enforcement by courts is low (needs work)

Great podcast on #Ukraine's green #energy future! Link to full episode below.

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1532319817654468608

Some interesting tidbits - Putin knows a ton about Ukrainian anti-corruption efforts. This is clearly a huge threat to his regime and one among several reasons for the full invasion.

OPEN LETTER BY 96 EXPERTS ON EASTERN EUROPE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT: Peace and Stability in Europe Depend on #Ukraine's Destiny tinyurl.com/yckrx82b 1. Actions to take now:
•Sanctions on all #Russian banks and a complete ban of Russia from the SWIFT payment system;
• A full stop on buying any oil, natural gas, or other commodities from Russia;

🧵Update from Dr. Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Kyiv Mohila Academia.

1. Thoughts from Kyiv – evening 4 April
Dignity. As the tragedies of Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin, Borodyanka, & of the villages north of Kyiv that lived (and died) through a month of Russian occupation become better known.. 2. ...what strikes me (and others) as the most catastrophic, the most revolting, nauseating and disgusting, about these mass killings is that their victims were denied Dignity.

🧵1. #Ukrainians are organizing at level level. Resistance to the occupiers but also, rebuilding, accommodating internal displacement, doing everything they can to keep things running, keeping the economy going, thinking of the future. 2. Just got off the phone with an academic from Rivne The National University of Water and Environmental Engineering. Surreal to hear the air raid sirens. We are going to organise seminars on regional development, crisis management, asset management, local economic dev....

🧵Another update from Professor Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Kyiv Mohilo Academia.
Thoughts from Kyiv – afternoon March 9

1. This war must have a purpose. 2. Perhaps I am being too mystical in my thinking, but history seems to show that changing the course of human development sometimes requires catastrophe . Could it be that all this death and destruction may have some constructive end?