Thread: In 2019, I met my favorite cameraman. Ukrainian Anton had grown up in Italy but spoke perfect English and German (was completing a masters at the film school). His cadres, meanwhile, were like masterworks. Everyone looked beautiful in them, because Anton loved people. In February 2022, I remember taking shots with him at a bohemian Berlin bar for Russophones where he worked sometimes. It was the night an intelligence source had confirmed to me the rumors about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine to me. The second worst night of my life.

Moments in German cultural sensitivity: Who thought it was a great idea to invite a Russian curator to an write an essay on Alexander Kluge—who has signed multiple public letters opposing arms to Ukraine—and then dedicate the whole thing to the memory of Victoria Amelina?

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1702595001237086692

Also: Either the gallery or the author got the place where Amelina died wrong in its “dedication” of the article to her. (It was not Dnipro but Kramatorsk.) Adding insult…

🧵Just finished reading a horrific report on torture and confinement in the Ukrainian occupied territories, compiled by Danish rights group Dignity, and several Ukrainian NGOs.

-The report finds that in c. 100 police stations Russia took over, torture chambers were “ubiquitous” The report is based on hundreds of incidents:

What a shocking thread. Re-education camps for stolen children from Ukraine. Read all of it.

https://twitter.com/mykhed_o/status/1625866946246852608

Look at the scale of this nightmare:

https://twitter.com/mykhed_o/status/1625866951422607360

Sources: Western aid workers shelled while trying to help injure civilians in Bakhmut. At least one dead, several gravely injured. Victim is still being identified. The scene of the incident: Three volunteer cars almost completely destroyed. Survivors with horrific wounds.
Local media reporting five are injured.
Video: ‘Ukraina Sechas’

I wanted to put together a summary of the important ECHR decision on Ukraine and the Netherlands versus Russia, delivered in Strasbourg last week.
+++THREAD+++ At this stage of the court process, Ukraine and the Netherlands were trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was Russia that effectively controlled "separatists" in eastern Ukraine.

Russia planned to “subjugate” Ukraine in ten days and control it by summer as part of plans drawn up by a small group of officials led by Vladimir Putin. That’s according to a new report by Britain’s RUSI, an institute linked to Britain’s army, drawing on captured Russian orders. Putin wrote his famous essay (asserting that Ukrainians and Russians were one people) in July 2021. That same month, the report says, the FSB was tasked with surveying Ukrainians. The result of their work seems to have been shaped by confirmation bias.

#Breaking: Ukraine on air alert after warnings of Russia’s largest attack yet, since its campaign to destroy infrastructure began in October. Officials have repeatedly stressed: Please don’t ignore the warnings and proceed to shelters. The head of the president’s office, Andriy Yermak, repeating that message in the past few moments.

Leaving Kyiv for a few weeks to see my family abroad. Hard for people in the EU to understand how difficult life in Ukraine is right now. 1/x I listen to the radio on the way to the station. The reporter says Putin’s killer drones, bought from Iran, are already in the air. In the capital, there were two alerts before 7:00 a.m. Elsewhere, in Kriviy Rig for example, explosions are already reported. 2/x

Yet another air alarm in Kyiv, with unconfirmed reports of drones in the sky from Belarus. This morning’s death-toll has risen to four. Local media are uploading all sorts of dark videos featuring drones “being shot down” on Kyiv’s left bank and in Beliya Tserkov, a town south of Kyiv.

Again, the sirens sound this Monday. Death toll from the kamikaze attack has risen to three. Now, Ukrainian media are reporting that rockets may have been launched from the Caspian Sea. Three rockets were shot down north of Kyiv, and the alert has now been lifted. Many people are becoming more and more nonchalant as the mayhem grows evermore frequent. My barista remained open all through the drone attack.

Explosion heard in downtown Kyiv #breaking I just heard another. Local media had reported Iranian drones flying towards the city.

#Breaking Ukrainian media: Russian planes with transponders turned off launch missiles towards Ukraine. Direction of attack and its intensity unclear. Some rockets headed towards the capital. Officials: Iranian drones cited flying over central-western Ukraine.

German politics: The Greens’ conference was set to debate calling a parliamentary enquiry into #NordStream2 and Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. But the conference commission has now taken the motion off the agenda. 1/x

ndr.de/nachrichten/me… The motion is set to be “referred to the parliamentary party”, a procedure that’s sometimes called “giving it a first-class funeral”, a delegate says. Despite widespread calls for a probe within Germany and abroad. And the fact that the party most likely to champion the issue.

My, Putin’s speech is an incoherence that would even make Trump envious “Entire nations were made drug dependent,” Putin says during his mind-bending tour through world history.

Reading a Danish investigative journalist’s book on the Nord Stream pipelines. Up to the Second Chechen War in ‘99. And, of course, the same civilian targets we have just seen in Mariupol and Mykolaiv were also hit in Grozny: A newborn clinic and a marketplace. At a meeting with EU leaders in Finland, Putin denied having targeted the marketplace to hit civilians; claiming that Chechen clans had stored weapons there, explaining the high death toll.

I wanted to write a little bit about the “tank parade” in Kyiv yesterday. My first impression was that it was something completely bizarre: A spectacle. I hadn’t seen this many people out since the war escalated in February.

Agreed: Little coverage on this, though it is highly dangerous for Scholz politically.
A thread:
Johannes Kahrs, the former MP in whose box 200,000 euros was found, was a kingmaker in Hamburg city politics when Scholz was mayor. He was also SPD finance spokesman.

https://twitter.com/berlin_bridge/status/1557658321687134209

The background to the scandal was a meeting Scholz had with a historic Hamburg bank involved in a “tax scam”, Cum Ex. The Finance Office allowed this bank to keep 50 million it might have had otherwise to repay, after a back-and-forth.

Please do read do Tom’s piece on the @amnesty report. My projects have not taken me to the cities mentioned in the reports for now. However, I wanted to add a comment about the evacuations in Lysychansk, which I know a lot about from a source.
1/

https://twitter.com/tomthescribe/status/1556726535981355008

The Amnesty report says:
“Mykola, who lives in a [Lycychansk] tower block that was repeatedly struck by Russian attacks which killed at least one older man, told Amnesty International: “I don’t understand why our military is firing from the cities and not from the field.” 2/

Serious questions continue to mount over *that @amnesty report*.

https://twitter.com/stratcomcentre/status/1556639186257874944

Report author @DRovera 1) Can you confirm or deny this?
2) If this is indeed so, how can you assure the world that you did not obtain these testimonies under duress?
3) How can you defend cooperating with authorities at sites which are believed to breach the Geneva Conventions?

Good morning Europe
Guten Morgen Deutschland
Good afternoon Australia and Asia
Sirens have just gone off in Kyiv at 8:00 a.m. local time Alert over 😒