Filmmaker and journalist. Conflict, environment, humanitarian issues - right now, mainly Ukraine. Latest documentary produced for the BBC:
Jun 26, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
For those new to Prigozhin in the last 48 hours, it's worth knowing just how heinous his Wagner mercenaries are.
They've committed atrocities and human-rights violations far beyond Ukraine. Their abuses in the Central African Republic have been particularly bad. A quick thread:
Massacres, executions, rape, torture, abductions, violent intimidation... Prigozhin's paramilitaries have committed the worst violations there with impunity, all while shoring up the increasingly authoritarian rule of CAR's President Touadera
Feb 23, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
A year ago to the day, it was sunny in Kharkiv. Something bad was clearly about to happen so I took the afternoon off.
I visited some lovely old churches and then Independence Square as families skated on its ice rink. But it's the city's art museum that really struck me
My Bradt travel guide described it as "number one on the list" of things to do in Kharkiv, given that "few collections in Ukraine represent so fully the country's artistic legacy"
Aug 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Russian mercenaries in the Central African Republic are using drones to scout gold mines before deploying in helicopters to take over the sites - stealing gold and killing miners indiscriminately in the process, says top expert @EnriPicco. Numerous attacks reported this year
Source: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Mar 11, 2022 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
As Putin gives the green light for thousands of fighters from the Middle East to be deployed to Ukraine, a similar move used by the Russians in the Central African Republic (CAR) may give us an idea of what's to come, if indeed he follows through on this. A thread:
So in CAR, in late 2020, the Russian mercenary group Wagner began deploying Libyan & Syrian fighters alongside its own troops to prop up the Bangui government against a new rebel coalition
These fighters were drawn from Russia-backed areas in regime-held Syria & rebel-held Libya
Jan 13, 2020 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
Until recently, the only details of Quds Force ops in central Africa came from uncorroborated claims and sporadic Western intelligence briefings. Now, UN investigators have pieced together the nuts and bolts of a murky plot to spread Tehran's reach into the heart of Africa /1
At its heart was a well-connected middleman called Ismael Djidah who had made a name for himself as a shrewd operator who could fix meetings with warlords, mercenaries and arms smugglers in the rebel-riven borderlands of CAR, Chad and Sudan
