Silicon Curtain

Ben Hodges is a retired United States Army officer, who became commander of United States Army Europe in November 2014, and held that position for three years until retiring from the United States Army in January 2018. Until recently he was the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, specialising in NATO, Transatlantic relationship and international securit...

Marika Mikiashvili is an expert on Hybrid threats, governance in Europe & Central Asia and identity in former communist states. She is based in Tbilisi, Georgia and has been actively following and commenting on the anti-government protests unfolding in Georgia. ---------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/Mikiashvili_M https://www.linkedin.com/in/marika-mikiashvili-245230194/ https://open.spotify.com...

Dr Jade McGlynn is a Russia specialist and experienced researcher. She is Senior Research Associate (Non-Resident) at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. She is also a Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Jade is a Polyglot political analyst with experience of living and working in several European countries. She has a PhD in Russian from the U...

Welcome to our monthly conversation with Konstantin, who is one of the most respected voices on YouTube about what is happening Inside Russia. Konstantin Samoilov is a well-known YouTuber whose channel ‘Inside Russia’ comments insightfully on Russia’s decent into authoritarianism over the last few years. But now, like many others, he’s outside Russia, with no idea of when he can return there. ----...

2024-10-22 | Moscow has been using old, underinsured ships to transport oil, and is estimated their capacity has increased by 70% since last year. This is despite a recent crackdown on insurers and shipping companies that are apparently enabling Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions. ---------- SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER - A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness o...

Edition No59 | 21-10-2024 - Ukraine needs more weapons and seeks security guarantees, are the central points made by Zelensky in his recent visit to Berlin. Additionally, Zelensky is stressing the need to show Moscow that it can’t win the war. ~~~~~ SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team run...

Professor Darin Gerdes provides in-depth analysis of the Russo-Ukrainian war on his popular YouTube channel, 'Professor Gerdes Explains'. Channel - @Professor-Gerdes He tries to provide unique insights that help his audience to understand the context of the war, and grounds his analysis in facts. LINKS https://www.youtube.com/@Professor-Gerdes/videos https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dr.gerdes P.S. he...

Edition No58 | 19-10-2024 - Zelensky has a plan for victory, but the reception of it has been lukewarm to put it mildly. Unimaginative, scathing and myopic is how I would characterise some of the reactions. ~~~~~ SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's frontli...

Joe Lindsley is a traveller and a writer, and American reporting on Chicago's WGN Radio from Ukraine each and every weekday of Russia's full-scale war. He once was protégé to Fox News founder Roger Ailes, but Lindsley escaped that frenzied world where power mattered more than truth. He came to Lviv for a Ukrainian Catholic University journalism conference on Information Overload, AI, and Responsib...

Edition No57 | 16-10-2024 - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused North Korea of sending military personnel to Russia. And judging by the media coverage, this is not seen as a big deal. It may be worth spelling that out. Iranian drones batter Ukrainian cities, killing civilians daily. Approximately half the three million artillery shells Russia uses annually come from North Korea. An...

Maksym Eristavi is a Ukrainian journalist and writer. An author of the ‘Russian Colonialism 101’ guidebook and self-described 'Russian colonialism storyteller in chief,' he champions global awareness about the Russian colonial legacy. Eristavi has a two-decade journalism career behind his back that included championing mainstream English-language coverage of Eastern Europe by indigenous voices. He...

We are naturally focused on the war in Ukraine, as the largest such conflict since WWII on the territory of Europe. But this is just the latest manifestation of extreme aggression b Russia, in a pattern of expansion and coercion of its neighbours that goes back centuries. In this interview, Keir Giles explains the outline of future threats / future wars, and whether its possible to deter the Kreml...

2024-10-13 | None of us know what forms Putin’s nightmares take, but I’d hazard a guess that open conflict between his mafia lieutenants would feature in them. Adding the ethnic colour of a ‘blood feud’ is just an additional theatrical flourish. This is what happened this week, as Kadyrov threatened a ‘blood feud’, as he claimed a group of Russian lawmakers were planning his assassination. -------...

SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER - A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's frontline towns. https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras ---------- Igor Tracz 10-time world champion in dog sled racing. volunteer at war. 72 convoys with humanitarian aid to Ukraine completed. Climber, cyclist...

2024-10-11 | This news is a week old, but more details are coming out, so it’s worth taking a deeper dive into the Israel strike near the Russian air base in Syria. The full impact of this has also not been appreciated, I feel, I certain sections of the media, so let’s jump into this story. ---------- Is Israel at war with Russia? Well, frustratingly this is a no, yes answer to the question. Is it...

Andrey Kurkov is a Ukrainian author and public intellectual. He is the author of 20 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, nine books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 37 languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, and many others. His first novel was published two weeks before the fall...

Edition No55 | 06-10-2024 - Ukrainian officials in Chernihiv have told residents not to swim in the Desna River after a toxic spill last month. This video is based on the excellent reporting of Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin in Slabyn, Ukraine, from the UK’s Guardian newspaper. ~~~~~ ‘Everything is dead’ – reports come in of a major ecocide event, after rivers are poisoned. Ukrainian officials in...

Katia Denysova is an Art historian and curator. She is the co-curator of ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine', 2022-24 which is currently running at the Royal Academy, London. (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; RMFA, Brussels; Belvedere, Vienna; Royal Academy, London) ---------- LINKS: https://courtauld.ac.uk/people/kateryna-denysova/ https://www.linkedi...

Edition No55 | 06-10-2024 - Ukrainian officials in Chernihiv have told residents not to swim in the Desna River after a toxic spill last month. This video is based on the excellent reporting of Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin in Slabyn, Ukraine, from the UK’s Guardian newspaper. ~~~~~ ‘Everything is dead’ – reports come in of a major ecocide event, after rivers are poisoned. Ukrainian officials in...

Lesia Dubenko is a Ukrainian journalist and analyst featured in the Financial Times, Politico Europe, New Eastern Europe, Washington Times, and more. She’s currently affiliated with Ukraine’s media outlet Euromaidan Press. You can follow her on Substack for a dose of good and satirical commentary https://lesiadubenko.substack.com ---------- SUMMARY: The West is conducting 'Preemptive self deterren...

GUEST: John Sweeney - investigative journalist and writer. Orange hat advocate. ---------- SPEAKER: John Sweeney is a British investigative journalist and writer. He worked for The Observer newspaper, and the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight series. Sweeney ceased working for the BBC in October 2019, and is now reporting on the war in Ukraine, as well as creating a Daily war diary. Which I strongly ad...

GUEST: Mark Galeotti - historian, author, security expert and academic. ---------- SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISER A project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's frontline towns. https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain/collections ---------- LINKS: http...

The Russian war economy is not doing well. But it seems like there is an attritional race on – will the Russian war machine collapse before the will and resolve of Ukraine’s allies, to support it for victory. Is it time to let go of the idea that Russia has endless resources to continue the war indefinitely, and that historically is not uncommon for Russia to lose wars – and catastrophically, with...

Oz Katerji is an independent Correspondent in Ukraine. British-Lebanese conflict journalist & filmmaker based in Kyiv. Director of a forthcoming film: The Battle For Kyiv. ---------- LINKS: https://x.com/OzKaterji/highlights https://www.instagram.com/ozkaterji/?hl=en https://www.newstatesman.com/author/oz-katerji https://thecritic.co.uk/author/oz-katerji/ https://foreignpolicy.com/author/oz-ka...

Chuck Pfarrer is an American writer, film producer and former navy SEAL. He’ll be a familiar and trusted presence to many who have tuned in to the Mriya Report on ‘X’ over the course of the war. As an author, Chuck has penned screenplays, novels and comic books, as well as non-fiction works. His works feature themes relating to the military, and of course is a strong advocate for Ukrainian victory...