Silicon Curtain

Christine Khariv is Business Development Manager at DLF attorneys-at-law Ukraine. Christine writes eloquently and passionately about Ukraine on LinkedIn and Twitter, exposing Russian falsehoods, and advocating for Ukraine’s cause.

Videos and photos by Bogdan Logvynenko and Yurii Stefanyak from Ukraїner. ---------- LINKS: https://www.youtube.com/@UkrainerinEnglish https://ukrainer.net/en/ ---------- Ukraїner English language social media links: https://www.instagram.com/ukrainer_en https://www.facebook.com/ukrainer.eng https://twitter.com/ukrainer_en https://www.linkedin.com/company/ukrainer/ ---------- Ukrainian language li...

Edition No9 | 09-06-2023 Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind, as War Comes to Russia ~~~~~ FEATURED ARTICLES: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-ukraine-launched-a-special-military-operation-in-russia/ Has Ukraine launched a ‘special military operation’ in Russia? Svitlana Morenets | 22 May 2023, 2:01pm https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ukraines-next-move-can-putin-be-outsmarted/ Ukraine’s nex...

Anna Proskurina is involved with Academic Projects and Communication, and specifically with Democracy International e. V. she is passionate about civil society, the opportunity for Ukraine to join the EU and Ukraine. She also engages in public conversations about Ukraine’s difficult history, democracy, and human rights. ------- LINKS: https://www.instagram.com/ukrainian.vibes/ https://www.instagra...

The land war in Ukraine has occupied most attention among media and analysts since the full-scale war began in February 2022. But what happens in the Black Sea is perhaps where we should focus more. The battle for Snake Island, and the sinking of the Moskva grabbed the headlines for a while, but the Black Sea is an overlooked factor in understanding Russia’s motivations for invading, and for how v...

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were forcibly deported to through Russia from Ukraine territory. They have experienced terrible things like the “filtration” camps on the borders, separation from families, cruel interrogations by Russians, and being forced to live in another country (an enemy country) without money or documents in many cases. Left stranded and struggling to leave Russia by them...

The last 9 months has seen a vicious war of attrition unfold in towns like Ugledar, Soledar and Bakhmut. But this should not be interpreted as a stalemate, as those struggles seems to have degraded the quantity of functional Russian equipment and depleted their fighting potential. Will Ukraine’s much-vaunted counter offensive finally bring an end to Russia’s genocidal and pointless war? And how fr...

Warning - poor audio quality in this episode. Putin and his armies have proved to be weak at classical warfare, giving rise to the meme that Russia has the second-best army, not in the world but in Ukraine. But Putin’s expertise in hybrid warfare, disinformation, and Active Measures continues to achieve more success, softened responses to Russia, and slowing down the supply of lethal armament that...

There are two undeniable characteristics of a terrorist state: Killing and kidnapping children. Russia does both. Even on International Children's Day, Russian bombs killed a child in Kyiv. Before invading, Russia prepared a disinformation campaign to justify kidnapping and deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. That says a lot about what this war is actually about. This is genocide according...

Worldwide there is an apparent rise in strongmen and authoritarian leaders, and there is no dearth of leaders who encourage personality cults. What issues arise when leaders seek devotees rather than support from citizens? There may be nothing wrong with leaders enjoying a mass following, the danger is when leaders are consumed by and trapped in the image and the mythology, they engineer for thems...

Oleksiy is 41 years old. On September 30, 2022, he was wounded because of Russian aggression. While performing a combat mission he came under fire and lost both legs. He is now undergoing rehabilitation therapy and trying to rebuild his life, with assistance from his wife, a dedicated medical team, and colleagues. There is a link in the video description to a fund that helps with the rehabilitatio...

In Ukraine, as in many other countries, law enforcement and security agencies are closed systems with their own rules and mutual support. In time of war, the number of security-related and military organisations greatly increases, and the number of people in their ranks swell massively. The potential for abuse and infringement of civil rights is huge and is a risk for any country at war. On top of...

Many Germans view Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union, not only in legal terms but in historical ones and some still refer to WWII as “a war against Russia.” The memory of that period and lingering ‘war guilt’ led many Germans prior to 2022 to seek accommodation with Russia, and to build energy dependence on the country, in the belief that it could avert war. But is this guilt mispla...

Many Ukrainians have told me that before February 2022, they could never have imagined that full-scale war would come to their country in the 21st century. But it did, and Ukrainians’ resilience has been extraordinary; they are not just fighting for their lives, families, and liberty, but also for their land, culture, heritage, and language. Today I’m speaking with Mariana Oleskiv the Chairperson...

Ukraine’s diaspora of professionals and refugees are playing an extraordinary role in support Ukraine, both materially, but also by raising awareness of it’s cause in their host countries and within the international community. Today I am speaking with Christian Borys, who is supporting Ukraine as a fundraising innovator – the founder of Saint Javelin – which started by selling one sticker and has...

Russia has no borders. This was the expansive and imperialistic idea behind the Russian World philosophy. But Ukraine has turned the tables on this idea and shown that Russia’s vast border regions are undefended, and in some ways undefendable. From the ‘little blue men’ appearing in Belgorod, to the drone strikes deep in Russian territory, the theatrical explosion about the Kremlin roof, and the m...

Prighozhin’s calculated outbursts, the incursion into Belgorod, the fall and then encirclement of Bakhmut by Ukraine… everything seems to be happening all at once. What is going on – and could this war be over much sooner than most military experts predict? Here’s a quote from the latest video dropped by Prighozhin, and he says a lot in it that Ukrainians could actually concur with: “We came here...

Today I’m speaking with Operator Starsky, a Ukrainian National Guardian, blogger, and self-described ‘war hipster’. He has created one of the most popular and original YouTube channels dedicated to the international community who support Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression. I’m not sure you need an introduction – I’m sure most people watching this channel will have seen your videos!

Here’s a quote from the latest video dropped by Prighozhin, “We conducted the Special Military Operation to de-nazify and demilitarise Ukraine, but instead of denazification we turned Ukraine into a country that the whole world knows about.” A new Greek or Roman civilisation. It’s an extraordinary interview, which we’ll be covering in more detail in this week’s review of the news in Silicon Bites....

My guest today, Iryna conducted an interview with a UK volunteer working for a mission to evacuate civilians from Ukraine's front lines. Forging a human corridor under constant bombardment is only half the battle — it also takes enormous effort to convince civilians to leave. British photographer turned volunteer Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke and his team have evacuated thousands of Ukrainians to safer...

60% of Russia's top leadership comes from the Soviet elites – the nomenklatura. The number of Chekists (KGB/FSB) in powerful positions has increased several times over, and no longer has a communist party that provided a crude counterweight to prevent them monopolising power in the Soviet Union. Putin's elites are nostalgic for the Stalin-Brezhnev ideals, because most of them made their ca...

Edition No8 | 18-05-2023 Spring heats up - Sabotage, Survival and Ukrainian Successes ~~~~~ FEATURED ARTICLES: TEXTY.ORG.UA https://texty.org.ua/ https://texty.org.ua/d/2023/germs_v2/en/ https://texty.org.ua/articles/109555/whats-that-got-to-do-with-soledar-death-and-renaissance-of-russian-occupation-telegram-channels/ ~~~~~ NEWS LINKS: The Moscow Times https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/18/cr...

Oleksiy Goncharenko was born in Odesa, and is a Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian parliament, member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Vice President of the PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, founder of a Ukrainian network of educational and cultural centres. In 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna...

Today I’m speaking with Gennadiy Druzenko Co-founder and Chairman of Pirogov, the First Volunteer Mobile Hospital; set up in 2019, and now a crucial player in supporting Ukraine’s response to Russian aggression and the casualties that result from it. In civilian life, Gennadiy is a constitutional scholar focusing on constitutional design and comparative constitutional law with both academic and go...

Sanctions were supposed to bring the Russian war machine to its knees. Crashing the Russian economy like a house of cards within months. But this hasn’t happened. This was the largest packet of sanctions in history, so why has it failed to curtail Russia’s aggression? Are sanctions a flawed concept? And who has helped Russia to evade and mitigate the worst aspects of sanctions? I’m joined today by...