Silicon Curtain

The Ukrainian language is a crucial aspect of Ukraine's struggle to  remain independent of Russia. Preserving the Ukrainian language is  essential for maintaining Ukraine's distinct cultural and national  identity, and in the current context, to resisting efforts by Russia to  control and dominate it politically. During Ukraine's history, there have been efforts to suppress the...

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have had to evacuate through Russia  or were forcibly deported there. 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 (the enemy country) without money or documents in many cases.  Left stranded and...

Comprehensive interview with retired Lt. General Ben Hodges. Life is  becoming harder in Ukrainian cities as winter sets in and the supply of  power and heat become uncertain. Winters are harsh in this part of the  world, and people in big cities cannot survive for long periods without  heat. Russia’s campaign to cripple Ukraine’s power infrastructure could  therefore trig...

Life is becoming harder in Ukrainian cities as winter sets in and the  supply of power and heat become uncertain. People in big cities cannot  survive for long periods without heat. Russia’s campaign to cripple  Ukraine’s power infrastructure could therefore trigger a new wave of  emigration to Europe. Putin is resorting to terroristic threats, against  nuclear facilities,...

In the 2000s, London became home to the Russian super-rich. Vast wealth  was stripped from Russia by the Oligarchs, and flaunted in London  through grandiose properties, ferocious legal disputes, private jets,  mega-yachts, and ubiquitous bodyguards. Russian oligarchs made colossal  fortunes after the collapse of communism, and London was the destination  of choice to spen...

Edition No5 |  25-02-2023  12 months of resilience and horror   ~~~~~   FEATURED ARTICLES:   How Putin's fate is tied to Russia's war in Ukraine https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64744197  By Steve Rosenberg, Russia Editor, Moscow | 24 February 2023  ~~~~~

Russia’s war is fought on many fronts, but one of the key ones is  information. It could be said that between 2014 and 2022 Russia was  ahead in the information war, but Ukraine has caught up and overtaken  since the full-scale war began in February 2022. Today I am speaking  with DATTALION: UKRAINE’S DATA BATTALION. DATTALION is home to the  largest free, independent, ope...

Ukraine is fighting for its very existence, against an enemy that  repeatedly claims it is not a real country, that it has no identity and  culture as distinct from Russian culture, and that Ukrainian is not an  independent language. Equally on the far left and extreme right in the  West, there are some who see Ukraine as a tool of Western foreign  policy. But Ukrainians h...

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24,  2022, some territories faced Moscow’s aggression for the first time,  while others had been illegally annexed or fought over since 2014. When  Russia’s full-scale invasion began, seven regions felt the full force of  Russian aggression. Of these, Crimea had been illegally annexed by  Russia the longes...

Henry Marsh - English neurosurgeon, and pioneer of neurosurgical  advances, has a strong professional connection to Ukraine, and visited  the country after the war began.   Russian propaganda would have us believe that the war in Ukraine is just  an extended civil war, driven by a popular insurgency. But this seems  far from the truth – a gross distortion of reality....

“A toxic flood of dark money has given billionaires and special  interests a powerful way to rig the system secretly in their favour…”  These are the words of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, ahead of a debate in  the US Congress around the Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. But  this phrase could equally be applied to the UK, where Russian Oligarchs  and dark money interest...

Can democracies preserve their norms and values from increasing attacks  by understanding how authoritarian regimes learn? This is the question  posed by Dr Stephen G. F. Hall in his forthcoming book. Looking at two  established authoritarian regimes, Belarus, and Russia, he identifies  clear signs of collaboration between authoritarian-minded elites, in  developing surviv...

Edition No4  |  23-02-2023 GULAG Economics  ~~~~~   FEATURED ARTICLES:  https://cepa.org/article/russias-return-to-gulag-economics/  https://vasilinaorlova.wordpress.com/ ~~~~~   NEWS LINKS:  Moscow Times  Russia's Planned Coup in Moldova Reminds Us Why Ukraine Must Win This War  https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/02/17/russias-planned-coup-in-mol...

Russia is paying a huge price in terms of blood and resource for every  metre of Ukrainian territory it tries to seize. The encircled city of  Bakhmut is emblematic of Russia’s lack of strategy and purpose as it  throws away hundreds of lives for every metre captured in a horrific  focal point of the war that has become a meat grinder. And all this for a  town that has lit...

Anna Danylchuk has been creating a war diary since the early days of the  full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. Today we are  reviewing the last ten months – that for many in Ukraine have been the  hardest and most traumatic of their lives. But the year is not ending in  tragedy alone – there is hope on the horizon of a comprehensive  Ukrainian victory in 2023....

The cost of Ukrainian victory will be high, and there are many voices  calling for peace, as the full-scale war that started in February 2022  approaches its first anniversary. But peace at any price is surely  rewards the aggressor, rather than the victim, and may just provide  Russia with a breathing space to rearm and reignite the assault in years  to come. So, what wou...

From 2007-08 Putin came to believe that the West would offer no  resistance to his expansionist aims. It’s at that moment he pronounced a  more assertive Russia, and started to act accordingly on the world  stage, and in relations to neighbouring countries, with the invasion of  Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014. NATO provocation is one excuse  given for Russian aggressi...

Protests in Russia have not happened on any great scale against the war,  compared to the dissent seen in Belarus a few years ago, and of course  to ferocity of the various Ukrainian revolutions. But protest and  dissent from within the Russia elite, political and diplomatic  establishment or from amongst the Siloviki is even more of a rarity. My  guest today is one of the...

Russian’s assault on Ukraine in 2022 presents the most serious  geopolitical crisis since the Second World War, and the nuclear  posturing and threats by Russia are unprecedented in human history. But  even before, through 2021 the ratcheting up of internal repression and  persecution of opposition figures in Russia had created a foreboding  sense of crisis and escalation....

Denis Zakharov - "When I say that every russian is responsible, I mean  it. But we are not responsible just for Ukraine. For ages, we commit  crimes and make people suffer for a bullshit idea of a great Russia that  doesn't even exist. Chechnya is one of the victims."  The narratives that come out of the Kremlin and Russian State TV are  aggressive, paranoid, and highly to...

The world of reporting from the former Soviet sphere has been turned on  its head. No longer do journalists based in Moscow report on the affairs  of the regions. Kyiv is now the ground zero of narratives emerging from  the region, and a Moscow-centric lens has shifted to become a Ukrainian  lens for the Western media. There are now relatively few Western voices  on the gr...

Instead of what he thought would be a ‘short victorious war’, Putin has  mired Russia in a protracted and costly struggle that may not only end  Putin’s tenure in the Kremlin, but also threaten the integrity of the  Russian Federation itself. The stakes could not be higher, and history  shows that change in Russia moves like tectonic plates – nothing for  decades, and then...

Vladimir Putin seems to have thought the ‘regime’ in Kyiv could be  toppled in 10 days through a blitzkrieg operation carried out from  Russian and Byelorussia territory. But instead, he has made the  political situation in Russia more fragile and volatile than at any time  since the 1990s. Could Putin’s aggressive expansionist policies in  Ukraine actually signal the disi...

Edition No3  |  15-02-2023 NAFO special edition  ~~~~~   FEATURED ARTICLES:  https://www.kyivpost.com/post/204  https://news.sky.com/story/amp/ukraines-internet-army-of-fellas-are-using-dog-memes-to-fight-russian-propaganda-and-theyve-raised-1m-for-the-army-too-12729625  https://amp.dw.com/en/nafo-ukraines-info-warriors-battling-russian-trolls/a-63124443  ht...

The Putin regime has been widely exploiting the vulnerabilities of  global social media platforms, using bots and trolls to promote specific  stories and narratives. Now there seems to be an increase in their  activity of trolls, agents, fellow travellers, useful idiots and  grifters who post lies and distortions online in support of Kremlin  narratives. Is this uptick in...