Silicon Curtain

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 that are the tens of thousands of war crimes being committed by the invaders. My guest today is an expert in the law and judicial reform, who is ensuring Ukraine makes progress on these fronts, to defend individual rights and liberty even in wartime. Olena Sotnyk was a Member of the Parliament of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, is a Human rights defender, lawyer, Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Rasmussen global Senior Representative in Ukraine Millennium Fellow at Atlantic Council. Olena is a well-known legislator and public policy maker in areas such as rule of law, judicial system reform, anticorruption, euro integration and youth policy. She has successfully represented Ukraine in the international arena and is one of the leading the voices of Ukrainians against Russian aggression.

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 misplaced? Belarus lost 25.3% of its pre-war population in the war. Ukraine lost 16.3%, while Russia lost 12.7%. And the material destruction of cities, infrastructure and the economy were proportionally greater on the territories of Ukraine and Belarus. More than 3.5 million Ukrainian citizens died during the brutal Nazi occupation of their entire territory, so does Germany have a moral obligation to protect Ukraine against aggression and to avoid a new genocide in the 21st Century? Sergej Sumlenny is founder of the European Resilience Initiative Centre and a former Regional Director for Ukraine and Belarus at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He is based in Berlin, Germany and is an expert in Energy and Security Policy, Human Rights, and International Business Consulting. He is also an expert in the Central and Eastern Europe region, with a Ph.D. in Political Sciences. Fluent or native in German, English, Ukrainian, and Russian. ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ LINKS: https://twitter.com/sumlenny https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergej-sumlenny-4502aa5/ https://european-resilience.org/ https://www.boell.de/en

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 at State Agency for Tourism Development of Ukraine. The work of the SATD is coordinated by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine and is responsible for marketing Ukraine as a tourism destination, and with developing tourism infrastructure. Tourism will be an important sector of the economy that helps with reconstruction of Ukraine after victory.

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 now contributed over $2M to Ukraine's war effort since February 2022.

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 mysterious fires happening at strategic facilities all over Russia, it seems that Putin’s war to secure Russia’s borders has actually had the effect of stripping Russia of any safety and security. 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.  

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 in vulgarity and trampled all over their territory looking for Nazis. While we were searching for Nazis, we nailed anyone else we could find. We approached Kyiv, and then, as is said in Russian, shat ourselves and retreated. Came upon Kherson, shat ourselves and withdrew… 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.” ---------- SPEAKER: Graeme Robertson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Centre for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. His work focuses on political protest and regime support in authoritarian regimes. As well as Putin v. The People, Graeme is also the author of Revolution and Reform in Ukraine, and The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia, published by Cambridge University Press. He has published articles in many academic journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, and the British Journal of Political Science, as well as contributing regularly to the media on Russia and Ukraine. ---------- BOOKS: Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. by Graeme Robertson and Samuel Greene (2023) Moscow in Movement: Power & Opposition in Putin’s Russia Samuel Greene (2014) The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia by Graeme Robertson (2010) ---------- LINKS https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-greene-27aab56/ https://twitter.com/samagreene https://politicalscience.unc.edu/staff/graeme-robertson/ https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/samuel-greene ----------

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.  But in this episode, I’m speaking to an unorthodox journalist, who has created some of the most memorable and impassioned coverage of Russia’s war of aggression. ----- 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 advise you to watch if you’ve not seen it. He’s also been working on a film, documenting the most brutal parts of the conflict – ‘The Eastern Front’, which is released in June this year. ----- LINKS: https://www.johnsweeney.co.uk/ ----- BOOKS: Killer in the Kremlin Putin's Prisoner: My Time as a Prisoner of War in Ukraine Taking on Putin with John Sweeney The Useful Idiot The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology Hunting Ghislaine -----

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 locations in Ukraine and abroad and explained their challenging operations to Iryna recently. #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet ---------- SPEAKER: Iryna Matviyishyn is a Ukrainian journalist and producer. Iryna is also a video reporter at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a freelance journalist with various international media. She was also an analyst, a video producer, and a project coordinator at UkraineWorld. Iryna studied journalism in Lviv and holds a master’s degree in human rights and democratization from the Global Campus of Human Rights in Europe. ---------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/IMatviyishyn https://kyivindependent.com/author/iryna-matviyishyn/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/iryna-matviyishyn-b10b3572/ https://supportukrainenow.org/donate ----------

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 careers in the Soviet Union, and they are trying to reshape Russian society and Russian minds to fit the repressive ideas of that period. Maria Snegovaya argues that this made not only a dictatorship but also a war inevitable, and that the Soviet-educated Moscow elite believes it can lay claim to the entire post-Soviet space. The solution to deter Russia's aggression is not just a change of government, but fully-fledged lustration. ---------- SPEAKER:Maria Snegovaya is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is a Senior Fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and a Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University. Maria’s research interests include public opinion, political economy, and foreign policy. She explores the ongoing authoritarian slide in post-communist Europe and the tactics used by Russian actors and proxies who circulate disinformation to exploit these dynamics in the region. Her research has been referenced by the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and BBC. Maria has also written for the Washington Post, the New Republic, Foreign Policy, and others. #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet ---------- LINKS: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-snegovaya-2760b18/ https://twitter.com/MSnegovaya https://t.me/mariasnegovaya https://mariasnegovaya.com/ ---------- ARTICLES:https://www.csis.org/podcasts/russian-roulette/escalating-waves-repressionhttps://theins.ru/en/opinion/maria-snegovaya/250988https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-russians-support-putin%E2%80%99s-war-against-ukrainians-201196https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/russia-great-transformational-failurehttps://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/08/vladimir-putin-backs-down-russia-ukraine/ https://www.csis.org/analysis/out-stock-assessing-impact-sanctions-russias-defense-industry ----------