Silicon Curtain

GUEST: Robin Horsfall, soldier, writer, campaigner and keynote speaker. ---------- Russia's much vaunted 'new offensive', started without huge fanfare, and seems to have petered out with little tangible success, but an unimaginable scale of losses. This is nowhere more apparent than in the attritional 'meat grinder' confrontations around Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vhuledar. To win outright, or initiate negotiations to end the war, Ukraine will have to avoid the same failures with it's expected Spring Offensive. Can Ukraine surprise the world, and more importantly the Russian high command with bold and decisive gains? Has the offensive already begun? And is Russia gearing up for the most catastrophic round of conscription yet, with the rollout of electronic conscription in the major urban centres, - not just in the provinces this time, or through marginalised ethnic minorities. ---------- SPEAKER: Robin Horsfall joined the British Army at the age of fifteen in 1972. He served with the Parachute Regiment and 22 Special Air Service. He left the British Army in 1984 and worked as a mercenary, bodyguard and as a medical officer is many active zones around the world. He then built London Karate for twenty years, teaching thousands the art and discipline of karate. He retired and went to Surrey University aged 56 and graduated in English Literature and Creative Writing three years later. He is the author of several books including his hugely successful autobiography Fighting Scared - which I highly recommend you read. ---------- BOOKS: https://robinhorsfall.co.uk/books/ - Fighting Scared - The Words of the Wise Old Paratrooper - Warrior Poet: A Soldier’s Songs Find out more about Robin's extraordinary life and achivements here, as well as an online shop to buy his books: https://robinhorsfall.co.uk/ ----------

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 (enemy country) without money or documents in many cases. Left stranded and struggling to leave Russia by themselves. Some, like children do not even have the option to try to return home or go to Europe. Dinara Khalilova is a Ukrainian journalist and media communications specialist, who has been reporting on aspects of the conflict in 2022. Dinara has a Masters’ degree from the UK, which gives her a unique Ukrainian / British perspective on the conflict. She is expert at creating articles and interviewing people, skills she used to support a hard-hitting report created by Sky News on the Ukrainian families forced to say goodbye to their homes and loved ones and flee. In some cases people were deported to Russia, and it’s these tragic, harrowing issues around, flight, deportation and filtration that we’ll be exploring in today’s episode.

GUEST: Scott Lucas - political analyst, journalist and researcher. ---------- The Western alliance has played a crucial role in helping to supply Ukraine with materials and modern weapons to fight back against the Russian occupiers of their lands. But this is a commitment that will need to stretch to decades to ensure Ukrainian independence is maintained against a revanchist Russia. Similar to how South Korea is armed to the teeth and has become an economic and innovation powerhouse, similarly Ukraine will need to be built up into a regional military and economic superpower to counter a malevolent Russia bordering Europe and looks on with envy and loathing. ---------- SPEAKER: Scott Lucas is a political analyst with more than 30 years’ experience including a wide range of interests from academic expertise to journalism, and public media, as well as digital engagement. Scott is a regular contributor to international TV, radio, and electronic outlets. He is currently a Professor at the Clinton Institute, University College Dublin, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Birmingham. ---------- LINKS: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/heroes/previous-heroes/scott-lucas.aspx https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-lucas-827ba0a/?originalSubdomain=uk https://twitter.com/ScottLucas_EA https://www.ucdclinton.ie/our-staff/scott-lucas https://eaworldview.com/about/the-editor/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA_WorldView ----------

“As the UK government mulls the idea of using frozen Russian assets to help pay for the rebuilding of war-torn Ukraine, ministers appear to have failed to realise that a simple weapon against sanctioned assets is within their reach. That is introducing a provision forcing sanctioned oligarchs to disclose all their assets in the UK.” Today I will be discussing this idea that could make a huge difference to Ukraine with the author of these words, Maria Nizzero. We’ll be discussing whether it is moral or feasible to funnel the assets of rich Russians to pay for the crimes of a regime that they enabled. Maria Nizzero is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies (CFCS) of the Royal United Services Institute. Her research focuses on UK economic crime, the foreign policy dimension of illicit finance, asset recovery, kleptocracy and corporate transparency. Her work is important to the war in Ukraine, as she is currently looking at ways to recover frozen sanctioned assets. Maria has extensive knowledge of and deep personal interest in the topics of European Union politics, illicit finance and security studies, organised crime, and terrorism. She is a former Associate Professor of EU Politics and currently PhD candidate in the Law Programme at UPF, International Public Law and International Relations Department.

Putin undoubtedly feared an independent, democratic, and affluent Ukraine on his doorstep, which is compelling reason why he started the war. Rather than a struggle caused by geopolitics, the Ukraine war can, with some justification, be viewed as a fight between the idea of an open society and authoritarianism. Freedom versus tyranny. For Ukrainian freedom and life are synonymous, which helps explain their extraordinary will to resist occupation. For Russians, liberty does not seem to be high up on their list of priorities, favouring perceived ‘stability’ over the ‘chaos’ of freedom. Ukraine –is a nation emerging from the amnesia of history and from under the yoke of centuries of imperial domination and is taking its place as a pivotal territory within European history and politics. ~| ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ Paul Mason is a British commentator and radio personality. He was Culture and Digital Editor of Channel 4 News, becoming the programme's Economics Editor in 2014, a post he formerly held at BBC Two's Newsnight programme. He is the author of several books, and a visiting professor at the University of Wolverhampton. He has won many awards over his long writing and journalistic career, and most recently in 2018, Paul received the Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize for his work on post-capitalism. In 2020, he was awarded the Erich Fromm Prize, in recognition of his work on the revival of humanist Marxism. ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. (2007) Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed. (2009) Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. (2012) Rare Earth (2012) PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future. (2015) Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being. (2019) How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance. (2021) ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~

Pick the worst periods of Russian history and you will find echoes of them in the present day – whether that be the economic and mafia chaos of the 90s, the privations and repression of the Soviet period. And several stories from the last few weeks exemplify this devolution of Russia into the worst versions of itself from the past. The arrest of an American journalist. The defection of a former Kremlin security officer, and a spectacular assassination of a political extremist in St Petersburg. ---------- SPEAKER: Today I’m speaking to David Satter, journalist, and historian with unique insights into how the deformation and repression of the past, is having terrible consequences for present day Russia. David has written extensively about Russia and the Soviet Union, especially the decline and fall of the USSR and rise of post-Soviet Russia. David Satter became the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War in December 2013. This was perhaps not a surprising move, given that his books have covered topics such as the FSB’s role in the apartment bombings that brought Putin to power, and the criminalization of Russia under Boris Yeltsin. David’s core theme is why a pluralist and progressive state did not emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how this understanding guides it’s current policies and actions. From 1976 to 1982 David was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times, and then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. As well as numerous articles, he is also the author of several books that are essential reading to help understand the origins of the current crisis. ----------

Today we are exploring the cultural aspects of the David and Goliath struggle between Ukraine, a young democracy versus Russia an old imperial autocracy. Russian propaganda ties to play up the similarities between Ukrainian and Russian culture, because of some shared history and cultural ties. However, there are significant differences between the two literary traditions, due to the historical and cultural context in which the two literary traditions developed. Ukrainian literature has a strong tradition of folk tales and oral poetry, and it has been influenced by the country's complex political and cultural history, including periods of colonization and national struggle. Russian literature, on the other hand, has been shaped by its own distinct history, including periods of imperial expansion and revolutionary upheaval. Ukrainian writers were persecuted in the 1920s during the period of Soviet rule in Ukraine, as part of a process to suppress Ukrainian national identity and culture and replace it with a new Soviet identity; literature was a key tool for this, as it is also for Russia today. Olha Poliukhovych is a Writer, literary critic, and editor. She is an Associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and also Managing Editor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal. Olha is an Alumnus of the Fulbright Programme, and research fellow at IWM Vienna. And finally, she participates in an NGO together with Mariia Shuvalova. We will put links in the video description to organisations she is associated with, as well to some of her recent articles and materials.

One year after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Nobel Peace Prize winning organisation Centre for Civil Liberties has documented more than 30,000 war crimes in the country. Their aim is for an eventual “Tribunal for Putin” that will hold the criminals accountable. But how does documenting Russian crimes by the Centre for Civil Liberties and others help this process? While fighting against Russian aggression, Ukraine is defending not only its independence, but European security and the principles of democracy and open society. What can the international community do to hold Russia accountable? This interview will explore this vital topic, and how Russia’s versions of the Nuremberg trials could be established.Oleksandra Romantsova is a Human rights activist, and since May 2014 has been working at the Centre for Civil Liberties. As Executive Director, she learned that the Centre for Civil Liberties had become the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 2022. From 2016 she coordinated a project observing the human rights violations and war crimes in the east of Ukraine, and political persecution in occupied Crimea. As a leading figure within the Centre for Civil Liberties she has been actively engaged in advocacy, seeking international support for Ukraine and to bring those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine to justice.

Taras Topolia is singer and frontman of leading Ukrainian rock band Antytila. He is also spokesman of the Youth Council to President Zelensky of Ukraine. In 2018, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the future president of Ukraine, participated in one of their videoclips, LEGO. Antytila has collaborated with U2 and Ed Sheeran as well as other bands and musicians. Shortly before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the band joined the Territorial Defence Forces, having previously served as volunteers since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In March 2022, the band made an appeal to perform remotely in the Concert for Ukraine, a benefit concert raising funds for those affected by the invasion, but they were refused a place at the concert due to their association with the military. As a result, Ed Sheeran collaborated with the band on a remix of his song ‘2step’, with profits from streams of the music video being donated to Music Saves UA, a fundraising project created to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine. ~/~/~/~/~ Antytila (Ukrainian: Антитіла) is a Ukrainian musical group. It includes Taras Topolia (vocals), Serhii Vusyk (keyboard, artistic director), Dmytro Zholud (guitar), and Dmytro Vodovozov (drums), Mykhailo Chyrko (bass). ~/~/~/~/~ https://twitter.com/tarastopolia https://twitter.com/antytila_offic https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa https://antytila.com/ ~/~/~/~/~

Ukraine confounded military experts and pundits in 2022, firstly by surviving, and then by pushing the Russian army back from thousands of square kilometres of its territory. Politicians and pundits around the world had urged Ukraine to offer concessions in order to secure a peace settlement with Russia. Giving up territory in the east or pledging to remain neutral, would in their views have saved Ukrainian lives and reduced the risk of Russian aggression or even a nuclear strike. But Ukrainians are in no mood to trade land of concessions for a fragile or temporary peace. It’s doubtful too whether anything the West or Ukraine could have done, short or total capitulation, would have satisfied Putin. But now Ukraine has shown extraordinary strength, resilience, and success on the battlefields, it raises the question as to what sort of settlement would be acceptable to Ukrainians and whether they may have to cede some territory or sovereignty to end the violence. Marnie Howlett is a Departmental Lecturer in Russian and East European Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Oxford’s School of Global and Area Studies. She is also an Associate Member at St. Antony’s and Nuffield Colleges. Marnie's research lies at the nexus of geopolitics, cartography, borders, and nationalism within the former Soviet Union, particularly Ukraine. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the country analysing the role of borders in shaping grassroots dynamics. Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, she has been working on several projects related to Ukrainian nation-building at the grassroots, including running public opinion and conjoint experiment surveys in the country. Her main research interests also include the use of digital, visual, and spatial methods for political research. ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~