UN report on human rights in Ukraine

19 06 2014

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has released its third Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine.

The full 58-page report can be read here.

A brief overview can be read here.





Poroshenko’s inaugural speech

8 06 2014

The inaugural speech of Ukraine’s new president, Petro Poroshenko, can be read in its entirety in English translation here.





More media war techniques

5 06 2014

While this web site is in Russian, the videos and images don’t require much translation. It’s a catalogue of examples of Russian state media “recycling” of images from other times and places — dead bodies, mutilated children, bombings, downed UN planes, et al. — in order to discredit Ukraine’s (former) opposition or its (current) interim government.

The sources include Syria’s current civil war (several images), Belgrade in the 1990s, Mexico’s drug war, the African Congo (that UN plane), and even a fire from Quebec’s Lac Megantic train derailment. All are presented as if these depict victims of “Kiev’s fascist junta” or on-the-ground images from eastern Ukraine.

See here for the article.

Then there is the army of internet trolls. Media studies dissertations can be written about this stuff.

 

 





More views from the left

2 06 2014

In “Eastern Ukraine: Popular Uprising, Conspiracy, or Civil War?” leftish cultural-political magazine n+1  presents a very interesting and diverse collection of interviews with left-wing activists in Ukraine and Russia on the events of the last few months.

And Observer Ukraine presents an interview with Left Opposition activist and lawyer Vitaliy Dudin.

An earlier interview with Zakhar Popovych (also included in the n+1 article) has been translated here.





Where next in Russia’s propaganda offensive?

29 05 2014

In the Moscow Times article “Russia’s Propaganda War Will Backfire,” Mark Lawrence Schrad, author of Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy and the Secret History of the Russian State, argues that the Putin regime’s media offensive against the Maidan revolution and the interim Ukrainian government will backfire on Russian-Ukrainian relations for years to come.

Read the rest of this entry »





PBS vs. Vice

28 05 2014

How is it that PBS’s respected public affairs show Frontline could produce a sensationalistic portrayal of Ukraine as a divided, bloody, chaotic mess — airing two days after an election that produced the clearest majority ever in a Ukrainian presidential election — while the internet-based Vice News could produce this comparatively sensible portrait of a country that showed courage and a very clear consensus in its belief that the political process is far preferable to warfare?

It is good to know that there are extremists on both sides, and PBS is right to show that. But we’ve been seeing that for months now.

 

 





Bojcun: Poroshenko’s sticky wicket

27 05 2014

In “The Chocolate King Walks Onto a Sticky Wicket,” left-wing Ukraine analyst Marko Bojcun provides an excellent overview of the prospects facing post-presidential election Ukraine: deteriorating socio-economic conditions, a fragile state, chaos in the eastern provinces, and so on.

The article is well worth reading.

 

 

 





On the presidential election

27 05 2014

Вибори_Президента_України_2014 (1)

Every serious newspaper in the world announced something yesterday about the winner of Sunday’s Ukrainian presidential election, Petro Poroshenko.

Canadian journalist (and Liberal Party politician) Chrystia Freeland’s piece in the center-left Toronto Star encompassed more of the meaning of the election for Ukrainians than most other reports. Read the rest of this entry »





Young: on where the fascism is

23 05 2014

Here’s another useful summary of things from Cathy Young (Ekaterina Jung).

(While I don’t always agree with her liberatarian-leaning political positions, she is a respectable journalist. I share it only because the Russian state media, i.e., propaganda, narratives are still so pervasive.)

 





Insider’s view from Slavyansk

23 05 2014

As Ukraine is preparing for its presidential election, historian William Risch is sharing this view from the ground in Slavyansk, epicenter of the pro-Russian Donetsk separatist movement. Very interesting.








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