Michael Babich 🇺🇦

140 is poetry. 280 is prose.

Kyiv this morning 📷 Marian Kushnir

🇺🇦 Melnyk at UN: Even when Russia's defeated, even when Putin's regime has collapsed, even after Russia has paid war reparations, even after all Russian war criminals have been sentenced, there'll be no reconciliation between Ukraine and Russia for decades, maybe for centuries.

Putin wants to end the war by the end of the year, but strictly on his own terms, according to Bloomberg. His demands allegedly include full control over the Donetsk region and a deal with Europe that would effectively legitimize the territories seized by Russia. At the same time, growing Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia and the lack of major battlefield gains are fueling internal criticism of the dictator. Some high-ranking Kremlin officials are reportedly increasingly nervous, believing the war has reached a dead end with no clear path toward an end, sources told the outlet.

The inhabitants of the Terrorist Federation were asked: “Do you personally support or oppose the actions of Russian armed forces in Ukraine?” The Levada Center did the asking. The most reputable independent polling agency in russia, to the extent genuine independence is possible in a tyrannical state waging a criminal war of aggression. For every person in supposedly “liberal-minded” moscow who found the question “difficult to answer,” there were eight who said yes, either definitely or probably. Yes, the regime criminalizes opposition to the war while insisting there is no war at all. Fear matters. Repression matters. But after Bucha, after the photos of Ukrainian children murdered by russia enter the information space every other day, after the most heinous war crimes russian soldiers commit, after roughly 1.5 million russian casualties (killed and wounded), after economic decline, growing subordination to China, burning refineries, and international isolation, russian “society” still overwhelmingly supports the war. The russian people do not find the question difficult because, for much of their country’s history, brutal colonial conquest was not treated as a moral dilemma. in the collective consciousness of the 100+ million people, moscow has a right, if not the duty, to invade neighbors. The current war did not emerge from nowhere. It follows a long imperial tradition that predates putin and the regimes before him. This is the uncomfortable reality many in the West refuse to grasp: there is no such thing as putin’s russia, there is only russia’s putin

„Was ich bedaure, ist, dass Europa sein diplomatisches Potenzial aus meiner Sicht nicht ausreichend einsetzt“ – Altkanzlerin Merkel wünscht sich im Ukraine-Krieg neben militärischer Unterstützung mehr diplomatische Bemühungen. Aber als Vermittlerin komme sie nicht infrage.

Harris Dickinson keeps things effortlessly cool during the 79th Cannes Film Festival in a butter yellow shirt, slouchy tailoring and a casual crossbody look 🕶️

This is incredible. Artificial intelligence getting booed out of the stadium in any commencement speech it’s mentioned. Maybe telling college students AI was taking their jobs wasn’t the best strategy. Must watch —>