From the editor
World leaders gathered in New York this week for the start of the UN General Assembly’s session, but the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan continued unabated, while authoritarian states used the opportunity to push their disturbingly coordinated propaganda. It’s no exaggeration to say that the fate of Ukraine depends on the result of the US presidential election on Nov. 5, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris staking out their very different positions on the issue, but the parliamentary election in Georgia on Oct. 26 will also determine whether a country careens towards Russia or attempts to stay free of its crushing influence.
Kamala Harris pledged her support for Ukraine while meeting Volodymyr Zelensky
Billboards featuring adverts by the ruling Georgian Dream party have appeared in Tbilisi recently, with pictures comparing destroyed buildings in Ukraine with intact buildings in Georgia, and the words “No to war!” This has enraged opposition activists, who brought tens of thousands of people out onto the streets in May to protest against the “Russian law” that designates many NGOs and individuals as “foreign agents”. Georgia also passed a law similar to Russia’s banning sex changes and “LGBT propaganda” earlier this month, and a day later 37-year-old transgender actor and model Kesaria Abramidze was stabbed to death in her home in Tbilisi. Abramidze’s partner was arrested on suspicion of killing her, but whether or not the murder was connected to the new law, the fear in Georgia’s LGBT+ community has unquestionably grown. Opposition to “woke” pro-trans policies and an obsession with encouraging women to have more children (another favourite topic of Vladimir Putin’s) is also running rampant in the US Republican party.
A Hungarian on X, László Róbert Mézes, posted that Viktor Orbán’s party had made very similar adverts to the Georgian ones before the June election to the EU parliament, with the word “War” over the faces of opposition figures and George Soros, and “Peace” over the face of the prime minister. Another country that is succumbing to Russian propaganda is Serbia, whose president Aleksandar Vučić, who said in his address to the UN General Assembly, “I would like to warn you, dear friends, of what had happened to Serbia, a precedent that is being used and abused in different parts of the world. To warn you of the Pandora’s box that was open neither two nor five years ago, but much before, and that everybody is so loudly silent about.
“The absolute dominance of the Western capitalist way of manufacturing, its science and technology, supremacy, convincing victory against the eastern contender, Soviet Union, first of all, within the framework of the third industrial revolution, brought the world, some would say, to the end of history and complete hegemony of the Western ideas in all spheres of social life… Even today we heard from many that by attacking Ukraine Pandora’s box was opened, the undermining of international law took place. That it was the precedent not witnessed by Europe since the World War II. This is the utter untruth.” Serbia supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity but wants its own territorial integrity to be respected, he added, referring to the West’s recognition of Kosovo.
It was hardly surprising that Iran’s vice president, Javad Zarif, was unrepentant in the United States about his country supplying deadly Shahed drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, but his openness about admitting to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that they only do it for the money was striking. “We do not believe that war is an answer to anything,” Zarif said. “So why are you supplying them?” Amanpour asked. “All roads have been closed to Iran, in violation of international law, and we need to engage in business,” he replied. “We need to be able to earn currency. The Russians engage with Iran in trade. The United States has closed all possibilities of trade with Iran.”
Trump meanwhile made numerous comments about the war in Ukraine this week that raised the real spectre of the United States unceremoniously dumping its ally if he is elected. It won’t have helped much that Ryan Routh, who went to Ukraine to try to recruit foreign fighters, has been charged with attempting to assassinate him on his golf course in Florida. At a rally in Savannah, Georgia he told the crowd, “Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Ukraine and now they can’t get us out, they can’t get us out! I watched him, we will win, we will win, he’s been saying that for three years. Every time Zelensky comes to the United States he walks away with a hundred billion dollars, I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth. But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president, I’ll get it done, I’ll get it negotiated, I’ll get out, we gotta get out. Biden says we will not leave until we win, what happens if they win? That’s what they do is they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon, that’s what they do, they fight.”
The Republican candidate went even further in another campaign speech, saying of Volodymyr Zelensky, “I watched this poor guy yesterday at the United Nations. He didn’t know what he was saying. They just don’t know what to do, they’re locked into a situation, it’s sad, they just don’t know what to do. Because Ukraine is gone, it’s not Ukraine any more, you can never replace those cities and towns and you can never replace the dead people, so many dead people. Any deal, even the worst deal would have been better than what we have right now. If they made a bad deal it would have been much better. They would have given up a little bit, and everybody would be living and every building would be bit and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.”
Zelensky was welcomed at the White House, meeting Joe Biden and speaking to the media together with Kamala Harris. The vice president and Democratic candidate told him, “In Switzerland in June along with 90 other nations at the Ukraine peace conference I told you that the United States shares your vision for the end of this war, an end based on the will of the people of Ukraine and the UN Charter, and that we must work with the international community to secure a just and lasting peace. And I told world leaders there, nothing about the end of this war can be decided without Ukraine. However, in candour, I share with you, Mr. President, there are some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory… these proposals are the same as those of Putin. And let us be clear. They are not proposals for peace. Instead they are proposals for surrender.”
Meanwhile Putin, unwanted at the UN, announced that Russia would allow itself to use nuclear weapons in the event of a mass drone or cruise missile attack or attack by a non-nuclear country supported by nuclear powers. It was yet another of his empty threats aimed at intimidating the world’s remaining democracies into wavering in their support of Ukraine. With Trump the method works very well. In just a few weeks Americans, Ukrainians and everyone else will find out if pandering to Putin will be the norm for the next four years, or if the United States will remain true to its stated values.
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Russia kills civilians in Kharkiv and Izmail
Russia struck a block of flats and a bakery in Kharkiv with guided bombs on Tuesday, killing three people and injuring at least 34. In the early hours of this morning Russian UAVs attacked Izmail in Odesa Oblast, setting homes on fire and killing three people: two women aged 90 and 69 and a 73-year-old man. Twelve people were injured in the attack, including a child. Also this morning a Russian missile destroyed a district police department building in Kryvyi Rih, injuring several people. On Friday night a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother when a Russian attack destroyed their house in Kryvyi Rih. The boy’s mother has been serving in Ukraine’s armed forces.
Wildberries shootout exacerbates Chechnya-Ingushetia tensions
Vladislav Bakalchuk, who was arrested after attempting to break into the Moscow headquarters of the Wildberries online retailer, which was founded by his estranged wife Tatyana, was released unexpectedly and a murder charge against him was dropped. The reversal of Bakalchuk’s prosecution was likely influenced by his backer Ramzan Kadyrov. Two security guards were killed in a shootout with the Chechens who accompanied Bakalchuk to the company’s office. Adam Almazov and Islambek Elmurzayev were both from Ingushetia and a crowd came out on the streets of the republic for their funeral. Tensions between Chechnya and Ingushetia are still high after Kadyrov obtained land from the latter in 2018.
Irish soldier who returned to front after injury killed in Ukraine
Robert Deegan from County Kildare, Ireland, has been killed fighting for Ukraine. The 29-year-old had served in the Irish Defence Forces a decade ago. In 2022 he was injured in Ukraine and lost an eye due to an improvised explosive device. He was evacuated back to Ireland for rehabilitation but then returned to the front lines. “He made the ultimate sacrifice while staying true to his principles and character,” Deegan’s family said in a statement. “Robert should be remembered as a hero who died protecting his comrades in battle while fighting for a principled cause.”
Cadet kills deaf woman he mistook for Ukrainian spy
Nikolai Tikhonov, a 28-year-old cadet from St. Petersburg, has been arrested and charged with the murder of a woman he believed was a Ukrainian spy because she was wearing a hearing aid. Tikhonov allegedly met a 41-year-old woman called Nadezhda in a nightclub and brought her to his home, where she saw his uniform and asked him about his military service. He punched her in the face and she died from her injury. Tikhonov, who was drunk, called police and told them that he had taken someone home who turned out to be “not a woman but a khokhol [derogatory term for a Ukrainian] and who knows what” and that he wanted to kill her.
Soldier who fought in Ukraine sentenced over foster child’s death
A court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced Alexander Naumov to five years in prison for the torture of his five-year-old foster child Daler Bobiev. Naumov claimed that he couldn’t have killed the boy because he was fighting in Ukraine at the time. His wife Veronika reported Daler missing in June 2023, saying he might have run away from home. The boy’s body was found soon afterwards in a bag in a garage near the Naumovs’ home. His death was established to have likely occurred in December 2022. Naumov was believed to have been home on leave at the time, and subsequently the couple continued claiming payments for taking care of Daler. Naumov was convicted of torturing Daler with extreme cruelty. Witnesses said he taped Daler to a chair and left him without food. His wife is charged with murdering the boy.
Three more sentences for anti-war activities
A military court has sentenced 19-year-old Danila Yakovlev from Biysk, Altai Krai, to 15 years in prison for treason and financing terrorism for allegedly sending 5,000 roubles ($54) to the Freedom of Russia Legion. Yakovlev was described by someone who knew him as a quiet young man who spent most of his time on the internet.
A court in St. Petersburg has sentenced former soldier Sergei Lintsov to four years in prison for “spreading fakes about the army motivated by hate”. The case was based on a video Lintsov posted on Telegram in September 2022 that he made near a children’s hospital in Kolpino outside St. Petersburg, but details of the video were not made public. Lintsov was arrested in September last year and held in jail until his trial. He pled guilty and expressed remorse.
A court in Yekaterinburg has sentenced former councillor from the town of Glazov in Udmurtia Andrei Yedigarev, 62, to three years in prison for Telegram posts about the war in Ukraine. Yedigarev was found guilty of justifying terrorism. He wrote approvingly about an explosion on a railway in Bryansk Oblast, called Russia a fascist state and compared Putin to Hitler. Yedigarev pled guilty and said that his illnesses would mean a prison sentence was a likely death penalty. He had been in jail since his arrest in May last year, during which he was hit in the face, stomach and groin.