From the editor
Ukraine and the world’s democracies have spent the day commemorating the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion in different ways. “On February 24, millions of us made a choice. Not a white flag, but the blue and yellow one. Not fleeing, but facing. Resisting and fighting. It was a year of pain, sorrow, faith and unity. And this year we remained invincible. We know that 2023 will be the year of our victory,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Joe Biden shook hands with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on Monday
Joe Biden, who made a surprise visit to Kyiv and Poland earlier in the week, confirmed the United States’ support for Ukraine, saying, “I’ll repeat what I said one year ago as Russia invaded Ukraine. A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free. And Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never.”
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is visiting Kyiv today. The Eiffel Tower was lit up last night in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Every EU foreign minister participated in a video in which each one of them said a word that described Ukraine, including “Courage,” “Respect,” “Europe,” “Family” and “Victory”. The Ukrainian national anthem was sung in the Lithuanian parliament. In the UK a minute’s silence was held to commemorate the victims of Russia’s aggression and Ukrainian troops training near Salisbury participated in a ceremony.
Activists brought a message to the gates of Russian embassies in many countries, including painting the street in front of the Russian embassy in London blue and yellow, parking a destroyed Russian tank in front of the embassy in Berlin, playing the Ukrainian anthem on a barrel organ outside the embassy in The Hague and bombarding the embassy in Warsaw with the sound of air raid sirens at 6 am. Inside, no one is listening, as the Kremlin insists it is fighting Nazis and Dmitri Medvedev has commented that Russian troops should “push the threat back to the Polish border”.
Rallies in support of Ukraine, with the participation of some Russians holding anti-war blue and white flags, have taken place all over the world, from Riga to Seoul, Haifa and Sydney. A few people in Russia itself have held signs opposing the war and been detained or placed flowers at monuments to the victims of political repressions or statues of Ukrainian poets. In St. Petersburg people came to the Taras Shevchenko statue to be told by police that he was a terrorist. In Moscow some left flowers at the Lesya Ukrainka statue.
Vladimir Putin showed little sign of regret in his state-of-the-nation speech on Tuesday, saying, “Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies to their own people. They’re the ones who started the war. We are using force to stop it.” At the same time a Russian missile struck a bus stop in Kherson, killing six people and injuring 12 more. The following day Putin appeared briefly at a rally in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium and led the crowd in an underwhelming three cheers for the “defenders of the Fatherland”. Some of the attendees left even before the president started speaking, complaining that it was too cold.
Unsurprisingly Putin had no reaction to recent criticism from Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has complained that his men are not receiving ammunition and posted a picture on Telegram of dozens of dead contractors, who he said were all killed on the same day outside Bakhmut. Prigozhin asked rhetorically whether Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov would take up weapons once they had run out of Wagner men.
Nor, of course, did Putin mention Alexei Navalny, who has been in prison for just over two years since his return to Russia after being poisoned. Navalny and his supporters have come under intense criticism from Ukrainians in the past year for their perceived failure to denounce the war – although Navalny has spoken out against it – but the formerly nationalist-leaning opposition leader has now published a clear statement demanding a withdrawal of Russian troops and return to Ukraine’s borders of 1991 (which would include Crimea). “We have to compensate Ukraine for the damage caused by Putin's aggression. The restoration of normal economic relations with the civilised world and the return of economic growth will make it possible to do this without interfering with the development of our country. We are at the bottom, and in order to emerge, we need to push off from it. It will be morally right, and rational, and beneficial,” Navalny wrote.
As the words of the Ukrainian anthem go, Ukraine has not yet perished – and nor has Navalny. Despite his ruthlessness, Putin has utterly failed to quash his worst enemies. The more killing he does, the stronger the solidarity against him becomes. This year has shown us all who the heroes and villains are, and there is still hope that the latter will be brought to justice or at least meet a swift and unpleasant end.
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British embassy security guard sentenced for espionage
Former security guard at the British embassy in Berlin David Smith, 58, has been sentenced at the Old Bailey in London to 13 years and two months in prison for gathering material to give to Russia. He pled guilty to eight charges under the Official Secrets Act relating to committing acts prejudicial to the interests of the state. Smith started collecting classified documents in 2018 motivated by his support for Vladimir Putin and hatred of the UK. The former RAF serviceman sent two letters to senior officials at the Russian embassy in 2020. He was caught in an undercover sting operation. One of Smith’s many pro-Russian posts on social media was a picture of himself holding a sign saying “Save Donbass people from Ukrainian Nazi army.”
How much russian Nazis pay for PR of "good russians"?