From the editor: War translator is voice for truth on X
Dmitri M. grew up in Estonia, lives in the UK and is Ukrainian and Russian by heritage. He is 33 years old and works in the videogaming industry, but also has more than half a million followers on X (formerly Twitter) who gain a better understanding of the war in Ukraine and life in Russia from his translations of video clips and Telegram posts by soldiers and commentators into English.
Dmitri’s translation of a video of an M2 Bradley decimating a Russian BMP
It was hardly surprising that Dmitri, who goes by the account name @WarTranslated, came to feel strongly about the war and want to do everything he could to support Ukraine. He was in his early 20s when Ukraine’s Maidan revolution began in late 2013, and he watched like everyone else as Russia moved in the following year to seize Crimea and parts of Donbas. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 Dmitri decided to act, he told me in a video call.
“I couldn’t really sleep all night, I was struggling to believe that it was happening,” he said. “Up until the very end I thought that maybe it was kind of a ruse or sabre-rattling, but when it happened it happened and I realised that this is probably going to go quite deep, and the resolution will be very challenging.” Dmitri had been to Russia and Ukraine several times and empathised with the people struggling for democracy during the Maidan, but became more “radical” after the invasion, he told me. He decided to start posting clips. “I could go straight into it in 2022, hit the ground running and do the thing that I felt was important at the time,” he said.
Dmitri uses the website Veed.io to make the video clips with subtitles, translating them himself without assistance from AI. Most are translated from Russian but some are originally in Ukrainian, for example a recent one made by the Ukrainian border guard service showing a brigade using heavy bomber drones. The first of Dmitri’s translated videos that went viral was of Georgian sailors telling the crew of a Russian ship that they were refusing to refuel it a few days after the invasion. That brought him his first 5,000 likes for a single post. Also in 2022 he brought followers videos of the successful Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv Oblast.
Last year Dmitri’s videos from the battle of Bakhmut taken from Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels and coverage of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny were among his most viewed, and in January this year a video of an M2 Bradley decimating a Russian BMP while Ukrainian troops fired their rifles from a badly damaged building on the Avdiivka front line attracted a large number of likes and reposts. He doesn’t necessarily know what the response will be, or have time to read the comments: “I just post it and whatever happens, happens,” he said.
Some videos provide an insight into civilian life in Russia, such as one from earlier this month in which a woman expresses surprise about the lack of response from the government to the catastrophic floods. “The president is silent, Peskov is silent, everyone’s missing!” she complains. “All of our central Russia is flooded and they’re quiet! In fact this is most likely sabotage. Most likely it’s done to provoke famine… The president is sitting quietly. I think no inauguration, only resignation! Putin to resign as well as all governors, all mayors, heads of settlements. Just look – everything’s flooded!”
“Firstly I want to make sure the clips are interesting to a large number of people in the West and Ukraine,” Dmitri told me. “Secondly something that brings a unique insight. Not just news aggregators that grab anything from everywhere. I try to keep a unique voice - be able to provide certain commentary. I’m just trying to explain to the Western audience that will find it a little bit difficult to peek into this whole Eastern European area.” Most of the videos Dmitri translates come from Telegram but he posts them on X to reach the maximum number of people. He tried YouTube but it placed restrictions on the videos because of copyright claims and explicit content. Some supporters of Ukraine have complained that their content’s reach has diminished since Elon Musk bought the platform, but Dmitri pays for a blue tick and hasn’t experienced any problems. “I do believe there is a difference in performance metrics based on whether you have the premium status,” he said. “I see it as a no-brainer really because it’s going to bring more views and engagement. Some people consider it to be wrong, but these are the rules of the platform - if I want my reach to be high I have to use it.”
Dmitri is confident that he can spot fake videos, such as ones that purport to be recent but are actually old or from a different conflict altogether. But he does have to compete with misinformation from accounts like US commentator Jackson Hinkle’s that spread the Russian narrative unapologetically. Hinkle recently posted a video of himself on a tank in Russia. He has 2.6 million followers and describes himself in his profile as “Fighting for a FREE AMERICA”. Yesterday Hinkle posted a picture of Kim Jong Un with a quote supposedly from the North Korean dictator: “Zelensky is an actor who plays his role well in the US-written screenplay.”
Musk has made “free speech” above all else his mantra, which makes it harder for Dmitri, who believes in truth and authenticity, to make a difference. “If you are producing a complete mockery of reality, just saying outright lies, I think the moral point of view has to enter somewhere, and it’s this moral element that Elon Musk is really struggling to control,” he said. “It’s a paradox at the moment for me. It’s very strange that he continues propping up a lot of these accounts that do not serve any other purpose than getting as much reach and engagement as possible.”
Dmitri has no intention of stopping his work. “I have no choice really. It’s been ingrained into my life right now,” he told me. “Sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on what time allows me. I will spend sometimes a day, sometimes I can only do a couple of posts a day. You have to be smart about it, you have to build it into your life. In the very early days I was very prolific, but it was mentally draining, just draining in general. It was affecting my life. I had to step away, change my approach and become a little bit smarter. I think I’ll be doing it for as long as I’m needed. I have a moral duty to keep going. If I go that means one less voice for us liberals on what is already a hostile platform. It will create a gap that the pro-Russian side will take.”
He believes that Ukraine will win the war. “Ultimately I do not think Russia stands a chance,” he said. “I’m not being overtly optimistic or too delusional about it, I know exactly what is happening on the front lines. I always come back to Newton’s physics law. You produce an action, you will receive a counter-action. Russia has produced such an enormous amount of action, also on the planet in general, it’s almost certainly going to hit them back in the face eventually. I think it will happen sooner rather than later. I almost feel disappointed that it is going to end this way, primarily because the people are still not that bad, I even had a Russian girlfriend. The way it’s probably going to end for Russia, it’s not going to be nice. It might end very violently, and I wish it didn’t have to go this way.”
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US authorises billions in aid to Ukraine
Joe Biden signed a $95.3 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Wednesday after the US House and Senate finally approved it. About $61 billion will go to support Ukraine, and the Pentagon immediately announced $1 billion of military aid to include air defence missiles, ammunition to shoot down drones, artillery shells and other equipment.
“Today’s American military aid package for Ukraine is vital,” Volodymyr Zelensky commented. “We will make every effort to compensate for the half-year spent in debates and doubts. We must turn everything the occupier has accomplished during this time, as well as everything Putin intends to do, against him. All of his frontline actions, strikes on our energy system and infrastructure, and terror against our cities and villages must unite us all - everyone in the world who truly values life - around the need to increase pressure on Russia. It is critical that the agreements President Biden and I reached be fully implemented. Thank you, America!”
Deputy defence minister’s arrest sparks rumours
Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, 48, has been arrested and sent to jail in Moscow to await trial on a charge of taking a bribe worth about $11 million dollars. Businessmen Sergei Borodin and Alexander Fomin have also been arrested for allegedly giving Ivanov the bribe, in the form of free work on his personal properties, in return for military construction contracts. Russian sources have suggested that the real reason for Ivanov’s arrest is some form of treason or an attempt to undermine Sergei Shoigu and find a scapegoat for failures of the military.
Two Russian soldiers arrested for mass murder in Kherson Oblast
Two Russian soldiers, Alexander Osipov and Alexander Kaygorodtsev, have been arrested for committing multiple murders in the occupied part of Kherson Oblast while they were drunk. At least five people were killed, including the head of the village of Abrikosovka, Lyubov Tymchak. Some reports say seven people were killed. Two of the victims were also Russian soldiers. Reportedly Osipov and Kaygorodtsev told Tymchak they wanted to live in Abrikosovka and she replied that there were no empty homes. They killed her and set fire to three houses. The pair also shot a woman dead in a neighbouring village.
Kaygorodtsev, who is from Novosibirsk Oblast, had already served a prison sentence for murder. While in prison he was also convicted and sentenced for dealing drugs. After his release in 2020 he was given a suspended sentence for violating his parole by going out at night and drinking alcohol in public places.
Three sentenced for “Death to the regime” graffiti
A military court has convicted two men and a 17-year-old girl of “calling for extremism and terrorism” for writing “Death to the regime” on a garage wall in Chita in October 2022. Anarchist schoolgirl Lyubov Lizunova was given a 3 ½-year prison sentence. Her friend Alexander Snezhkov, 19, was given a six-year sentence, and the third defendant, Vladislav Vishnevsky, was sentenced to 18 months of compulsory work. The three were initially released but the charges were brought after authorities discovered their two Telegram channels with less than 100 subscribers on each. Lizhunova and Snezhkov were added to Russia’s list of extremists and terrorists shortly afterwards.
Long sentences handed down for pro-Ukraine activities
The supreme court of occupied Crimea has sentenced an unnamed Ukrainian citizen to 11 years in a maximum-security prison for espionage for allegedly giving information about the position of Russian troops and the infrastructure of Zaporizhzhia Oblast to Ukraine’s SBU. In court the man said that he had renounced his views.
A military court has sentenced a 37-year-old unnamed Kemerovo man to nine years in prison for treason and participating in a terrorist organisation for allegedly trying to join the Ukrainian armed forces. The man was arrested at Kemerovo airport in November last year and reportedly had camouflage gear, medical supplies and communications devices with him.
A court in Moscow has sentenced St. Petersburg activist Daniil Krinari to five years in prison for allegedly collaborating with Ukraine. Krinari was arrested in Grodno, Belarus in December 2022 and extradited back to Russia. His wife commented that he was probably arrested because of his Telegram channel and denied that he had worked for Ukraine.
A court in Moscow has sentenced Yuri Kokhovets, 38, to five years of compulsory work and a four-year ban on hosting websites and social media channels for giving comments to Radio Svoboda in a vox pop in which he criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kokhovets was convicted of spreading fakes about the Russian army for talking to the US-funded media outlet in summer 2022 about Russia’s massacre in Bucha. “Our government started it, Putin and his gang. Russia by itself created all its problems,” he commented. “Our government said it wants to fight nationalists but it bombs shopping centres and civilians in Bucha. Our troops from Buryatia and Dagestan shot them for no reason. And people are starting to hate all of this.” In court Kokhovets said he regretted giving the interview and hadn’t known what the consequences would be.
Congrats on issue #200 !!!