Section: Global Voices (The Netherlands)
Amid the Vast Universe of the ‘Valerian’ Movie, Ukraine Gets a Special Shout-Out
Photoshopped screenshot from the sci-fi film “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” with cosmonauts wearing the Ukrainian flag as shoulder sleeve insignia, shared on social networks. The presence of the Ukrainian flag on the sleeve of an astronaut in the movie “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” has created a small sensation...
What Happens when Montenegro Citizens Return Home After Fighting in Foreign Wars?
Screenshot from the online version of the documentary film “The Road of No Return?” by Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), from Montenegro. Milica Bogdanović, the author of this post, is a member of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), the organization which produced the film mentioned. The documentary film “The Road of No Return?”...
Ukrainian Wikipedia Awards National Winners of ‘Wiki Loves Earth’ Photo Contest
Rock-cave complex “Dovbush Rocks”, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, photo by Pavlo Pivovar, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA. Ukrainian Wikipedia has given awards to the top 11 photographers in the national segment of the international photo contest “Wiki Loves Earth” which celebrates natural monuments and protected areas. The award ceremony took place...
In Ukraine, Fears of ‘Technological Terrorism’ Cause Free Expression to Decline
Open air exhibition of posters of different kinds of soldiers from Ukrainian history next to landmark St. Andrew Church in Kiev. Photo by Filip Stojanovski, CC BY. Olga Kyryliuk, PhD, is an expert in International Law, and co-founder of the Ukrainian NGO Digital Defenders Partners – DDP (Партнери цифрового правозахисту in Ukrainian), focused on...
Russian Crooner Joins Effort to Attract Tourists to War-Torn Eastern Ukraine
Source: Kremlin.ru Nearly three years into the war in eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics (DNR and LNR, respectively) are making a renewed attempt to attract foreign tourists to their internationally unrecognized statelets—with support from one of Russia’s most famous crooners. Joseph Kobzon, a celebrated...
The Russian State Media: Champion of Internet Freedom. (From Now On.)
Photo: PixabayIn the past five years, the Russian government has blocked an estimated 5.6 million webpages — most of them by accident, after blacklisting entire IP addresses to target individual lawbreakers. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal censor, has gone after both small online resources, like thousands of websites affiliated with illegal...
Ukraine Sanctions VKontakte, Other Russian Social Media Websites
Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed an order instructing the country’s Internet providers to block several major Russian social media websites, according to a decree published on the Presidential Administration’s website. The far-ranging National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) decree,...
New Documentary Throws Shade on Police Investigation Into Dissident Journalist’s Murder in Kyiv
A promotional banner for the documentary film “Killing Pavel” by OCCRP and Slidstvo.info, featuring a quote by Pavel Sheremet. A new documentary film by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)* and Slidstvo.info examines the assassination of journalist Pavel Sheremet, who was killed in Kyiv in July 2016. Ten months after a...
Diversity, Interrupted: Anti-Gay Crusades Mar Ukraine’s Tolerant Façade
Source: Aleksandr Nosenko, Instagram. As this year’s Eurovision Song Contest enters its final weekend, a half-painted rainbow arch meant to symbolize the event’s slogan, “Celebrate Diversity,” hovers ominously over the city center. After far-right leaders complained that the colorful paint job amounted to homosexual propaganda, the...
Navalny’s Army Unmasks the State-Supported Radicals Out to Get Him
Igor Beketov, aka Gosha Tarasevich, the leader of SERB. Photo: LiveJournal This Monday, opposition leader Alexey Navalny proved how useful it is to have millions of supporters among Russia’s young, energetic Internet users. Days after Navalny was attacked outside his office in Moscow, his supporters rallied online to identify the likely...
