Section: Global Voices (The Netherlands)
How Alexey Navalny Abandoned Russian Nationalism
Photo: Alexey Navalny / Instagram In February 2011, about nine months before Alexey Navalny became internationally famous as one of the leaders of the anti-Putin Russian opposition, The Guardian published a story about him titled “Russia’s Chief Whistleblower Wants to Jail the Corrupt.” The article featured a picture of Navalny in a...
31 Years Later, the Lights Come Back on in Chernobyl
Polish adventurers entered the town of Pripyat in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and turned on lights for the first time since the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On April 26, 1986, a nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine caused radioactive material to be spewed into the atmosphere,...
Meet the Activist Trying to Bring Ukraine’s Villages Online
Orest and Oksana Olinik in their shop in Khrystanivka. Source: Ethan Daish and Elisabeth Lima “I don’t really like Europe. In Europe, 99 percent of things are finished; here, there is work to be done,” says Oksana Olinik, standing in the small Soviet-era shop she and her husband Orest have just opened in the village of Khrystanivka in...
Meet Russia’s Warrior-Writer and Bloodthirsty Priest
Photo: Pixabay. In addition to being a prominent contemporary writer in Russia, Zakhar Prilepin is a vocal political ideologue. A member of the National Bolshevik Party, he hosts a talk show on the nationalist, ultra-conservative Tsargrad TV network. Prilepin is also the chief editor of Svobodnaya Pressa, another pro-Kremlin media outlet that...
‘Zelyonka:’ the Anti-Putin Antiseptic
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Source: Navalny.com “Zelyonka,” a green topical antiseptic used in Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe, is back in the headlines: On March 19, Russian opposition leader and presidential candidate Alexei Navalny was attacked with the antiseptic outside his campaign headquarters in the Siberian...
Ukraine Will Blacklist Websites That ‘Undermine Ukrainian Sovereignty’
Rally in support of Novorossiya in Moscow, June 11, 2014. Source: Artem Tkachenko, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ukraine’s Ministry of Information Policy is preparing a list of websites that “undermine Ukrainian sovereignty” as part of an effort to uphold the country’s new information security doctrine, signed on February 25 by President Petro...
911 for Donbass: Meet the App That Will Keep Ukrainians Updated About Military Attacks
Source: Vyacheslav Abroskin, Facebook. An app that informs users about military attacks and lets them contact law enforcement in seconds will soon go live in Ukraine—and, its creators hope, reduce casualties among civilians in the war-torn eastern regions of the country. For nearly three years, the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that compose the...
Controversial ‘Crashing Airplane’ Advertisement Stirs Serbian Presidential Elections Debate
Images from the video promoting candidacy by Aleksandar Vučić for president of Serbia. Serbia will hold presidential elections this April, and current Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić this month announced his candidacy for president. Just a few day later his campaign published a video commercial comparing the country to an airplane in danger of...
Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Watchdog Catches MPs Casting Multiple Votes, Again
Source: Chesno, YouTube On Thursday, the Ukrainian anti-corruption watchdog Chesno recorded five instances of MPs casting multiple votes through parliament’s electronic voting system, marking 161 documented cases of such fraud since the organization began keeping count in December 2014. Videos uploaded to YouTube by Centre UA, an...
Donetsk Court Sentences Two for Supporting Separatism on Social Media
Source: Kremlin.ru On Monday, a court in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine sentenced two men to five years in prison for supporting separatism on the social media website VKontakte. The Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office said in a press release that the two men were convicted by a Sloviansk city court under Part 2 of Article 110 of...
