Section: The Netherlands
Meet Russia’s New Activists, the Anti-Maidan Movement
“Anti-maidanovtsy, anti-maidanovtsy everywhere.” Images edited by Kevin Rothrock. The latest thing to sweep Moscow’s culture of street demonstrations is a coalition of war veterans, patriotic politicians, nationalist bikers, and mixed martial artists. They call themselves the Anti-Maidan movement. The group’s name signifies its...
Twitter Chatter About Putin and Poroshenko: The Language Breakdown
Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot. This article is part of a citizen-media data-analysis project, a collaboration between RuNet Echo and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Explore the complete article series on the All the Presidents’ Tweets page. When we started collecting our Twitter data last October, we were...
The Russian Military Commander Allegedly Leading Ukraine’s Separatists
Images mixed by Kevin Rothrock. Vladimir Putin has attracted considerable attention for comments in Budapest yesterday, February 17, where he urged Ukraine to accept defeat in Debaltseve after losing to “yesterday’s miners and tractor drivers.” Putin’s appeal comes as many on the RuNet believe they’ve found video proof that...
Trolling Russia’s Hearts and Minds
Images edited by Kevin Rothrock. Wars are fought at the front lines, but winning a nation’s hearts and minds comes at the home front. In Russia, the conflict in eastern Ukraine is a hotly contested political subject, and nothing counts more than rhetoric about the people who have died. This is hardly surprising, given that almost 6,000...
Ukrainian MP Pushes for Carbon Copy Of Russian Blogger Law, Meets Resistance
Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot. Ukrainian Internet users were in for an unpleasant surprise at the end of last week when a member of the Ukrainian parliament suggested bloggers in Ukraine should be required to verify information in their posts and disclose their personal data to the authorities. Vasyl Petyovka, an MP from Western Ukraine who got...
Russia Says You Can’t Mention Ukrainian Nationalists, Unless You Say They’re Bad
Images mixed by Kevin Rothrock. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s government-run media watchdog, has issued a new set of “clarifications” about the media’s freedom to mention officially recognized “extremist” groups. The Justice Ministry has banned 41 such groups, most recently targeting five Ukrainian nationalist organizations in November 2014....
Ukraine amnesty will not cover MH17 perpetrators: Dutch PM
There is a ‘cast iron’ guarantee from Ukraine that the people who shot down Malaysian Airways flight MH17 will not… …read more Source:...
The Minsk Summit 2.0
Images edited by Kevin Rothrock. World leaders pulled an all-nighter in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on Wednesday in a marathon session of tense, high-stakes international diplomacy. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko welcomed two of the European Union’s most powerful leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President...
Dutch MPs want answers on Ukraine agreement amnesty
MPs have called on the cabinet to explain what the consequences of an apparent amnesty in the agreement on eastern… …read more Source:...
How the War in Ukraine Tears Apart Families and Friends Online
Natalia Antonova’s mother, Tatiana (right), and Tatiana’s twin sister, Natalya, in Crimea in the 1970s. Photo by Yuri Nifatov. (Used with permission.) “The final blow was them posting bloody pictures of the Donbass dead on my Facebook, with comments like ‘This one’s on your conscience. Sleep well at night?’ I could have...
