Francesca Ebel
@FrancescaEbel
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Correspondent @washingtonpost covering Russia and Ukraine | Formerly @AP in Tunis. insta: @francesca_ebel Напишите мне: Francesca.Ebel @washpost .com
Moscow, Russia
Joined August 2011
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Our friend & colleague
@evangershkovich
has been detained in Russia. The FSB has accused him of spying. He was fully accredited as a reporter by MFA. Evan is an excellent thoughtful journalist who cares deeply about his work & these allegations are absurd
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Life in Russia is deteriorating extremely rapidly. So many of my friends are packing up & leaving the country. Their cards are blocking. Huge lines for ATMs etc. Rumours that borders will close soon. “What have we done? How did we not stop him earlier?” said a friend to me yday
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Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago. I took this video of Khreschatyk, central Kyiv, on the night before the invasion, and sent to friends who asked what life was like in the capital, whether people were panicking, readying for war amid the warnings etc. It’s hard to watch it now.
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I’m in the north of
#Kyiv
where Russia is continuing to bomb the neighborhoods. This is the bridge that Ukraine blew up today to prevent the advance of Russian tanks. You can see ppl fleeing the city on foot scrambling over the ruins; I watched as a man dragged over his bicycle.
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How this war that nobody wanted will destroy Russian families and livelihoods is a v important part of this story. For English language coverage follow
@PjotrSauer
@ASLuhn
@BBCWillVernon
@BBCSteveR
@Andrew__Roth
@antontroian
on the ground rn
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This is what life looks like on Khreschatyk now, a week later. Completely empty, bleak and frightening.
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Despite the cheery atmosphere, the ppl I talked to tonight were visibly exhausted & emotional about what was happening to their country. Best friends Anna & Euhenia said that the day had been one of panic, hysteria & fear. “It wasn’t clear what to do, where to run, how to behave”
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Bogdan Voytenko told me he plans to sleep overnight in the makeshift bomb shelter. “I think that it is one of the only places right now where you can hide in Kyiv. All other places are… terrifying” he told me, a far away look in his eyes.
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Happy 32nd birthday to our friend and colleague Evan Gershkovich, who has now been in prison in Russia awaiting trail on absurd charges of espionage for nearly 7 months. We continue to call for his release. Evan, we miss you.
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The one-man picket protesting yesterday’s arrest of Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov is growing, despite multiple arrests of protestors earlier today.
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Screens in
#Kyiv
now flashing messages for potential Russian invaders/saboteurs. Don’t have bandwidth rn to translate each mssg (
@WarTranslation
over to you) but the gist of it is — “leave without blood on your hands, don’t kill for the sake of Putin!”
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This is Danylo and Diana. They are from Zaporizhzhia, which lies about 20 miles from the frontline and has been under relentless bombardment since Russia’s invasion. They had their first date 6 months into the war — by that time, missile strikes had become a terrifying new norm.
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“Our activists and opposition politicians told the West for a long time that Putin is a fascist and that they should bring sanctions against him,” she says. “They didn’t listen.”
Interviewed
@lcshtn
for
@TheEconomist
about her daring escape from Russia
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Just imagine this??
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Deeply obsessed with this presenter’s pronunciation of Hichem Mechichi
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Honestly, some of these ballot stuffings are hilariously brazen. People literally queuing behind this man as he stuffs ballots into the urn.
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Kyiv mayor Klitschko took a moment to answer when I asked him if there were plans to evacuate civilians if Russian troops managed to take
#Kyiv
. “We can’t do that, because all ways are blocked,” he said. “Right now we are encircled.”
📸 Efrem Lukatsky
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"When I speak Russian, inside myself I am embarrassed that I speak the language of the enemy in public," said Liubov, in Russian. "This is a very personal feeling."
Enjoyed reporting this endlessly rich & fascinating topic - w
@kostiantynwp
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Time for my own بلاغ - happy to be back full time at
@AP
as their new Tunisia/North Africa correspondent! 🎉
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In Chasiv Yar, east
#Ukraine
where strikes hit a residential neighborhood overnight, leaving at least 15 dead. Emergency services say they rescued 5 ppl and have made contact with 3 others who are trapped alive under the rubble.
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We are being told to evacuate our hotel in
#Kyiv
. Staff have told us to take all belongings and head to nearest bomb shelter — say they are acting by on govt orders; they have no further information.
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Can you believe… I’ve lived in Tunisia for 18 months… and this was my first lablabi 🌶🥖 I get it now!
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I spent the last fortnight following a group of young Russian protesters to get an insight into how they are organizing, the tech that they’re using and the challenges they face. Here are my main takeaways —
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10 yrs after Tunisia's revolution, billions of dollars stolen by the Ben Ali family remain missing. The search reveals much about the former leadership’s corruption & the networks Arab dictators use to remain in power.
My investigation for
@newlinesmag
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“This is the worst year on record. The city has never had so many problems”
As Russia targets Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, it is unable to maintain its own. My latest:
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Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees left homeless in England, data shows
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BEEAKING - Kais Saied has just sacked PM Hichem Mechichi, says that he will freeze parliament and remove parliamentary immunity from MPs 🇹🇳
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In my first story for
@washingtonpost
, I dug into what we know about the
#Belgorod
shooting and what it tells us about Russia’s forced mobilization of migrant workers:
“In a war, they are the first victims, because they are defenseless”
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My latest from Yerevan: I spoke to Russian families & teachers who fled the country in the wake of the invasion, to get a sense of how they are talking to Russian children about the war - and what it may mean for their futures.
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BREAKING- Ukrainian officials say a Russian strike has hit a children’s hospital and maternity facility in besieged city of Mariupol.
President Zelenskyy has tweeted that there were “people, children under the wreckage.”
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“If they come here, I’ll jab them with a pitchfork if I don’t have weapons - but I do have weapons" said Pjotr Vyerko, 81.
From Gorenka - caught in the crossfire of Moscow's most intense efforts to take Kyiv - where villagers are armed & ready to fight:
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Andrey Lugovoi, wanted by the British Government on suspicion of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, is currently on Russian state TV giving his 2 cents on the
#Skripal
case
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“But when the moment finally came, the President could not stop thinking about that headless woman on the ground.”
Lots of moving, much needed details about Zelensky’s day-to-day & what/who is behind his operation.
By
@shustry
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How do you grieve when there is no body to be found? How do you move forward when the person you loved vanished into the dust in a matter of seconds?
On the unthinkable questions many are now grappling with in
#Kremenchuk
:
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Took cover alongside this family earlier today after we heard a shell was incoming. I really have no words.
#Kyiv
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True, what I wrote is anecdotal and based on reports of friends from similar (ish) backgrounds across Russia… but it matches what others are seeing. It is not representative of Russia as a whole, but that some are experiencing this shift IS significant.
The problem with reports like this is always the source. The “friends” of a cosmopolitan Associated Press journalist educated at Cambridge are not representative of the Russian population as a whole.
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Streets of
#Tunis
right now following President Kais Saied’s speech announcing removal of PM and freezing of parliament 🇹🇳
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This October, a Russian missile strike crashed through their home and killed them both, obliterating their futures and their dreams. They will killed one month before their first wedding anniversary.
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So instead we took a stroll down the unremarkable Wilton road which is in oddly in the opposite direction to all of those places :)
Skripal suspects Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov tell Russia Today they had nothing to do with Novichok attack. “We went [to Salisbury] to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum, but we couldn’t do it because there was muddy slush everywhere."
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@serhiikorolchuk
@kostiantynwp
@s_morgunov
This is also a story about war trauma and how I single strike, a single death, impacts a whole community. It’s about the people that are left behind.
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“Если попаду на фронт, я просто выстрелю себе в голову. Я не хочу стрелять в других людей.”
Обязательно читайте новый текст
@sovkusomsahara
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Afghan politician Fawzia Koofi tells AP she is in Moscow to make sure women are represented: “we want to participate in every single meeting and face the Taliban, and the Taliban should have the courage to face the women of Afghanistan.” Koofi is 1 of 2 female participants here
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Good morning from Perm, one of my favourite russian towns, where last night it was -19! ❤️
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Would like to take this opportunity to say that the clock is INDEED a must see. It’s the oldest clock in the world!! Made in around 1386!! 💯 worth a whistle stop tour from Moscow
#Salisbury
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Dispatch from Ukraine’s southern front, on the badass trio of Ukrainian postal workers delivering pensions & letters to frontline towns 📨
“Somebody has to do this job — and nobody wants to do it”
Story with
@kamihrabchuk
& Sasha Maslov
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🇹🇳 It’s important to keep a spotlight on deteriorating situ in Tunisia right now. Recommend following these journalists & commentators:
@Ghaya_BM
@erinclarebrown
@amara_tarek
@MedDhiaH
@liliagaida
@sh_grewal
@MyriamAt
@MoniaBH
@MonicaLMarks
@tounsiahourra
@sasoukee
(as a start)
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A missile hit a residential area in
#Kramatorsk
earlier today, killing 1 civilian and injuring at least 6. Yuri, a resident, described a huge explosion that shattered all the windows and threw him & his wife to the ground. “Everything flew up into the air” he told us
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On why many believe the war that began in Crimea must end with Crimea. How Crimea explains Putin’s war & the intractability of claims from each side.
Thanks to
@herszenhorn
for his thoughtful editing. And to
@CamUkrainistyka
et al for their insights
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Despite the pouring rain, several thousand people turned out today to protest Kais Saied’s consolidation of power. The latest in a round of anti VS. pro-Saied weekend demonstrations.
#Tunisia
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The notorious Russian jail holding U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich -- visual story with
@maryilyushina
@juledurg
A portrait of what life looks like inside Lefortovo prison, where
@evangershkovich
will spend months awaiting trial.
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"We need to get back onto the streets" - opposition leader
@navalny
cheered by crowds during rousing speech at demo
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Very sad to be leaving Ukraine today. Thinking particularly of the Ukrainian journalists, fixers, producers & media drivers who are continuing to work in these difficult & dangerous conditions, as their own lives are falling apart. Pic yday frm beautiful, increasingly tense Lviv
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Thank you
@RenataBritoAP
(and others) for covering this aspect of the story. The racism on the part of some commentators and officials has been so blatant/revealing. Follow Renata & rest of AP migration team for their important, nuanced coverage.
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Important story from
@PjotrSauer
Spent a day with Svetlana Golub, the head of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee and watched Svetlana take dozens of phone calls from crying family members of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Some said their children did not want to be part of the war
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A few months after their first date, without telling anyone, they got married at a local registry office. Diana uploaded a video after the ceremony of her kissing Danylo and singing, “I got married at 19! Despite the war!”
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This genius meme of Tarantino looking around a Russian apartment will be appreciated by all who know the struggle of Moscow apartment-hunting/have spent countless, hopeless hours perusing ❤️
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Beautiful, ambitious and creative, they fell quickly and madly in love. “They were drowning in each other,” said a friend of the couple. They didn’t want to waste a second.
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Awful news from Moscow -
@sarahrainsford
is an exceptional journalist with a long history of working in Russia. One of the best.
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Bardo right now. Thousands have turned out to protest President Saied’s power grab.
#Tunisia
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Surreal to write this up: on attack on popular Ria restaurant in
#Kramatorsk
, which had become so central to wartime life there.
“This is the reality in Ukraine — one second you are having dinner, the next you’re dead, or almost dead”
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My profile of Russia's ultra-nationalist "war camps" is out today via
@AP
and
@washingtonpost
:
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UPD: I reported Klitschko’s comments word-for-word. We have now updated this story to reflect that the mayor has since taken a step back from this statement; his spokesperson says he misspoke.
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One of the shells that hit Ukraine’s capital
#kyiv
today landed in a busy, residential area. No one was hurt here, but Ukrainian govt has said at least 40 people have been killed so far in what they are calling a “full-scale war” targeting the country from the east, north & south
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My grandparents (83, 92) have not left their home since March 2020. Yesterday they finally got their vaccination to the sound of organ music in
@SalisburyCath
which will have totally delighted them ❤️
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This is what Nikolskaya street looks like right now, a minute away from the Kremlin!
#Mexico
#WorldCup2018
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I just got home having spent some hours interviewing members of
#Tunisia
’s trans & intersex community, including trans activist Ahmed El Tounsi. During our convo we spoke specifically about police brutality against queer & trans activists...
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UPD: I reported Klitschko’s comments word-for-word. We have now updated this story to reflect that the mayor has since taken a step back from this statement; his spokesperson says he misspoke.
Kyiv mayor Klitschko took a moment to answer when I asked him if there were plans to evacuate civilians if Russian troops managed to take
#Kyiv
. “We can’t do that, because all ways are blocked,” he said. “Right now we are encircled.”
📸 Efrem Lukatsky
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There are scores of female journos and bureau chiefs doing really good work here... But apparently we don’t exist?
I keep thinking about this tweet and how relevant it still is. Aside from
@Amie_FR
at the
@washingtonpost
and
@NatVasilyevaAP
at the
@AP
, the Moscow foreign correspondents' pool has become a boys' club, especially the all-male
@nytimesworld
bureau.
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Read this devastating report from Mariupol from our colleagues Mystyslav Chernov and Zhenya Maloletka. They risked so much to keep covering what was happening there.
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"To my fellow Russian correspondent Evan Gershkovich: Courage."
Insightful piece from Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent arrested and falsely accused to spying in 1986.
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🇹🇳 My latest for
@newlinesmag
on the political implications of Saied’s Decree 117. Does this new constitutional order signal a return to despotism or is
#Tunisia
’s democratic transition on pause?
With comment from
@Selim_
@zalali
@t_kahlaoui
& others.
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I was raised in
#Salisbury
and now live and work as a journalist in Moscow. The last few months have been pretty surreal — I’ve tried to condense how I feel about it in this personal essay for
@AP
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I should clarify that locals I spoke with told me it was blown up by Ukr forces; govt has not officially confirmed this.
I’m in the north of
#Kyiv
where Russia is continuing to bomb the neighborhoods. This is the bridge that Ukraine blew up today to prevent the advance of Russian tanks. You can see ppl fleeing the city on foot scrambling over the ruins; I watched as a man dragged over his bicycle.
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My latest on the complicated case of Tumso Abdurakhmanov - Chechnya’s most popular YouTuber and outspoken critic of Ramzan Kadyrov, who is now facing deportation from Poland. If he returns to
#Chechnya
, activists say he faces torture, or worse
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While the focus of today’s demos was the corruption & ineptitude of Tunisia’s political class, the protests also follow a swell in anger in previous months over widely documented police brutality
Thread (1/8)
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“I will miss the most important day of my life. But I am simply not letting Putin turn me into a killer in a war that I want no part in.”
By
@PjotrSauer
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A beautiful piece about Evan and everything that he stands for.
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‘I’d rather leave than fight’: Russians react to Putin’s draft
Dispatch on yesterday’s news by
@Andrew__Roth
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It has been 100 days since our friend and colleague Evan Gershkovich was wrongfully detained in Russia on baseless charges.
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Delighted to review ‘F Letter’, a remarkable new anthology of Russian feminist & queer poetry for
@LAReviewofBooks
. Some of the poetry is quite astonishing, especially in context of recent conservative policies, repression of feminist/lgbt activists etc
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Hundreds to people turned up at the Dutch Embassy tonight to lay down flowers for those who perished in the crash
http://t.co/5uwjeS9JMl
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“Putin is afraid of Prigozhin, ordinary people are clearly not”
Prigozhin’s rockstar exit from Rostov shows public support for ‘traitor’
By
@PjotrSauer
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The BBC obtained recordings of Ben Ali’s calls to top officials after he fled Tunisia on 14 Jan, 11 years ago. Rather surreal to hear his confusion/ panic:
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