Ilya Lozovsky
@ichbinilya
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Writer and senior editor @OCCRP , but tweets are just me. Investigative journalism, democracy, corruption, US politics, Eurasia. More fun than this profile IRL.
Amsterdam
Joined February 2010
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I can think of a worse “foreign policy blunder” Germany has done in the last 100 years.
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Remember when Russia shot down a civilian airliner that had taken off from Amsterdam, killing 298 people, and Europe was like "oh, that sucks, but whatever"
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Reports that a Ukrainian kindergarten, used as a shelter, was hit. I will not share the images as they’re too graphic. Absent an extremely compelling explanation - hard to imagine what it could be - this is a war crime.
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In Buratiya, male uni students are being taken straight out of classes. Some schools have closed and turned into enlistment offices. Men are being rounded up and conscripted from small villages.
This will all look *very* different in Russia's ethnic republics than in Moscow.
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It’s hard to articulate, but there’s something very satisfying in exactly HOW Russian narratives are being proven completely wrong.
Their army isn’t just losing unexpectedly - it’s proving to be an unprofessional, ridiculous, constantly humiliated band of criminals.
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I just spoke with a senior employee from Amnesty International.
Their sum-up: “It’s a dark moment for the movement, there’s no other way to put it.”
Also: "We threw a party the Russian state was eager to attend for its own political purposes.”
More in this (long) thread 👇
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when putin gets criticised from an unexpected direction
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The actual nuclear specialists are coming out of the woodwork to say that no, it would not be a marvel-movie-style explosion. Yes, it's bad — fuel could leak. But let's not retweet gov't pronouncements uncritically. It's a different kind of reactor than Chernobyl.
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Digital billboards reportedly in Kyiv:
“Russia soldier, stop! Putin has lost. The whole world is with Ukraine. Leave without blood on your hands.”
“Russian soldier, stop! Remember your family. Return home with a clean conscience.”
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Wow, thought this was a photoshop, but it's legit.
As cached yesterday by the internet archive, the *official page* of the Education Ministry of Dagestan — a Russian region! — republished Zelensky's speech calling on Caucasian peoples not to fight in Ukraine.
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Boris Johnson is announcing new sanctions in the UK. A notable one I just heard: Aeroflot is banned.
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.
@tvrain
interviews a young couple at the protest in St. Petersburg.
"Why the flowers?"
"We're on a date."
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Seriously, anyone who supports negotiating with Putin now. I am not trolling. I am genuinely asking: What is there to negotiate? What can Ukraine, or Europe, or the United States, offer? How much of Ukraine should remain in Russian hands?
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Hard to sum up how badly things are going for Putin. Initially disappointing sanctions gained huge bite. Western unity & resolve. Worldwide disgust. Ferocious Ukrainian resistance. And the one thing we thought Russia could do - kill & conquer - is proving very much in question.
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In an hour-long video, Glenn Greenwald gives credence to Russian claims that the Ukrainians were carrying out “emergency disposal” of dangerous pathogens they had been developing with US help.
I'm going to translate a *LONG* thread by a geneticist debunking these claims.
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.
@yandexcom
is the largest technology company in Russia and the country's second-largest search engine.
The former head of its news division, Lev Gershenzon, just made this remarkable post on Facebook, addressed to his former colleagues. My translation.
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Sarajevo’s city hall, destroyed during the siege and later rebuilt, lit up in solidarity with Ukraine tonight
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Alesya Marakhovskaya, a really great Russian journalist who has left the country, just wrote an impassioned Facebook post about how the war is tearing apart her family.
With her permission, I'm translating into English in this thread. People should see what this looks like. 👇
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confirmed by defense minister
Ukraine plans to submit evidence of Russian artillery hits on a kindergarten and an orphanage to the ICC as an war crimes.
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it’s exactly what bloodthirsty chauvinist ghouls deserve. no glory, no respect even in defeat. just scornand exposure as the pathetic lot of thieves and rapists that they are. go back home and figure out how to get a washing machine that isn’t covered with the blood of innocents.
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There's a disturbing video going around of Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian POWs in the legs. It appears to be in or near Kharkiv, and judging by the dialogue, they're exacting revenge for the shelling of civilian areas.
War brutalizes everything and everyone it touches.
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I've translated a fascinating report by the very well-sourced Russian journalist
@faridaily_
about what senior Russian officials think of the invasion. Haven't seen this kind of information anywhere else.
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"a war that is ALLOWED to grind on for years"
Imagine signing your name to this! And calling yourself a progressive!
"How can we ALLOW Ukraine to keep fighting? Surely the better option is to get them to capitulate!"
Am I taking crazy pills? How can anyone sign this?
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This is absolutely grotesque. Belarusian television shows clearly frightened, injured young people.
"Are we going to do more revolution?" asks an interrogator with a disguised voice.
"Never again," they say.
По белорусскому телевидению показывают сильно избитую молодежь, которая испуганно выражает раскаяние. Видео: Расстрига
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these videos of Ukrainians advancing with their hands up on armed, helmeted Russian troops - and cursing up a storm - are so powerful. occupying this country is a total fantasy
Day 14. Good morning. Video: Kherson - the only regional capital that has fallen. Ukrainian crowd of protestors gets angry after Russian troop start beating up a protestor. Russians open fire (in the air) and that does not stop but mobilize protestors. Pure anger and no fear
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Bernie tweets an extremely normal and anodyne anti-war message and is flooded with 🌹accounts denouncing him. The replies are a sight to behold.
It is beyond belief that in 2022, as we face challenges like covid & climate change, any national leader would start a war that could kill thousands & create millions of refugees. There is a diplomatic solution to this crisis. It is tragic that Putin seems intent to reject it.
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Amnesty's Ukrainian chapter has disavowed the report, saying they did everything they could to prevent its publication. Their head,
@OPokalchuk
, has just resigned. The Ukrainian gov't has also witheringly criticized the report — here's a good summary.
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Just watched a very uncomfortable exchange on
@tvrain
. The anchor, Anna Mongait, was interviewing Sergei Leschenko, a former Ukrainian legislator and now an advisor to Zelensky's office.
It was a polite interview, but at the end something happened that made my hair stand on end.
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Zelensky asks Viktor Orban to go to the Budapest waterfront and look at the “shoe memorial” to the Jews killed by the fascist wartime Hungarian militia.
“It’s the same people in Mariupol,” he says. “It’s time to decide who you’re with.”
This really is quite something. Wait for the total admonishment of Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
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So what does this look like on the inside?
“People are upset,” said the employee I spoke with.
“There are lots of people within the movement who are deeply frustrated with the report — who don’t think it was constructive for human rights in Ukraine or the movement.”
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Well-meaning liberal Russians saying things like "All of this violence is too horrible" will not feel adequate to many Ukrainians.
Russians and Ukrainians are not all caught up together in some natural disaster. The Russians did this. The Ukrainians won't forget it.
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This "US intel says Shoigu is planning a coup" claim is essentially a litmus test for unreliability: Put an unsourced, very dubious claim onto Twitter, see which accounts pick it up, and you now know who not to trust.
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The world knows Bucha and Mariupol, but there's hardly a corner of Ukraine untouched by Russian crimes.
We've just published this story about Andriivka, a small village about an hour outside Kyiv. Please read and share.
Important bits in this thread 👇
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If you’re just joining us, at issue is this report just issued by
@amnesty
that criticizes the Ukrainian military for basing themselves in civilian areas. It’s been met with a firestorm of criticism from Ukrainians and specialists in the law of war.
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Navalny is not only Russia's leading opposition politician — he's also, in effect, one of the country's top investigative journalists.
His video investigations, which are always exceptionally produced to be clear and understandable to ordinary people, are exemplars of the genre
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I'm not going to chide people for being overly dramatic. Everyone is understandably freaked out and upset. But let's keep our heads. The real-life situation is bad enough — focus on the fact that Russian troops are committing blatant war crimes by shelling Ukr cities.
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They specifically mentioned this tweet by Amnesty Sec Gen
@AgnesCallamard
as “incredibly inflammatory, not constructive in the least. It's helped cause a number of folks within the movement to really lose confidence in her leadership in this crisis.”
Ukrainian and Russian social media mobs and trolls: they are all at it today attacking
@amnesty
investigations. This is called war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation. This wont dent our impartiality and wont change the facts.
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A sign listing Russian oligarchs to sanction. You love to see it.
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A short thread that's very difficult to write.
Those of us with friends, loved ones, or colleagues in Ukraine — or who are simply in love with the country — have been in a state of continual heartbreak for weeks, and especially in the last few days as Russian atrocities mount.
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I can’t get over the fact that this is the Russian MFA’s pinned tweet. I just can’t.
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“Why are you hiding? We’ve come to liberate you.” Then they blow half her husband’s head off.
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This is a straight news piece, not opinion, in the NYT. As far as I understand, the expert consensus is that a lack of controlled burns over many decades *is* in fact the primary and direct cause of the severity of these fires. This is not even gestured at in the story.
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This piece is really confused. The "normie" centrist position — not the leftist position! — is that the US should help Ukraine, but not become an active participant in the conflict. That's what Biden is doing. It's NOT what the DSA is saying.
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I don't blame him in the slightest. How could any of us blame Ukrainians for what they're feeling?
But it was still a punch to the gut. Another marker of the psychic and moral damage Putin has caused, not to speak of the murder and torture and physical destruction.
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how is it progressive to support ethnic cleansing? I really don’t get this one!
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Finally, the report as fodder for Russian propaganda.
“When you have a party,” they said, “You’re responsible for who gets in the door and whether you kick them out. Unfortunately, we threw a party the Russian state was very eager to attend for its own political purposes.”
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I don't have any answers, or even ideas. Propaganda. ruins families. It's hard to think of anything more evil, short of doing the shooting yourself. And those who peddle it know exactly what they're doing.
Here's Alesya's original post in Russian.
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Russian writer and economist Maxim Mironov (
@mironov_fm
) has written an absolutely fascinating critique of the elite Russian media space. Read it here 👇 if you speak Russian. If you don't, keep reading this thread for my translation.
Как мы про…али все полимеры.
Когда началась война все оказались в ужасе по двум причинам. Во-первых, что Путин начал эту безумную войну. Во-вторых, что большинство населения его в этой агрессии поддержала.
Когда я изучил опросы общественного мнения, то я им не поверил и стал..
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It’s interesting that the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia is never (that I’ve seen) viewed through a “dictatorship vs democracy” lens, as Russia/Ukraine is. I don’t think Armenia is obviously less democratic than Ukraine?
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Allowing the war against Hitler to drag on for years will only immiserate the Jews even further. We condemn — absolutely condemn! — his aggression. But this conflict must end, and every diplomatic avenue must be pursued to ensure that it does.
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For the love of God, if this horrifies you, demand that your government heighten the pressure. Best thing outsiders can do.
Putin may no longer be a rational actor, but people around him are. The more they see Russia’s interests damaged by his adventurism, the higher the pressure grows. Eventually someone, or a group of someones, could make a move.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians are dying. No time to spare.
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As we learn of the horrors of a new Srebrenica, let’s not forget what the leftists have to offer right now.
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That's it (back to me again). It's really heartbreaking to read, and it's just one example I've seen in recent weeks and months.
I think this will sound familiar to many Americans, just pitched at a higher and more urgent level. Russians are arguing, Ukrainians are dying.
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I think that if tomorrow my relatives are told to round up and shoot the foreign agents, they’ll get right to it, and nothing will stop them. Not the fact that I’m their beloved niece. Not the fact that I’m the only girl in their family...
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First, from this employee, a partial defense: A lot of the criticism is “clearly in bad faith,” they say.
It might be a persuasive argument that Ukraine, a country defending itself against brutal aggression, shouldn't be criticized — but not for a human rights organization.
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Simonyan, on Dugina’s alleged killer ahiding in Estonia: “I think we’ll find some professionals who’ll want to have a look at the spires around Tallinn.”
Is this another case of Russia stridently denying responsibility for something, only to casually admit it years later?
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It’s long been known that — despite Western sanctions — the Russian military is supplying itself with foreign technology through third countries.
But how do these supply chains actually work? We investigated.
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This is Nastya Chukovskaya, a Russian woman living in Budapest who, along with her partner, has helped countless Ukrainian refugees find shelter, food, and other assistance.
This is her face as she describes her experience trying to get the United States embassy to help. 👇
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But I can't keep forcing myself to speak with people who, at the snap of the fingers, will take a pitchfork and put all the dissenters on it. Starting with me, no matter how nice a niece and role model I’ve been to their kids all these years.
Fuck.
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That’s it. I think it’s an interesting and not simplistic window into a big, complicated organization. (If anyone else at
@Amnesty
wants to talk, I’m here.)
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More broadly, this employee said, when releasing this report, Amnesty did not take the opportunity to highlight all the reporting they had done about Russia, as a way of framing the extent of the alleged Ukrainian violations in a proper context.
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Woah! Big impact from our
#PegasusProject
investigation: Amazon is shutting down NSO Group infrastructure. Not sure if *all* of it, or just what they deem as relevant. Forensic reports have shown that the Israeli company's spyware uses Amazon Web Services.
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*that should say Buryatia, of course.
49-year-old Sergei is among those conscripted.
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But today I talked to my grandmother on my mother's side (they're Ukrainians, but moved to Russia long ago). She cried. Her relatives are in cities that under fire. She cried that I can’t return to Russia, and that she’s 72, and that she’s afraid she’ll never see me again.
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Most of all, the employee said, the problem was messaging and framing.
“How we share information matters — and this was deeply problematic, the way we went about it.”
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As Alexei Navalny remains in a coma — and officials don't allow him to be evacuated to Germany — I wrote about his role in Russian investigative journalism. He's not just an "opposition leader." He's one of the top revealers of corruption in the world.
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Minsk right now. It feels like there’s a new and different form of protest every day.
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forgot to add a key element - obvious shock and dismay at home. Surprisingly open popular opposition and the first (still small) signs of an elite split.
This could very well turn out to be his end.
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People calling for a NATO-enforced no fly zone: Please explain how that’s supposed to work. A Russian plane appears: do you shoot? If not, it’s not a no fly zone. If yes, congrats, you’ve taken a huge step towards nuclear apocalypse.
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Because that's what the TV says. And nothing worse than this sudden dehumanisation can happen to them.
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Ukrainian journalists I know personally are buying bulletproof vests and helmets, preparing for their cities to turn into war zones. Because their country could get invaded any day now. Meanwhile, here's Jeet Heer.
The "lessons of history" are often ambiguous but I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea to start a war with Russia in winter.
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About to start: the Russian education ministry's Russia-wide "online lesson" about "why the liberation mission in Ukraine was necessary."
The version I'm watching is on the Ministry's page on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook clone. Not sure if it's also streaming elsewhere.
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Long before his attack on Ukraine, Putin single-handedly propped up Assad’s genocidal regime in Syria. He’s been a diabolical force on the world stage for years. Ukrainians may be the ones who will rid the world of him — with their blood — to the shame of everyone else.
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“It’s not the mandate of a human rights org to self-censor,” they said. “It would be a disservice to those Ukrainians who shared their stories with us — who were asking the Ukrainian military to move away from their homes. What would we say to them if we censored our findings?”
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This is Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, dubbed the "Butcher of Mariupol."
Below, my translation of his recent statement about last week's attacks on apartment blocks near Odesa. Just to remind ourselves what Russian propaganda sounds like. We should never get used to this.
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I recently fought with my close relatives. It began with all the classics about the war. They used words straight out of the darkest depths of propaganda:
- 'They have fascist marches.'
- 'Why is NATO at our borders?'
- 'We gave them their country.'
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"In his speech, he emphasized that the peoples of Dagestan should not die in Russia's vile and shameful war."
The site, is now down. A rogue employee? A hack? Or something more?
(Dagestan has been an epicenter of protest since the mobilization)
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...(this used to please them a lot, they kept stressing it), not the fact that I used to help their children with their homework, not the fact that they used to set me as an example to their children about how to study and work hard. Nothing.
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After offering this partial defense, the employee told me what they thought was most troubling about the report.
First was its vagueness: “This stuff is technical and international law is hard, but it’s our responsibility to do this well,” they said.
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It turns out that my relatives have long been hinting to her that I’m an enemy of the people, and taking delight in making up details about what I do and on whose money. And in response to my grandmother telling them what I really do, they wave their hands: “It's not like that.”
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Deleted a tweet expressing surprise at Armenia’s failure to vote to condemn Russia’s invasion at the UN. Got lots of Armenians arguing that the abstention was meaningful, given the country’s dependence on Russia. Best not to comment on countries where you’re not a specialist!
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Looks like Trump is giving in? Make no mistake: this is a result of the public outrage. And that wouldn’t have been possible without the underpaid journalists busting their ass to quickly and accurately report this story. Please support good journalism. It’s a public good.
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This transcript doesn't really capture the emotion. Leschenko's fury was so palpable, I almost felt like he was going to come through the camera and throttle me.
This is someone I've interviewed a few times — a totally chill, humane, reasonable guy.
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“One way to do this is to have a plan to forcefully rebut attempts to take bits of truth and move them through the disinfo machine … We didn’t have a plan to do that organizationally, to pre-rebut what we knew the Russian media machine would do with our findings.”
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if I believed in God, I would thank him every day that my mom got us the fuck out of there in 1990.
Since I don’t, I’ll just thank her again 👋❤️
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Gotta say it is pretty wild to see a massive terrorist attack followed by worldwide protests in support of the attackers
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- 'They have bio-labs, haven't you noticed how many diseases are out there? A pigeon flies here, takes a shit, and that's it.'
With these pigeons, I almost passed out from this shit, how quickly and confidently they chose this side.
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If this rift ever heals, it will take generations. Just an unfathomable tragedy.
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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP BUYING THEIR FUCKING OIL AND GAS. EUROPE IS FUNDING THIS.
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"We also don’t, nor could we, accuse the Ukrainian military of using human shields — this is a specific category in international human rights law that has a high evidentiary threshold.”
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“That requires intentionality. We don’t make that claim.”
But, they said, “We were not forceful [in the report] of teasing out these distinctions or being clear in what we were saying.”
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I don’t expect Belarus to be a huge news story in the United States, because... why would it be?
But it’s still shocking to scroll all the way through the New York Times page and find literally *nothing*
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