The war that is happening right next door, almost across the border, is being covered in the media on a scale previously unheard of. It could be said to be the first full-scale European war of the internet age. The web is teeming with studies by various, more or less competent, specialists in open source analysis (OSINT), daily reports based on Ukrainian and Russian material, reports and accounts by journalists going almost to the front line, and finally moving interviews with Ukrainian survivors from under the Russian occupation, with soldiers, including Ukrainian prisoners of war happily released from captivity, and Russian 'plenaries’. Economic analyses also appear. Of course, the Russian side is very active, the Russian 'troll farms’ do not stop, there is a lot of disinformation on the web, often reproduced by people who are not fully informed – and this also has to be taken into account. But if one remembers something from school Russian and has convinced oneself that Ukrainian is quite comprehensible, thanks to the Internet one has access to an abundance of all sorts of sources. Keeping track of the constantly changing situation is very time-consuming and it is easy to get lost in it.
This is why we have prepared a report of a somewhat different nature from the previous studies presented by RDI, based mainly on popular, rather than scientific, material available on the web. Its aim is, on the one hand, to show the picture of the war as it emerges from the multiple sources available to the public, and on the other, to try to understand what is actually happening in the neighbourhood and why this nightmare is still going on. Although the reality seen from different perspectives slips through our grasp like a slippery fish out of a river, a more or less coherent picture emerges.
We would like to draw your attention to the annexes, which are a valuable addition to the report. The first of these is a text entitled 'Prigozhin. Man of Chaos’, by Mikołaj Susjew. This article discusses in detail the role and influence of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and close associate of Vladimir Putin, on events in the region. A look at this analysis will provide a better understanding of the context in which key figures associated with Russian politics operate.
The second attachment is an interview we conducted with Father Nikolai Belyichev, a Marianist born and raised in Kharkov, who now resides there. The interview, entitled „On the war as seen from Kharkiv, on the 'Russian mira’, politics and the Church”, raises many important issues directly and indirectly related to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Father Belyichev shares his insights, experience and reflections on the current situation in the country and its impact on society, and the role of the Church.
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