Amid war in Ukraine, the fleeting moments of despair and salvation I witness are what truly tell the story | Charlotte Higgins
There are images that flicker in the mind before sleep: the loss, the resilience and then the strange mundanity of it allWhat was it like? Is the question I am often asked when I return from working in Ukraine, where I have been travelling regularly since 2022. There’s an understanding implicit in the question that the answer will not – not quite – lie in the accumulation of reporting. For good reasons the reporter keeps her eyes steady and focused outward, collecting the essential information, conveying it as clearly and smoothly as possible. The reporter reins in and disciplines her subjectivity, while, ideally, recognising its existence and understanding its contours. The reporter knows that the facts of the matter are the thing.At the same time, feelings and impressions cannot wholly be untangled from the facts. Feelings are inevitable, if you are functioning as a human in any sense at all. They are the tentacles of empathy that reach out in an attempt to understand people and situations. Feelings have an epistemic role – a part to play in acquiring knowledge. Nevertheless, they must be tidied into the background. Respect for your readers and your subjects demands it; the rituals and rules of journalism demand it.Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writerUkrainian Lessons by Charlotte Higgins (Cape, £22) will be published in August. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may applyUkrainian Lessons: Art in a time of war with Charlotte Higgins and guests
On Wednesday 30 September, join Charlotte Higgins and our panel of acclaimed Ukrainian writers to reflect on the profound connections between war, art and life. With Olia Hercules, Sasha Dovzhyk, Olesya Khromeychuk, and Shaun Walker. Book tickets hereDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy ridicules Russian military drive, saying Putin keeps postponing goal deadlines
Ukrainian president says Kremlin leader has repeatedly set and deferred timelines to fully capture eastern Donbas area. What we know on day 1,588Volodymyr Zelenskyy has mocked Russia’s military drive, saying the Kremlin has set and put off 15 deadlines to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region across four years. The Ukrainian president was responding to Vladimir Putin’s rejection a day earlier of what the Russian leader said was a Ukrainian proposal to abandon long-range strikes and scale down the fighting. He said Putin’s comments showed he was out of touch with the feelings of Russians who faced queues at petrol stations, linked to a Ukrainian campaign of strikes on oil industry targets. “Even an oil-producing state – a ‘gas station’ as Russia has often been called – is now facing fuel shortages,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday. “This is a direct consequence of the war; one of many consequences. It is also one example of how Ukraine responds – with precision, not through terrorism.”Zelenskyy also said the Kremlin had set – and later put back – 15 deadlines over the course of more than four years to capture four regions in eastern Ukraine: Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. “Russia’s political leadership remains obsessed with Donbas,” he said. “If Russia does not end the war, it will have to postpone that deadline once again.” Putin on Sunday said Russian forces would press ahead with their battlefield aim of fully capturing the four regions.Russian attacks across Ukraine killed 10 people and wounded dozens on Monday, authorities said, with strikes continuing into the afternoon as the death toll climbed. A missile attack in the south-eastern city of Dnipro killed six people and wounded 29, the regional governor said. Zelenskyy said the strike targeted infrastructure and that rescue rescue operations were under way. A Russian drone attack on a passenger minibus in Zaporizhzhia killed two men and a woman and injured eight others, including a seven-year-old boy, regional officials said. A glide bomb also hit the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, killing a 23-year-old woman and wounding 10 others, according to officials there.A Russian court has said it jailed three bar workers for participating in the “international LGBT community”, in the first such case since Moscow labelled the community “extremist” in 2023. Russia has for years targeted LGBTQ+ organisations but has become even more hostile since invading Ukraine in 2022. A court in Orenburg, a city bordering Kazakhstan, said on Monday its verdict was in the “first criminal case” for “organising and participating in the activities of an extremist organisation – the international LGBT movement”. It said the owner, the administrator and art director of the Pose bar in Orenburg were found guilty of organising “events united by the theme of demonstrating solidarity with people of non-traditional sexual orientation” – the Russian legal term for LGBTQ+ people. The three would serve between two and seven years in jail and the owner would have to pay a 1m rouble ($13,000) fine, the court said.Ukraine’s energy grid was buckling under temperatures in excess of 36C on Monday amid the European heatwave. Authorities in the western Rivne region introduced emergency power outages to ease pressure on the grid, while the central Khmelnytsky region also announced temporary outages. Five other regions – from Ivano-Frankivsk in the west to Zaporizhzhia on the frontline in the south – warned households and businesses to be prepared for blackouts on Tuesday.A Russian army veteran who threatened Vladimir Putin with mutiny has been convicted of displaying “extremist” symbols and jailed, according to his Telegram account and court documents. The former soldier, who had reportedly served on the frontline against Ukraine, posted videos on Instagram last week calling for a meeting with Putin – alleging that many soldiers were being tortured for refusing “mindless, suicidal orders” – and threatening an army mutiny, attracting millions of views. The Kremlin said on Friday it had not yet seen the video but that it appeared to have “strange wording”. The court on Monday published only limited information confirming the case, without giving the sentence, but the soldier’s Telegram account said he was jailed for 11 days. Continue reading...
