On December 31st, 2022, 140 Ukrainian soldiers, including 30-year-old Oleksii Anulia, a kickboxer from Chernihiv, returned from Russian captivity. Oleksii spoke about the torture, beatings, torture with a stun gun, and starvation. Here is his story.Read this article in Ukrainian

"We must recover the name of every personwho suffered from war crimes.Because a human being is not a number,"human rights activist Oleksandra Matviichuk.Dmytrivka is a small village just a few kilometres north of the Zhytomyr highway that connects Kyiv to Chop, a town near the Hungarian border. It’s the site of a dumping ground for cars that Russians shot and burned during the siege of Kyiv. It is one of dozens of dumps in the Kyiv region."After the de-occupation, about fifty cars were brought to Dmytrivka," say operatives of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (Ukraine has retained law enforcement agencies that worked in the territories that are now temporarily occupied — ed.)

Russia is a country where rebellion against the authorities is often led by leaders who are even more brutal and despotic than legitimate leaders. Little-educated Prigozhin can hardly be compared with Lenin, but he has a lot in common with Yemelyan Pugachev, an (in)famous leader of the bloody Cossack War of 1773-1775.Published on June 19, 2023Translated by Dmitry Lytov and Mike LytovЧитати українською

There are many parallels between the history of Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In particular, both countries were once Soviet republics and both have been going through a painful process of decolonization in recent years. The sooner they both go through this path, the sooner they can move on.As the Kazakh academic Aynash Mustoyapova notes, there are two important things that our peoples should realize in order to achieve a new interpretation of history.We published the abstracts of her speech on the YouTube channel of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.You can subscribe to the channel about Ukraine and the Middle East here (in Ukrainian)Translated by Dmitry Lytov & Mike LytovRead this article in Ukrainian

On October 11, 32 Ukrainian soldiers returned from captivity. Among those released is 22-year-old Oleksandr Makarevych from the Chernihiv Region, who has been serving in the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade (the Black Zaporozhtsi) since September 2021. He went missing on June 26 this year near Bakhmut, Donetsk Region. Until October 10, the family did not know anything about what happened to him.Translated by Dmitry Lytov and Mike LytovRead this article in Ukrainian

In the middle of October 2016 Russian Orthodox Church opened its “spiritual and cultural center” by placing a golden-domed cupola on top of the future Saint Trinity church in Quai Branly. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except the fact that the future church was being built at a stone’s throw from Palais de l'Alma which contains the Élysée Palace’s postal service and the private apartments of senior presidential advisers. What some might dismiss as conspirology is very likely to be an attempt of using this place of worship and other Russian churches as electronic surveillance centers to eavesdrop on French authorities, Russian influence researchers say.