Ukraine spoils Putin’s May 9 parade, writes The Economist. While the Russian army is failing its goals in Ukraine, Zelensky stole Putin’s thunder showing himself as a better speaker on a day crucial for Russia. As Putin did not make any important announcements at his parade on Tverskaya street, the Ukrainian President “orchestrated a day-long political show of resistance and solidarity”, writes the outlet. Ukraine hosted Justin Trudeau, Jill Biden, and Barbel Bas as Bono performed in a metro station in Kyiv. Mariupol defenders managed to stage a press conference a day before, using Elon Musks’ Starlink satellite system. All this is a way better picture than a parade happening today in Moscow. At the same time, Russia is gaining some victories ― it now controls the land corridor to Crimea and about 80% of Donbas (compared to about a third before February). Russia has also managed to occupy or blockade Ukraine’s seaports. Yet, Ukrainians are fighting fiercely, staging the counter-offensive in the northeast of Kharkiv and digging trenches to lessen the impact of Russian heavy artillery. Russian-speaking cities that Russia hoped would welcome new leaders are organizing protests against the occupation. With western support, the article summarizes, Ukraine has every chance to prevent Putin from taking the entire Donbas and the territory between Azov and Black Seas, which would mean a definite strategic defeat for Russia.
The Atlantic writer Tom McTague talked to Britain’s foreign secretary Liz Truss who believes the West must start fighting back more actively. Truss urges “G7” to institutionalize as an “economic NATO” that can defend itself from Chinese economic coercion. She also thinks NATO to develop a more global vision. The Atlantic writes that war in Ukraine had given London “an injection of energy and ambition”, which some call opprobrium and others perceive with delight. Kremlin portrays the UK as one of the key enemies, and state TV features clips of the UK being bombed with Russian nukes. Liz Truss’s central idea is that the West is stuck in a spiritual crisis where it has forgotten how to stand for its’ ideals and what those ideals were. That is why, Truss says, there is a need to strengthen international coalitions to get things done. Some European experts believe that this idea serves the UK with more significant influence and reliance on NATO and G7 as the country has willingly left the EU. British vocal “hawkish” anti-Russian position has also been criticized among international diplomats who believe it had made it difficult to reach a cease-fire in what they claim to be “an attempt to restore British reputation following Brexit”. Among British officials, there is a concern that Truss is partly playing a political game to raise her chances of succeeding Johnson. In the interview, Truss says she thinks the Cold war had never ended, and one of the biggest challenges for the western democracies was perceiving freedom for granted. Throughout their conversation, McTague notices how attached Truss is to the ideas and ideals of the 1980-s with her admiration of Mrs. Tatcher and nostalgia for the older generation, who are more attached to democracies than the younger ones.
Ukrainian cities affected by the Russian invasion are returning to life, writes The Washington Post after talking to Ukrainians from Bucha, Kharkiv. Over a month after the liberation of Bucha, the city is coming back to life with water and electricity being largely restored, market and local shops opening, and damaged roads temporarily fixed. Ukrainians are not waiting for “The new Marshall plan” – they are cleaning up and rebuilding their cities themselves, writes the outlet. The driving force of these efforts is the belief that Ukraine is anything but defeated. Kharkiv is still being battered by artillery, but local volunteers are clearing debris from strike sites, which allows special units to demolish or rebuild the buildings. The volunteers range from women in their 60s to 12-year-old boy; all of them want to have a decent life in their city. In Irpin, the mayor has called for volunteer architectors, engineers, and designers to help restore the city with its’ parks and recreation zones and was astonished to see over 120 people responding. Although the full-scale war does not seem to end soon, Ukrainians are doing their best to rebuild what was ruined.
The New Yorker produced a piece about TB-2, aka Bayraktar drone, designed and produced in Turkey and a legendary weapon used by Ukraine in the war against Russia. The weapon was designed by Selçuk Bayraktar, a Turkish entrepreneur (some people even consider him like Elon Musk), who is married to the youngest daughter of unchanging Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Bayraktar’s father, Özdemir, founded an auto-parts company and was an amateur pilot, and his mother, Canan, was an economist and a computer programmer. When Bayraktar was achieving his second masterʼs degree in M.I.T, he began building small prototype drones at his family’s factory in Istanbul, and his father made sure to get support from the authorities. The prototype for TB2 debuted in 2014, and Bayraktar dedicated it to the memory of Erbakan – Erdogan’s mentor, who was an Islamic nationalist and a critic of Western Culture, elected as a Prime Minister in 1996. Selçuk is Erdogan’s son-in-law, and he is a part of the inner circle, he refers to liberal values, including gender equality, and at the same time, he is an outspoken defender of Erdogan’s regime. As Turkey, like Russia, is trying to restore its’ superpower, the two countries have complicated relationships. Ukraine is not the first country that used TB-2 against Russia. In 2020 Turkey supplied the drones to Azerbaidzhan, which fought against Russia-supported Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh and proved to be effective against Russian machinery. Over the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian officials have praised TB-2s. A lemur born in one of the Ukrainian zoos during the war was named Bayraktar. There have been many videos featuring the bombing of Russian machinery. There have been fewer similar videos in the past few weeks, which might be a sign Russians have trained to destroy the drones. Still, Bayraktar is upgrading software for his products and is producing more – a twin-prop Akinci that can fly to forty thousand feet is his latest production drone.