Associated Press writes about drivers who risk their lives to evacuate people from occupied territories in east and south Ukraine. The routes are dangerous andл sometimes several days long, and the drivers are at risk of detention, injury, or even death. There are some drivers who do it for money, but many are volunteering alone or in groups. AP correspondent talked to Oleksandr Petrenko, who carried out several evacuations from Mariupol and areas around the city, saving about 130 people. As he has repeatedly traveled to Russian-held territory, the risk of detention is high, so now he is helping with logistics for a team of other drivers operating in Zaporizhzhya. Petrenko shares a set of strict rules he adopted: clean up smartphones from photos and messages, never get into political discussions, and don’t criticize Russia, as a wrong word to a wrong person might lead to deadly consequences. According to Ukrainian activists, there are more than two dozen drivers have been captured and held in the east of Donetsk oblast, and their status is unclear.
The Telegraph writes about Irpinʼs “hedgehogs” – a group of fathers who grouped to protect their city and now is training to join the warʼs eastern front. The group of four includes “Hulk”, “Doberman”, “Beard” and “Armenian” - all men in their 30s and 40s united in response to the Russian invasion and attack on their city. While Irpin is liberated and many people are returning home, the “hedgehogs” families stay in a refuge. The group joined the territorial defense unit to get trained and join the battle in the east. Telegraph talked to Mattew Robinson, one of 40 international trainers working in Kyiv to teach novice recruits the basics of battle tactics and weapons handling. Robinson shared frustration about the fightersʼ lack of training and equipment before being deployed. “They have big shopping lists of everything they need. It’s horrifying to see – I look at these men and think there is a third of you that are not going to live,” he said. In the big picture, despite mistakes, inaccuracies, and lack of planning and supplies, Ukrainian Armed Forces still are holding off an overwhelmingly powerful enemy.
Blockchain technology might be helpful to collect and verify war crimes evidence in Ukraine, writes CNN. The Starling lab research center uses the technology behind cryptocurrencies to preserve and verify publicly available online information about Russian war crimes against Ukraine. The group has already submitted evidence about five attacks on educational facilities in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court last Friday. Due to the ubiquity of modern cellphones, there have been bashes of open online data that might be used as evidence of war crimes committed by Russia. That presents an opportunity and a challenge, given the lack of protocols for preserving digital evidence. By leveraging the blockchain distribution across a network of computers, and other crypto technology, Starling is able to prove information hasnʼt been manipulated and ensure that it wonʼt disappear if, say, a tweet was deleted or if a cloud database went out of business.
An Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer Jeremy Grunert, writes in War on the Rocks about the future of the space industry affected by the war in Ukraine. The war itself, sanctions imposed on Russia and its allies, and Russia’s response to the sanctions affect outer space in multiple ways, claims Grunert. First, Russia’s Roskosmos, previously a significant role in commercial space, is likely to be narrowed, providing benefits to alternative launch-service providers, potentially including Japan and India. As Russia introduced a launch embargo in response to western sanctions, in a short-term perspective, the world’s launch market won’t be able to satisfy the demand. Second, the war affects import and export streams with commercial and national security effects, the US at least is probably going to decrease dependency on other countries and produce the spare parts for space equipment domestically. Third, the war demonstrated the increasing role of commercial space systems in defense, which would likely lead to such systems becoming targets for belligerents. Thus, the companies would need to consider countermeasures. Still, the war in Ukraine is ongoing and the full scale of its effects on the commercial space industry is unlikely to be fully evident for some time.