Carlos Vargas

🇺🇸🇨🇴

[Nokia @nokia]

Nokia and @iceye_global announced today a partnership with the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine to develop sovereign satellite communications. Through this Letter of Intent we will explore how trusted, sovereign satellite communications can strengthen Ukraine's resilience and give it control over the connectivity it depends on.

Read more: https://t.co/rnVJinYEOb

[Steven Bartlett @StevenBartlett]

What do you say to your family when you don’t know if you’ll ever see them again?

In February 2022, he told his wife and children the war had begun. Then he left as Russian forces advanced towards Kyiv, unsure what the coming hours would bring.

This is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Before politics, he built a successful career in Ukrainian television as a writer, producer and performer, even portraying a president on screen. In 2019, he was elected President of Ukraine. Three years later, Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Sitting down with him was surreal and an enormous responsibility. It was a rare chance to hear his account of the first hours of the war and the decisions that followed.

We discussed things like:

How he found out Russia had invaded.
Why he refused an offer to evacuate Kyiv.
The 64km Russian military convoy advancing towards the capital.
How Russian forces tried to capture a key airport.
His account of discovering hundreds of bodies after Russian occupation.
What he believes it will take to end the war.

But I also wanted to understand how he’d been coping.

One of my first questions was simply, “How are you doing?” His answer was: “It’s hard.”

He spoke about meeting parents whose children had been killed. Some, he explained, simply ask him for a hug.

And as he spoke, there were tears in his eyes.

Whatever your views on the war or the decisions made by those involved, this is a rare opportunity to hear his account of events that have changed millions of lives.

Because behind every map, every headline and every political decision, there are real people.

Out now on all platforms ❤️👊🏾

(President Zelenskyy was recorded in Ukrainian and dubbed in English.)

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Russians killed an infant and two women in a park in Nova Vodolaha, Kharkiv region.

At least 14 people were injured in the Russian drone attack, including 7 children. Many people, including families with children, were in the park at the time of the attack.

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@DiscussingFilm That’s actually fire

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

‘CLAYFACE’ film variant cover for an upcoming comic.

(🎨: Frank Cho)

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Terrible news about the earthquake in western Colombia, which also affected neighboring Ecuador. As of now, at least 25 people have been reported dead, and there are people trapped under the rubble. Our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives and to everyone affected. Any loss of life is tragic. We stand in full support and solidarity with the people of Colombia and everyone who has been affected by this disaster. We call on everyone around the world who can support the affected people and countries right now to step up and help.

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@SecRubio @ABDELAESPRIELLA USAID would’ve been there, you gutted it

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@KyivIndependent Of course he wasted all their stockpiles in Iran so now he needs a steady supply, manipulation at its finest

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@BluRadioCo Yo recién apuñalado viendo esto

[Kronos ⊝ 🇭🇷 @azimuthium]

Zabivaka canonically got drafted and died near Donetsk btw.

[Defense of Ukraine @DefenceU]

Sanctions will work. We'll make sure they do.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next.

Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades.

George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks.

The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order.

No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide.

A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute.

The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no.

The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it.

https://t.co/dAOBBMsgDS

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

There's one moment from the liberation of Bucha that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

At the entrance to the city from the Irpin side, near the railway line, there's a very nice and cozy apartment complex, I once wanted to buy an unfinished flat there, but it was out of my price range.

When we returned to Bucha alongside Ukrainian forces, that same complex had been badly hit. The Russians had positioned artillery in the courtyards nearby, so shell and fuse crates were scattered everywhere. Burnt, torn-off BMP tracks lay strewn around.

In the parking lots, among mountains of debris and wreckage, Teslas burned to the ground. Nearby, rows of small buildings with little shops, cafes, bakeries, riddled with bullets, looted and torched.

All around -- grayness, darkness, the feeling of an exhumed grave, as if you could feel with your very skin that something evil had happened here.

And there, on the basketball court, a man was wandering aimlessly in silence. Just walking in circles, over and over again. He still couldn't come back to himself.

All 33 days of the occupation he had hidden in a basement right there under those buildings, literally right under the Russians' noses, hiding so as not to end up among those who, as captured on camera, were marched in single file with their hands behind their heads and taken around a corner to be shot.

But that guy was lucky.

Several days had passed since the Russians left, and he was still walking there in circles, in silence. I tried to talk to him, to ask if he needed anything, and he raised his eyes to me and said: "Do you know why they hate us so much?"

He started to sob, wiping away tears. "Do you know? Tell me, why, why, what did we do to them? Tell me."

I think that evening I came home to Kyiv after a day in the field reporting on the atrocities in Bucha, and for the first time in a long time, I got drunk.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

The reckless campaign against Iran will weaken America’s president. That will make him angry. Be warned: he makes a very bad loser https://t.co/UUNQjqewMl

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against "shaheds" in the Middle East region. I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security. Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security and protect the lives of our people. Glory to Ukraine!

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

What Russians did in Bucha is particularly painful to my heart. I was there in the first days after it was liberated, and I will never forget it.

Friends, please share this as widely as possible in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

The Ukrainian feature film Bucha is now available on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, and Fandango in the US, Canada, and the UK.

The world needs to see the truth about the heroism of Ukrainian civilians under Russian occupation.

Thank you for helping Ukraine's voice be heard louder!

[James Talarico @jamestalarico]

This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.

His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert.

Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@SimuLiu You deserve Shang Chi 2, thank you for speaking out against a clear violation of our rights

[@holandees_errante @nederlandeer]

¿Quién recuerda cuando las fuerzas especiales 🇷🇺 intentaron secuestrar a Zelensky en febrero de 2022 y 200 matones del Dynamo Kyiv le abrieron el trasero?

[Star Wars Holocron @sw_holocron]

Thinking about this today