Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼

International Law Consultant/War Crimes Analyst/CE, Journal International Organization Studies (JIOS). Alum: Georgia State University

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

Tonight I took the car and drove across all of Kyiv, just to see how my beloved city feels at this time.

It’s a strange feeling.

On the surface, you see the same utterly ordinary life that’s been here for almost all the ten years I’ve been wandering these streets. Streams of cars stuck in traffic on the immense Beresteiskyi Avenue, streetlights, neon signs, shops, advertisements, traffic lights flashing, pedestrians. Somewhere behind the lit-up windows, three or four million lives rush past you.

Supermarkets are full of people picking up groceries on their way home from work. As usual, people sit outside the cafes, wrapped in blankets. The McDonald’s restaurants, glowing yellow, are full of people eating burgers -- as always, until the sirens start wailing again.

Nearby, hipsters sip “Drunken Cherry” at tables and on the marble parapet over the underpass. The favorite little "Pita" with its awesome Middle Eastern food is open as usual.

In short, it’s an utterly ordinary, chilly September weeknight in a big, vibrant metropolis. I swear, if you got in a car too and drove around this city without knowing you were in Kyiv, you’d never guess that a brutal, catastrophic war was being fought over it, right here and now.

And amid all this, every couple of hours, somewhere in this vast city, death comes crashing down. Here, then there. An impact, columns of smoke, fires, videos on social media. A supermarket, a warehouse, a shop, a parking lot, a shopping mall, ambulances and fire trucks. Then somewhere else. And again.

And tonight, sometime in the night, another apartment block will be brought crashing down to a terrible roar, and several more families will die beneath the rubble of their homes -- because one power-drunk, aging dictator has gone mad with impunity and the intoxicating taste of blood.

That’s how this city lives, waiting for the heroically fighting army to hold out and save the world.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@ronsterd89 Yes, and it sparked the song Bell Bottom Blues by Derek and the Dominos.

[moi59 Robert @MoiRoro59]

@EmmanuelMacron @alain_letessier @ZelenskyyUa Cher président il faut convaincre l’Europe de protéger le ciel Ukrainien, on ne peut pas laisser faire ce massacre de civil.

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Emergency crews have been working at the sites of Russian strikes since overnight. It was a massive attack – the Russians had been preparing for a long time, combining different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, aiming to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure. There is destruction in Kyiv and the region, as well as in the Odesa and Chernihiv regions.

In the capital, residential buildings were damaged, including a high-rise whose upper floors were destroyed, as well as a children’s hospital and a school. Emergency response and rescue operations are ongoing. As of now, we know that this Russian strike has claimed the lives of 12 people in Kyiv, with one person killed in the region. My condolences to all the families and loved ones. Around 40 more people were injured. In the Odesa region, the enemy carried out a drone attack on a border crossing with Moldova; in the Chernihiv region, it targeted gas infrastructure. I thank all the rescuers, medics, police officers, and utility workers who have been helping people from the first moments.

Unfortunately, while Moscow is investing in ballistic missiles and escalation, such strikes do not always receive the response they should from the world. And as long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistic defense, Russia will not consider peace seriously. We are doing everything to ensure we have that protection, and work on the FREYJA program continues every day. But Patriot interceptors cannot yet be replaced, and we need them every day. Every additional missile saves the lives of our people. I thank everyone who understands this and is looking for and finding ways to help.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

The ukrainian civilians, the military, the response crews, everyone that is trying to keep Ukraine alive, I admire the fact that they keep going and going, and I'm so sorry once again about that freaking psychopath next door. Where is Europe?

I would be scrambling my Jets to help close the skies over Ukraine if I could. If I were the leader of the United States, I would have done this a long time ago.

Putins damn missiles, and of course, the support of DJT and his other psycho bedfellows; we all know this. How many Ukrainians have to keep dying before Europe pulls together and does something; d.... it!

[Mykhailo Fedorov @FedorovMykhailo]

Elon Musk is prorably the most important tech person and entrepreneur in the world for our country. By shutting down Russia’s illegal use of Starlink on Ukrainian territory, @elonmusk and @SpaceX protected our air defense, saved our air force, and spared thousands of civilian lives. This is an invaluable contribution to our defense, and every Ukrainian is deeply grateful to him for it.

Catch the full story in my interview with @CBSNews.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@phurstclass @krassenstein You're right Peter it is not being talked about by mainstream media, but has been by Miedas/Ben Meiselas on a regular basis.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@krassenstein There's been a host of complaints and some kind of meeting with the family members, but the administration is denying it, especially Hegseth, they deny everything. I say bring them home, and get us out of this ridiculous war.

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

OMFG!

This should be a national scandal.

Multiple sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have attempted to jump overboard as the aircraft carrier’s deployment in the Middle East stretches months beyond what their families originally expected.

Think about how desperate conditions have to become for American service members, people trained to endure enormous physical and psychological stress, to reach that point.

The roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln have reportedly endured food and water shortages, poor-quality rations, shortages of basic hygiene products, broken toilets, mold and mildew in showers, intermittent hot water, disrupted mail service and brutally long workdays with little meaningful time off.

The ship has spent extraordinary stretches at sea without the regular port calls that normally allow crews to get off the vessel, rest, resupply and simply experience something resembling normal life for a few days.

These men and women volunteered to serve the United States. They understood that military service could mean sacrifice, danger and months away from their families.

They did not volunteer to be treated as disposable.

If conditions aboard one of the most powerful and expensive warships on Earth have deteriorated to the point where sailors are reportedly trying to throw themselves into the ocean, then something has gone catastrophically wrong.

Our service members deserve better than this.

And somebody in leadership needs to answer for how it was ever allowed to get this bad.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Close the skies. Again I ask, what other than cowardice is preventing Europe from defending Ukraine against this terrorist onslaught?

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@Kasparov63 Agree; this should have been done a long time ago.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@ronsterd89 2

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@SteveScaliseGOP Well just maybe you should have followed my advice when I filled out your surveys. You're not listening.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@trinzu Aw, so sweet. It's so great to see someone that cares for their animals so much.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@LCRlene Says the actual Communist.
Unbelievable, the insanity and ignorance.
.

[Gabrielius Landsbergis🇱🇹 @GLandsbergis]

Not even Article 4, for a cruise missile landing on NATO territory?
Such a non-reaction would have been unimaginable before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There would have been strong measures immediately taken.
But, over time, outrages have been normalised and even rationalised to the point where they are no longer considered outrageous.
So I have to ask — what other aggressions would also be greeted with a shrug? Destroying critical infrastructure? Killing people? How many?
The promise to defend every inch has now been broken, so how many more inches are we going to let go?

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@ZelenskyyUa This is what happens when you treat reformers and innovators as threats instead of assets. Makes no sense. I thought that the MoD had to be a civilian.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

I think I finally understand what bothers me about this. It is not only corruption as some on here correctly put forth, but for me it is something deeper. Corruption is the visible symptom. The real disease is a political and institutional culture built around loyalty, hierarchy, and quid pro quo, where the old guard protects itself even at the expense of wartime effectiveness.

When a country is fighting for survival, its most effective modernizers are not optional; they are part of what keeps the state alive. So, when the political establishment feels threatened by their popularity and uses “accountability” as a weapon to remove them, the state is essentially destroying its own shield in order to protect the comfort of the existing power structure.

That is what makes this so damaging. Protecting the existing military command chain instead of embracing innovation means choosing the structural status quo over the people actually improving the war effort. The resignation of the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Air Force in protest, calling Fedorov’s removal a “great evil” that would harm the country’s air defenses, is a major signal. So are the thousands of citizens, veterans, and active soldiers protesting in Kyiv, and the military voices describing this as one of the biggest blows to morale since the war began.

To me, this is the tragedy: a system so committed to control at the top that it can consume one of its own strongest defenders in the middle of a war. The corruption matters, but it may be only the surface-level expression of something even more dangerous, an old-guard culture that treats reformers and innovators as threats instead of assets.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

@FedorovMykhailo Would someone please enlighten me? I don't understand why. A cabinet reshuffle is not a good enough answer for me, I don't get it.

[Deborah Cotton 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇼 @dcotton01]

He's being replaced by Alexander Syrsky? Thanks for mentioning this, I didn't know who was replacing Fedorov. I thought Syrsky was Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. So who will be replacing Syrsky? Strange shuffle. I still don't see this with what Fedorov has accomplished and I am concerned about this move considering that Fedorov has also had a valuable relationship with his allied counterparts. I do hope Jake can explain more. I'm totally baffled.