Rokram

[Council of Europe @coe]

3.5 million Ukrainians are estimated to be living in territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.

A new report by @alain_berset documents the continued deterioration of human rights in the temporarily occupied territories, including:

[Rokram @RomKram]

@aplusk In response to the Russian bots - and a reminder of why Ukraine is fighting: Freedom House annually rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 208 countries and territories. Dead last on the list are the Ukrainian territories invaded and occupied by Russia

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

There is nothing surprising about Trump inviting Putin to the G20 summit. From ending aid to Ukraine, blocking Ukraine's membership into NATO, lifting sanctions on Russian oil, or pressuring Zelenskyy to give Donbas to Putin, Trump always sides with Putin. So, tragic. So, wrong.

[Rep. Jamie Raskin @RepRaskin]

More than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted by Russian forces since the start of Putin's bloody war. America must work to secure the immediate return of these missing kids to their families and freedom for the Ukrainian people.

[COL (Ret) Jeff in 🇦🇹 @JeffFisch]

This dude! He’s fought tirelessly to get enough signatures to bring a vote on Russian sanctions / Ukraine aid. Hazzah!! But…

The better question is why?

Because the Speaker is burying the bill, refusing it to surface even though he knows it will pass with veto proof support.

[Rokram @RomKram]

@FoxNews @mobbs_mentality Hi Meghan - with the notable exceptions of Venezuela, Iran and Cuba - the current administration has a pretty good track record of honoring dictatorships and dishonoring fellow democracies.

[Daractenus @Daractenus]

Viktor Orbán does not seem particularly pleased with the fact that Hungarians are turning out to vote today in the highest numbers since the fall of communism.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

Just a thought:

Ukraine’s President is Jewish.
Our Defense Minister is a Muslim, a Crimean Tatar.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is an ethnic Russian.
Our top drone ace — recently awarded the title Hero of Ukraine — is an ethnic Hungarian.
Over 70,000 women serve in the military now.
Almost all of the most renowned combat medics are women.
The revolution that changed this country forever began with a Facebook post by an ethnic Afghan Pashtun, a prominent Ukrainian journalist.
And in our parliament, we have a Black MP — an Afro-Ukrainian and universally admired Olympic champion.

All of this — in a country that is still, for the most part, Slavic.

On the streets of Kyiv today, you’ll see halal restaurants for Muslim tourists standing peacefully next to Jewish eateries. Nearby are a museum and a monument to Sholem Aleichem, and a plaque bearing the face of Golda Meir, who once lived here.

Among our main landmarks: 19th-century synagogues. Just a short walk away — a large mosque and Muslim cultural center. And above all, of course — the ancient Christian churches and monasteries that are the oldest and most significant in the East Slavic world.

I still can’t get over the fact that Ukraine’s chief Muslim mufti (an ethnic Tatar from Donetsk) stepped down to serve as a frontline paramedic in the army. That our chief rabbi works tirelessly every day to help Ukraine across the globe — and that his adopted son died fighting for Ukraine, weapon in hand.

For many years now, a giant glowing menorah has stood each Hanukkah in the heart of Kyiv’s main square. And on Independence Day, every religious denomination gathers in Saint Sophia Cathedral to offer prayers for Ukraine, each in their own rite.

Just as they all come together for remembrance at Babyn Yar and the Holodomor monument.

The more you look at the world, the more often you realize how much healthier Ukrainian society has become when it comes to coexistence between nationalities and faiths.

We weren’t always like this. We are becoming this now — as the country is being radically transformed by revolution and by the defense against imperial Russia.

We are shedding the weight of so many remnants of the past — really fast.

Just recently in May, Ukraine held its WWII commemorations — with poppies and the slogan “Never again!”

What a stark contrast to the satanic frenzy of Russia’s “Victory Day,” with its death cult, its “We can do it again!” bravado, and its glorification of dying for the Tsar.

Against the backdrop of war, Ukraine is living through a real national and cultural renaissance. We are rediscovering the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian books, music, cinema — as something precious.

And for how many decades were we taught to look down on everything Ukrainian — as “third-rate,” “peasant,” “inferior”?...

I walk the streets of Kyiv on Christmas (December 25th, not January 7th as demanded by Moscow priests) and see bands of children in traditional embroidered clothes carrying colorful Bethlehem stars and singing carols. “Ukrainian Christmas” is returning to these lands as a vibrant cultural tradition.

On Easter, crowds gather near Saint Sophia Cathedral for picnics and spring dances. In the old city above Podil, I often hear youth pounding out Cossack songs on drums. I always see many people at our nation’s sacred places — the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the cathedrals of Lviv, the Motherland Monument, the old castles.

We haven’t suddenly become devout believers. We’ve simply come to take pride, like never before, in being Ukrainian — in treasuring our traditions, our culture, our history, and our way of life, in our own country.

New traditions keep being born in wartime, against all odds.

Today, we honor war veterans by inviting them to make the symbolic first kick at football matches — and then we give them a standing ovation from the stands, for their service.

I could go on like this for hours.

What I’m trying to say is — I love what Ukraine is becoming.

This hope — breaking through unspeakable pain and hardship — feels like a light piercing the tunnel.
Ukraine now, and Ukraine 12 years ago, are two completely different countries.

The road ahead is brutally hard, but if only — if only our Ukraine can survive this war for its very existence.

[Rokram @RomKram]

@OlgaNYC1211 @mehdirhasan Mehdi - Honestly - where do you see in his statement support for the US and Israeli attack on Iran? Read it again. It’s about opening the Straits

[Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv]

While Russian Duma members were getting guided tours of US government buildings and Trump was busy pressuring Ukraine to surrender, Russia helped Iran destroy an irreplaceable American $700,000,000 AWACS aircraft.

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

BREAKING: Russia shared satellite images of Prince Sultan US base in Saudi with Iran right before their attack that injured our troops. Ukrainian intel confirms it.

Meanwhile Trump refuse to condemn Russia.

Is this what you voted for?

[Rokram @RomKram]

@CongressmanKean @tonybucco Thank you for your support. There remains work to be done to ensure a just and lasting peace - and the US is uniquely positioned to help make this happen - and bring the children home…

[Rokram @RomKram]

@SecScottBessent Put more money in Russia’s pocket so they can kill more Ukrainians. And then blame Zelensky - saying Putin wants peace. Did I miss anything?

[Bricktop_NAFO @Bricktop_NAFO]

X claimed to have filtered 99.1% of Iranian bots that tried to flood the platform with disinformation before and after the strikes.

THis leads me to question. why can't they just do this with Russian bots.

[Rokram @RomKram]

@generalkellogg General Kellogg - Few dispute your statement above. But you’ve been on the inside. The question is: HOW does this war end - so that is doesn’t just start up again? Can you confirm that we need to ensure a strong and well-defended Ukraine?

[Rokram @RomKram]

@McFaul Sachs’ “shock therapy” in post-communist countries - grounded in high level theory - demonstrated extreme ignorance of the actual societies and power structures in place. Execution of his concepts allowed for raiders and oligarchs to amass wealth and effectively take over.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

I would like to once again disappoint everyone dreaming of Russia destroying Ukraine -- no, if you think it will help you to impose illegal and illegitimate “elections” on Ukraine during wartime and get rid of Zelensky, you are very deeply mistaken.

No, you will not be able to “install your own person” who will be “more agreeable” and quickly run to Moscow to hand Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter.

Even if such a joke of “elections” were ever to take place under U.S. pressure, we would either elect Zelensky again (which is likely) as a very-far-from-perfect but still resilient wartime leader whose removal has been aggressively pushed from outside. In fact, this notorious external pressure has only mobilized support for him throughout these years.

Or we would elect Zaluzhny, Budanov, or another serious candidate who would, by and large, continue the policy of resolute defense against the destruction and absorption by totalitarian fascist Russia.

Because -- surprise, surprise!! -- millions of Ukrainians have been fighting or helping the country and the military in the rear for years not because they are being forced by that evil Zelensky who “doesn’t want peace,” and whose easy-peasy removal would supposedly make Ukrainians immediately raise their hands and crawl back into the GULAG.

This is happening because millions of people in Ukraine are making a conscious choice to continue fighting at the front and enduring the hardships of war at home.

And if you think that fighting for years against the full military power of Russia is an easy choice that does not require titanic motivation and willpower, you are, to put it mildly, very wrong.

Otherwise, we would not be having this conversation now, one week before the fourth anniversary of the start of the largest war in Europe since World War II that was initially supposed to be a 10-day walk in the park with a Russian triumph in Kyiv.

If you think that there are a million clones of Zelensky fighting at the front who can all be switched off with a single button, then you are either an eight-year-old kid or Donald Trump.

The motivation that has sustained years of such a brutal war against such an enormous adversary will not be broken by yet another TikTok clown populist that you will try to impose, as you did in Romania.

And the Ukrainian military does not have any Stalin-style "blocking detachments" or modern Russian-style "pits for cowards" (which, incidentally, is one of the reasons why the widely-discussed number of AWOLs is so high -- if someone firmly refuses to fight, sooner or later they will leave, and nobody's really going to hunt them down or prosecute them).

If the people of Ukraine were not willing to fight, all of this would have ended long ago, exactly as Putin expected in 2022.

Or as it happened in Afghanistan in 2021, or in Syria in 2023 -- which is what happens when an army and a people are not willing to fight for their country and their leaders.

Honestly, one cannot help but be horrified by how catastrophically global politics has degraded over the past year.

[Rokram @RomKram]

@EdKrassen @AOC Wow - the bots don’t even try to change their wording

[Maxim Timchenko @TimchenkoMaxim]

While the world watches on, russian drones and missiles are dismantling the remaining pieces of Ukraine's energy system. Last night, it fired 40 missiles and 400 drones against us, destroying substations, transmission lines and power plants.

Two DTEK power stations were badly hit and we are assessing the damage now. With temperatures dropping to -20C (-4F) by Monday, their objective is obvious: to maximise human suffering. If we don't get more air defence ammunition and stronger diplomatic support soon, Ukraine's energy crisis will quickly turn into a humanitarian crisis.

[Rokram @RomKram]

@BohuslavskaKate So clearly stated. How best to communicate this directly to the American public ?