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A Ukrainian girl seen singing in a viral video while in a Kyiv bomb shelter is using her newfound fame to help raise money for her homeland. VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze caught up with Amelia Anisovych, 7, and her family in Poland, where they are living as refugees.
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Olga M. spent the first week of the Russian invasion hiding with her teenage son in a shelter in Kotsiubynske, a Kyiv suburb. As the shelling intensified in nearby Irpin, they fled, reaching Spain a week later.

“My legs are bloodshot” from standing on the trains and in lines, said Olga, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect family members, including her husband, who stayed behind.

Throughout her ordeal, she tried to talk about the war with her parents, who live in Ekaterinburg, Russia.

“Why are you so upset?” she recalled her father asking her on the first day. “We will bomb your military bases. What difference does it make to you?”

Olga said she stopped talking to him after that, but maintained relations with her mother, who avoids discussing the war that has made refugees of her daughter and grandson.

Olga’s father grew up in Ukraine but moved to Russia in the mid-1970s and married Olga’s mother, a Russian woman. Olga married a Ukrainian man and moved to Ukraine but still considers herself Russian and maintains Russian citizenship.

She said her parents have not visited her in Ukraine since 2008, insisting they would be thrown into jail for speaking the Russian language.

“I was telling it was not true. I don’t speak Ukrainian, and I still haven’t obtained Ukrainian citizenship,” Olga said.

‘Propaganda narratives’

As much as her communication with her parents pains her, Olga finds talking to her former classmates in Russia worse.

“They start with sympathy, saying they are on my side, but always follow with accusations,” she said. “They repeat the propaganda narratives, like that we have been bombing Donetsk and Luhansk for eight years, or that we bomb ourselves. They told me that the Ukrainian government handed out 10,000 guns to the citizens, and now we shoot each other.”

Only one member of her family in Russia, her brother, doesn’t need to be convinced. “He knows that it’s Putin’s fault,” she said.

Other residents of Ukraine with family in Russia tell similar stories.

Tatiana L., who evacuated with her 17-year-old daughter to western Ukraine from Hostomel, one of the hardest-hit towns near Kyiv, describes talking to her relatives in Moscow and the Ural region.

“First, I was sending them my videos explaining what was happening in Hostomel. They were not replying. I was sending videos of Borodyanka, Mariupol. On the second week of the war, they blocked me,” she said.

She recalled that they sent a message to her mother about the price of potatoes in occupied Kherson and what sounded like a pleasant life under Russian occupation. “After that, they blocked my mom,” she said.

Her Ural relatives, said Tatiana, explained to her that the bombing was the Ukrainians` fault. “They told us that we should have surrendered to avoid casualties, but we didn’t do that because we wanted to be heroes. They don’t even try to understand that we want to stay alive, live in our own homes, raise our children in peace.”

Some Ukrainian residents report getting a more sympathetic hearing from relatives in Russia.

Evolving opinions

Vladislav, a political scientist in Kyiv, said his relatives in Moscow clearly understand what is happening.

“On the first day of the war, they sent me a message saying they were ashamed,” he said. The relatives, originally from Ukraine, know the Ukrainian and English languages, follow the Ukrainian television channels and ask him questions. “They wish us victory,” he said.

Still others say their relatives in Russia are gradually changing their opinions as the war grinds on.

Olexander, currently serving in territorial defense in Kyiv, talked about his conversations with his father, who has lived in the Altai region of Russia for the last 10 years.

“When I called and told him that the war started, he told me that we deserved it because we were Nazis and bombed the Donbas; he was repeating all these television messages,” he said.

That began to change after Olexander helped his father install a VPN that allowed him to follow the Ukrainian television channels and official statements from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

“Now he keeps silence and asks me if I have a bulletproof vest, tells me to be careful,” Olexander said.

He said he believed his father had been heavily influenced by seeing images on Ukrainian TV of dead Russian soldiers and their demolished tanks.

“Their military TV channel, Zvezda, broadcasts that the Russian army is [so] powerful, as no other,” he said. “After seeing the destroyed tanks and dead soldiers, he understood that they lied to him.”

Alex L., a pensioner who spent three weeks in heavily shelled Chernihiv before evacuating to Germany, said he believed that his cousin in Moscow also had changed her mind, but that he didn’t know for sure.

“She called me, asking what was going on,” Alex said. “I said we were bombed and shot at. ‘Who is bombing and shooting at you?’ ‘Russians.’ ‘You are making it up.’ I stepped outside and held my phone to the sounds of explosions. She still told me that it was fake.”

Alex said he stopped talking to his cousin but remained in contact with her daughter, who understood what was going on.

“Her daughter probably convinced her. She says that her mother understands now. But they are speaking so carefully. They are very, very afraid,” he said.

While Ukrainians were eager to describe their conversations with their relatives in Russia, they refused to put VOA in contact with them. They also asked to have their identities not revealed to protect their relatives.

Questionable polling

Russian opinion polling indicates that support for the war has been growing in Russia despite the lack of military progress. The All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center reported on March 23 that 74% of Russian citizens supported the decision “to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine,” up 9 points from a February 25 poll and 3 points since March 5.

But Natalia Savelyeva, a resident fellow at the Future Russia Initiative with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, pointed out that polling in authoritarian countries is unreliable, especially during a crisis like a war.

“In autocracies, citizens are often afraid to answer pollsters’ questions, let alone questions about politics,” she has written. That tendency has been reinforced by a new law providing long prison terms for any candid discussion of Russia’s so-called “special military operation.”

Savelyeva points to an independent study conducted in Moscow by jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s organization, which “demonstrated that during the week from February 25 to March 3, the number of people who blamed Russia for the conflict and believed that Russia is an aggressor increased.”

Whatever the true numbers, it is evident from the experiences of Ukrainians with relatives in Russia that many Russians have accepted the narrative of the war provided by state-controlled media, even when it runs counter to what they are told by close family members.

“A person rejects information that contradicts their vision of the world, which is unpleasant. Even if this information comes from verified sources — from relatives, from friends in Ukraine,” said Maria Snegovaya, a political scientist and researcher at Virginia Tech, a research university in Blacksburg, Virginia.

She said people often choose to disbelieve the words of relatives because otherwise they would feel they must do something. “This motive is important for understanding why even liberals in Russia refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for what is happening,” she said.

Peter Pomerantsev, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University and an author of two books on propaganda, agreed, saying many Russians are experiencing cognitive dissonance — believing in mutually exclusive things and trying to push away doubts that make them uncomfortable.

Even so, he said, Russians understand that their government lies to them and can be convinced if their Ukrainian relatives persist with a sensitive approach. “Everybody in Russia has doubts,” he said. “Everyone, even the most fascist ones. None of them trust their government.”

In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, who left Russia in 2020, pointed out some cracks in the Russian propaganda message were already beginning to appear.

“There are some cracks, but it’s not about more sympathy toward Ukrainians. It’s more killed soldiers, because the casualties are really big in the Russian military,” Soldatov said.

“I know from my relatives in the Volga region, quite far from Moscow, that now in small towns, they have people who have had their kids killed in Ukraine,” he said. “So, society started talking about it because there are so many deaths. But unfortunately, I don’t see any sympathy for Ukraine, which is a very hard thing to say.”
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Turkish-made drones have featured prominently in Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s invasion, taking out significant Russian targets in the first few weeks of the war. But the conflict, and any possibility of a Russian victory, have cast a shadow over the future of Turkey’s rapidly growing drone industry, which relies on Ukrainian engines. 

In one of many videos released by the Ukrainian military, a Turkish-made Bayraktar drone destroys a Russian tank to the cheers of the drone operators. But with the Bayraktar drone powered by Ukrainian engines, Samuel Bennet of the U.S.-based Center for Naval Analyses warns any Russian victory in Ukraine could set back Turkey’s rapidly growing drone industry. 

“Russia sees Bayraktar’s TV2s in particular as a highly competitive weapon and technology not just in the former Soviet space, but in the global aerial vehicle market. Russians are nervous that Bayraktar are penetrating the former Soviet space, the Caucasus and Central Asia and now Ukraine,” Bennet said. “And so, if Russians were to sort of exercise the full extent of their powers in the outcome of the negotiations, they would probably seek to limit Ukrainian military cooperation with Turkey so as not to further Turkish growing advantage in certain technologies like UAVs.” 

Ukraine provides cutting-edge engine know-how, and does not put restrictions on Turkish companies selling to third parties. Turkish drone use in conflicts like the Ethiopian civil war has drawn international criticism from rights groups.  

James Rogers, assistant professor in War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, says the Turkish drone industry would not have the same freedom of use if it turned to its Western allies for engines. 

“There are more restrictions when you deal with UK, European or American suppliers, and that is something Turkey will definitely keep in mind,” he said. “We know that the United States has been very select to who it sells drones and drone elements to around the world. This was one of the reasons why Turkey started its entire indigenous drone program because Congress wouldn’t approve the sale of Reaper-Predator generation medium altitude long endurance drones to Turkey.” 

Earlier this year, a prominent Turkish military helicopter deal with Pakistan collapsed over Washington’s restrictions on the use of American engines. In addition, Congress has been enforcing increased controls on the supplies of military components to Turkey over Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system.

While Ankara has received praise from Washington over its support of Ukraine, Aaron Stein, director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, expects little change in Washington’s stance towards Turkey. 

“One side is that Turkey is hostile to the United States. It’s no longer an ally, it’s (an) adversary. So, we should be treating it as such. And the other side is we misunderstand Turkey, and it needs a big hug because it’s so important. And the government is somewhere in the middle, and usually, current events reinforce positions on either side,” Stein said. 

Given the challenges of finding an alternative to Ukrainian engines, Turkey’s drone industry will likely look for drones to thwart Moscow’s ambitions and secure both Kyiv and its future.  
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The United Nation’s children’s agency says some 2 million children have fled the fighting in Ukraine, with another 2.5 million driven from their homes within the country.

In a statement released Wednesday, UNICEF, along with the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR), said children make up half of all refugees from the war in Ukraine. UNICEF reports more than 1.1 million children have arrived in Poland, with hundreds of thousands also arriving in Romania, Moldova, Hungary Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

UNCHR has documented that more than 100 children have been killed during the conflict, and an additional 134 children have been injured, though the agency says the true toll is likely to be much higher.

Both U.N. agencies warn that displaced children heighten the risk of trafficking and exploitation. To seek to reduce the risks children and young people face, UNICEF, UNHCR and government and civil society partners are scaling up “Blue Dot” centers in refugee-hosting countries, including Moldova, Romania and Slovakia.

The “Blue Dot” centers are one-stop safe spaces that can provide information to traveling families, help identify unaccompanied and separated children and ensure their protection from exploitation, and serve as a hub for access to essential services.

UNICEF said it is also working urgently with national governments and other authorities across the region to put further measures in place to keep children safe, including strengthening child protection screening at border crossings.

In Wednesday’s statement, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said, “The situation inside Ukraine is spiraling.” As the number of children fleeing their homes continues to climb, she added, it is important to remember “every single one of them needs protection, education, safety and support.”

This week, UNICEF began a humanitarian cash transfer program to support 52,000 of the most vulnerable families inside Ukraine. In addition, the agency, as of this week, has dispatched 114 trucks carrying 1,275 metric tons of emergency supplies to support children and families in Ukraine and the bordering countries.

The supplies include medicines and medical equipment, winter clothes for children, and hygiene, educational, early childhood development and recreational kits.
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Russia said Wednesday there is still no sign of a breakthrough in peace talks with Ukraine.

Ukraine presented a list of demands Tuesday at the start of negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey aimed at ending the 36-day war, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a press briefing. An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the two sides discussed the terms of a possible cease-fire, along with international security guarantees for Ukraine during Tuesday’s session.

Ukrainian negotiators also proposed that Kyiv would adopt a neutral status in exchange for security guarantees, such as not joining NATO or other military alliances.

Peskov told reporters that Moscow welcomed the fact that Kyiv has presented a written statement of demands, but said Russia has not seen anything promising that would lead to a final agreement.

Meanwhile, local officials in Ukraine say Russian forces have continued artillery attacks on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, despite a vow to reduce operations in those locations as a sign of goodwill.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk earlier Wednesday announced the two sides had agreed to open three evacuation corridors. Vereshchuk said one corridor would be used for the evacuation of the besieged city of Mariupol and delivery of humanitarian aid to Berdyansk, located about 84 kilometers south of Mariupol, another for the delivery of humanitarian aid to – and evacuation from – the city of Melitopol, and a third for a column of people traveling from from Enerhodar to Zaporizhzhia.

Filippo Grandi , the head of the U.N.’s refugee agency, said Wednesday the number of Ukrainians who have fled their native land to escape what he called a “senseless war” has now exceeded 4 million people.

The U.N. says more than half of those who have left Ukraine since the start of the February 24 invasion have headed west into Poland.

Britain’s defense ministry says Russian military units fighting in Ukraine have been forced to return to Russia and Belarus to “reorganize and resupply” after suffering heavy losses fighting Ukrainian forces during the war.

“Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics,” the ministry said Wednesday in its latest intelligence report, “and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganizing its units in forward areas within Ukraine.”

The assessment comes a day after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Russian troops will focus on the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine, which includes the Russian-controlled areas of Luhansk and Donetsk. Shoigu claimed the shift in strategy was because Russia had largely accomplished the first stage of its “special military operation,” including degrading Ukraine’s military capacity.

But Britain’s military says Russia’s decision to focus on Luhansk and Donetsk “is likely a tacit admission that it is struggling to sustain more than one significant axis of advance.”

The U.S. State Department issued a new advisory Tuesday urging U.S. citizens either traveling to or residing in Russia to leave the country immediately. The advisory cites a number of factors, including “the potential for harassment against U.S. citizens by Russian government security officials, the singling out of U.S. citizens…by Russian government security officials including for detention,” as well as limited flights into and outside of Russia and the limited ability of the U.S. Embassy there to assist U.S. citizens.

The State Department designated Russia a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” nation on its travel advisory list shortly after the February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
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The invasion of Ukraine thrust its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, into the spotlight. Although many perceived the former actor and comedian as a probable lightweight, he rose to the occasion, capturing the world’s attention when he famously refused a U.S. offer to evacuate the conflict zone, reportedly saying, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.”

“I think that will go down in history,” says Kenneth Dekleva, a senior fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations. “After two years of a worldwide pandemic where we’ve seen so many failures of leadership, both in authoritarian societies and in democratic societies in the West, Zelenskyy is a breath of fresh air. … Zelenskyy has inspired people, and he’s shown us that good leadership and courage, heroism — these kinds of core values — matter.”

Instead of going into hiding, Zelenskyy has made a point of remaining visible, appearing on social media and in footage released by aides since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Male leaders often attempt to project strength, masculinity and a sense of being destined to lead, according to Michael Blake, a professor of philosophy, public policy and governance at the University of Washington.

“Zelenskyy appears to be presenting a much more unusual picture of leadership in which his trajectory is not ordained by fate or some sort of political genius. Instead, it’s almost accidental,” says Blake. “His personal style of self-presentation is much less concerned with depicting unusual lack of fear or unusual physical prowess. Instead, he is perfectly willing to own up to being frightened and being occasionally overwhelmed.”

Zelenskyy is also shunning the usual leadership look. He’s put aside his dark suit and tie in favor of an olive-green T-shirt or jacket more associated with soldiers or rebel guerillas.

“I think it’s ultimately a symbol of, ‘I’m here. I’m authentically with you,’ and it’s been incredibly powerful,” says Samuel Hunter, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “I think he wanted to upset the people in the suits a little bit, to come across as a changemaker, this person that is doing things that other people are unwilling to do.”

Social media appeal

Like Donald Trump before him, Zelenskyy has learned to leverage social media to communicate directly with the masses. Trump broke the mold by cutting out the middleman, including his own spokespeople and the news media, by tweeting directly to his supporters. While Trump primarily used Twitter, Zelenskyy relies on the more visual Instagram platform.

“There was what felt like a direct line from what (Trump) was thinking to what others were seeing and hearing and reading,” Hunter says. “And I think Zelenskyy represents the next data point in that pathway, but it’s very visual and touches with a younger generation in a very compelling and interesting way.”

One of Zelenskyy’s strengths is that he appears to have cross-generational appeal.

“He’s probably someone that multiple generations can connect on in part because not only is he adept at dealing with this sort of social media world and speaks multiple languages and is sort of this Hollywood star per se, but because he’s sticking around in zones that are dangerous,” Hunter says. “The older generations — he’s earning respect from those, as well. I think he spans generations in ways that other leaders have not been able to.”

Zelenskyy isn’t the first former actor to connect with the masses. U.S. President Ronald Reagan was aware of image and presentation due to his acting background. Trump, who starred on a successful reality television show, is also very deliberate in how he presents himself.

“It is, I think, an under-noticed fact that politicians do have a fair amount in common with actors,” Blake says. “I think what’s really different here is that Zelenskyy is changing the role.”

New leadership model

A change that could usher in a new model of democratic leadership.

“When he appeared with unshaven cheeks and bags under his eyes and said, ‘I’m still here.’ Every time he came back to say, ‘I’m still here,’ it’s simply added to the thought that this could, in fact, be a model of leadership that would do the job,” Blake says.

Over the past few years, populism’s message has attracted a growing number of followers. Freedom House, which tracks the number of countries that are democratic, has noted a decline in functional democratic governance every year for the past 20 years.

“Some of this has been a result of the rhetorical strength of populism in a world fraught by fear of the undeserving ‘other’ coming in and undermining your economic status,” Blake says. “People are frightened of a slowdown in economic productivity, of widespread migration undermining cultural integrity. People are just plain frightened, and so, the populist has an easy sell, which is, ‘I’m here, touched by God, to return you to the former glory that was unjustly taken from you.’”

Blake says there hasn’t been a good counternarrative to that other than reasserting democratic platitudes — like the importance of the consent of the governed. But Zelenskyy demonstrates that democratic leadership has the capacity to be morally justified while also rousing people’s emotions.

“The fact that Zelenskyy appeals not just to the head, but to the heart, has been extremely promising, because it indicates that democracy might have rhetorical power as well as intellectual power,” Blake says. “We see someone who is willing to say, ‘This is worth fighting for. This is worth suffering for.’ And people are responding to it.”
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine      
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Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine ended Tuesday with both sides stressing the importance of the negotiations and indicating a willingness to compromise.

Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, hosted the fifth round of Ukrainian and Russian peace talks. The Russian delegation described the more than four hours of talks as positive. Speaking to reporters after the talks, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin pledged a reduction in military operations.

To increase mutual trust and aid negotiations, he said, a decision was made to reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas.

The Russian delegation said further steps on reducing military operations would be discussed on their return to Moscow. Tuesday’s talks focused on Russia’s demand that Ukraine should become neutral and end its aspirations to join NATO. The Ukrainian delegation proposed that eight countries should guarantee its security, including Poland, Israel, and Turkey, in exchange for neutrality.

Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak, speaking to reporters, said international guarantors are key to accepting neutrality.

He said intensive consultations are underway on various issues, the most important of which is agreement on international security guarantees for Ukraine. That agreement, Podolyak added, is necessary to end the war.

The delegations also discussed proposals on the disputed status of the self-proclaimed breakaway republics of Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, which Russia annexed.

Ukraine demands their return, while Moscow calls for their international recognition as independent states and Crimea as Russian sovereign territory. Among the proposals discussed was that Crimea’s status would be subject to a 15-year consultation period.

But the Ukrainian delegation insisted such a step would only be possible in the event of a complete cease-fire. Expectations had been low ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, but Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed the talks had achieved the most progress since the start of the war.

Analyst Sinan Ulgen said the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations in Istanbul underline the importance of Turkey, which has been careful to maintain good ties with both sides during peace efforts.

“As a result of this balanced policy, Turkey is one of few actors that can play a constructive diplomatic role right now. That diplomatic role can be best described as ‘good office,’ which is more than a facilitator but less than a mediator,” Ulgen saud.

But analysts suggest that a meeting of the Ukrainian and Russian presidents is key to ending the conflict. While Kyiv says it’s ready for such a summit, Moscow insists it would only be possible if there are concrete proposals to discuss. Tuesday’s meeting may turn out to be the first step in that process.
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The International Committee of the Red Cross reports a misinformation and disinformation campaign is being waged on social media to discredit its humanitarian work in Ukraine.

The Swiss-based organization warns the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is deepening. It finds the level of death, destruction and suffering inflicted upon the civilian population since Russia invaded the country February 24 abhorrent and unacceptable.

Relentless bombing of the port city of Mariupol has demolished civilian homes and infrastructure. It has displaced tens of thousands of people, depriving them of food, water, and medical care.

Spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross Ewan Watson said civilians in Mariupol and other frontline areas are making life and death decisions to flee when there is no agreement that would allow them to leave safely.

He said a surge of misinformation and disinformation is jeopardizing ICRC efforts to protect and distribute humanitarian aid to people trapped by conflict.

“We are seeing deliberate targeted attacks using false narratives and disinformation to discredit the ICRC. And this has the potential to cause real harm for our teams and our Red Cross, Red Crescent movement partners working on the ground and for the people we serve,” he said.

Watson said a huge flow of misinformation and disinformation is being orchestrated across social media channels targeting the ICRC. For example, one claim that has no basis in truth, he said is the agency’s alleged role in forced evacuations.

“The ICRC has not been involved with any forced evacuation, forced transfers of civilians into Russia from Mariupol or any other Ukrainian city…The ICRC does not want to open an office in southern Russia to filter Ukrainians as many reports are alleging. So, that is absolutely false. We are not opening a refugee camp or any other type of camp,” said the spokesman for the ICRC.

Watson said the ICRC operates on the basis of impartiality and neutrality. He said it expects the warring parties to fulfill their obligations under International Humanitarian Law to protect civilians and limit military operations to exclusively military objectives.
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