1UA TV

A Russian tanker impounded by Greece this week and reportedly carrying Iranian oil will be released amid confusion about sanctions on its owners.

“The coast guard has been ordered by the anti-money laundering authority to release the vessel,” a Greek government official said, without providing further details.

On Tuesday, Greek authorities impounded the 115,500-deadweight tonnage Russian-flagged Pegas, with 19 Russian crew members on board, on the southern coast of the island of Evia.

They said the ship was impounded as part of EU sanctions on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, the EU banned Russian-flagged vessels from its ports, with some exemptions, as it adopted new sanctions against Russia for what the Kremlin describes as a “special military operation.”

The Pegas tanker was also among five vessels sanctioned by the United States on Feb. 22, 2022 — two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — as part of broader sanctions against Promsvyazbank, a bank Washington described as critical to Russia’s defense sector.

Promsvyazbank said it and its unit PSB Lizing were not the owners of the tanker as it was bought back by its owner in April 2021.

Promsvyazbank did not name the new owner. PSB Lizing said the owner was TransMorFlot. TransMorFlot was not available for comment.

Greek sources close to the matter said that following checks there were no legal grounds to continue impounding the Pegas as the ship had recently changed ownership and its new owner was not on an EU sanctions list.

Iranian oil

On Tuesday, U.S. State Department welcomed Greece’s efforts to implement the sanctions “initiated in response to Russia’s brutal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine” and said it was aware of reports that the tanker was loaded with Iranian crude oil.

Eikon tanker tracking shows the Pegas has been floating around the Mediterranean since September 2021 after loading in the Gulf in August.

Three industry sources said it had Iranian oil on board but struggled to sell it to a customer in Europe, which alongside the United States has a ban on Iranian oil.

U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which monitors Iran-related tanker traffic, also said the Pegas loaded around 700,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran’s Sirri Island on Aug. 19, 2021.

Prior to this load, the Pegas transported over 3 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2021, with over 2.6 million of those barrels ending up in China, according to UANI analysis.

A Greek coast guard official confirmed it had received the decision made by the anti-money laundering unit, an independent authority, but said the order had not yet been officially served to Pegas.

The Pegas, which was renamed Lana in March, had earlier reported an engine problem. It was headed to the southern Peloponnese peninsula to offload its cargo onto another tanker but rough seas forced it to moor just off Karystos where it was seized, according to the Athens News Agency.
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Onstage, they dance through hoops and perform acrobatics with smiles on their faces. Off it, they hold anguished phone calls with family back in Ukraine.

Dancers Anna and Olga have found a sense of calm performing in a circus near New York, but they are still living the war they fled thousands of miles away.

“I spent a month without a full night’s sleep. We couldn’t go out to buy food — we were stressed and shaken all the time. It was scary,” recalls Anna Starykh, who left Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February.

Now the 21-year-old is performing with the Flip Circus in the New York City suburb of Yonkers, where she can sleep without being woken by explosions.

More than 4,500 miles away from Kyiv, in a parking lot near the banks of the Hudson River, Starykh and her friends prepare to perform with colleagues from across Europe and South America.

The stage has become their sanctuary.

“Work really helps (us) to calm down and stay positive,” she tells AFP.

Their concern for their family members back home is palpable, though.

“I don’t know in which situation they will be next day, next week, next month. I cry about this,” says 22-year-old Olga Rezekina, who also fled Ukraine after the invasion began and whose parents and brother live in Odesa.

Rezekina and Starykh arrived in the United States with 20-year-old Anastasiia Savych, a Flip Circus veteran who had returned to Ukraine with other circus members to renew her visa when Russian tanks crossed the border Feb. 24.

All are graduates of the Bingo Circus Theater, a circus academy in Ukraine. Rezekina and Starykh joined Flip to replace two of Savych’s male colleagues, who were mobilized to fight and stayed in Ukraine.

On the day of the invasion, Savych left Kyiv for Poland on the train.

“I never saw the capital so empty. No cars, no people outside. Everything was closed. It was like in a horror movie,” she tells AFP.

Two other Ukrainian dancers in their troupe fled via Romania and joined up with them in America on March 10.

‘Leave problems backstage’

They are among more than 5 million people who have left Ukraine since the invasion, according to United Nations estimates.

“When I just arrived here, I felt guilty,” says Savych, whose mother convinced her that she would not be able help the family by staying in Ukraine.

Now she waits to hear that the war is over and that “we won,” Savych says.

“I’m 20 years old and want stay young and not speak about the war,” she tells AFP.

The three friends all have similar but different dreams for the future.

“Live and be safe,” says Starykh, when asked hers. “Traveling around the world,” says Rezekina, while Savych hopes to live permanently in the U.S.

Alexa Vazquez, who helps run Flip — the circus was founded by her family in Mexico more than 50 years ago — says it was difficult getting the women out of Ukraine with airports closed.

“To have these girls here with right now safe means a world to us, especially to me, because they are friends, they are family. We can support them in any way possible,” she tells AFP.

The Ukrainians appear several times in the show, in which animals do not perform.

“People come and they want to look at a good show. You can leave your problems backstage,” concludes Rezekina. 
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The British government is facing strong backlash from opposition parties and human rights groups after announcing plans earlier this month to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda for processing, in a bid to deter migrants from crossing the English Channel in small boats.

The British government says the prospect of being sent to Rwanda will deter migrants from embarking on the treacherous journey.

Record numbers

More than 4,500 migrants have crossed the English Channel from France to Britain in small boats this year, four times more than the total this time last year. There have been dozens of fatalities, including 27 migrants who drowned when their boat capsized off the northern French coast in November.

There is broad political agreement that the dangerous treks must stop, along with bitter debate about how that can be accomplished.

Britain’s latest plan is to fly migrants more than 6,000 kilometers to Rwanda, where they will be put in holding centers while their asylum claims are processed. Britain’s home secretary, Priti Patel, signed the policy alongside Vincent Biruta, Rwanda’s minister of foreign affairs, during a visit to Kigali earlier this month.

“The persistent circumventing of our laws and immigration rules and the reality of a system that is open to gain and to criminal exploitation has eroded public support for Britain’s asylum system and those who genuinely need access to it,” Patel told reporters. “Putting evil people, smugglers, out of business is a moral imperative. It requires us to use every tool at our disposal and also to find new solutions.”

“Working together, the United Kingdom and Rwanda will help make the immigration system fairer, ensure that people are safe and enjoy new opportunities to flourish. We have agreed that people who enter the U.K. illegally will be considered for relocation to Rwanda to have their asylum claims decided and those who are resettled will be given the support, including up to five years of training, with the help of integration, accommodation, [and] health care so that they can resettle and thrive,” the British home secretary said on April 14.

Britain has paid Rwanda an initial $156 million for a five-year trial plan. Britain will also pay Rwanda for each migrant the African nation accepts.

“This [plan] will not only help them, but it will benefit Rwanda and Rwandans and help to advance our own development,” Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Vincent Biruta told reporters.

Bitter backlash

The policy has prompted a furious response in Britain and elsewhere. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby — the most senior cleric in the Anglican Church — criticized the policy in his Easter sermon. “Subcontracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God,” Welby said.

Migrant support groups say Britain should not be outsourcing refugee processing to Rwanda, a country where London itself has flagged human rights concerns.

“We think it’s inhumane, it’s going to be very expensive, and it won’t be effective,” James Wilson, deputy director of the group Detention Action, told VOA. “The U.K. is a signatory to the refugee convention. We have a legal and moral obligation to be assessing any asylum claims to the U.K. in the U.K.”

Wilson said the government should provide safe routes for refugees to reach Britain. “A humanitarian visa system, so that those who have reached France and are looking to claim asylum in the U.K. and having some grounds for doing that would be able to apply for a visa to come to the U.K. to have their asylum claim considered. If we put that kind of scheme in place, which we think is entirely practicable, it would end the need for Channel crossings,” he told VOA.

Patel says Rwanda is “a safe and secure country with the respect for the rule of law and clearly a range of institutions that evolved and developed over time.” She also said Rwanda already has resettled almost 130,000 refugees from multiple countries.

UN objections

Britain says asylum-seekers should apply for refugee status in the first safe country they arrive in, including France. The United Nations disagrees. “There’s nothing in international law that says you have to ask in the first country you encounter,” said Larry Bottinick, a senior legal officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

“UNHCR understands the frustration of the U.K. government on that and is not in favor of Channel crossing, of course. We think there’s more effective ways and more humane ways to address this,” Bottinick told The Associated Press.

Australia lessons

Until 2014, Australia sent thousands of migrants to offshore processing centers in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island of Nauru. Many asylum-seekers are still being held in these facilities. The policy failed to deter migrants, says analyst Madeline Gleeson, a senior research fellow at the Kaldor Center for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“In the first year of offshore processing being in place, more people arrived in Australia by boat than at any other time in recorded history of asylum-seekers arriving that way,” she said.

Gleeson says Britain has indicated that only some migrants will be sent to Rwanda, and they are likely to be single men.

“If that is the case, what you might find is that the next boats coming across the Channel belonged to those groups which are not going to go to Rwanda — so you might see increased numbers of women and children coming on that boat,” she said. “And the concern there is if those boats sink or if they run into trouble, you’re likely to have a much higher human toll if there are more women and children on the boat.

“There will be a cap on how many people can go to Rwanda. And so, the U.K. risks running into the problem we found here in Australia, which is very quickly — within 12 weeks of this policy starting — we had already maxed out the full capacity offshore,” Gleeson told VOA.

There are further concerns the migrants sent to Rwanda will simply try again to reach Britain, thereby fueling the human trafficking gangs that operate from Africa to Europe and on toward the English Channel.
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Britain plans to send asylum-seekers thousands of miles away to Rwanda for processing, in a bid to deter migrants from crossing the English Channel in small boats. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the policy has triggered a backlash in Britain.
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Turkey has one of the worst records in Europe when it comes to the number of women murdered, or femicides. One of the most prominent groups challenging this phenomenon is called the “We Will Stop Femicide Platform.” But a court case could soon shut the group down, prompting outrage and protests across Turkey. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Tensions between Jerusalem and Moscow are rising over the contested Alexander Nevsky Russian church property in Jerusalem’s Old City. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently sent a personal letter to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett demanding Israel immediately hand over control of the church. The issue is one of the latest flashpoints in the increasingly contentious relations between the two countries during the Russian war against Ukraine. Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem. Camera – Ricki Rosen.
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Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak stressed his nation’s plans to increase its defense capabilities during a visit Wednesday to Washington, where he was greeted by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III.

During a meeting at the Pentagon, Austin commended Poland for its humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine, saying it has not only provided “much-needed security assistance to the Ukrainian military to help it continue to successfully fight back invading Russian forces.” It is also performing “the absolutely essential role of facilitating the delivery of security assistance from the United States and other NATO Allies and partners from around the globe” to Ukraine,” he said.

“Perhaps most importantly, the Polish people have opened their hearts and their homes to millions of Ukrainians fleeing the violence, and you’ve done it with grace,” Austin said in his welcoming remarks.

Since Russia started the war in Ukraine about two months ago, nearly 3 million people fleeing Ukraine have entered Poland.

Blaszczak said in Washington that his country considers the U.S.’s active defense policy and leadership as crucial and that Poland is “proud to host American troops” and would like to “maintain this momentum.” He added that closer collaboration between the two countries in the political and military domain will bear fruit in the industrial and economic sectors.

Since the war in Ukraine started, an additional 5,000 U.S. troops have gone to Poland, adding to the 5,000 on rotation there.

On the eve of the Polish delegation’s visit to Washington, Pentagon spokesperson John F. Kirby announced that Ukraine has received additional fighter jets and parts “to be able to increase their aircraft fleet size,” without giving details as to how these jets and parts were delivered.

Asked by a gathering of mainly Polish media reporters what role Poland may have played in that delivery, Blaszczak declined to comment.

Ray Wojcik, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as an attache at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw from 2014 to 2018, said it made good sense to keep the details of the delivery secret. Earlier publicity about a Polish proposal to transfer MiG-29s to Ukraine, which was rejected by the United States, amounted to a media “blunder,” he told VOA.

Standing alongside Austin, Blaszczak said “Poland considers its security very seriously; thus, in the view of Russian invasion on Ukraine, we have already implemented a new law which will facilitate the strengthening of our armed forces. It will increase our defense budget up to 3% GDP from the next year on.”

In his remarks to the Polish reporters, Blaszczak said, “We will soon talk about assault helicopters,” adding that “manned vehicles are an important component of the Polish armed forces.” The minister made similar pronouncements on social media.

During his talks with Austin, he said, he had “emphasized the fact that the strengthening Poland’s defense capabilities equals to strengthening defense capabilities of NATO’s entire eastern flank.”

Wojcik said he believes Poland is “on the cusp” of announcing plans to purchase Apache attack helicopters, which the U.S. so far has made available to only a small number of allies.

The Apaches work “hand and glove” with the latest U.S. Army Abrams tanks, a prized procurement Poland secured just last month, according to Wojcik, currently a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Security and Defense program at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. “It’s a key capability” badly needed by the Polish military, he said.

Poland’s new defense spending law will enter into force on Saturday, giving the defense ministry new funds to beef up the nation’s armed forces and equipment.

Blaszczak told reporters the Polish delegation was scheduled to meet Thursday with U.S. defense manufacturing firms Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Boeing. U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters are manufactured by Boeing.

The 3% GDP figure catapults Poland to the top of all European nations in defense spending other than Russia and leaves it second only to the U.S. among NATO members, according to Wojcik.

Poland is also doubling its armed forces to 300,000, with 250,000 active duty, Wojcik said, noting that all in all, Poland will rise to be a military powerhouse in Europe and in NATO in a few years’ time.

“Poland will indeed be the best equipped military in the region and among the top six in NATO” as a result of its increase of defense expenditure and planned procurements, Wojcik said.

Judging by land force alone, he said, “in about five years’ time after major acquisitions and integration of new gear,” Polish armed forces’ strength will be exceeded within NATO only by the U.S., Britain and France.
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Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 96th birthday at her Sandringham estate on Thursday as gun salutes rang out across London and Windsor and military bands played “Happy Birthday.”

Britain’s longest serving monarch, who celebrates a historic platinum jubilee this year, was pictured with two white ponies in a photo released for the occasion.

Government ministers joined members of the royal family in sending their best wishes to the queen, who has stepped back from most public duties this year over concerns about her health.

She has travelled from Windsor Castle, west of London, to spend her birthday at her estate in Sandringham, Norfolk.

“An inspiration to so many across the UK, the Commonwealth and the world, it’s particularly special to be celebrating in this Platinum Jubilee year,” her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate said on Twitter.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is visiting India, wished the queen a happy birthday and paid a “heartfelt tribute” to her “70 years of dedicated and faultless service to our country and the Commonwealth” in a video message.

Toymaker Mattel launched a commemorative Barbie doll of the queen dressed in an ivory gown with a blue sash and wearing her wedding tiara to mark the jubilee.

Elizabeth became the queen of Britain and more than a dozen other realms including Canada, Australia and New Zealand on the death of her father King George VI on Feb. 6, 1952, while she was in Kenya on an international tour.

The news was broken to her by her husband Prince Philip, who died last year aged 99 after more than seven decades by her side.

When she ascended the throne, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Harry Truman were running the Soviet Union, China and the United States, respectively, while Winston Churchill was British prime minister.

Elizabeth has largely avoided the public spotlight after spending a night in the hospital in October for an unspecified ailment and being ordered to rest. She tested positive for COVID-19 in February and has said she was left very tired.

She has missed events including the Remembrance Sunday gathering and Easter service, but she joined other members of her family and dignitaries at a memorial service for her husband at London’s Westminster abbey last month.
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The United States is imposing new sanctions on dozens more individuals and entities accused of evading financial penalties imposed on Moscow
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Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he will visit Israel on May 24 amid increasing efforts between the regional rivals to mend ties, four years after they expelled ambassadors.

Turkey and Israel have in recent weeks been working to mend their long-strained ties, and energy has emerged as a potential area of cooperation.

President Tayyip Erdogan said last month he was “very, very hopeful” for energy cooperation with Israel, and he hoped to discuss the issue with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

On Tuesday, Erdogan said he told his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog that he was “very upset” by Palestinians injured or killed in the West Bank and Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The two countries expelled ambassadors in 2018 and have often traded barbs over the Palestinian conflict, Turkish support of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, and other issues.

Speaking to broadcaster CNN Turk, Cavusoglu said he will travel to Israel and Palestine with Energy Minister Fatih Donmez on May 24 and would discuss the appointment of ambassadors with his Israeli counterpart during the visit.
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As Russia launched new attacks Wednesday on the embattled Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, President Joe Biden convened his military leadership to get the latest assessment of the Russian invasion.

“I want to hear from all of you and your assessments on what you’re seeing in the field and across our forces,” Biden said to his top military brass at the White House before his meeting. “The strategic environment is evolving rapidly in the world, but that means our plans and force posture have to be equally dynamic.”

Biden met with combatant commanders, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and approximately two dozen other military leaders and national security advisers.

Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. slapped fresh sanctions on dozens more individuals and entities accused of evading ongoing financial penalties imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

“The Department of Treasury sanctions Transkapitalbank — a key Russian commercial bank that has offered services to banks globally to evade international sanctions, and more than 40 individuals and entities that are part of a Russian sanctions-evasion network led by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

Psaki said Washington also has imposed sanctions on companies in Russia’s virtual currency mining industry and applied visa restrictions on more than 600 individuals in response to human rights abuses by Russia and Belarus.

A day earlier, reports emerged that Biden’s administration was preparing another large military aid package for Ukraine. The size would be similar to the $800 million package announced just last week and is expected to include more artillery and tens of thousands more artillery rounds, which will likely be critical to the fighting in the eastern Donbas region.

Earlier in the week, Biden confirmed to reporters that he will send more artillery to Ukraine.

“Out of the $3.5 billion in drawdown authority Congress granted for this fiscal year, we have used over $2.4 billion to provide Ukraine the military equipment and capabilities they need to defend themselves,” a senior administration official told VOA. “We are continuing to look at additional security assistance we can provide to Ukraine, and there are additional authorities we can draw on if needed.”

The $3.5 billion is part of the $13.6 billion Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act that Congress approved in March.

Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told VOA that in addition to military assistance and economic sanctions, Washington must start thinking about plausible end states of the conflict.

“And then, think of what we can do to encourage the parties, working with other outside actors, even the Chinese perhaps, to try to get to some kind of a place we can all live with, compared to the alternative of this turning into a multimonth or even multiyear conflict,” O’Hanlon said. “But for the short term, we’re just trying to help the Ukrainians not lose.”

Battle for Mariupol

More than 100,000 Ukrainians are believed to be trapped in Mariupol, where 400,000 people lived before Russia invaded the country Feb. 24.

“The conditions there are truly horrific,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday at a diplomatic conference in Panama. He underscored that attempted humanitarian corridors to allow Mariupol residents to escape “have fallen apart very quickly.”

The fight over Mariupol is part of a broader Russian offensive in the strategically important Donbas region, where Moscow has been boosting its military presence.

“Moscow’s current objective is to broaden its control in the East and South. Ideally, they would like to grab Kharkiv and Odesa,” John E. Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told VOA. “But those are tall orders. They may have to settle for Mariupol.”

On March 25, following losses in northern Ukraine, Moscow announced a major shift in strategy and removed forces from the north, including the suburbs of the capital, Kyiv, to consolidate military gains in the Donbas and establish a land bridge to Crimea.

Analysts say if Russian forces gain complete control of the Donbas, their diplomats will hold a stronger hand in peace negotiations and be in a better position to demand autonomy for the region.

“But even if he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] makes large gains in the East and South and accepts a settlement that gives him control of his new conquests, that does not mean that he will be satisfied,” Herbst said.

U.S. Defense Department analysts say the battle for the Donbas region, where fighting has been ongoing since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, could last for months more.
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In a good month, the Russian-language news site Slavic Sacramento averages around 50,000 readers. But when Russia invaded Ukraine, that figure tripled.

Founded in 2014 and catering to a large Russian-speaking community that has set up home in Sacramento, California, and in other American cities, Slavic Sacramento covers a mix of local and national U.S. news, as well as events back home.

“There is a niche audience [in California] that speaks the Russian language, that doesn’t read or watch American news,” said editor-in-chief Ruslan Gurzhiy.

These are people “who oftentimes feed themselves with disinformation and misinformation” from Russian-sponsored media, Gurzhiy told VOA.

Since its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Russia has sought total control over news coverage, issuing laws and directives to local media on how to cover the war and forcing the few remaining independent outlets to shut down or go into exile.

And while Kremlin-backed outlets have been dropped in the U.S. and barred across the European Union, they still have a hold in Russian and Spanish-language markets.

That’s where outlets like Slavic Sacramento come in.

“I noticed that [state-controlled] channels like Russia Today and Channel One Russia are overwhelming,” Gurzhiy said, as he explained the drive to provide more independent coverage.

Born in Belarus to a Belarusian mother and a father from Crimea — the Ukrainian region later annexed by Russia — Gurzhiy moved to the U.S. with his family more than 20 years ago.

The 40-year-old identifies as Ukrainian-Belarusian-American.

While Gurzhiy has a small team working with him in Sacramento, he relies on a network of journalists and military officials in Ukraine to report on the conflict and to counter what he calls Russia’s systematic disinformation campaign.

“It’s really challenging for us because we want to make sure that our coverage remains objective, and so we verify everything that comes from Ukraine, because just like how Russia has a lot of disinformation, it’s wartime and Ukraine has some too,” he said.

For that end, Gurzhiy and his team in California reach out to multiple sources for every story.

Blocks to news

Slavic Sacramento’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed in Russia. In the first days of the war, the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, blocked access to the website in Russia along with several other news networks, including VOA’s Russian service, the BBC and others.

But the website continues to reach readers in Russia.

“About 10 percent of our current readership comes from Russia despite the ban, because I published a story about a VPN [virtual private network] service, so I think people are using that proxy to access our website,” Gurzhiy said.

WATCH: How Audiences in Authoritarian Countries Can Bypass Censorship

Back in California, Gurzhiy says, he has received threats via social media over his coverage on the war and previous reporting on corruption in Ukraine.

He is also fighting a 2018 defamation lawsuit over the outlet’s reporting on alleged misuse of humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

“I have many local enemies among the diaspora community in California who’ve been threatening me a lot … threatening to destroy my business,” he said.

“The funny thing is that one side says I’m a Ukrainian agent, while the other calls me a Russian agent,” Gurzhiy said. “Other people even say that I’m an FBI agent, and so it’s really hard to work in this community.”

Videos about war

Still, the coverage is popular, with Slavic Sacramento’s Facebook page gaining more than 70,000 new followers.

Part of that success is due to its livestreams about the war.

Vitaly Ataev Troshin, a Russian journalist based in Los Angeles, California, has been a leading contributor to those videos.

Originally from Moscow, the 33-year-old has been living in the U.S. for six years. In addition to his collaboration with Slavic Sacramento, he broadcasts videos on his own social media accounts.

“I go to Ukrainian rallies, I bring guests from different backgrounds, I try to diversify as much as possible to show my audience in Russia that we are able to talk with Ukrainians,” Troshin told VOA.

Unlike Slavic Sacramento, Troshin’s target audience is primarily in Russia.

“I try to tell people who watch my videos to see what is going on next door in Ukraine,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t believe me, they go against me.”

For these livestreams to be effective, Troshin occasionally conducts high-profile interviews.

This month he hosted Konstantin Borovoy, a liberal Russian politician and former member of the Russian parliament (Duma), to discuss the situation in Ukraine. In another livestream, he brought on the Russian actor Aleksey Panin.

Before he left Russia, Troshin in 2014 founded a bimonthly newspaper called New Moscow, named after a territory incorporated into the Russian capital.

He still manages the publication and its online version from Los Angeles, and uses it to publish news about the war.

“We’re checking the information about who has died or been captured in Ukraine right now from the Russian side,” he said. Many people in Russia “don’t know that these [soldiers] have left the country to go fight the Ukrainians.”

“I know it is against what the government is saying, but I can’t just skip it because these are my people, they are from my city,” Troshin said.

Publishing such news in Russia is risky.

Moscow in March passed a law that carries a 15-year prison term for those found to have spread what it deems false news about the military. Authorities have already charged journalists and activists under the law.

Troshin is planning to visit Russia in the summer, but doesn’t know what awaits him.

“I don’t know what [Russian authorities] will do to me when I go back, but I live here now and I see what is going on,” he said.

“When I go back to Moscow, I will continue to talk about what’s happening [in Ukraine]. I can’t just sit home, close my door and windows and ignore the fact that people are dying.”
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