NEW RESOURCES

I have a great interest in the intersection between military conflict and Internet culture, so I’ve been reviewing Ukraine/Russia war compilations on YouTube. The Meme Orange does compilations of spicy memes/ war memes regularly, while Memenade does daily meme compilations which include Ukraine memes. I think my favorite, though, is Dima Maleev. His channel states he is Ukrainian; I have not confirmed this but have no reason to disbelieve it. Anyway, instead of simple meme aggregations he takes four or five meme topics and gives background, context (like audio recordings) and plenty of meme reactions. There are only about four of these “WAR MEMES” videos (I’m sure they take a huge amount of work) but they’re well worth viewing. If you have trouble understanding accented English turn the captions on; they’re auto-generated but very good.

iNews: Call Russia: UK volunteers phone random Russian numbers to ‘plant seed of doubt’ about Ukraine war. “These ‘phone calls to end the war’ are part of Call Russia, a volunteer network of more than 30,000 people from around 116 countries dialling into Russian homes to speak directly about war in Ukraine. It’s the brainchild of 45-year-old Paulius Senuta, the Lithuanian CEO of Not Perfect Companies who has experience working across Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”

Internet Archive Blogs: Supporting Ukrainian Scholars Through Interlibrary Loan. “Internet Archive’s full collection of books and periodicals are now available, for free, to Ukrainian libraries through interlibrary loan (ILL) via RapidILL.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Radio Free Europe: Russia Blocks Websites Of The Moscow Times, Radio France International Over Ukraine War Coverage. “France Medias Monde, a state-owned holding company in charge of French international broadcasting, said it will continue to look for ways to distribute RFI reports in Russia.”

The Moscow Times: Moscow Times’ Russian Service Blocked Over War Coverage. “Russia blocked The Moscow Times’ Russian-language service on Friday after it published what authorities call a false report on riot police officers refusing to fight in Ukraine. The Moscow Times’ English-language edition is not affected by the block. MT Russian remains accessible abroad and while using a VPN.” I did this one before the one that included Radio France.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NPR: Meet the activists who projected a giant Ukrainian flag on Russia’s Embassy in D.C.. “Anti-war activists engaged in a light beam battle against Russian diplomats in Washington, D.C., Wednesday evening in a display of disapproval over the country’s ongoing war in Ukraine. The activists spent hours projecting the Ukrainian flag on the Russian Embassy’s exterior walls with ultra-bright light.”

New York Times: 5 Ukrainian Art Accounts to Follow on Instagram Now. “Social media give us responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine almost instantly, but some of the most moving responses I’ve seen come from the young Ukrainian artists who’ve managed to make new work documenting events as they unfold. What follows are four accounts run by Ukrainian artists — one currently in Austria, and three still in the country — and one by Ukrainian Americans, all working to keep the world’s attention on what’s happening on the ground.”

Business Insider: Ukrainian pilots launch ‘Buy Me A Jet’ campaign to help defeat Russia’s massive air superiority. “The Ukrainian military has launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund the purchase of new fighter jets, say reports. In a video showing destroyed Ukrainian military equipment and devastated homes and towns, a Ukrainian pilot looks into the camera and says, ‘buy me a fighter jet.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Russian Court Says Google, Wikipedia Face Fines Over ‘Fake’ Content. “A Russian court has threatened U.S. Internet giant Google and Wikipedia owner Wikimedia Foundation with fines for failing to delete what it said was ‘fake’ information about the Ukraine conflict, Interfax news agency reported on Friday.”

Washington Post: Ukraine is scanning faces of dead Russians, then contacting the mothers. “Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow’s invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Progressive Policy Institute: The War In Ukraine Highlights A New Era In Information Warfare. “The war in Ukraine has relied heavily on information warfare and the struggle to control the global narrative. It has highlighted both the impact that online campaigns can have on international crises, as well as the danger posed by false information on internet platforms. Social media-based disinformation is not the unknown threat it once was, but despite acknowledgement by internet platforms, online users, and American public officials that state-sponsored disinformation was likely to disseminate in the days following the Russian invasion, false claims have succeeded in blunting the world’s overwhelmingly adverse global reaction to Putin’s war.”

Articles of War: Ukraine Symposium – Cultural Property Protection In The Ukraine Conflict. “This post will address various issues related to the protection of cultural property, including the treaty law that applies, the practical issues that arise from those binding international law obligations, and the potential for war crimes prosecutions after the fact as a sanction or a deterrent for such conduct. The post will examine the obligations of both parties to the war in Ukraine and answer basic questions, such as, what efforts have the defenders made to protect cultural property? Is the obligation to protect cultural property separate from or paramount to the clear obligation to refrain from attacking civilians and other civilian objects? And what can be done to hold parties who violate these rules of warfare accountable?”

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