NEW RESOURCES

The Irish News: Ukrainian refugees in the UK have made calls to a slavery and exploitation helpline. “Unseen said millions of Ukrainians need support to keep them safe from trafficking. The charity, along with a coalition of anti-slavery and human rights groups, has launched a new website… The website aims to provide a one-stop shop of useful websites, helplines, and information including where to get basic travel and housing advice to opening a bank account and understanding your rights as a worker in the UK.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Cryptocurrency crash devalues Ukraine’s government crypto fundraise. “Cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply in recent weeks. Bitcoin has lost more than 20% of its price so far in May, following a 17% drop in April, highlighting the risks faced by holders of the highly volatile assets. All the funds raised in the ‘Aid for Ukraine’ fund were stored in cryptocurrency but the government was able to spend $45 million of it on equipment for Ukraine’s army before the crash, Bornyakov said in written responses to Reuters questions.”

Publishers Weekly: Efforts for Ukrainian Publishers, Refugee Children Expand. “In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the international publishing community has come together with a number of initiatives aimed at offering support to children’s authors, publishers, and aid organizations. Here, we continue to cover these ongoing efforts.”

Washington Post: Ukraine issues stamp commemorating sinking of Russian warship. “The previous set of six stamps featured a Ukrainian service member making a rude hand gesture at a Russian warship from the shore. The latest set includes three of those same stamps as well as three modified stamps showing the service member still standing, but not the ship.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Poynter: This college ‘nerd’ investigates the Ukraine war from the digital front lines. “Until earlier this year, The Intel Crab, which has more than 250,000 followers and a reach in the tens of millions, was among the latter. But Justin Peden, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Alabama-Birmingham who only recently switched his major to journalism, revealed his identity earlier this year. ‘I’m no longer anonymous for one simple reason: I want to be held accountable for my work,’ Peden told me. ‘Both positively and negatively.'”

iNews: ‘How to steal a Russian tank’: The extraordinary resistance tips the Ukrainian government is giving civilians. “The determination of Ukrainians to repulse the Kremlin’s invasion has taken many forms but few can sum it up better than the entry on an official website aimed at citizens living behind enemy lines. It reads: ‘How to start and steal a Russian tank.’ The online guidance comes complete with diagrams of a tank crew compartment and detailed instructions on how to get a T-72 moving, as well as information on accessing the fuel cap.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Exclusive-Russian hackers are linked to new Brexit leak website, Google say. “A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain’s exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence.”

Coda Story: Social media companies are facing pressure to start archiving war crimes evidence. How will that work?. “Long before politicians caught on, Alexa Koenig, the executive director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, was working on how social media can be used as evidence in international courts — and how companies can do a better job of preserving it. In the report Digital Lockers: Archiving Social Media Evidence of Atrocity Crimes, Koenig and her team outlined how social media platforms can transform from ‘accidental and unstable archives for human rights content’ to vaults of evidence accessible to investigators and prosecutors. Going a step further, the team at the Human Rights Center created a framework for using digital open source information in international courts.”

ABS-CBN News: Russia orders blogger’s arrest over Ukraine videos. “A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered the detention in absentia of Russian blogger Michael Nacke, accusing him of discrediting the Russian army and its offensive in Ukraine. Nacke, a 28-year-old Kremlin critic, hosts a YouTube channel with more than 700,000 subscribers that discusses Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. A citizen of Russia, he is currently in Lithuania, he told AFP, after Moscow’s Basmanny court ordered his detention.”

Associated Press: Pro-Russian Hackers Spread Hoaxes to Divide Ukraine, Allies. “As Ukrainians flooded into Poland earlier this year to flee Russian invaders, a hacking group aligned with the Kremlin sought to spread rumors that criminal gangs were waiting to harvest the organs of child refugees. The network, known to cybersecurity experts as Ghostwriter, seemingly aimed to sow distrust between Ukraine and Poland. It’s one of several tactics outlined in a new report that outlines how Russia has used disinformation, fear and propaganda alongside bullets, tanks and soldiers in an effort to demoralize Ukraine and divide its allies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

War on the Rocks: The Dubious Prospects For Cargo-Delivery Drones In Ukraine. “A frenzy of drone experimentation is already underway in Ukraine. Faine Greenwood has collected more than 400 references to drone usage in Ukraine, primarily for surveillance, journalism, targeting, and documentation. Ukrainian forces have also demonstrated the ability to use small drones to drop grenades and other small explosives on Russian troops — a use case that, technologically speaking, is almost identical to airdropping aid.”

NewsWise: Statistical Physics Rejects Theory of ‘Two Ukraines’. “When reading news and analyses of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, researchers in Spain perceived many conflicting messages being transmitted. The most notable one is the theory of ‘two Ukraines’ or the existence of ideologically pro-West and pro-Russian regions. This doesn’t match the unity of Ukrainians against the Russian invasion, so they wondered if they could provide any solid proof to support or reject such a theory via data analysis tools?”

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