TWEAKS AND UPDATES

UNESCO: Ukraine: UNESCO launches programme to support Ukrainian artists. “UNESCO will provide financial support to Ukrainian artists to support the continuation of artistic creation and access to cultural life, under a pilot programme launched by the Organization in partnership with the Ukrainian NGO Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).”

Yale School of Management: Over 1,000 Companies Have Curtailed Operations in Russia—But Some Remain. “Over 1,000 companies have publicly announced they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia to some degree beyond the bare minimum legally required by international sanctions — but some companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred. Originally a simple ‘withdraw’ vs. ‘remain’ list, our list of companies now consists of five categories—graded on a school-style letter grade scale of A-F for the completeness of withdrawal.”

The Verge: Wikimedia Foundation appeals Russian fine over Ukraine war articles. “The Wikimedia Foundation is challenging a Russian court’s ruling that it violated disinformation laws in articles about the invasion of Ukraine. The organization filed its appeal last week, arguing that the articles contained ‘well-sourced, verified knowledge’ and that Russia did not have jurisdiction over the globally operating Wikimedia Foundation.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reuters: Russian lawmaker expects Google to stay in Russia. “The deputy head of the State Duma parliamentary committee on information policy, Anton Gorelkin, said on Thursday he expected Google would remain in Russia.”

New York Times: Tracking the War in Real Time. “In this conflict, the gains by either side can be small, and claims of captured territory can be difficult to verify. These are instances when the expertise of the [Institute for the Study of War] comes in handy. To better understand how these assessments come together — drawing on satellite images, orbiting heat sensors and social media — I spoke to Mason Clark, a team leader at the institute, and George Barros, one of its analysts.”

WIRED: Russia Is Taking Over Ukraine’s Internet. “WEB PAGES IN the city of Kherson in south Ukraine stopped loading on people’s devices at 2:43 pm on May 30. For the next 59 minutes, anyone connecting to the internet with KhersonTelecom, known locally as SkyNet, couldn’t call loved ones, find out the latest news, or upload images to Instagram. They were stuck in a communications blackout. When web pages started stuttering back to life at 3:42 pm, everything appeared to be normal. But behind the scenes everything had changed: Now all internet traffic was passing through a Russian provider and Vladimir Putin’s powerful online censorship machine.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: U.S. probing how American electronics wound up in Russian military gear. “Federal agents have begun questioning U.S. technology companies on how their computer chips ended up in Russian military equipment recovered in Ukraine. Commerce Department agents who enforce export controls are conducting the inquiries together with the FBI, paying joint visits to companies to ask about Western chips and components found in Russian radar systems, drones, tanks, ground-control equipment and littoral ships, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigations.”

The Guardian: Specialist gang ‘targeting’ Ukrainian treasures for removal to Russia. “A specialist gang is smuggling valuable historic artefacts out of Ukraine and into Russia, according to an international team of academics and digital technology experts who are tracking thefts.”

NPR: Open source intelligence methods are being used to investigate war crimes in Ukraine. “We’ve heard about so-called open-source intelligence for a few years now. It’s where publicly available information – things like satellite imagery, phone videos, social media – can be pieced together to reveal secrets about wars or threats. Now it’s being used to track down war crimes and war criminals in Ukraine. It is painstaking work carried out by an army of internet sleuths. NPR’s Deborah Amos reports from Berlin, where some of them are based.”

CNN: Exclusive: A crypto-based dossier could help prove Russia committed war crimes. “Starling [Lab]’s dossier isn’t a typical exhibit. Instead, the group’s submission will feature publicly available online information that’s been preserved and verified using the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies, in what it says is the first submission of evidence of its kind to any court of law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Academies: Action Steps for Rebuilding Ukraine’s Science, Research, and Innovation. “We, the leadership of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the ALLEA European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, met in Warsaw, Poland on June 2, 2022. The aim of the meeting was to discuss and agree on steps to build a strong science, innovation, research, and training system in Ukraine.”

Radio Prague International: Number of Czechs who think their country is target of Russian information war falling. “The number of people in the Czech Republic who believe that their country is the target of an information war waged by Russia against the West fell from May’s 51 percent to 46 percent in June, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Ipsos agency in cooperation with the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO). Most of those who do believe that the Czech Republic is a target of a Russian information war are men, young people and those with a university education.”

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