The Kyiv Post wrote a brief, but relevant, op-ed this week warning of the cyber threat Ukraine could face from Russia:
Russia’s proxies don’t include just gun-toting separatists in eastern Ukraine; scores of them sit behind computer screens, ready to menace. They have drastically upped their game with sophisticated malware. And this seems to be a response to the lower-tech knocking out of Ukrainian electricity to Russian-occupied Crimea, tacitly accepted by Ukraine’s authorities.
Read the entire article here
Here is a map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone, courtesy of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE):
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with an interview we did with director Evgeny Afineevsky, whose documentary Winter On Fire: Ukraine's Fight For Freedom was nominated for an Oscar this week.
When a friend in Kyiv called Israeli-American filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky in November 2013 and convinced him to drop everything and take his cameras to Ukraine because "something was happening" there, he had no idea what he was getting himself into, let alone that it would lead to an Oscar nomination.
"Sometimes you need to be crazy, and I think we filmmakers are crazy," he told RFE/RL shortly before the resulting movie, Winter On Fire, was short-listed for an Academy Award for best documentary on January 13. "I came initially for two weeks, and that's how long we planned to be there. But literally after eight, nine days things changed."
Angered at President Viktor Yanukovych's abrupt rejection of stronger ties to the European Union in favor of Russia, tens of thousands of Ukrainians had gathered to vent their frustration on the capital's Maidan square, the site of the Orange Revolution nine years previously.
What started as a peaceful movement quickly spiraled out of control as the authorities became increasingly brutal in their attempts to suppress the unrest and, in turn, antigovernment activists attacked police lines and occupied public buildings. Some three months later Yanukovych had fled into Russian exile, and scores of demonstrators had died in the process.
And Afineevsky was there to film it all, capturing the stories of people from all walks of life who took to the streets to steer Ukraine away from Russian influence.
Read the entire interview here
This ends our live blogging for January 15. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.