Robert Fripp - Music For Quiet Moments (2021)

 

“When Robert Fripp’s Music For Quiet Moments started to appear with relatively little fanfare in May 2020, as a series of weekly uploads to YouTube and streaming services, their overall effect was one of balm. Moving through the digital ether, Fripp’s ambient soundscapes slowly drifted their way through a collective psychological environment grappling with the uncertainty of pandemic times. The series unfolded over a year, 52 weekly entries, each offering another aspect of an ever-changing same: Fripp performing live in various contexts, quietly testing out the possibilities afforded to him by music that drops the pretense of narrative and lets itself just be. ...”

Uncut

amazon

YouTube: Music For Quiet Moments | Robert Fripp   1 / 52

2010 April: Robert Fripp, 2011 September: Frippertronics, 2014 April: The New World 1986 (Frippertronics), 2017 September: The Essential Fripp & Eno (1994)

​Russia, Blocked From the Global Internet, Plunges Into Digital Isolation

 

The Kremlin in Moscow last month. Russians have been cut off from many Western internet services in a matter of days.

“Even as President Vladimir V. Putin tightened his grip on Russian society over the past 22 years, small pockets of independent information and political expression remained online. Any remnants of that are now gone. As Mr. Putin has waged war on Ukraine, a digital barricade went up between Russia and the world. Both Russian authorities and multinational internet companies built the wall with breathtaking speed. And the moves have ruptured an open internet that was once seen as helping to integrate Russia into the global community. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Once Victims in Southeast Europe, Jews Come to Aid Fleeing Ukrainians

NY Times: An agreement on nuclear plants in Ukraine is urgently needed, the U.N. nuclear agency says. (Video)

POLITICO: In a matter of weeks, Vladimir Putin made them refugees

VOX: War in the time of crypto

WIRED: War Is Calling Crypto’s ‘Neutrality’ Into Question

War Won’t Stop Crypto. Here’s Why.

 

War Is Calling Crypto’s ‘Neutrality’ Into Question

The teens who found splendor on the gritty East Side docks of the 1940s

 

“The smokestacks and storage tanks of the East River waterfront of the 1930s or 1940s should be an unappealing place to meet friends. But painter Joseph Lambert Cain has captured a group of teenagers gathered on a pier here to sunbathe, talk, and pair off. For these teens, perhaps from the Lower East Side or the Gas House District in the East 20s, the waterfront is an idyllic location—away from the critical eyes of adults and into the warm embrace of the working class city they likely grew up in. Cain titled his painting ‘New York Harbor.’ I’m not sure of the date, but my guess is about 1940. The riverfront industry surrounds them, but the modern city of skyscrapers is within sight and reach.“

Ephemeral New York

Leaving Kharkiv with children, suitcases and trauma.

 

Days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops have faced resistance from Ukrainian forces as they threaten major cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv and drive hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian residents to flee to neighboring countries.

“LVIV, Ukraine — Passengers streaming off the train from Kharkiv looked shellshocked, their faces drawn with tiredness. They clutched children with big, staring eyes. ‘From Kharkiv,’ said Olena Tuliakova, dragging a wheeled suitcase and holding her 3-year-old son, Ilya, by the hand. ‘I left my parents there,’ she added, breaking into tears. She said she planned to travel across Europe to Spain, where her husband was working. She had taped a label to Ilya’s jacket with his name and the family’s phone numbers in case he got lost in the crush or worse. ...”

NY Times

Foreigners who fled Ukraine team up to help others escape

BBC - Ukraine: 'We try to tell them the truth' - parenting in wartime

Ukraine war: Thousands still trying to flee the country as Russia targets civilian areas in Kharkiv

NY Times: Italian City Tied to Russia by a Revered Saint Feels the Sting of War in Ukraine

​Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett (1955)

 

“Waiting for Godot (/ˈɡɒdoʊ/ GOD-oh) is a play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir(Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s translation of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) ‘a tragicomedy in two acts’. The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. …”

Wikipedia

The Kennedy Center: Samuel Beckett + Waiting for Godot (Video)

‘We Wait. We are Bored’: Waiting for Godot in a Time of Lockdown

Guardian: In Godot we trust

Open Culture: Hear Waiting for Godot, the Acclaimed 1956 Production Starring The Wizard of Oz’s Bert Lahr (Video)

2009 November: Samuel Beckett, 2010 April: A Piece of Monologue, 2011 June: Film (1965) - UbuWeb, 2012 March: “fathoms from anywhere”, 2017 April: Krapp's Last Tape (1957), 2017 May: The Alternative Facts of Samuel Beckett’s “Watt”

​Tram 83, a soundtrack

 

“Africa Is a Country Radio continues its literary theme for its third season on Worldwide FM. The third installment in our theme of African literature is inspired by the debut novel from Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Tram 83. The story takes place in the fictional City-State, a resource rich secessionist state in central Africa. ... These are places that have also influenced my own musical tastes. So, as a dedication to all the central places of gathering at or of the global margins around the world, I present Tram 83, a soundtrack.Listen below, get the tracklist on Worldwide FM and follow us on Mixcloud.”

Africa Is a Country (Audio)

W - Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Ukrainians Find That Relatives in Russia Don’t Believe It’s a War

 

“LVIV, Ukraine — Four days after Russia began dropping artillery shells on Kyiv, Misha Katsiurin, a Ukrainian restaurateur, was wondering why his father, a church custodian living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, hadn’t called to check on him. ... As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all. ...”

NY Times

LitHub: Read from The Orphanage, a Novel of Occupied Ukraine

POLITICO - ‘Putin Miscalculated’: Ukrainians Are Literally Lining Up to Fight Back

New Yorker: Russia Blocks Its Last Independent Television Channel

YouTube: The Failed Logistics of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine  19:42

Open Culture: Pianist Plays ‘What a Wonderful World’ for Ukrainian Refugees at Lviv Station (Video)

Places for Peace - Various Artists

“If you want to support the Ukrainian people in this humanitarian crisis there are many ways to do so. You can directly donate to one of the support organizations of your choice, or you can choose to support one of the many different charity funding initiatives that are started. There are many to choose from, but the Places for Peace compilation from the Home Normal label will definitely be of special interest to Ambientblog readers (and ambient music lovers in general). Places of Peace is offered as a Name Your Price download so you can decide what you can afford to donate yourself. All profits from this release will be donated to UNICEF’s ‘Donate to Protect Children in Ukraine‘. ...”

ambient music (Audio)

Bandcamp (Audio)

How the Manhattan D.A.’s Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled

 

“On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States. The prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald J. Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges. ...”

NY Times

​2022 anti-war protests in Russia

 

Police officers detain an antiwar demonstrator in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday. Social media companies are rolling out new tools to protect users in Ukraine and Russia from harassment, hacking or other repercussions for online speech. 

“Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, ongoing anti-war demonstrations and protests broke out across Russia. The protests have been met with widespread repression by the Russian authorities, with over 6,500 arrests being made in the seven days from 24 February to 2 March. ... On 1 March, reports and photographs appeared in social media, also republished and confirmed by Novaya Gazeta, showing primary school children behind bars, arrested by police in Moscow for laying flowers at the Ukrainian embassy and holding signs saying ‘No to war’. A special detention center set up in Yekaterinburg ran out of room for prisoners arrested from protests. On 2 March, the artist Yelena Osipova, aged 77 and born to survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, was amongst those arrested at an anti-war protest in Saint Petersburg. Videos of her arrest were widely shared on Twitter and Reddit. Police action against the protesters continued the following day. On 4 March, the activist Yulia Galyamina was detained and held in custody pending trial, charged with violating the law on public events by trying to organize an anti-war protest. On 5 March, ahead of protests planned for 6 March, police raided, searched and detained hundreds of Russian journalists, politicans and activists. ...”

Wikipedia

Dissent: The Seeds of War

In Russia, thousands defy police threats to protest the invasion of Ukraine. Can it make a difference? (Video)

PBS: Spilling into streets and city squares, Russian citizens protest the war in Ukraine (Video)

 

Yelena Osipova survived the Siege of Leningrad from 1941-45

Homebrew Computer Club

 

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak learned valuable lessons at Homebrew. 

“The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspect of the Silicon Valley information technology industrial complex. Several high-profile hackers and computer entrepreneurs emerged from its ranks, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Computer. With its newsletter and monthly meetings promoting an open exchange of ideas, the club has been described as ‘the crucible for an entire industry’ as it pertains to personal computing. ...”

Wikipedia

W - Hacker culture

The Homebrew Computer Club (Video)

2021 August: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy (1984), 2021 August: Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World

 

Apple-1: Steve Wozniak debuted the prototype Apple-1 at the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976.

​‘It’s stomach-turning’: the children caught up in Ukraine war

 

“When the air raid sirens wail, Natalya Tyshchuk feels relatively lucky. She only has to get herself and her daughter Mia – born three months premature in December but no longer in a cumbersome incubator – down to the basement that serves as a bomb shelter for the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in central Kyiv. Racing down the stairs beside them are nurses and families of premature babies in intensive care, who have to be rushed underground with their life support machines, oxygen canisters, and all the tubes and wires monitoring their fragile young lives. ...”

Guardian

WSJ: In a Kyiv Hospital, Children Pay the Price of Russia’s Invasion

Plight of the cancer children who could die from lack of treatment ...

The fight to save children’s lives at Kyiv hospital

25 Meaningful Ways You Can Help Ukraine Ukraine

​Inside Mesa Verde Cliff Palace: North America's architectural wonder

“Within Colorado‘s sprawling Mesa Verde National Park, there are numerous abandoned cliff dwellings that the Ancestral Puebloans built, the direct predecessors of today’s Puebloans. Mesa Verde was once the Puebloan’s homeland region, and it is smattered with relics from their past. All across the park, there are cliff dwellings to be found. However, the most significant of them all is Cliff Palace.Open from 8 am to sunset, you can access the Palace via the loop road, whilst on the track, you’re taken to other marvels such as Balcony House and overlooks to the other cliff dwellings. The cliff dwellings are wedged into the cliffs, protected by the rocky overhangs above them and the deep ravines below them. Due to the old structures’ unpredictability and the danger posed by such awe-inspiring but imposing natural beauty, you can only enter the Cliff Palace and Balcony House by a ranger-guided tour. ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

W - Mesa Verde National Park

Hugo Lioret – Pomone (2021)

 

“... In the case of Hugo Lioret, maybe sometimes it’s good to handle this reality thing with a little diplomacy.  Lioret, a French native (but since relocated to The Hague NL) blurs the line between, let’s call it this second-generation “non” reality (making recordings of the natural world) …and the completely inorganic electronic processing that the Acousmatic world thrives on. ...”

Avant Music News (Audio)

Bandcamp (Audio)

Hugo Lioret

​15,000 Are Sheltering in Kyiv’s Subway

 

Officials in Kyiv say as many as 15,000 people, including many children, have taken refuge in the subway system to escape bombing and artillery fire as Russian forces advance on the capital.

“KYIV, Ukraine — As the escalator glides down the final few yards into the subway stop deep in Kyiv’s normally immaculate mass transit system, a sprawl of foam mattresses, suitcases and plastic bags filled with food comes into view. The space is surprisingly quiet, almost silent, despite the 200 or so people camped there to escape the bombing and artillery fire above. They sleep three or four to a single mattress. The children push toy cars over the gray granite slabs of the station floors, watching their mothers scroll endlessly on their cellphones, searching for news of the war.Little hands and feet stick out from underneath blankets, though it is noticeably warmer in the station than above ground. Volunteers come and go, bringing food and other necessities of life. One mother sets up a tent, for a modicum of privacy. ...”

NY Times (Video)

The Intercept_: How the War in Ukraine Is Being Covered (Up) on Russian TV (Video)

ARTFORUM: Letters from Kyiv - A wartime diary by Yevgenia Belorusets  (March 01, 2022)

 

Sandbags protecting a door at City Hall on March 01, 2022, in Kyiv.

Eivind Aarset: When Tonality Is the Excusion

 

“Norwegian musician Eivind Aarset opens this piece for his quartet (featuring bassist Auden Erlien and two credited drummers, Wetle Holte and Erland Dahlen, though one of them, Holte, only spends some of the time drumming) with syrupy held notes, Aarset’s electric guitar’s tone extended beyond the instrument’s inherent, unmediated possibilities. Delays that slowly fade keep notes in play, clock-like pings becoming whisps, strums becoming halos. There seems to be a precognition of this early on: right at the start, it’s as if another performance is layered under this one, if you listen closely — perhaps bleed from a nearby room, perhaps an intended substrate, perhaps a bit of something caught in the digital buffer of one of those tools arrayed in front of Aarset. ...”

disquiet (Video)

W - Eivind Aarset

Bandcamp (Audio)

Eivind Aarset (Video)

500,000 Ukrainian Refugees Are Headed to Fortress Europe

 

“According to the U.N Refugee Agency, more than half a million Ukrainians have fled the country since the beginning of the Russian invasion, and at least another 160,000 have been internally displaced. Many of the countries these refugees are fleeing to, including Hungary and Poland, have been the sites of strong repression against immigrants in recent years. So far more than 150,000 Ukrainians have reached Poland, 70,000 have arrived or passed through Hungary, and 40,000 have reached Romania, Moldova, or Slovakia, among other countries. The UN also estimates that if the war were to continue to escalate or drag on, as many as four million people, or almost ten percent of the population, could flee Ukraine. Such a mass exodus would put Ukrainian refugees up against one of the most militarized borders and one of the most repressive anti-immigration regimes in the world. ...”

Left Voice

VOX: Where are Ukrainian refugees going? (Video)

NY Times: Opinion | Ukraine Presents a Moral Crisis, Not Just a Military One

NY Times: Opinion | The Ukraine of My Childhood Is Being Erased

NY Times: Ukraine War Sets Off Europe’s Fastest Migration in Decades

 

The Ukraine Refugees Response Moldova

​Showing Solidarity With The Ukrainian Underground

 

Casa Ukrania of Odesa

“This article was commissioned mid-way through 2021 as a companion piece to the last feature we ran on New Weird Ukraine – a guide to the country's DIY, experimental, underground music scene – something we thought we should point out here in case it seems odd there is no mention of the current conflict with invading Russian forces. This is the first of a series of articles we have coming to you this year from Ukraine – some were commissioned before the war, some are being commissioned as we write this. ...”

The Quietus (Audio)

 

FOMO | Monotonne (Audio)

​Messages in the Maps

 

The original of this world map was likely drawn in the 12th century CE by an anonymous and likely Egyptian scholar for the Kitab Ghara’ib al-funun wa-mulah al-’uyun (Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes), and the earliest-known version of it is this 13th-century CE copy. ...

“Using a gentle two-finger pinch, Emilie Savage-Smith turns a page of an 800-year-old manuscript on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. She leans forward and pauses, carefully reviewing each illustration. ’This entire treatise is one of the universe,’ says Savage-Smith, professor of the history of Islamic science at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, describing the Book of Curiosities, a 13th-century compendium of Islamic maps. ...”

AramcoWorld

 

The earliest Islamic maps of the Mediterranean were drawn in the late 10th century ce by geographer and cartographer Ibn Hawqal in his Kitab surat al-ard (Book of a picture of the earth). ...

​Explosions Shake Kyiv and Ukraine’s Second-Largest City

 

A projectile hit the main radio and television tower in Kyiv, on Tuesday.

“On Day 6 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow appeared to target civilian areas with increasingly powerful weapons and a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian tanks and vehicles sat about 20 miles north of Kyiv, a menacing presence that raised the possibility that Moscow could attempt an encirclement of the capital. Raising already high tensions, the Russian Defense Ministry threatened to conduct strikes against facilities in the city belonging to Ukraine’s security service and to a special operations unit to prevent information attacks against Moscow. Video showed a projectile hitting Kyiv’s main radio and television tower, forcing television stations off the air, according to Ukrainian officials. ...”

NY Times (Video)

POLITICO: Opinion | Putin’s ‘Denazification’ Rhetoric Distorts History — and Ukraine’s Current Reality

NY Times: Ukrainian Invasion Adds to Chaos for Global Supply Chains

Jacobin: How Europe Learned to Use Central Banks as a Weapon

Foreign Policy: In Modern War, Short-Sellers Aren’t on the Sidelines

POLITICO: How the Russia-Ukraine conflict has fundamentally changed Biden’s presidency (Video)

 

In Moldova, a welcome sight for Ukrainian refugees.

​Walking Mexico City in the footsteps of Luis Buñuel

 

“We tend to associate Luis Buñuel with Paris. Many of his best-known films were made in France, including ‘Un Chien Andalou‘ (1929), the surrealist masterpiece Buñuel made in collaboration with fellow-Spaniard Salvador Dali, and which saw the two artists mine their dreams for imagery derives from the very depths of their subconscious. It was France that sparked Buñuel’s career and it was also where it concluded, with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). ... Forced to flee Spain during the Civil War, Buñuel spent many years working at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and for Warner Bros. However, he soon tired of the Hollywood studio system and decided to resettle in Mexico City to start his film career afresh. ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

Cold Comfort: Sarah Manguso’s icy debut novel

 

Christian Skredsvig, Vinter (1880). 

“Sarah Manguso’s turns of phrase have a way of instantly crystallizing into idiom. Ever since I finished reading her novel Very Cold People, shards of her precision keep surfacing in my head. When I pull the olive wool-blend cardigan that lives on the back of my desk chair over my shoulders, I think, ‘warming sweater,’ as in, ‘an old Irish cable-knit cardigan with leather buttons hung in the downstairs coat closet, which smelled of hot farts and smoke. If anyone ever needed a sweater, they could go and put on the warming sweater, which was its name, as if other sweaters were merely decorative.’ ...”

The Baffler

NY Times: ‘Very Cold People’ Makes Something Beautiful Out of a Painful Childhood

Initial Talks End Between Russia and Ukraine

 

Russia hits Ukraine fuel supplies, airfields in new attacks Ukrainian soldiers take positions outside a military facility after an explosion in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. ...

“As Ukraine’s second-largest city reeled under a barrage of Russian rockets that officials said  killed dozens of people, a Ukrainian delegation met counterparts from Russia for several hours of talks on Monday in Belarus. The bombardment of a residential area of Kharkiv five days after Russia’s invasion began signaled a possible intensification of the conflict. Moscow’s actions have fueled nationwide resistance, forced half a million refugees to flee Ukraine and left Russia to deal with growing sanctions and increasing isolation. Among Monday’s other major developments. Belarus hosted the first face-to-face talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials since the Russian invasion began, but President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said before the meeting that he was not hopeful that it would end the hostilities. The Treasury Department announced that it would freeze assets of the Russian Central Bank that are held in the United States and impose sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The value of the ruble plunged by more than 25 percent as the effects of Western sanctions shook Russia’s economy. ...”

NY Times (Video)

WIRED: News From Ukraine Is Unfolding in Fragments Over Social Media (Video)

Aljazeera - Russia-Ukraine war by the numbers: Live Tracker

The Nation - The Book Arsenal: A Dispatch From the Cultural Front in Kyiv

BBC - Ukraine maps: Tracking Russia's invasion, NY Times - Maps: Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The Intercept_ - Ukraine Conscripts Head to Battlefield to Fight Russia Invasion

Voice: New Yorkers From Near and Far Continue Protests Against Russian Attack on Ukraine

​Navigating Pete Namlook’s Sprawling Musical Universe

 

“It was on the banks of the River Main in Frankfurt, Germany that one of the most powerful visions of electronic ambient music was born. An employee at the city center bank, a 30-year-old named Peter Kulhmann was walking along the Main with his gig bag in hand—Kuhlmann played guitar in his free time. At the time, he was a skilled jazz fusion player, but the scene had left him feeling disenchanted. He decided to stop for a moment, take out his guitar, and look out on the lapping waters of the city river. He began to strum the instrument, aligning his playing to the natural sound of the water. As he played, he could feel himself opening up fully to nature—and to the present moment—finally hearing the natural music that existed all around him. ....”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Cyber tensions rise as West fears invasion of Ukraine

 

A day before Ukraine announced its Defense Ministry and banking servers had been hacked, our video team toured the country’s Cybercommand Center, where officials have been preparing for this scenario for years.

“In the online world, the West and Russia are already at loggerheads over Ukraine.As government leaders scramble to come up with a diplomatic deal to avert all-out war in Ukraine, cybersecurity officials warn of a potential wave of Russia-backed cyberattacks that could destabilize NATO countries. Meanwhile, disinformation experts fret Moscow is pushing false narratives through Russian state-affiliated media to tee up a pretext for war by fueling claims that Kyiv or NATO members may soon attack Russian military targets. ...”

POLITICO (Audio)

NY Times: A hack of the Defense Ministry, army and state banks was the largest of its kind in Ukraine’s history. (Video)

Aljazeera - ‘Be afraid’: Cyberattack in Ukraine targets government websites (Video)

W - 2022 Ukraine cyberattacks

The Enigma of Roberto Bolaño

 

“I discovered the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s work in 2008, which, not coincidentally, was also the year I discovered that the United States had helped deliver his native country into 17 years of ultra-right-wing authoritarianism. I learned this history shortly after stumbling into a student exchange program that dropped me in Quillota, Chile, where I went to a high school that happened to be the dictator Augusto Pinochet’s alma mater. Everybody I knew in Quillota was lovely to me, and very patient with both my error-riddled Spanish and my shocking historical ignorance. ...”

The Nation

LitHub - A Spaniard, a Frenchman, and Several Dead Russians: What I Owe Roberto Bolaño

NY Times: ‘The Savage Detectives’ - Mexicans Lost In Mexico By Roberto Bolaño (1975)

New Yorker: Roberto Bolaño and the Beat Connection

W - Roberto Bolaño

​Protesters taking to streets of Russia are warned they face TREASON charges

“Putin has cracked down on Russians calling for peace, with authorities warning protestors they could face 'treason' charges as more than 1,700 demonstrators were detained after showing solidarity with global protestors. Rarely seen protests against Russian president Vladimir Putin broke out in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, as the global outcry against the Russian strongman grew louder. Pictures showed officers physically picking up protesters and dragging them away from the demonstrations, which are rare in the authoritarian country which does not tolerate dissent against the Kremlin.Russian police have detained more than 1,700 people at anti-war protests across Russia after President Vladimir Putin sent troops to invade Ukraine, an independent monitor said Thursday. ...”

Daily Mail (Video)

 

Anti-War Germany

A Sleepless Night of Russian Air Strikes in Ukraine “At only takes one thumping, window-shaking boom to reach a state of sudden, adrenaline-fuelled alertness. I was already awake in my room in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, when a burst of three explosions went off at five in the morning. A moment later, I was hustling downstairs to the hotel’s basement with Emanuele Satolli, an Italian photographer with whom I’ve been travelling. We looked at our phones in silence and tracked all the places where the bombs and missiles were landing: not just in Kramatorsk—where, on the outskirts of town, there is a military airfield that houses the Ukrainian command overseeing the war in the Donbas—but in Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Odessa, Kyiv. Days earlier, I had been staying in a sleek business hotel in the center of the capital; a colleague who was still there posted an Instagram story of the breakfast buffet on the fifteenth floor, with shelling and air-raid sirens in the distance. ...”

New Yorker (Feb. 24, 2022)

 

 Thousands take to the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine for the Unity March to show solidarity and patriotic spirit over the escalating tensions with Russia.