letter from Ukraine
‘Attention! Air raid alert!’ said Luke Skywalker...
Ryan Burton King
My phone went off with a loud siren. The voice of Mark Hamill – yes, of Luke Skywalker fame – spoke sternly: ‘Attention! Air raid alert! Proceed to the nearest shelter. Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.’ I hastily moved to mute it and apologised. A large table full of Ukrainian men grinned back at me. ‘Now we can tell who is not local,’ one of them joked. We continued eating our pizza and talking.
I was in Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine - one of two other cities I visited this past month. Every day and night brought reminders of war, as Ukraine continues to defend itself against its Russian invader almost three years into a three day fight. In Odesa, my bedtime soundtrack was the mournful cry of air raid sirens, the infernal buzzing of Russian drones, the roar of explosions, and the reassuring rat-a-tat-tat of air defence guns. This is the daily lived reality of the 38 million people who still live in Ukraine, most of whom meet the threat with a weary but collective shrug and carry on with whatever they need to do.
Debunking 3 myths about the origins of Christmas
Ryan Burton King
Christmas. 'It's the most wonderful time of the year,' Andy Williams croons. Or, as a cast of characters from Jim Henson's Creature Shop sang in The Muppet Christmas Carol, it is 'the summer of the soul in December'.
But for others, it is a season of woe, an opportunity to blow a cold frost wind over the festivities with assorted dubious claims, doubtless well-intentioned but badly thought through and poorly communicated.
Ukraine: There is no safety in appeasement
Prior to his election to a second presidency in November 2024, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that he would easily and swiftly bring the conflict to an end.
“It’s a very easy negotiation to take place. I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them”, he said as early as March 2023, in a Fox News Interview with Sean Hannity.