The first explosions jolted me awake in eastern Ukraine just before 5am, though I’d struggled to sleep at all that night. Curled up on my motel bed, I’d watched online as Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky appealed directly to the Russian people to avert the invasion, though he must have known by then it was hopeless.
I’ve reported on Russia for the BBC over more than two decades and I know what Putin is capable of. I’ve charted his crushing of democratic rights and freedoms, his previous wars in eastern Ukraine as well as Chechnya and Georgia and the growing hostility in relations with the West. Last August, as the campaign against free speech intensified, I was expelled from Russia, labelled a “security threat”.
Even so, when I watched Putin’s snarling address broadcast as Russian troops began rolling across the border, I realised I was shaking. It wasn’t only the invasion itself that disturbed me so much, it was the brazenly false justification for an assault that would soon include the bombing of residential areas and murder of civilians.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 20, 2022 من Evening Standard.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 20, 2022 من Evening Standard.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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