Svitlana Morenets | The Spectator columnists & writers

For the first time since Russia’s invasion, schools in Ukraine are starting to re-open. For many parents, including my own, this presents a dilemma. Is it safe for pupils to return? My brother is seven and has spent the past year doing ‘remote learning’, which is hard enough in countries at peace, let alone those fighting an invasion. A return to school would be good for his education, but then again, might there be the danger of Russian air strikes? Parents at my brother’s school have been asked to vote on whether they would prefer pupils to continue with online learning, or return, with all the risks involved. It’s estimated that at least 3,000 of Ukraine’s 12,800 schools will reopen their doors. Many do not have proper bomb shelters, which are a necessity for a country digging in for a long war.

Can Zelensky afford to freeze Ukraine’s gas prices?

This morning, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a moratorium on energy prices – so while gas bills are rising all over Europe, Ukraine will remain unaffected. This honours a pledge he made on his election. Freezing energy bills is a standard populist policy in Ukrainian politics (in a country where temperatures can reach -25ºC and the elderly can’t afford to buy medicine, it’s hard to win without making such promises). But there are now serious worries about whether it could bankrupt a government that needs all the money it can get to fight a war. Energy prices will be frozen until six months after martial law ends in Ukraine: the pledge is good for as long as the war lasts. The current plan is for Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company, to buy gas at the current sky-high prices – then sell it at a low price.

Ukrainians aren’t surprised by Amnesty’s victim-blaming

Is Amnesty International victim-blaming? The Ukrainian military has been endangering civilians, it said, by establishing military bases and putting weapons systems in residential areas. Agnès Callamard, the organisation's secretary-general, remarked that ‘being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law’. It was a bizarre statement. Russian forces are attacking villages and large cities with dense populations. The Ukrainian armed forces can’t sit in a field, or put their weapons on a boat and sail away from coastal cities. As well as the morality of shifting the blame on to the aggressor, Amnesty’s statement doesn’t recognise the realities of the war situation.

Ukraine and Russia sign grain deal – what next?

This afternoon Kyiv and Moscow signed a UN-backed agreement to free up at least 20 million tons of grain from blocked ports. Ukraine said it would not sign a deal with Russia directly, only with Turkey and the UN. As Wolfgang Münchau noted this morning, it marks the first successful mediation between the two sides since the start of the war.This deal will complicate Vladimir Putin’s efforts to strangle the Ukrainian economy. But the Russian leader needs to show countries that are neutral – or more inclined towards Russia (in Africa and Asia) – that he saved them from hunger and rising food prices. Otherwise, Algeria could increase gas supplies to Europe and Egypt could supply Ukraine with hundreds of units of Soviet weapons and military equipment.

How Justin Trudeau caved to Putin

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was certain that its sanctions were worth the pain. But there always was a question as to whether this resolve would last once the domestic difficulties actually started. This week, western countries moved closer to admitting it might be too much to bear.At the time of the invasion in February, a massive Russian turbine was being repaired in Montreal. It was one of many turbines used to send gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany. When the Russians moved into Ukraine, it was kept in Canada as punishment. Over the next few weeks and months Russia replied, cutting off gas supplies to the continent. Gazprom – the Russian state-owned energy giant – last month said it would only ramp up gas supplies to Europe if it got its turbine back.

Ukrainians are in mourning for Boris

Boris Johnson’s support for Ukraine looked like a gimmick for many in Britain. Whenever the PM was in trouble, he called president Zelensky. When things got too much in Westminster, Boris popped up in Kyiv. But for Ukrainians, Boris’s backing of Ukraine is no joke: he is a national hero. He is the most popular foreign politician: his approval ratings are 90 per cent, only 3 per cent behind Zelensky. He recently became an honorary citizen of Odessa. Four streets are named after him, and one cafe in the capital even makes a ‘Boris Johnson’ croissant (with vanilla ice cream on top, which is supposed to look like his hair). As he announced his resignation this morning, Boris addressed the Ukrainian, saying: ‘I know we in Britain will continue to support your fight for freedom for as long as it takes.

Russia’s referendum weapon

Preparations for a ‘referendum’ have begun in Kherson Oblast, the Russian-occupied region north of Crimea, according to Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration and one of Moscow’s puppet governors. ‘Kherson Oblast will never return to an environment of Nazism, debauchery, and cynicism,’ he said. A date for the referendum has not yet been announced, but Stremousov previously mentioned that it could take place in the autumn.  Russian troops went into the region at the beginning of March. Since then, the Kherson city has been under occupation. Ukrainian intelligence has warned that one of the goals of the referendum may be the forced mobilisation of Kherson’s residents into the Russian army.

The recapturing of Snake Island shows what Ukraine can do

After days of missile strikes, Ukrainian forces have forced Russia off Snake Island in the Black Sea. ‘The enemy hastily evacuated the remnants of the garrison in two speedboats and left the island’, according to the Ukrainian Operational South Command. Russia's defence ministry appeared to concede defeat, saying that ‘Russian forces have completed the assigned tasks and withdrew as a step of goodwill’. The retreat is huge news in Ukraine, as Snake Island is not only important strategic territory, but has acquired a cult status as a representation of Ukraine’s resistance. Snake Island became world famous on the first day of the war when Ukrainian troops broadcast a message saying: ‘‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself’.

Is Russian Orthodoxy dying in Ukraine?

Ivano-Frankivsk has just become the first city in Ukraine to have no Russian Orthodox Church, amid a mass defection of churches away from the Moscow patriarchate and towards the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine. At the start of the invasion in February, almost two-thirds of Orthodox churches were still formally aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church whose leader – Patriarch Kirill – is a close ally of Putin. Until recently, the Russian Orthodox Church claimed dominion over Ukraine for centuries. The 2014 invasion of Crimea dampened its appeal. In 2019 a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine was recognised by Patriarch Bartholomew – the archbishop of Constantinople and the de facto leader of Orthodoxy. The church was set up to distinguish Kyiv from Moscow: in the words of Ukraine’s then-president, it would be ‘without Putin, without Kirill’ and instead with ‘God and Ukraine’.

Does Putin’s shopping centre strike signal a new strategy?

A crowded shopping mall in Kremenchuk has become the latest target for Russia’s missile attack. There were more than a thousand civilians’ in the mall, Volodymyr Zelensky said, ‘The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire. The number of victims is impossible to imagine’. X-22 missiles were fired from Tu-22 M3 long-range bombers, with launches made from the Kursk region, according to Ukrainian Air Force Command. The death toll so far is 13 with about 40 injured. An air raid siren sounding shortly before the blast may have allowed some to escape to safety, but rescuers are seeking to salvage bodies now. There have long been fears that Russia would move on from its reliance on tanks and switch to missiles – flattening the parts of Ukraine that it could not invade.

Guerilla warfare and targeted assassinations: Inside Ukraine’s partisan resistance

Dmytro Savluchenko was one of Moscow’s useful idiots: a Ukrainian advocate of Russkiy Mir (or 'Russian world'), Putin’s idea of a kind of reich of Russian-speaking peoples. Back in 2014, when the Russian army stormed the Donbas region, Savluchenko campaigned for Kherson (an area bordering Crimea) to join Russia. More recently, Savluchenko has served as a senior official in the Russian-installed administration of Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region. His career ended this morning, when he was killed by a car bomb. His killing marks the start of a new phase in the war: guerilla warfare and targeted assassination. ‘Our partisans have another victory…a Russian activist and traitor was blown up in a car in one of Kherson's yards in the morning.

Ukrainians will never accept another fake peace with Putin

Two months ago, I became one of the 80,000 Ukrainian refugees who have settled in Britain. The kindness I’ve been shown, by my host family and so many others, has been overwhelming. People are caring, but curious too. They ask how long Zelensky will really fight for. By which I suspect they mean: surely you guys don’t think you can actually win? Why prolong the bloodshed? It’s a good question. By some estimates, nearly 80 per cent of the Russian army is in my country right now. We’re tiny by comparison with Russia and fighting alone, though with donated weapons. Officially, up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed or wounded each day in eastern Ukraine. Unofficially, many more. My father, who is 53, could be called up any time.

Zelensky’s homophobia row reveals a divided Ukraine

A peculiar row has broken out in Kyiv over the role of one of Zelensky’s best-known advisers. Oleksiy Arestovych is a familiar figure in Ukraine and has developed a profile abroad, described as a ‘sex symbol’ by no less a source than the Economist. But when it comes to sex, he has some clear views. ‘LGBT people are deviant,’ he said on 19 June. ‘I sympathise with them, but I am against propaganda’. Cue outrage, with KyivPride demanding Zelensky fire Arestovych for homophobic statements, ‘Such rhetoric from Ukrainian authorities is unacceptable if we want to be in the EU’. A reference to action that Brussels is taking against Hungary for its stance on LGBT rights. But KyivPride has another argument: that the war has demonstrated that gay Ukrainians deserve equality.

Could Lithuania be Putin’s next target?

When Russian troops started ‘military exercises’ on Ukraine’s borders, those of us living in Kyiv had grounds to worry. Putin operates by bluff, disinformation and false flags. He blows smoke, but sometimes his troops march through that smoke. That’s why we ought to pay attention to reports on Russian state media that there are to be military ‘manoeuvres in the Kaliningrad region,’ the Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. ‘About 1,000 military personnel and more than 100 units of military and special equipment of artillery and missile units are involved’, says RIA News on its Telegram account. ‘Artillerymen and rocket launchers in Kaliningrad will carry out ‘several hundred firing missions’ using ‘Grad’ and ‘Uragan’ multiple rocket launchers, Hyacinth large-calibre cannons and self-propelled artillery units’, they add.

What Ukrainians think of the Macron, Scholz and Draghi visit

The photo said it all. Zelensky’s face when embraced by Macron summed up how Ukrainians saw yesterday’s visit from the leaders of France, Italy and Germany – the Ukrainian media reaction today has varied from scepticism to ridicule. They had arrived to say that Ukraine should be given EU ‘candidate status’ – a goal that drove the 2014 Maidan revolution. This morning, the European Commission confirmed that it would back both Ukraine and Moldova in becoming members of the bloc – and excluded Georgia. After the news broke, President Zelensky said the decision was ‘the first step on the EU membership path that’ll certainly bring our victory closer’. But with Russia saying only yesterday that Ukraine might not exist in two years’ time, the focus at yesterday’s meetings was instead on Germany’s failure to provide the arms it promised at a time when fighting is at a crucial stage and Ukraine’s survival is in doubt.

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