Every year for the past decade, the World Happiness Report ranks how people in more than 150 countries evaluate the quality of their lives to find the world’s happiest countries. And for the past four years, the top spot has been claimed by Finland. Today, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which publishes the report together with Gallup World Poll, announced that the Nordic country is yet again leading the list.
Generosity, perception of compassion, freedom to make life choices, social support, and life expectancy are some of the factors evaluated when determining the rankings, with each country scoring on a 10-point scale.
Finland was named the happiest country in the world with a score of 7.821 out of 10 ahead of Denmark (7.636) and Iceland (7.557), which came in second and third, respectively. The United States came in 16th place, up three spots from last year.
Canoeing at Oulanka river, Oulanka National Park, Kuusamo region, Finland
Gonzalo Azumendi/Getty Images
This year, the most significant gains were by three Eastern European countries — Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia — while the biggest losses were by Lebanon, Venezuela, and Afghanistan.
While 2021 was again marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has upended people’s lives globally, including in Finland (the country faced an economic slump like many nations around the world), there is a silver lining.
Person seeing northern lights during winter in Inari, Finland
Andreas Gillner/EyeEm/Getty Images
“We found during 2021 remarkable worldwide growth in all three acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll,” John Helliwell, professor at the University of British Columbia and editor of the report, said in a statement released to Travel + Leisure. “Helping strangers, volunteering, and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25 percent above their pre-pandemic prevalence. This surge of benevolence, which was especially great for the helping of strangers, provides powerful evidence that people respond to help others in need, creating in the process more happiness for the beneficiaries, good examples for others to follow, and better lives for themselves.”
Key findings in this year’s report include that “positive emotions are more than twice as frequent as negative emotions” and that despite the challenges presented by COVID-19, self-perceived individual wellbeing continues to be resilient with no significant changes compared to pre-pandemic levels. Unfortunately, about 3 percent more of the global population experienced worry and sadness compared to data collected from 2017-2020.
Esplanadi -park downtown Helsinki is full of tourists during summer months
Ilari Nackel/Getty Images
“At the very bottom of the ranking, we find societies that suffer from conflict and extreme poverty,” Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, said. “This presents a stark reminder of the material and immaterial damage that war does to its many victims and the fundamental importance of peace and stability for human wellbeing.”
How the West is breaking through Russia’s propaganda wall
Drew Harwell – March 17, 2022
A funeral procession carrying the casket of two Ukrainian soldiers makes its way through the streets of Starychi, Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. The men were killed at the International Training Center by a Russian missile. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/TNS) (LAT)
An international resistance of computer programmers and volunteer “information warriors” is racing to pierce Kremlin propaganda and expose ordinary Russians to the uncensored truth of a brutal war.
They’ve built tools that allow anyone to surprise Russian citizens with text messages detailing the war’s civilian death toll. They’ve published antiwar videos and news sites built to evade Russian government bans. They’ve even cobbled together databases with the personal details of Russian military personnel – all in the hopes of fomenting rebellion across the new Iron Curtain.
Since the days of the Cold War, when U.S.-government-funded stations such as Radio Free Europe broadcast anti-communist messaging across the airwaves of Soviet states, the West has tried, often futilely, to pierce the propaganda bubble that surrounds and isolates the Russian populace.
But the Internet has sent those information-war efforts into overdrive, allowing everyday people to pitch in on imaginative efforts designed to reach strangers thousands of miles away.
The volunteers behind today’s efforts say they hope to help overcome the Russian government’s suppression of the war’s devastated cities, bombed hospitals and humanitarian catastrophes. The human rights group OVD-Info says thousands of Russians have been arrested in antiwar protests since the invasion began.
But some of the initiatives also could backfire due to their reliance on the personal data of Russians, many of whom are disconnected from the war effort and face grave risks for public protest. They could also prove ineffective due to the force and speed with which the Kremlin has worked to sever millions of Russians from the open Internet.
The Russian government, decrying Western censorship, has blocked or restricted access to the social networks Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; the websites of publicly funded broadcasters such as the United Kingdom’s BBC, Germany’s Deutsche Welle and the United States’ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America; and independent news sites appealing to Russian audiences.
A new “fake news” law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened 15 years in prison for journalists who contradict state propaganda, including by calling the war a war, leading The Washington Post and other news organizations to pause reporting inside the country. Popular independent TV and radio outlets in Russia have been shut down or banned.
But the Internet has helped reveal how porous such traditional blockades can be – and how quickly political messages can spread. After a Russian state TV producer named Marina Ovsyannikova burst onto a government news broadcast with a “No War” sign, the moment went viral almost immediately on the Russian Internet, and her Facebook page exploded with thousands of celebratory comments, some of which were in Russian.
In a video message posted to Telegram before her arrest – which has since been widely copied and shared – she said, “I am ashamed that I’ve allowed the lies to be said on the TV screens . . . that I let the Russian people be zombified.” Meduza, an independent Russian-language news site recently banned by Russia, reported on Tuesday that employees at Ovsyannikova’s state-run network routinely watch Western news to understand the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recorded videos appealing directly to citizens of the country invading his own, saying in Russian, “As long as your country has not completely closed itself off from the whole world, turning into a very large North Korea, you must fight.”
Ukrainian officials have promoted highly produced videos attempting to drive home the visceral shock of war. They also run a Telegram channel showing videos of killed or captured Russian soldiers as a way to alert their family members and stoke anti-military anger back home.
Social media companies and media outlets in the West have also started helping Russians circumvent that censorship by using the special software Tor, which routes Internet traffic through a scattered network of servers, effectively neutralizing the website blockade.
The BBC, Deutsche Welle and Twitter have published links to their Tor sites – accessible with a free browser – as well as Russian-language guides on how to view them. Some were first launched on the “dark web” years ago but were used only sparingly before the war.
“Our mission is to maintain a dialogue with the people of Russia,” Peter Limbourg, a director at Deutsche Welle, wrote in one reader guide. “A dialogue sometimes also includes unpleasant truths.”
VPN – or virtual private network – apps, which allow Russians to access otherwise-banned sites, have been downloaded millions of times in recent weeks on the Apple and Google app stores, market research data shows.
And internal data from Tor, which began as a U.S. government project but now operates as a nonprofit, shows that use of the system inside Russia has soared, with thousands more computers connecting to its network since the invasion began.
The U.S. government has also sought to protect the continued presence of companies such as Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company used by much of the Internet to keep their websites online. The company has faced calls to drop sites that echo Kremlin propaganda, but it has resisted due to concerns that could lead to its other clients – including independent media reaching Russians – falling offline, too.
The State Department has supported them in that balancing act, with a spokesperson telling The Washington Post, “It is critical to maintain the flow of information to the people of Russia to the fullest extent possible.”
The New York Times and The Post have launched channels on Telegram, the uncensored group-chat service popular in Russia, and made some war coverage free to access in Russia and Ukraine.
The BBC, which also uses Telegram, says traffic to its Russian-language digital platforms has exploded, including breaking a record of nearly 17 million people in the first week of the war. But the British news giant has also turned to one of media’s earliest marvels, shortwave radio, to reach Russian listeners, saying this month it would start broadcasting on new frequencies that “can be received clearly in Kyiv and parts of Russia.”
Four hours of daily news reports are now broadcast in the early evening and just before midnight Ukraine time on the frequencies of 15735 kHz and 5875 kHz, the BBC said. In one of the BBC World Service’s first shortwave broadcasts, in 1932, King George V said it would connect those throughout the British Empire “so cut off by the snow, the desert or the sea that only voices out of the air can reach them.” Its last shortwave broadcast before the Ukraine war was in 2008.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is not transmitting over shortwave. But the owners of a shortwave station in Okeechobee, Fla., whose radio antennas tower over a cow pasture, told reporters that they have started beaming Voice of America broadcasts over the airwaves to Russia. (An online fundraiser for the operation has raised more than $12,000.)
Thomas Kent, a former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, wrote in an essay last week that Western strategists should consider more imaginative options for fomenting internal dissent in Russia, including organizing campaigns to email audio files, holding closed discussions on small social networks and smuggling flash drives.
“Kremlin leaders cannot eternally ignore public discontent, even if they are willing for now to brutalize anyone who dares protest in the streets,” Kent wrote. “The Western world must demonstrate it respects Russia’s population, even if the regime doesn’t. That means showing commitment to the principle that Russians deserve to be informed.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the BBC say they’ve seen audiences for their Russian-language offerings grow dramatically since Russia’s invasion and crackdown on independent media.
The RFE/RL website saw its number of unique visitors from Russia spike by 86% in the first two weeks of the war; on YouTube, many of its latest videos have surpassed 1 million views. People are also evading Russian censors by sending the stories over Telegram and email newsletters, said Jamie Fly, president and chief executive of RFE/RL.
“Certainly it is becoming more difficult if you are Russian sitting inside Russia to get independent news and information, but people are still looking to that content, whether they’re using VPNs or mirror sites,” Fly said. “As we saw throughout the Cold War, in a variety of countries, people always find a way no matter what the jamming tactics are.”
Beyond the official efforts, teams of computer programmers have also begun striking out to stir up Russian rage. One group, squad303, named for an air squadron that tore through Nazi warplanes during World War II, has built a website that shows a randomly selected Russian citizen’s email address, phone or WhatsApp number – as well as a pre-written message a visitor can send to strike up a conversation from their own accounts.
“Hello, my Russian friend,” one text says, roughly translated. “We don’t know each other. I live abroad. I know that Russia invaded Ukraine and many soldiers and civilians died there. How do you live in Russia? How is it going?”
One of the group’s programmers in Poland – using the name of Jan Zumbach, one of the squadron’s ace fighter pilots – said he now works alongside more than 100 volunteers from Estonia, France, Germany, the United States and other countries, broken into teams devoted to software development, cyberdefense, social media and a “help desk” to get new messengers onboard.
Millions of messages, some of which have showed photos of the war or tallies of civilian deaths, have been sent in less than two weeks to the Russian numbers, according to the programmer, who said their database includes tens of millions of phone numbers and email addresses taken from hacked Russian databases. The team has raced to expand its infrastructure, growing from one server earlier this month to 16 servers today. Other mass-distribution operations are currently in the works, he said.
The project is all-consuming, he said, and he’s getting about three hours of sleep a night. But he said he remembers how important outside information from Radio Free Europe was to his parents during the 1980s, when they took part in the Solidarity labor movement that shook the Soviet Union. He hopes his work today will have a similar impact.
“We do not expect instant rewards or instant replies. It’s a process,” he said. “Every single text message sent to a person in Russia is a tiny bridge between two people.”
Dey Correa, a volunteer messenger in Panama, said she has sent hundreds of messages to Russians with help from the site, including 50 while she was at home breastfeeding her infant son.
She shared screenshots with The Washington Post showing dozens of messages and conversations, including one in which a respondent said Russians were shocked by the war but afraid to protest due to police crackdowns.
Correa doesn’t know if it will have any impact, and she has worried about retaliation. But she said she felt motivated to do something when she saw photos of a devastated maternity ward in Mariupol, Ukraine.
“When I saw the hospital, it became personal,” she said. “I think how horrible the nights are for those mothers – the cold. Not all of them have the opportunity to hold their babies, like I do.”
Another group has created a search engine, called Rusleaks, that aggregates more than a dozen databases purported to feature the personal information of Russian military personnel, including tens of thousands of people’s names, addresses, phone numbers and passport details.
The data have not been fully verified and some of the records have been released by the Ukrainian government, raising the risks of false information.
But one of the group’s members, a software developer formerly in Kyiv, said the data could be used to alert the Russian public to what their government is doing or help investigate war crimes.
“I don’t know how soon it will happen. I don’t know that it will happen at all. But I am doing what I’ve been training for,” he said. “We are fighting on too many frontiers now. And this is clearly one of them. . . . Whatever it takes to make our voice louder.”
The Washington Post’s Paul Sonne contributed to this report.
A satellite image shows Russian helicopters destroyed at Ukraine’s Kherson International Airport.
Ukraine’s military said the attack happened Tuesday. It is not clear how many helicopters were hit.
Ukraine said earlier this month that it destroyed 30 Russian helicopters in a different attack.
A satellite image shows destroyed Russian helicopters at a Ukrainian airport after an overnight attack.
The image, taken on Wednesday by a Maxar Technologies satellite, shows the aftermath of a Tuesday strike by Ukrainian forces at Kherson International Airport in the south of the country.
Ukraine’s military said it hit the airport on Tuesday. It is not clear what kind of weaponry was used in the attack, or how many helicopters were destroyed.
CNN reported on Tuesday that at least three Russian military helicopters were destroyed.
There is no indication of whether there were any casualties in the attack.
Ukraine previously said that it destroyed 30 Russian helicopters on a Kherson airfield on March 7.
Russia captured the city of Kherson on March 2. It was the first major Ukrainian city to be seized by Russia in its invasion, which it started on February 24.
Stephen Fry Explains Best Way To Stop Increasingly Desperate Putin In Ukraine
Ed Mazza – March 17, 2022
British screen icon Stephen Fry says there may be only one way to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin. And it’s not necessarily what many people want.
In a new video for Pindex, Fry explained why Russia couldn’t win a conventional war, especially if Western powers stepped in. The danger now is that Putin will turn to “unconventional” means.
While direct talks between Russia and Ukraine have gone nowhere, Fry said there may be another option.
“A study of hundreds of conflicts found that mediation increased the chances of resolution,” he said. “And with deaths mounting on both sides, talks may only become more difficult.”
Fry suggested former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who speaks Russian and maintained close ties with Russia while she was in office, or Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has offered to play a role, as potential mediators.
Richest Russian Built NYC Power Over Decades and Lost It in Weeks
Vladimir Potanin stepped down from the Guggenheim and CFR cut ties with him as billionaires with links to Russia have their donations scrutinized.
Blake Schmidt – March 16, 2022
A month ago, Vladimir Potanin sat alongside the world’s financial and business elite on the advisory board of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations and among the trustees of the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.
Those power circles, which included Tom Hill, the former Blackstone Inc. executive, and billionaires from Brazil and India, were cultivated over decades. Now, they’re closed off to Potanin, Russia’s richest man. Over the past two weeks, he’s dropped off both boards.
The nickel and palladium magnate, who is among the few original oligarchs who remain active in business in Russia, hasn’t been sanctioned. Potanin, with a net worth of $24.5 billion, is referred to as the mastermind behind the controversial loans-for-shares program that led to the privatization of natural resource companies after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
For much of the past two decades, U.S. cultural institutions in the arts, non-profits and education were willing to look past the history of how billionaires with ties to Russia amassed their fortunes. In Potanin’s case, he was seen publicly years ago with Vladimir Putin, including in an exhibition hockey game with the Russian leader in Sochi.
Vladimir Putin, right, listens to Vladimir Potanin during a visit to one of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic venues, near the Black Sea city of Sochi, in February 2013.Photographer: Ivan Sekretarev/AFP/Getty Images
Potanin, 61, now stands out as an example of how quickly Western bastions of social capital are turning amid a pressure campaign on Putin to end the Ukraine war. While Russia’s elite have a number of ways to reshape their fortunes in response to the fallout, regaining their place in these institutions will likely prove a tougher task.
“The reputational risk right now of keeping an oligarch on an institutional board such as CFR is just too great,” said David Szakonyi, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, which has researched the philanthropy of billionaires whose fortunes are tied to Russia. “It’s going to be very difficult for Potanin to win back his former positions.”
Potanin, president of MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, which accounts for about 40% of global palladium output and 10% of refined nickel, did not reply to interview requests.
The former first deputy prime minister of energy and economy under Boris Yeltsin spoke publicly last week for the first time since the Ukraine invasion, criticizing Russia’s retaliation against international penalties.
“We have to look respectable and composed, and our efforts should be directed not at ‘slamming the door’ but at maintaining Russia’s economic position in markets that we’ve been mastering for so long,” Potanin said on Norilsk Nickel’s Telegram channel on March 11.
Big Apple Benefactors
Some NYC-linked charities supported by Russian billionaires.
Source: Official statements, Anti-Corruption Data Collective; includes donations since 2010 made directly or by their foundations or corporations.
*Moguls listed have not been personally sanctioned except for Fridman, Aven and Khan, by the European Union and United Kingdom in 2022; Vekselberg, by the United States starting in 2018. Donations listed were prior to those sanctions.
Potanin, along with oligarchs Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, are among the billionaires with links to Russia who have given more than $300 million to hundreds of the most prestigious U.S. non-profit institutions in the two decades ending in 2020, according to the Anti-Corruption Data Collective. At least $100 million went to more than 100 organizations in New York, data provided to Bloomberg show.
At the Guggenheim, trustees of the board were required to donate at least $100,000 a year, according to Thomas Krens, director emeritus at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, who said he had contact with Potanin for more than a decade. He recalled the Russian billionaire as steadily supporting exhibitions of Russian art and being “quiet, not outspoken” at meetings.
“Many oligarchs saw an opportunity and moved on that” to bolster their reputations with philanthropy in the West, Krens said in a telephone interview. “The response to this war and to Putin’s strategy has been one of trying to ostracize or shine a spotlight on the money and where it came from.”
Scant Sanctions
Many of the New York donors haven’t been sanctioned. That doesn’t prevent the questions.
Yancey Spruill, chief executive officer of New York-based DigitalOcean Holdings Inc., was asked at a conference last week about Len Blavatnik, a British-American billionaire whose Access Industries is the technology company’s largest investor.
“Educated in American universities, Columbia, Harvard Business School, made his money as an American,” Spruill said in response on March 8. “I know there’s a lot of speculation,” he said, adding that Blavatnik “has been knighted by the Queen of England.
Blavatnik was born in Soviet Ukraine and grew his fortune in the Putin era when Russia’s state-owned Rosneft bought out his energy firm. At $36.9 billion, his net worth exceeds that of Potanin, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“What is happening in Ukraine is unimaginable and we, along with all fellow Americans, hope and pray that the conflict ends quickly and that all Ukrainian citizens are once again able to live their lives in peace and freedom,” Access Industries said in a statement.
Blavatnik has donated across the political and philanthropic spectrum, including to the Central Park Conservancy, Carnegie Hall, the Mount Sinai Health System and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Tough Tracking
It’s hard to track the full extent of charitable giving as institutions often don’t disclose their donors out of concern they’ll receive backlash over the politics of benefactors, Szakonyi said. Disclosures of specific donations may be in broad ranges or as even vaguer minimum amounts, and in some cases there may be no values disclosed at all, he said.
And even though some institutions are asking billionaire donors to step off their boards, they aren’t returning funds or closing exhibits. For example, the Guggenheim still carries an ongoing exhibition by Moscow-born artist Wassily Kandinsky that was sponsored by benefactors including Potanin — though his name has since been removed on the museum’s website.
Kandinsky in New York CityPhotographer: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
The display was a reminder of the complexity in undoing philanthropic support from billionaires who were welcomed in the heyday of a globalized gilded age.
“It is more difficult to unwind decades of generous oligarchic donations, which, after all, have served to advance public interest in the West, than it is to seize flagrant symbols of oligarchic wealth, which many people resent,” said Stanislav Markus, a business professor at University of South Carolina who has studied Russian wealth.
A CFR spokeswoman said in an email last week that “it would no longer be appropriate” for Potanin to remain a member of its global advisory board “in light of Russia’s continuing aggression against Ukraine.” The Guggenheim Museum said he resigned from the board.
Potanin has sprawling interests that include a Russian pharmaceutical firm, a ski resort, a copper project and at least two superyachts.
After building his fortune, Potanin began reinventing himself as philanthropist — becoming the first Russian to join Bill Gates’s and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge in 2013. He chairs the Hermitage Development Foundation, an endowment for the state museum in Saint Petersburg that was founded in 1764 with a collection of paintings acquired by Catherine the Great.
On his foundation’s website, Potanin said he wants philanthropy to be “more systemic, more business-like,” calling it a “vast, endless space that will never diminish.”
— With assistance by Amanda L Gordon, and Devon Pendleton
Up NextUkraine War News: Putin Says Russia Beat Economic Blitzkreig, Warns of Hardship
Kremlin: many people in Russia are behaving like traitors
March 17, 2022
LONDON (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Thursday that many people in Russia were showing themselves to be “traitors” and pointed to those who were resigning from their jobs and leaving the country.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made the comments a day after President Vladimir Putin delivered a stark warning to Russian “traitors” who he said the West wanted to use as a “fifth column” to destroy the country.
“In such difficult times…many people show their true colours. Very many people are showing themselves, as we say in Russian, to be traitors,” Peskov told reporters on a conference call.
He was asked about Putin’s remark that Russia would undergo a natural and necessary “self-cleansing” as people were able to “distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors”.
Peskov said: “They vanish from our lives themselves. Some people are leaving their posts, some are leaving their active work life, some leave the country and move to other countries. That is how this cleansing happens.”
The Kremlin leader’s comments were welcomed in parliament by Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the nominally opposition Communist party that often backs Putin on important matters of policy.
“We need to defeat the fifth column that is entrenched inside and is ready to stab us in the back any minute,” he said. “All these troubles started in 1991 when (modern Russia’s first president Boris) Yeltsin with his clique sold and betrayed the country.”
Japan says it spotted Russian amphibious ships heading toward Europe
March 17, 2022
Japan said on Thursday it spotted four Russian amphibious ships in waters close to its shores on Wednesday.
The Japanese military said the four ships sailed in the Tsuruga Strait that separates Japan’s Honshu island and Hokkaido island, an unusual move for Russia, Reuters reported.
The ships are able to hold military equipment, including tanks, and hundreds of troops.
Japan’s defense ministry released pictures of the ships that appeared to have military trucks on at least one of them, according to Reuters.
When a defense ministry spokesperson was asked if the equipment could be going to Ukraine, he said “it is possible.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of buildings over the past three weeks.
Russia has targeted hospitals, movie theaters and residential buildings, although the Kremlin denies doing so.
Ukrainian officials have decried alleged Russian war crimes and continue to push for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Western countries have resisted the move but have provided military aid to Ukraine to defend its country.
Russia continues to falsely claim their presence in Ukraine is a “special military operation” to liberate the people from a “neo-Nazi” government.
More than 3 million Ukrainians have been displaced due to the fighting.
Koch Industries to stay in Russia, says exiting does ‘more harm than good’
Andrew Jeong and Adela Suliman – March 17, 2022
Charles Koch, chief executive of Koch Industries, in Colorado Springs in 2019. (David Zalubowski/AP) (AP)
Koch Industries, the American manufacturing giant that employs 122,000 people across the world, said Wednesday it would not exit its operations in Russia because doing so would put its “employees there at greater risk and do more harm than good.”
The multinational conglomerate’s presence in Russia is relatively small, its president and chief operating officer, Dave Robertson, said in a statement Wednesday. It has about 600 workers at its Guardian Industries subsidiary operating two glass-manufacturing facilities in Russia and an additional 15 people working outside Guardian but in the country, he said. “We have no other physical assets in Russia,” Robertson added.
Guardian Industries and its family of companies employ over 14,000 people in 26 countries and have bases in Rostov and Ryazan in Russia, according to its website.
Koch’s decision was disclosed after more than 400 global companies publicly announced plans to withdraw, suspend and scale back their operations in Russia because of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Consumer and social media campaigns to boycott such things as Russian vodka, classical music concerts and soccer have also added to public pressure on companies.
However, according to a list compiled by Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team, Koch Industries is one of about 30 companies described as “digging in” and “defying demands” for an exit or reduction of activities in Russia. Others on the list include Reebok, Cargill, Halliburton, LG Electronics and food brands such as Cinnabon and Subway.
Oil companies including Shell, BP and ExxonMobil were among the first to cut ties with Russia, along with some banking firms and tech companies such as Apple and Google. Others, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, followed.
“The horrific and abhorrent aggression against Ukraine is an affront to humanity,” said Robertson, the Koch executive. “Principles always matter, and they matter most when they are under pressure.”
Robertson said Koch “will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them.” He added: “Doing so would only put our employees there at greater risk and do more harm than good.”
The company is complying with sanctions, he said, and will continue to provide financial assistance to employees and their families from Ukraine along with “humanitarian aid to those affected in neighboring countries.”
In an address to Congress on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “Peace is more important than income.”
“All American companies must leave Russia . . . leave their market immediately, because it is flooded with our blood.” He urged American lawmakers to “take the lead” and “make sure that the Russians do not receive a single penny that they use to destroy our people in Ukraine.”
The war is posing a corporate quandary and testing the mettle of some of the world’s most powerful brands, as well as the long-held theory of international relations that countries that trade together don’t wage wars against each other.
Koch is among corporations such as Cargill, LG Electronics and Subway that have decided to stay in Russia. Many of those companies have issued statements expressing concern over the conflict, but Koch is one of the few that have opted both to stay and openly condemn the Russian government.
Koch Industries, based in Wichita, is the second-largest privately held company in the United States and has broad operations, including in energy, chemicals and electronic technologies. It is run and partly owned by Charles Koch, known for the millions he donated to conservative causes with his brother David Koch, who died in 2019.
U.S. says Russian troops “killed 10 people standing in line for bread”
Tucker Reals – March 16, 2022
Firefighters are seen at the site as smoke rises from a damaged building after Russian attacks hit residential buildings in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 13, 2022. / Credit: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty (State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty)
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said Russian troops “shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread” on Wednesday in the decimated northeast Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. The embassy did not cite what evidence it had of the attack in a statement posted on its official Twitter account.
“Such horrific attacks must stop,” the Embassy said in the tweet, adding that the U.S. government was “considering all available options to ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine.”
With each day, the cost in human lives and suffering of Russia’s war on Ukraine rises. The United Nations human rights office has registered about 600 civilian deaths, but the U.N. acknowledges the real toll is certain to be far higher. Ukrainian officials say thousands have been killed — more than 2,000 in the besieged southern city of Mariupol alone.
Video: A look at the treatment of Ukrainian refugees at border crossings
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There was little information on the alleged attack on civilians lining up for food in Chernihiv, but video posted to social media showed the purported aftermath, with a number of bodies on the ground.
One of those to post the video was Oleksandr Merezhko, deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, and chair of its Foreign Affairs Committee.
In Chernigiv Russians have killed more than ten people who were standing in line to buy some bread. pic.twitter.com/sy2yGN1BAw
“Russians have killed more than ten people who were standing in line to buy some bread,” he said in his tweet.
The alleged attack came a day after Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said a Russian artillery strike had hit a university and open-air market in Chernihiv on Monday, killing 10. It was one of many strikes to hit the city over the last three weeks.
The governor of the region said Wednesday that electricity had been cut to Chernihiv city and some surrounding towns and villages, but the Reuters news agency quoted Governor Viacheslav Chaus as saying Ukraine’s armed forces were dealing “powerful blows on the Russian enemy every hour.”
Firefighters are seen at the site as smoke rises from a damaged building after Russian attacks hit residential buildings in Chernihiv, Ukraine, March 13, 2022. / Credit: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty
On Tuesday, Reuters interviewed Mykola Vasylinko in Kyiv, who said he had just fled to the capital from Chernihiv, where the situation was “much worse.”
“This is no Chernihiv,” he told Reuters. “They [Russian forces] have tried to erase [it] from the Earth’s surface. They bomb residential areas, they specifically target residential buildings.”
Chernihiv is one of several large cities very close to Ukraine’s northeast border with Russia that have come under blistering artillery fire since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion and air war against Ukraine to start on February 24.
Russian troops opened fire on people waiting for food in Chernihiv, killing 10 people, local reports said
Rebecca Cohen – March 16, 2022
People carrying a person to a vehicle in the aftermath of the shooting in Chernihiv.Suspilne
Russian troops opened fire on Ukrainian civilians waiting for bread in Chernihiv, reports said.
The attack killed 10 people, the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne said.
The US Embassy in Kyiv said it would “ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine.”
Russian troops killed at least 10 people after opening fire on a group waiting in line for food in Chernihiv, Ukraine, a local report said.
A video posted to Telegram by the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne appeared to show multiple blurred-out bodies on the ground in the city, which is under attack by Russian forces.
Suspilne reported that the soldiers opened fire in the residential area at about 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday as people “stood in line for bread.”
A man can be heard screaming “help” as bystanders carry a person who appears to be wounded to a car after the attack. At the end of the clip, an ambulance drives up to the scene.
The US Embassy in Kyiv accused Russian forces of the assault in a tweet on Wednesday.
“Today, Russian forces shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread in Chernihiv,” the embassy said. “Such horrific attacks must stop. We are considering all available options to ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine.”
Russian troops first invaded Ukraine on February 24. In the weeks since, Russian forces have shelled towns across the Eastern European country, hitting multiple civilian targets, including a maternity hospital.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called these civilian attacks war crimes.
The United Nations’ human-rights office said on Tuesday that at least 691 civilians had been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began, but it believed the true death toll was “considerably higher.”
“Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes,” the agency said.
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