Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, extends across eleven time zones, and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's second-largest city and "cultural capital". Other major urban areas in the country include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Kazan.
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. It also borders Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; and Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian; Russian is also widely spoken, especially in the east and south.
Odesa is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative centre of the Odesa Raion and Odesa Oblast, as well as a multiethnic cultural centre. As of January 2021, Odesa's population was approximately 1,010,537. On 25 January 2023, its historic city centre was declared a World Heritage Site and added to the List of World Heritage in Danger by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in recognition of its influence on cinema, literature, and the arts. The declaration was made in response to the bombing of Odesa during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has damaged or destroyed buildings across the city.
A culture war is a cultural conflict between different social groups struggle to impose their own virtues, beliefs, and practices over society. The notion of "war" is a metaphor for how social groups holding entrenched values and ideologies build adversarial narratives around "hot button" topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization over politics, public policy or consumption issues. Culture wars often delve around wedge issues, often based on values, morality, and lifestyle which often lead to political cleavage.
Lutsk is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Volyn Oblast and the administrative center of Lutsk Raion within the oblast. Lutsk has a population of 215,986. Historically it was a cultural and religious center in Volhynia.
Brody is a city in Zolochiv Raion, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine. It is located in the valley of the upper Styr River, approximately 90 kilometres northeast of the oblast capital, Lviv. Brody hosts the administration of Brody urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: 23,134.
Rivne is a city in western Ukraine. The city is the administrative center of Rivne Oblast (province), as well as the surrounding Rivne Raion within the oblast. Administratively, Rivne is incorporated as a city of oblast significance and does not belong to the raion. It has a population of 243,873.
Olyka is an urban-type settlement in Lutsk Raion, Volyn Oblast, western Ukraine. It is located east of Lutsk on the Putylivka Rriver. Its population is 3,032.
Fascist has been used as a pejorative epithet against a wide range of people, political movements, governments, and institutions since the emergence of fascism in Europe in the 1920s. Political commentators on both the Left and the Right accused their opponents of being fascists, starting in the years before World War II. In 1928, the Communist International labeled their social democratic opponents as social fascists, while the social democrats themselves as well as some parties on the political right accused the Communists of having become fascist under Joseph Stalin's leadership. In light of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, The New York Times declared on 18 September 1939 that "Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism." Later, in 1944, the anti-fascist and socialist writer George Orwell commented on Tribune that fascism had been rendered almost meaningless by its common use as an insult against various people, and argued that in England the word fascist had become a synonym for bully.
Xavier Kurt Naidoo is a German soul and R&B singer, songwriter and record producer. He is a founding member of German band Söhne Mannheims, and started two record labels, Beats Around the Bush and Naidoo Records. Naidoo also has a successful solo career. His debut album Nicht von dieser Welt (1998) has sold over 1 million records, and all his next six albums Zwischenspiel – Alles für den Herrn (2002), Telegramm für X (2005), Alles kann besser werden (2009), Danke für's Zuhören (2012), Bei meiner Seele (2013) und Nicht von dieser Welt 2 (2016) reached number 1 on the German album charts. Most of his songs are in German, but he has also released a few English songs.
The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the modern territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus'. Important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, arose there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes Europe's third-largest and the world's fifth-largest.
Ukrainian nationalism is the promotion of the unity of Ukrainians as a people and the promotion of the identity of Ukraine as a nation state. The origins of modern Ukrainian nationalism emerge during the 17th-century Cossack uprising against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Ukrainian nationalism draws upon a single national identity of culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, that dates back to the 9th century.
Antisemitism in Ukraine has been a historical issue in the country, particularly in the twentieth century. The history of the Jewish community of the region dates back to the era when ancient Greek colonies existed in it. A third of the Jews of Europe previously lived in Ukraine between 1791 and 1917, within the Pale of Settlement. The large concentration of Jews in this region historically made them an easy target for anti-Jewish actions and pogroms.
Olaf Scholz is a German politician who has been serving as the chancellor of Germany since 8 December 2021. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice Chancellor in the fourth Merkel cabinet and as Federal Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2021. He was also First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018, deputy leader of the SPD from 2009 to 2019, and Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2007 to 2009.
The 21stcentury is the current century in the Anno Domini or Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on 1 January 2001 and will end on 31 December 2100. It is the first century of the 3rd millennium.
EMMA is a German feminist magazine. Its print edition is published every two months in Cologne, Germany.
The Holocaust in Ukraine was the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, the Crimean General Government and some areas which were located to the East of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in the Transnistria Governorate and Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region and Carpathian Ruthenia during World War II. The listed areas are currently parts of Ukraine.
Heinrich Kittel was a German general during World War II who commanded the 462nd Infantry Division. As a prisoner of war, he was interned at Trent Park, where his conversations with fellow inmates were surreptitiously recorded by the British intelligence.
Sönke Neitzel is a German historian who has written extensively about the Second World War. He is editor of the journal German History in the 20th Century and has written several books such as Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying; The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs based on recordings of German POWs held at Trent Park which he wrote with Harald Welzer. Neitzel edited the book Tapping Hitler's Generals.
Eliot Ward Higgins, who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and former blogger, known for using open sources and social media for investigations. He is the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. He has investigated incidents including the Syrian Civil War, the Russo-Ukrainian War, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. He first gained mainstream media attention by identifying weapons in uploaded videos from the Syrian conflict.
