Support a joint fundraising campaign of AIN.UA, KOLO, and SHIELDS for night vision and attacking equipment for the Da Vinci Wolves battalion.

Medical Aid and Rehabilitation

Dear Oleksandr, I would like to start our conversation with things that save the lives of Ukrainian warriors. You used to work in different health positions before the war, and now, your battalion has its own health service unit called Ulf. What is the situation with medical equipment and aid at the frontline and rehabilitation after injuries?

There are universal rules for all units, and saving lives and the health of injured soldiers depends on how well people follow these rules.

But first, let’s go back a bit and speak about planning. We plan any combat action and activity, including training, by considering the medical aid component. We plan the logistics, unit interaction, evacuation routes, etc. These elements are connected. You can even say that evacuation equals logistics and vice versa. In reality, however, it will always go differently despite even the most sophisticated planning. And if you have no plan at all, the worst scenario will happen.

Second, the individual training of each soldier is vital. The better you are equipped, the better your people are trained to use available means, and the more likely your rescuing and lifesaving measures will be effective.

Based on your observations, how well are the future combatants taught tactical medicine, using the MARCH algorithm, and first aid in a boot camp? Would you recommend taking extra measures and doing another private tacmed course before beginning military service?

There is never too much training. The more different courses you take, the easier the next training, the better cohesion in the boot camp and by performing combat tasks.

If you have polished your skills to almost automatic—both in defense and attack and if injured—you will do it without even thinking about it.

So, when you have polished your skills to automatic actions, you will follow the protocol and act automatically in a stressful and dangerous situation. If the protocol is not well tested yet, under stress pressure, you do anything but the things required in a specific case.

Everyone can be scared after getting wounded and sometimes literally fighting for their life. And fear is what accompanies all your actions. Strictly following the protocol helps you act right, even under pressure.

I know that you were doing rehabilitation after an injury. Can you briefly describe, as a former healthcare specialist, plus and contras of the injured soldier rehabilitation?

Yes, my rehab happened with the help of specialists at the Unbroken Center on the base of the Lviv First Medical Community. They set me on my feet.

Getting wounded, receiving first aid, and being evacuated is one story. The more efficient it is, the more chances to survive and heal.

Of course, the treatment is also important: the quality of surgery and then external fixation, the speed of wound healing, and the kind of treatment you get.

In my case, the rehabilitation began on the fifth day after the surgery when I still had an Ilizarov apparatus on me. In the hospital, a personal physical therapist first gave me advice on how to maintain muscles to avoid atrophy. For example, what would be a problem if one of your joints becomes dysfunctional? It gets atrophied. And restoring its functionality can be difficult or sometimes even impossible.

So, in my case, it was theoretically possible. After the surgery, surgeons told me that the basic functions could be restored at least within a year. But thanks to the rehabilitation, I participated in cross-country running after only eight months. And now, I am preparing to visit some front edges.

In the Unbroken Center, I did exercise the whole day. At nine o’clock, I came to the gym, did physical therapy until lunch, and then I had psychotherapy at the local mental health center until six o’clock.

As a result, I could run a short distance after four months after the start of my rehab. By doing this, of great importance is the patient’s attitude that rehabilitation is a job you must do so carefully as you did your job on the battlefield.

In my opinion, such medical centers and the Unbroken must be in all big cities. Because unfortunately, there are already many patients for them, and there will be many more.

EW/SIGINT and a Cossack Agreement in Infantry

Speaking about the materiel, equipment, and means to destroy enemies, what is the most desired at the front? EW and SIGINT? Munition?

At war, you need everything, and even that would be not enough. It sounds like a metaphor, but it also makes sense.

Let’s take as an example the Honor Company, which is a part of the Da Vinci Wolves separate battalion. First, we must provide soldiers with all the basics—from socks to individual protection. Most of it is provided by the state. Of course, when our friends offer something better, for example, tactical socks for our guys so that their legs don’t sweat too much, I would never say no.

By the way, the bulletproof vests and helmets provided by the state have a pretty decent quality. However, we always need earmuffs. They must be reliable, protect against concussions, and not interfere with communication on the battlefield at the same time. Thanks to our partners, all our guys have at least one set of earmuffs now. The comms is a different story because coordination of actions within combat and during evacuation relies on them.

In order to simplify the answer, let’s restrain the war to two key objectives: to see and destroy the enemy and not to be seen and destroyed by them. These two objectives demand us to be always a step forward.

Let’s begin with safety. We must do our best to prevent the enemies from seeing us and being able to hit us. For this, we must shut down their “eyes” represented by drones. What is efficient in preventing them from flying? It is the means of electronic warfare and signals intelligence (EW and SIGINT). It’s expensive equipment, and the government can cover only part of the costs. Thus, we have to look for extra resources to purchase more of it. Fortunately, we got lucky in this context, particularly with EW.

Another essential safety component is making targeting our positions impossible for the enemy, for example, by using FPV drones, which have become vital in modern combat actions.

Regarding EW, if I understood you right, you need both the equipment and qualified specialists to coordinate your actions with other units. One must bring impressive expertise to avoid jamming their own drones entering the EW range.

It is a separate science. According to the manning table, EW and SIGINT specialists must be on the level of a battalion. Of course, a battalion would act in the interests of its smaller units. However, ideally, these specialists must be on the level of a company.

Unfortunately, the manning tables used today have been written for the past wars. It is fabulous that the Ukrainian state considers successful UAV application cases and introduces a new military branch.

But one must understand that any change to the manning table is difficult because it is always followed by logistics changes. If the government writes something in the manning table, it must supply all the means for a respective position.

So, let’s pay more attention to the capabilities of our state, daily facing extraordinary challenges while constantly adapting to new circumstances. We fight and develop our army at the same time. Come on, it is hard work.

Why did I mention this? Because our people like to make stupid conclusions. If something wrong happened, someone must always be found guilty—an official or a high-ranked military officer. But you need to understand that any change in the manning table means logistics changes. If something is missing, it is not always because someone is stealing.

We just don’t have enough means to create a perfect manning table with EW and SIGINT specialists, a land robotic platform operator, and space intelligence on the level of a company.

In reality, first, teach a guy to be an infantryman. Then, they cohere with others as basic infantrymen with opportunities to use other means like electronic warfare and signals intelligence. The fact that such options are available on the company level makes such infantry more valuable for application beyond regular assault operations.

And if you fight with other men, and this very infantry guy works as an EW/SIGINT specialist, you have a so-called gentlemen agreement or a Cossack agreement.

People who understand this concept would not avoid their duties in the army and would wish to master new skills due to understanding that their lives depend on it. So now you have an idea of the mental basics of a volunteer battalion.

We should thank the units that are not afraid of undertaking more and more innovations.

Technological Handicap and Saving Lives

In one of your late public speeches, you emphasized the importance of having a technological handicap over the enemy. In your point of view, does it exist? Is it negative? Is it equal? Or are we a step ahead?

How far have we gone on a technological level compared to Russians? Are we winning or losing? I don’t know. I would like to believe that we are a half-step ahead.

My belief is based on over two years of the full-scale war. Let’s look at the 2022 situation: without a doubt, Ukraine was the first to widely apply DJI Mavic drones. And it gave unbelievable results on battlefields. How does it look in practice? Russians sometimes had ten times more artillery munition than we did. Under such circumstances, we never dreamed of victory but only hoped to suppress the enemy somehow.

Despite all this, we managed not only to hold the enemy but also to perform an incredibly successful counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region. Why? Because Ukrainians were motivated, skilled, persistent, and technologically advanced. We understood the importance of drones in highly efficient artillery use. When Russians shelled the squares, we hit precise targets.

Another example is last autumn when US help ceased to come at the most critical moment, and we had “munition hunger.” FPV drones were our Plan B.

In Ukraine, you can see innovations going from the bottom to the top, from volunteer communities with a proper mental setting, “Let’s try something that nobody tried before.” Innovations are made by privates and considered and widely implemented by higher officers in the Defense Forces of Ukraine.

In Russia, it works differently. They study our successful cases and command to scale up our solutions vertically from the top to the bottom. By doing so, the enemy catches us up very quickly. For instance, in early 2023, we had a significant advantage in Bakhmut: Mavic drones dropping explosives 24/7. But in late summer of 2023, the enemy already had more drones than we had. We couldn’t relax either during the day or at night. And they achieved this just in a few months.

The enemy researches our innovations, reproduces them, and scales their production up. Nevertheless, our success in this war means to be always a half-step ahead. I think we can succeed here. I wish we could do it faster.

When preparing a fundraiser for the Da Vinci Wolves, we heard a statement about “a battalion of the future” from your Back Office team. It should follow the philosophy of saving as many lives of Ukrainian warriors as possible by achieving a technological advantage over the enemy.

Futurists started to speak about it a long time ago, and the practitioners implement theories in very this time with the help of various military equipment. We all read books and watched movies about robot wars. Some unmanned vehicles have been used during World War II already. Unfortunately, the military doctrine we had at the beginning of this war had been written based on past wars. But we all understood that the next doctrine would be written based on the current war. Thus, the winner will be the one who will adapt a new doctrine faster than the competitor.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are writing this new doctrine right now. To finalize it, we need only two things: forces, the manpower that can implement the doctrine, and the materiel needed to complete this task.

The logic of the doctrine demands to hold infantry as far from the frontline as possible. And even if the men are close to the contact line, they must be ultimately safe. Our primary goal is to save lives. An experienced warrior is the most valuable asset at war. We have plenty of guys with combat experience in our battalion. Today, they share it with others and try to implement their experiences into new solutions mentioned before.

Compared to the past wars, there were never such sophisticated intelligence opportunities in history. However, there is the opposite side of the medal: the ever-highest restraints on forces and equipment concentration in history. Because as soon as some forces concentrate on a spot, the enemy will see it. So, it is nearly impossible to perform a hidden maneuver. And now imagine how it looks on the army level—totally impossible.

I remember you on the manning tables from old wars that we still use today. So, what can we do and change on the practical level? In boot camps, we aim to cohere the maximum number of different forces and equipment. We combine the infantry with land robot platforms already during drills to clearly understand how electronic warfare and signals intelligence work. We test the gear together with our air surveillance units, FPV drone operators, etc. In other words, we already use methods not present in the current military doctrines during training. We exchange our experiences peer-to-peer with other passionate battalions, especially volunteer battalions, to craft the new doctrine together.

• Reports indicate that the decision is related to new sanctions that limit the provision of software to Russian companies. Slack sends these letters to the owners of those accounts that are “based in the Russian Federation, primarily used by users from the Russian Federation, or otherwise associated with distribution in the Russian Federation.”
• Letters are also received by those Russian companies that have purchased a license to use Slack abroad.

Which new sanctions?

The USA announced a new package of anti-Russian sanctions on June 12. Among the new restrictions is a ban on providing IT services to residents and businesses in the Russian Federation. In particular, to supply Russia with IT consulting and design services, cloud services for enterprise management, as well as project and production software.

In the first months after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Slack began to disconnect some large Russian customers from its service. Then the restrictions affected those companies that were included in the sanctions lists.

Since 2023, Slack has removed the Russian language from its interface. Yes, system messages will no longer be translated into Russian, but users can still send and receive messages in Cyrillic.

Regarding IT services

Among the new sanctions is a ban on providing IT services to residents and companies in the Russian Federation. However, this does not concern all services. Three directions have been selected:

• IT consulting and design services;
• IT support and cloud services for enterprise management software;
• Project and production software.

The decision will come into force on September 12, 2024. However, the American authorities note that they “strongly support the free flow of information and communications around the world,” so despite the ban, they continue to allow some telecommunications and Internet transactions.

Other sanctions

In total, the country imposed more than 300 new sanctions on more than 300 individuals and companies, including in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and the Caribbean. The full list includes more than a hundred Russian companies linked to the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation.

Thus, authorities warn that foreign financial institutions are also at risk of being sanctioned for conducting or facilitating significant transactions or providing any services to them.

In the US, more than a dozen transnational networks have been targeted for laundering gold for a Russian manufacturer, supporting Russian drone production, and purchasing materials for chemical and biological weapons, anti-UAV equipment, machine tools, industrial equipment, and microelectronics.

Sanctions were imposed on the Moscow Stock Exchange, the SOGAZ insurance company, the Arctic LNG 1 and Arctic LNG 3 projects, as well as Gazprom Invest.

• According to Reuters, the Moscow Stock Exchange has suspended trading and settlement in dollars and euros. This means that banks, companies, and investors will no longer be able to trade both currencies through a central exchange, which offers advantages in terms of liquidity, clearing, and supervision.
• Instead, they will have to trade in the over-the-counter market, where deals are made directly between two parties.
• A representative of a major Russian exporter of goods that is not under sanctions told Reuters: “We don’t care, we have yuan. It is almost impossible to get dollars and euros in Russia.”
• As Moscow seeks closer trade and political ties with Beijing, the Chinese yuan has overtaken the dollar as the most popular currency on the Moscow exchange.

Five Russian banks are sanctioned: Promsvyazbank, Vnesheconombank, Sberbank, VTB Bank, and VTB Capital Holding. And also their representative offices in other countries, whatever they are called.

Earlier this year, AIN reported on how Russian companies and entrepreneur avoid sanctions by using cryptocurrency, purchasing weapons and drone parts for their war in Ukraine.

And that’s good, because it’s about the economy. The Defense Procurement Agency recently announced for the first time closed tenders through the Prozorro system for 20,000 drones with an estimated cost of up to UAH 3 billion,

Klimenkov said.

According to him, these tenders were held partially. And the military got good drones both in terms of price and quality.

About 7,000 drones have already been contracted. The tenders has been closed, and now about 7,000 more are undergoing inspection and qualification. More than UAH 1 billion — this budget has already been spent.

The journalist also asked about the prevention of corruption schemes in defense procurement. Dmytro Klimenkov replied that, first of all, supervisory boards have been introduced in two agencies: the State Rear Operator and the Defense Procurement Agency.

What should these supervisory boards do? They should monitor the effectiveness of the use of budget funds, the effectiveness of top management, and accountability. In other words, we will reduce the risk of corruption by implementing tools that already work.

Secondly, the Ministry of Defense cooperates with the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. This involves internal and external audits, the deputy minister said.

Among other things, he also said that from 2024, the state will spend UAH 1.2 million per year for one serviceman, excluding weapons. However, it is necessary to take into account the type of troops, seasonality, and other factors.

Our goal is to provide the battalion with night vision and engagement equipment to have an advantage on the battlefield in all conditions. Destroy the enemy: day and night, on the ground and in the air. To find, eliminate, and win.

What are we fundraising for:

• HOR wing complex — 1 unit;
• Optical sights for large-caliber weapons — 5 units;
• Mavic 3T thermal imaging drones — 20 units;
• Night vision devices (PVS 14, etc.) — 30 units;
• Thermal imagers and thermal imaging sights — 130 units;
• Radios — 100 units.

The HOR complex will help our fighters conduct aerial reconnaissance at long distances — up to 150 km, 20 Mavic 3T thermal imaging drones will help adjust fire at night, PNB and thermal imagers will help attack aircraft to spot and destroy the enemy more effectively, and radios will help maintain stable communication in combat conditions.

Help the soldiers get one step closer to the battalion of the future — technological and devastating to the enemy.

• Via Monobank

The “Da Vinci Wolves” battalion named after Dmytro Kotsyubailo is a volunteer unit that has been defending the independence of Ukraine since 2014. They are a real fighting brotherhood that consistently and effectively destroys the Russian invaders.

Today it is one of the most experienced and effective combat units not only in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but also in the world. Experience and skills, combined with the capabilities of the most modern weapons, bring the Ukrainian nation closer to victory every day.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the combat group “Da Vinci Wolves” became a battalion that officially entered the ranks of the Armed Forces. They took part in battles in Donetsk region: in Soledar, Berestovo, Serebrianka, Volodymyrivka, and Bakhmut; in the Luhansk region — in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bilohorivka, and Kreminna. They also took part in the liberation of Kharkiv Oblast — Balaklia, Izium, Kupiansk.

Key points

• Russian military companies, such as the Kalashnikov Concern, are struggling with restrictions on the import of dual-use parts (parts that can be used for both civilian and military purposes) imposed by US and EU sanctions.
• The concern, which is the largest russian manufacturer of small arms, needed electronic parts for drones.
• Andrey Zverev, a russian smuggler working with China, helps these companies circumvent sanctions by using Tether to pay for purchases. Tether is a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, but unlike dollars in the banking system, its transactions are more difficult to track.
• Zverev used Tether to transfer millions of dollars from Kalashnikov to an electronics distributor in Hong Kong, then moved the goods through Central Asian countries to avoid customs control.
• The Garantex trading platform, which works almost exclusively with russian clients, plays a key role in this process, allowing users to convert rubles to Tether.
• According to estimates, the volume of this shadow trade can reach $10 billion per month.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department pressures Congress to pass legislation that would allow it to block transactions with U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins like Tether.

In December 2023, the agency blacklisted a Moscow-based company that cooperated with an authorized russian bank to make payments through Tether.

Russia is increasingly turning to alternative payment mechanisms to circumvent US sanctions and continue to finance its war against Ukraine,

Brian Nelson, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in his statement.

The use of cryptocurrencies to avoid sanctions and finance illegal activities is nothing new. For example, North Korea stole billions of dollars in cryptocurrency to fund its weapons program. In response, the UN called for stricter regulation of cryptocurrency transactions.

• According to the sources, commercial satellites take pictures of a certain area in Ukraine, and days or weeks later, russian missiles hit that place. Sometimes another satellite takes additional pictures, perhaps to assess the damage.
• Given the large number of such cases, it is hard to believe that these are just coincidences.
• Russia does not have a sufficient number of its own satellites for such a large-scale survey.
• Despite Ukraine monitoring the orbits of russian satellites, it was previously believed that allied satellites would not be used for russia’s benefit.
• Now Ukraine suspects that the russian federation can buy satellite images through intermediaries.

Getting satellite images is not that difficult

The are several ways to get satellite images of a needed location.

• You can find old blurry images on Google Maps for free.
• Clear up-to-date images cost several thousand dollars on satellite-tracking sites.
• The faster a picture is needed and the higher the resolution, the more expensive it is. A company in the USA can take a photo of an apartment in Odesa for $1,200 within a few hours.
• Even archived pictures of military facilities in Ukraine can be easily purchased.

Reaction of American companies

American companies Maxar and Planet claim that they carefully check their customers. They assure that they comply with American sanctions that prohibit cooperation with russia. However, company representatives could not clearly explain how they prevent satellite images from falling into russian hands.

Andrii Liskovich, head of an American non-profit organization that provides non-lethal aid to Ukraine, is skeptical of companies’ claims to control the end use of their satellite images. According to him, they do not have the necessary resources to properly check the end recipients of their products.

Possible solutions

• Ukraine proposes that companies provide it with a list of filming orders before they are executed.
• Western governments should impose restrictions on the distribution of satellite images over Ukraine, ensuring access only to carefully vetted recipients.

This is not the first time russia is able to circumvent international sanctions. Previously, it was reported that chips from American manufacturers, in particular large companies Texas Instruments (TI) and Analog Devices (ADI), reach russia despite the sanctions introduced after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, russians were able to buy Starlinks through the ties in the Arab countries.

This means that Russian companies will not be able to use these products or access the data contained in them.

Microsoft explained this decision by EU sanctions against Russia. The 12th package, adopted on December 19, 2023, contains restrictions on the supply of software for business intelligence (BI), customer relationship management (CRM), and other products.

Will this affect regular users?

The representatives at Softline replied that there is no unequivocal answer yet because it is not clear how the blocking will take place technically.

If the Russians do not store all Google data locally, they may lose access to it starting March 20, 2024. This means they won’t be able to view, edit, or download files stored on Google Drive; use other Google products that are integrated with Google Drive, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides.

Earlier this month, it became known that the EU lifted sanctions on Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh. The decision is yet to be explained.

The news caused a lot of frustration from the Ukrainian gaming community, who do not even expect to play the game in Ukrainian. AIN explains why it is wrong, reminding our readers that the Russian state continues committing genocide against Ukrainian citizens and the Russian gaming community is widely supportive of this war.

Rockstar Games isn’t the only one to cause such an uproar

The news about the job opening at Rockstar Games sparked an expected outrage among Ukrainian gaming community, which was shunned and thrown aside by big game developers for a very long time. Under one of the most recent posts on X about the job opening, there were dozens of pleas to support the Ukrainian language localization for the upcoming GTA VI.

• Despite over 30 million people speaking Ukrainian in the country, gaming industry oftentimes regards Ukrainian community as Russian-speaking, forcing fans of different franchises to play only in Russian. This trend has only started to change recently, after the inception of the Russian war against Ukraine, when Ukrainian community became much more vocal about their desire to play games in their native language.
• The GameSensor platform analyzed the global situation of the presence of the Ukrainian language in games on the Steam platform and what percentage of popular games have Ukrainian localization. The highest percentage of games with Ukrainian localization was in 2018-2019, and since then it has only been decreasing.
• One of the most recent examples was the inclusion of Ukrainian localization to Cyberpunk 2077, which is more of an exception than a rule. To no surprise, this had somehow angered Russian gamers, who were so keen on bashing the Ukrainian localization, CD Projekt RED had to issue an official apology to calm them.

The incident showcases the fact, that no matter how much angry, violent, and hateful the Russian gaming community is, it will still get support from the developers. Why? Because gamedev tops love Russian money.

Rockstar, Steam, PlayStation just love Russian money

Another similar incident brought our attention recently. Following the news of Sony’s release of Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on PC, a discussion was created on the game’s Steam page asking for the Ukrainian localization. The discussion quickly gained over a hundred comments supporting the idea, but it was instantly attacked by the Russian gamers who used hateful language towards the Ukrainians.

• Instead of moderating the comment section, Steam’s moderators decided to just delete the whole discussion. After the incident, several new discussions were created to be continuously flooded with hate and deleted afterwards. Instead, Russians started their own quest to further shun the Ukrainian community, creating topics with their “explanations” why the Ukrainian localization is a bad idea.
• Spoiler: the list is full of ethnic hate (saying Ukrainians are to poor to buy the game), insane сlaims (Ukrainians don’t have time to play games as they are at war), as well as propaganda (many countries use Russian so it’s more profitable for companies).

Earlier, AIN already wrote about the way Steam tolerates Russian war sympathizers. The marketplace allows the Russian gaming community to freely create genocide-supporting hate groups for the simple reason: Steam fears to lose Russian bloodied money. Sometimes it seems like no matter what crimes against humanity this “community” perpetrates and endorses, money will surely make Steam, Rockstar, Sony, Xsolla, and other big names completely oblivious.

Other hateful things Russian gamers did to the gaming world

1. Russians stole the early build of GSC Game World’s upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, blackmailed the developers, and made it playable. Before that, Russian military killed Volodymyr Yezhov, a prominent game designer at the studio.
2. They copied and released its own “analog” of the Finnish FPV simulator game Death from Above, which allows you to play as a Ukrainian military.
3. The “apolitical” Russian-made game Atomic Heart, which is funded by Russian VC fund GEM Capital, made fun of the killings of Ukrainians, glorifying the Soviet regime at the same time.
4. In Minecraft, a popular sandbox game owned by Microsoft, Russian players re-enacted the battle for Soledar, a city in Ukraine that Russian forces occupied in January.
5. In May 2023, the players of the Russian version of World of Tanks recreated the Soviet Union’s parade of tanks in Moscow 1945, glorifying the Soviet army.
6. In another popular gaming platform Roblox Russian users created an array of Russian military forces assets to celebrate the national holiday, Russia Day, also glorifying its bloody regime.
7. Escape from Tarkov’s developers showed the middle finger to the stylized soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, mocking Ukrainians during their marketing campaign.

In the records, russian occupiers discuss the possibility of acquiring the Starlink terminals: “The Arabs bring everything: wires, Wi-Fi, routers…” says one of the invaders. According to him, the cost of one terminal is 200,000 rubles [about $2,190].

Earlier, Elon Musk, the owner of Starlink, categorically denied that the terminals were sold to Russia directly or indirectly. SpaceX, which is also owned by Elon Musk and operates the Starlink satellite communications network, has also denied that it has any official dealings with the russian government or the russian military.

According the official statement, the Starlink company doesn’t operate in russia, and the company has never sold or shipped equipment to russia. However, reports from the Ukrainian military personnel indicated that the systems were massively used from the territory previously said to be unavailable.

• As stated by the Ukrainian military personnel, Russians are probably buying the Starlink systems in the United Arab Emirates with already activated accounts and continue to use them on the occupied Ukrainian territories.

• The news comes as a surprise, due to Elon Musk repeatedly saying that Starlink is intended for peaceful use only. In 2022, Musk even deliberately shut down Starlink to thwart a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol.
• According to the Starlink network coverage map, satellite Internet is not available in Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, China, North Korea, Syria, and parts of the occupied Ukrainian territory. Musk did not make any public statements that the systems will be launched in the Russian market.

• Furthermore, the Ukrainian military also started reporting much lower speed of the Internet from the Starlink systems not even close to the frontline. The problems have been observed for several months, and in the last week they have been particularly serious.

On social media, the audience took his words ambiguously: some criticized the government for shifting the responsibility for providing drones to ordinary citizens, while others, on the contrary, supported the idea and saw it as another way to support the army.

AIN.Capital spoke to three Ukrainians who had completed the People’s FPV course and asked them about the specifics of assembling drones at home.

Illia Bondar, Photographer

Illia confessed, “I never held a soldering iron in my hand; however, I found the idea of hand-crafted drones quite interesting.” So, he signed up for Victory Drones training and had to wait a month to finally participate because so many people were willing to learn this. About 500 attendees visited online training sessions. The complete course consists of seven lessons: a lecture + a Q&A session each.

“Maybe that makes this course so valuable compared to YouTube videos: You can ask any question, even the stupidest ones. Because the stupidest questions are much better than the stupidest failures.”

One session lasts over three hours. According to Illia, students can get feedback and continue communicating with teachers even after the end of training. All learning videos stay available in Google Classroom, so you can watch them anytime while assembling a drone.

Illia got components for his first drone in Ukraine because he didn’t want to wait for delivery from China despite better prices. “The first training alumni created high demand for pieces. So, the second wave got some struggles,” he recalled. The first drone-crafting set cost Illia about ₴16,000.

Nowadays, he orders 10 to 15 sets in China for $230–260 per unit. He works not alone. Some first and second-wave alumni joined Illia. The team currently has three members spending two hours daily after work on their new hobby. Illia emphasizes that the course is a must before starting to craft drones because soldering a piece also requires knowing how to set up drone software and where to test it.

“An experienced hand can assemble up to four drones daily. I can craft now two or three things. The assembly is only one part of the process. You must also fill it with software, test it, and set it up. The assembly feels like a Lego for adults.”

“A low-quality drone will never get to the army.”

The Victory Drones team provides the participants with a list of components and software for drones at the beginning of the course. The People’s FPV trainers developed it in advance. All trainees have to install the software in a UAV. It is the basic setup. A check follows—the drone must have no gaps; the engines must rotate in the right direction. While soldering, participants send pictures of their work to a trainer who can check for mistakes. If any, the teacher will explain to the student what to fix and how.

After a pre-check, Illia packed and gave the drone to Victory Drones. They tested and re-checked it. According to Illia, improperly assembled UAVs don’t even reach a test stage. So there’s no chance it would appear at the frontline. “If the assembly was successful, though, and the item passed the Victory Drones’s test, it goes to an actual combat unit without naming it due to obvious reasons,” said Illia. However, the manufacturer gets feedback and photographs from soldiers after receiving them.

“During the People’s FPV training, I didn’t care much where exactly they sent my drone. My training was free of charge. So, the product I created is a sign of my gratitude to the authors of the course. I knew it would get to the frontline.”

Illia also shared information about the Social Drone initiative by KazhanFLY, where handmade drones are received and tested. You may indicate the desired destination for a UAV. And they will deliver it accordingly after checking.

“After manufacturing some drones, your contact list grows, including UAV pilots. Then you work on specific requests for a specific military unit.”

Cost of equipment

Regarding Facebook posts about a starting equipment set that should cost you about ₴6,000–8,000, Illia seems not to believe that. He is sure a ₴200 AliExpress soldering iron would be fine for crafting one or two drones for the project. Then, you give another hundred hryvnia for a solder. “A silicone mat also would be nice, but a flat table is just perfect for soldering on,” Illia said. In total, the initial expenditure is about ₴1,500.

Later, however, Illia bought a better soldering iron for more UAVs since he had ordered 15 sets of components. “The 200-hryvnia tool is no longer comfortable for large numbers, but it’s all about the comfort of welding it,” he added.

“I am not a professional yet and have only two soldering irons: the first was from China and the second one I bought later. But my first product still has no quality claims. So I don’t see the problems they write on Facebook about.”

The most difficult is to find a proper video transmitter (VTX) with a chip inside.

They at People’s FPV provide you with software for a specific VTX. Regarding additional drone equipment (remote controls, land stations, glasses), Illia remarks you can buy it to check the video connection. But it is not a must when you are going to craft only a few drones.

Today, Illia plans to learn UAV testing to skip the pre-check stage. However, it’s not simple because you should load your flying machine and test it at maximum capacity. A drone must be safe to fly over the positions of Ukrainian fighters before targeting enemies. Illia has advice for beginners:

“Don’t listen to those who criticize the process they don’t understand. Yes, there might be useful remarks. But often, people refuse to try something after reading that. And it is strange when our warriors lack FPVs. I agree with those who say it is not a thing for anyone and requires checking. Someone can think, ‘OK, I can craft something that will fly. Something is better than nothing.’ But no, it won’t work in that way. You need to consider your skills. If you feel talented in this, why not? And it is the right time now when any help is vital.”

Ivan, Network Specialist

Ivan asked not to mention his last name in the article. His post about drone set fundraising exploded with a great interest in media he wasn’t ready for. Although, he agreed to speak with AIN.UA anonymously.

Ivan applied for the Victory Drones course about an hour after he saw the announcement, passed all the checks and security issues, and got a confirmation in October 2023.

The course had a positive impact. He never thought free training could be such a high quality. At every stage, we got hints and advice on what to fix and how, like we were “fifth-grade students”—which cable to solder, how it should look, what other issues might be there, and how to solve them, etc.

“I did not do much of soldering, tried only a few times, and it was years ago. Then I watched a video, tried again, and made it.”

Ivan got a degree in construction, but now he works with computer networks. He’s always been more in programming than engineering. The guy started assembling a drone during the course and finished it right after.

Ivan got all the parts in Ukraine to skip waiting time and supposedly paid only a few thousand hryvnia more. The purchases started before the training following Victory Drones’s recommendation list. Some parts were fast to get but became rare then, and something was bought by mistake, for example, a wrong-angle antenna or a wrong-direction fan. But those were the cheapest articles in the list—200 to 400 hryvnia.

“The first UAV cost me about ₴17,000. I spent another ₴4,000 on tools, and it was very cheap because my friend solderer made me a special offer. So, they should cost a bit more.”

Soldering appeared to be the most complicated part of the process—you had to pay attention to material parameters, temperature, and skill. Ivan managed to pass the check only with his second drone.

After performing a self-check, he had to wait another month for independent re-checking of his drone. Ivan and others got clear instructions that it was all about safety. “There were some logistics issues by Victory Drones after I filled out the delivery form, but we all found it OK,” he added.

The drones went through a two-stage certification. Ivan got his first certificate after the course and passed the test. The second certificate was for assembling a drone. After testing, confirmation followed if it works, flies, and lacks issues. While waiting for a verdict, Ivan ordered the components for the second product. He thought if the first outcome would be not satisfying, he would consider his mistakes to improve the next one. Fortunately, feedback from the field was positive.

After that, he decided to start a new fundraising for more parts and involve more friends since drone assembly doesn’t require much time. Now, he simultaneously puts two drones together and possesses a part of the components for six more.

Ivan noticed a shortage of some spare parts. And this is where the speculation begins.

“Look at video transmitters, for example. As our training started, I could buy them in Ukraine for 2,500 hryvnia. And I thought it was too much. Now, they cost up to 6K in Ukraine. So, the price has grown more than two times. And it’s available in China for about 5,000.”

Ivan thinks that raising prices to high demand and supply shortages is a standard practice of resellers. He looks for suppliers in different groups. He follows recommendations of experienced professionals regarding marketplaces or proven merchants. One shop’s specialty is drones, and the other is IT parts. Alternatively, you can search on Prom.ua, AliExpress, or multiple flea market Telegram channels.

Drone settings

From Ivan’s POV, a great advantage of Victory Drones training is providing ready-to-install software and a list of components. Correspondingly, there is no need to waste time learning all the details and setting nuances. Everything that a participant must do is to assemble a frame, solder the components together, and install the software file.

Ivan is going to give Victory Drones all the drones he assembles. But in the future, he will look for other options to hand over handmade UAVs to friends and buddies in the fields after the check. “It can be possible only when I am 100% sure in my drones.

So, testing is crucial, too,” Ivan added. The engineer considers it another plus of this project because, currently, civilians are not allowed to fly drones in Ukraine. With such initiatives as Victory Drones, people may test their UAVs on an appropriate testing ground.

“The Victory Drones initiative is outstanding. You can give them your handmade drone for a test, and if there is any issue, they will fix it instantly and won’t send it back to you.”

After the test, a military drone operator instructed Ivan about cable installation. His advice is,

“Don’t assemble drones for fun. Please do understand that it is not about the quantity. Pay attention to the quality and be careful about what you do so that your product has a specific purpose. It must fly and not just be assembled.”

Artem Melnyk, Software Developer

Since he works in IT, Artem is fond of technology. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, he was interested in quadcopters and could fly them. However, the man never assembled them. In November, he signed up for the People’s FPV course. It was too late for the first wave, so they added him to the waiting list. All applicants were verified. “Wrong people” might not attend this kind of training. It started in three weeks. Artem shares his insights:

“It was cool and clear. There was a lot of structured information. I used to watch different videos online, for instance, on the E-Drone YouTube channel. I liked their videos, too. But Victory Drones explained and chewed over all the details and answered all the questions.”

A teacher and a mentor hosted the lessons. The first told the information and the second read questions from the chat.

Artem started his first drone assembly right after the end of training. But then, the component shortage began. He believes it was because the training got hyped. So, he had to order the pieces in China. The package came in late December. However, Artem successfully mounted his first UAV and sent it for testing. All the parts cost him about 9,000 hryvnia.

Fortunately for Artem, it was the sale season, and the USD to UAH exchange rate was better. Now, drone components cost ₴13,000–14,000. In addition, you will need a battery to test the thing. This piece is worth ₴2.5K in Ukraine.

Some things are not worth saving on

Artem says some parts are not worth saving on because whether a drone will fly depends on that very component. The most important is not to let it fall on the heads of the soldiers piloting it. Pay attention to the frame. It must be balanced and equal to all beams. It also must be robust (a 7-inch UAV) to carry a 1.5-kg weight. The beams get a high load, lifting four engines. If made of low-quality materials, they can crack.

“Victory Drones and Social Drone recommend carbon frames. Why carbon? It is light and robust. Alternatively, you can use textolite plates, different kinds of plastic, or aluminum.”

The frame also protects against vibrations that can interfere with the video connection. Artem prefers the MARK4 7-inch carbon frames for their space for components, convenience, and solidity, similar to the Apex models recommended by Victory Drones. MARK4’s price is $15 to $22.

Artem also doesn’t recommend to save on engines. The FPV drones basically are not designed to carry a heavy weight, so the engines must be high-quality ones. Emex is gold for Artem. A four-engine set costs about $70; there are cheaper alternatives as well, for example, a $50 one from Yashida. “They are well-tested and show only a little share of refuse. There are also expensive options—Mamba, Flash Hobby, or Brotherhoods.”

Artem also emphasized the importance of video chips. There are supply shortages both in China and Ukraine, and it has become harder to find reliable video transmitters. The prices have doubled. And Chinese resellers take advantage of the situation.

They accept as many orders as possible but deliver nothing, waiting till the end of shortage and keeping the money “frozen.” The 2.5W Rush Max VTX is a perfect example. Recently, it was available in China for $60. But now it doesn’t even for over $100.

“Military likes volunteer drones.”

Artem stated he didn’t get any feedback from militants yet, “Maybe it is because my package got to them only two weeks ago. It’s not that long.” He’s not going to stop, however.

“After assembling my first drone during the Victory Drones training, I crafted four more. Then, I ran a fundraising campaign on Instagram and FB and got funds for ten more. I ordered them on January 8, so they are coming from China now. And I won’t stop on this.”

Artem told of a girl whose father is serving now has contacted him. Recently, he changed his profession to the FPV drone pilot, and his unit needs tons of them.

“The girl said the drones from the state are low-quality ones. So low like only 6 of 10 are working. Half of them either are not completely set up or have issues. Military likes volunteer drones as they are well-tested and of higher quality.”

She offered cooperation, and he didn’t refuse. So, the drones he made go to her father through the Social Drone initiative. Artem admitted so many requests from people needing drones after he started raising funds. Several charity organizations also contacted Artem for consulting.

He underlined the importance of proper drone soldering and cable-laying so that the soldiers could easily add an explosive in the field. Usually, it gets done with sticky tape and cable ties. Don’t overpressure the cables and don’t let the thing vibrate.

Also ask military guys about their needs, equipment, and software when crafting drones for someone. They are not universal; they work with different communication protocols, frequencies, VTX capacity, etc.

“Victory Drones prescribed the use of 5.8 GHz for video transmitters. But you can also find 1.2 GHz at the frontline, I believe. They work in smaller distances, but it also has fewer obstacles since fewer EW are used on this frequency,” Artem concluded.

He agrees that drone assembly is not for everybody. But everyone can learn how to do it. The financial component is also vital. The person should afford to buy UAV components. Yes, fundraising is a decent option. However, you must be sure of your drone-assembler skills.

“You are responsible for money you got from people, so you must be sure you convert it into a real drone.”

As part of the fundraising, we raffled off prizes from our partners — Master of Code Global, Mate academy, and Uklon. The latter raffle — Apple MacBook Air 15.3″ M2 2023 — will last until February 26, we will also direct the additional funds collected to the needs of the strike drone company.

We will publish detailed statistics and a report on the transfer of drones after February 26.

The Ukrainian-made drones that we have purchased are called “Hummingbirds” made by TAF Drones. They have good protection against EW and, according to the soldiers, will help them with combat missions.

• You can donate via Monobank, by following the link.

This video shows an example of how “Achilles” is currently working on the Bakhmut direction in the Donetsk region. Your donation can bring the release of new videos closer — and the breakdown of the equipment and fortifications of the Russian occupiers.

• The reason for the fine, according to the Russian authority, was that Apple forbade developers of iOS applications to inform customers within the program about the possibility of paying for purchases outside the App Store, as well as use alternative payment methods.
• Although Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the company disagreed with the Russian regulator’s decision but did pay a fine on 19 January this year, as Reuters reports.
• In February 2023, the Russian authority also reported that Apple had paid a fine of approximately $12.1 million for another violation of antitrust laws, which concerned the abuse of a dominant position in the mobile app market.

Why is it important?

Russia has been at conflict with foreign technology companies for several years now, particularly over what Moscow considers illegal content and refusal to store user data locally. These disputes intensified after the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Following the atrocities the Russian army started committing in Ukraine, Apple suspended the sales of its products in Russia and limited the functionality of Apple Pay in the country. However, after almost two years, Apple seems to have given in to the blackmail and decided to appease the terrorist government.

• On December 20, 2023, the news was revealed that VK, which owns the FSB-controlled social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, acquired 100% of the group of companies, owners of YClients, a service for online recording and business automation in the service industry.
• The amount of the agreement is not disclosed. In the future, the integration of YClients services into VK platforms is planned.
• According to NGL.Media, the news is about the Sogaz group (“Согаз”), the largest shareholders of which are Yuriy Kovalchuk, who is part of the closest circle of the Russian president, and the Gazprom company, which is managed by Alexei Miller, who is also close to Putin, as well as Putin’s cousin Mikhail Shelomov.
• The media also identified approximately 500 Ukrainian companies that still use Altegio or Yclients services.

Why is it important?

Formally, YClients stopped its operations in Ukraine back in 2022 — shortly after the beginning of the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, the identical Altegio service, which is positioned as a company with European roots, started its operations. It was allegedly launched by partners and former employees of the Russian company, as YClients announced the continuation of work in the Russian and Belarus markets.

All available data indicates that Altegio is simply a new brand of the Russian company for Western markets. Therefore, Ukrainian businesses continue to use services from a Russian company that has close relations with Russian intelligence services.

“Look at the game Russian propaganda is playing right now, focusing on millions of players through Steam and other platforms. In May, the Finnish studio Rockodile made a popular drone simulator Death from Above, where you control the Ukrainian military. And in December, an “undisclosed” Russian studio is promoting its own game where there are no Ukrainians and, accordingly, there is a desire to replace the Finns and the Ukrainian context and its connection to drones by promoting Russian content. Therefore, if you have access, report this “kamikaze” in English about the player deceit or slander,”

Yurii writes.

FPV drone simulator Death from Above was released in Early Access on Steam on May 25, 2023. It was developed by the Finnish game studio Rockodile Games with the support of the German publisher Lesser Evil. It tells the story of a Ukrainian drone operator fighting the Russian invaders.

30% of the net profit from sales of the game was promised to be given to two Ukrainian charities: “Come Back Alive” and “Army of Drones”. The full version of the game is set to be released after the end of the development stage in the fourth quarter of 2023.

“You are a lone Ukrainian military drone operator battling Russian occupation forces. Hidden behind enemy lines, you command a ‘super drone’ to seek and destroy tanks, take back communication towers, recover stolen goods, and fight for a better tomorrow. Slava Ukraini!”

the game description says.

However, in less than eight months, a similar game from the Russian studio HFM Games FPV Kamikaze Drone gets released into early access. HFM Games’ website states that they are “an independent game studio from St. Petersburg, operating since 2015 and… making the best games in the world.”

The poster and gameplay are very reminiscent of Death from Above, but here you are offered to play as the Russian military. Footage from the game looks like photos from the battlefield of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.

The game already has 34 reviews on Steam, which are defined as “good”. In particular, a user with the nickname DiNNy notes that “I want to see more dynamics in the game, some destruction, a larger training ground and with equipment. You may even add a map editor and more equipment, tanks, BMPs, MRAPs, ordinary cars.”

Why is this important

Russia’s war against Ukraine has been going on for almost 10 years, almost two of them as a full-scale invasion. The enemy not only seizes lands by military means and bombards Ukrainian cities, but also wages war in cyberspace with propaganda. Video games are only one of its means.

Such an example was on February 21, 2022, when the Russian game Atomic Heart was released. The developers made it a political statement: mocking the killings of Ukrainians by the Russian army, admiring the USSR, and leaving “Easter eggs” for the joy of the Russian audience, which supports the war.

The Owlcat Games studio is a well-known gamedev studio, the developer of the Pathfinder series and the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, founded in Moscow in 2016. The studio has official headquarters in Nicosia, Cyprus, however, as of January 2023, it continued hiring for its office in Moscow, leading many to believe the Nicosia headquarters is just a way to avoid being sanctioned by Western countries and distance itself from the terrorist state.

At the same time, the studio’s leads and executives called Ukrainians chauvinistic slurs and hired people in occupied Crimea in 2014.

• For example, Nikolai Samborsky, Owlcat’s lead cinematic artist, used ethnic slur “хохол” against Ukrainians on X. When called out, he just deleted his account.

• Another one, Anatoly Shestov, Owlcat’s executive producer, was hiring in Crimea in 2014, just after its annexation by Russia.
• After the studio was called out, Owlcat simply went on a spree, blocking these accounts. “Owlcat Games, the company that hears no evil, sees no evil. They were made aware of these issues, but silence speaks louder than words. In fact, inquiries were met with a ban spree. Ignorance is bliss, right?” @40kRogueTrader commented on X.

Owlcat Games is funded by GEM Capital

As AIN.Capital wrote earlier, Owlcat Games is one of the studios directly funded by GEM Capital, a Cyprus-based Russian investment firm, which is run by Russian Kirill Gurskiy and Roman Gurskiy as Managing Directors. The fund was founded by Anatoly Paliy, who previously worked at Gazprom, a state-owned multinational energy corporation, and has close ties to the sanctioned Russian state-owned VTB bank.

Why is it important?

Owlcat Games is a Russian studio funded by a Russian fund full of Russian employees who, evidently, continue displaying Russian chauvinistic tradition of diminishing other people’s lives by using ethnic slurs. Many Ukrainians who already suffer from the Russian missiles and bullets demand transparency and accountability, as well as call for boycotting the studio and its Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader title.

This was reported by Maksym Filipenko oh his X (Twitter) page @MaksymDraws.

• By searching “Donetsk” on Adobe Stock you can find dozens of images with flags and insignia of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. This “Republic” is the one that was created by Russian occupiers in 2014 and is under the US sanctions since 2022.

• Adobe doesn’t explicitly reveal the names of the creators on its platform. However, the Cyrillic names give you a 98% confidence that they come from Russia or the occupied territories.
• Furthermore, according to the terms of the Adobe Stock Contributors bonus program, these creators from Russia receive 33% royalties for publishing those images.

Why is it important?

Despite the claims to leave the Russian market, Adobe continues to deceive its customers by purposefully cooperating with the creators from Russia. Earlier in 2023, it became known that Adobe automatically renews licenses for Russian users free of charge. According to the Russian mass media, the company was doing this “to preserve the loyalty and support of its users in a difficult period.”

Moreover, the images are most surely violating Adobe Stock’s guidelines, as they display the flags and insignia of terrorist ogranizations. “Fun fact: you cannot find the ISIS flag on Adobe Stock, or even the Nazi Germany flag,” says Maksym Filipenko.

• This year’s “festival” will be held from 1 to 15 November 2023 with support from the European Union Embassy in Russia.
• The program includes 21 films from Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and other EU countries — all shown with Russian subtitles free of charge.
• The festival will also feature two films co-produced by Russian and European film studios.

“The slogan of the event is announced to be “Cinema Unites” — showcasing the unity of cultures and interests.”

The EU Embassy’s press office states.

Why is it important?

The news immediately caught the attention of Ukrainians who felt hurt and offended by such initiatives. Despite the atrocities that Russians are doing to Ukrainian citizens, the EU Embassy to Russia seems to be quite okay with providing entertainment to such Russians, normalizing their genocidal “culture.” Not only is this festival hurtful to Ukrainian people, but it also gives Russians funds and a platform to spread misinformation across the whole of Europe.

• At the onset of the full-scale war, Xerox “limited its operations in Russia”. These These limited operations included business with only specific clients and partners in full compliance with all applicable government-issued sanctions against the aggressor state.
• Xerox is now exiting its remaining operations in Russia and divesting the business to the local management through the sale of its Russian subsidiary. The details of the deal are undisclosed.
• According to Economichna Pravda with reference to the Russian mass media, “Xerox (CIS)” LLP will continue to work as an independent organization, will change its name in the near future, and will not be associated with the Xerox Corporation.

What harmful ideas spread

Among the most obvious ideas that are deliberately spread during this campaign: they say that the atrocities of Hamas in Israel show that Russia in Ukraine is fighting with restraint, and that the horrors of war against Ukraine are exaggerated. Or they even question the very reality of our war, and, unfortunately, this is done not only by paid Russian bots but also by very much real opinion leaders.

For example, Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet that he has not seen as many confirmations of the war in Ukraine as in a few days of the war in Israel.

This tweet shows well why it is important for Ukrainians not to stand aside now. This tweet with a blatantly false manipulative claim implying “exaggeration” of Ukrainians suffering from Russia’s attack has nearly 90,000 likes. GeoConfirmed’s replay of the same thread, which proves Trump Jr. is lying, has 18,600 likes. Lies in such cases almost always win refutation in terms of likes and coverage, because the audience loyal to the opinion leader primarily likes and distributes such tweets.

There are other malicious messages, from known and unknown accounts with “blue checkmarks”. It is duplicated almost verbatim in dozens, if not hundreds of such accounts and presents the audience with the idea that they say, imagine if Russia committed such atrocities in Ukraine, from a photo of the destroyed Gaza. Ukrainians do not need to imagine: they know that Russia used all types of weapons, except nuclear, and committed all types of war crimes. However, the Western audience does not always know about it. A few examples, along with examples of criticism of such posts:

There are a lot of such or similar messages, and it is expected that they reflect the opinions of propagandist Russian television.

That’s why, it is important to this information campaign.

How to resist them

If you speak English and have time for it, it is worth joining in refuting such messages. There may be several options for how to do this (examples are in the tweets above):

• If there are grounds in the message, file a complaint against it on Twitter for calls for genocide or violence.
• Adding context with evidence via Community Notes is one of the few Twitter features that came under Musk that could be useful. This is the context added below the tweet with evidence that the message contains misinformation or incomplete information. You can try to register in this community (what is Community Notes and how to register there, you can read here). And you can tag it to draw attention to a malicious tweet (@CommunityNotes).
• You can repost or retweet under such messages, but you should consider that direct interaction with them will increase their “visibility”. That is why, in some examples in the previous section, Ukrainian users share screenshots of messages, and not the messages themselves.
• If you have no ideas, you can see what other users do and help them to destroy these messages.

• This is not an isolated case or a mistake, as many well-known bloggers report the same. In each case the explanation from the platform (rather, an automatic response) sounds the same:

“Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our sex and nudity policy. We’ve removed the following content from YouTube.”

• Among those who received similar messages are Mykhas Korhorush, who runs a YouTube channel about pop culture, Tyler Anderson (Olexii Shkrobynets), who has a channel about TV series and movies, as well as many others.

• One of the possible explanations for this situation: massive reports on the videos and links coming from the Russian users, which led to auto-moderation of such content (if the complaints were reviewed by human moderators, they would see that they are absurd).
• Bloggers who faced such a problem are advised to appeal YouTube’s decision.

As of October 10, 2023, YouTube has allegedly applied human moderators to review the appeals of Ukrainian content makers and cancel decisions on fake violations of the rules.

What happened?

The ICRC issued a “code of conduct” for civilian hackers on how to fight a cyber war the right way. In particular, they were advised not to attack civilian objects, intimidate civilians, call for violations of international law, and so on.

Every rule on the Red Cross list had been previously violated by Russian hackers, particularly those linked to the Russian military, both before and after the full-scale invasion. Back in 2015, the Russian hackers left Ivano-Frankivsk and part of the Prykarpattia region without electricity, hacked Ukrainian state websites to gain access to citizens’ data, etc. Of course, it is futile to look for the Red Cross’s reaction to these incidents, because there is none.

In protest to such hypocrisy, the Ukrainian hacker group Hdr0 hacked the Russian website of the Red Cross and changed the lead page to the message that shows how the Russian branch of the ICRC violates the organization’s charter, in particular, the principle of humanity, independence, and universality. Currently, the website is offline, but its defaced main page remained in the web archive.

What caused such reaction?

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the ICRC’s reputation as a humane and independent international organization has suffered greatly. Its Russian representative office sometimes even helps the occupiers to violate the norms of international law. Some of the most striking examples include:

• In November 2022, it became known that the Russian Red Cross had stolen property from the Ukrainian branch in Crimea. Dmytro Lubynets, the authorized representative of the Verkhovna Rada on human rights, wrote about this in his Telegram. It was about 10 premises with a total area of 641 square meters, as well as 6 cars and office equipment.
• The Russian Red Cross supports the Russian military: in October 2022, it launched a fundraising to help the families of mobilized and military personnel of the Russian Federation, as part of the #МЫВМЕСТЕ campaign. The initiative is similar to those that the Russian volunteers launch to help their army. The award launched by Putin to support social initiatives has the same name (about which there is a separate news item on the website of the Russian Red Cross).
• Ukrainian paramedic Orest Hrytsiuk, recently released from Russian captivity, talked about how representatives of the Russian Red Cross scolded, mocked, and laughed at Ukrainian prisoners. In a comment, the ICRC representatives in Ukraine actually questioned his words:

• You can read more about what’s wrong with the ICRC in the material prepared by the OSINT community Molfar.
• It is also worth clarifying that there are two separate organizations: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a Swiss organization that has offices in various countries. There are also hundreds of separate national Red Cross societies (coordinated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies).

So the reaction of the Ukrainian hacker community to the ICRC’s hypocritical statements seems quite logical.

“There are no rules during wars. And the Red Cross (https://redcross.ru/), which is smeared with the blood of our prisoners and the tears of our children, has no right to giving advice or making rules about anything. We will use every opportunity to inflict maximum damage on our enemy,”

the group that hacked the organization’s Russian website said in the statement.

The context and picture with Crimea in Cyberpunk 2077

For the sake of objectivity, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, CD Projekt RED has expressed support for Ukraine. Back in March, the studio withdrew its games from sale in the Russian Federation and Belarus because of the Russian military invasion of their neighboring country. On February 25, it was announced that they were donating PLN 1 million (7 million UAH) for humanitarian aid. Thanks to these funds, the Prytula Foundation bought diesel generators to eliminate the consequences of the explosion of the Kakhovska Dam.

Given the studio’s stance on the war, its generally good reputation in the Ukrainian gaming community grew even more when it was announced that Cyberpunk 2077 and the game’s massive expansion, Phantom Liberty, would finally receive a Ukrainian localization.

• The translation was handled by two Ukrainian studios: Unlocteam, as well as “Шлякбитраф”, which previously localized another RPG hit, Baldur’s Gate 3. On September 21, 2023, Unlocteam announced that the translation was finally ready.

• Ukrainian fans of the game rejoiced at the news and praised the work: after all, a lot of adapted content appeared in the translation, understandable only to the Ukrainian audience. In particular, graffiti with the Ukrainian Crimea was specifically recognized.

In summary, Ukrainian gamers were happy about the localization and were waiting for the release of Phantom Liberty. This is the reason why the Polish studio’s apology to the Russians looked all the more unpleasant.

What was the apology for?

An apology appeared on the studio’s official Telegram channel for the Russian community: the very fact of a separate channel for Russian players already surprised many so much that they doubted its authenticity (and the studio even has an active VKontakte page). But this is a real channel announced on the game’s official website with a verification check mark. This channel published an apology to the Russians for the fact that some points in the Ukrainian localization could offend them.

“The Ukrainian localization of Cyberpunk 2077 contains several lines that could offend certain Russian players. These lines are not written by CD Projekt RED and do not reflect our views. We are working to fix them and replace them in the next update.”

What lines are we talking about? One of them, probably, is a free translation of the phrase, where assholes was replaced by “rusnia”:

The game also has a “Russian” pose: when the character squats like a “gopnik” and other similar jokes. Moreover, in the English-language game media it is also said that the studio apologized for the graffiti, that is, probably for the image of the Ukrainian Crimea.

Previously, the Unlocteam studio wrote that all terminology was agreed with the game developers.

How the Ukrainian community reacts to this

It was not difficult to predict the Ukrainian reaction to all this. No one expected an apology to the Russians from the Polish studio that supported Ukraine and removed its games from the Russian market.

There is also an alternative opinion: that translators should not resort to such free adaptation. According to journalist and blogger Viktor Tregubov, the developers are now apologizing not out of love for Russians, but because such trolling is illegal in some countries. Also, this situation, which is already being written about by foreign game media, may scare other foreign game studios away from the idea of making an official Ukrainian translation, because no one would like to get into the intricacies of the conflict.

P.S. We liked the jokes about Russians. Pity they will be removed.

Many global businesses exited the Russian market, but many didn’t, what was your company’s stance on that? When have you decided that you would be leaving the Russian market?

Ukrainian Persha Studiia (Wargaming Kyiv) reports up to me, so I frequently visited Ukraine. The last visit was in October 2021 and had two purposes: to look at the game projects in development and to assess the situation on the ground. Before I left I agreed with Serhii Shumyhora (Executive Director of Wargaming Kyiv) that we should begin preparing for the worst. 

So the weekend before the invasion, we opened a site in Truskavets with a capacity of 200 people with infrastructure and networks ready for work. Within 4 hours of the first Russian troops crossing the border, we had buses ready to transfer our people to a safer place. I was contacting Serhii and the team regularly to make sure they had everything they needed. 

Immediately after that, I began to work with our chief executive team to put together the options around what we should do next. By the first or second week in March, I concluded that the right decision for the company was to exit Russia and Belarus completely. You can imagine how huge a deal that was.

So how did you organise it?

We did some preliminary work and it all culminated in what we called a work week. We didn’t want to have lots of people speculating about what we were discussing, so it was a kind of nondescript way of talking about it. We gathered all the senior executives together for a week in a head office and by Wednesday (30th of March) we had made the decision to exit Russia and Belarus. We didn’t want our games seized by the state and used for propaganda purposes. 

We had a board meeting on the 31st of March to confirm or reject the decision. Some questions were asked like: should we have the ability to buy it back? But my position was: there’s no going back, no hidden clauses. So the board voted for it. 

So legally on the 31st of March, the Lesta Studio ceased to be part of Wargaming (it was acquired by Wargaming 10 years earlier — editorial note).

Amusingly enough we decided against publishing a press release about it on the 1st of April, to avoid people thinking about it as a joke. So we made the media announcement on the 4th of April. All of our Russian operations have been withdrawn since then. 

As you announced your exit from the Russian market in April, could it be safely said that Wargaming has not received any dollar of revenue from Russia since then?

From the 31st of March, no money has gone in or come out of the Russian market for us. We’ve been very clear about that.

The business was disposed of to local management at 0 cost, debt free, cash free, with no consideration to take it back. We went through the formalities of registering the sale in Russia and completed the registration 8 days before Russia passed all the laws preventing international businesses from exiting its market.

Was the Russian market one of the key markets for Wargaming? How much money did the company lose due to leaving Russia? What were your estimates and did they prove to be realistic?

The estimates were almost precise, within 3% of the revenue for our fiscal year that ended March 23. We lost $250 million of revenue due to that decision. However, we managed to stabilize the losses and operations through asset disposals, some exits, and so on. And by August 2022 we brought ourselves back to breakeven. 

In terms of staff, 2/3 of our employees were in Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine before the invasion. Around 3400 people out of 5400 were in those three countries. The vast majority of the Russian employees stayed in Russia at Lesta Studio. So our headcount shrank to 2800 but till September 2022 bounced back to over 3000.

How many players have you had in Russia and Belarus? Did you get any sort of hate commentaries from your Russian user base concerning this decision?

The user base we lost was about 5 mln. These were significant markets to us and significant player numbers. 

When you make a really difficult decision like that, there will be hostile people. But we believed what we were doing was right for our company and for Ukraine. 

Could you say anything about the Ukrainian office’s performance during the full-scale war?

I haven’t visited the Ukrainian office since the full-scale war started but I talk to them regularly. There’s an English expression: they’ve barely missed a beat. That’s about sums it up. The team has been incredible.

Some were already working remotely, and some made their own arrangements when the war started, but the core of our teams have not missed a beat. They provided all of last Halloween’s events in World of Tanks. Our Central Art team in Kyiv has worked at full capacity and full utilization. 

We obviously have done everything we can to support them. And as I said before we were not going to lay off people. In fact, we’re we’re planning potentially to grow a little bit there and in Ukraine.

How many people are you going to hire in Ukraine?

For example, if we are talking about our Central Art Team, there will be growth in headcount numbers. It is not finalized yet, but we think our Central Art Team will grow around 40% and much of that will be in Ukraine.

Many people here worry about the winter and potential Russian attacks that will bring lasting blackouts. Is the company ready to support its Kyiv office? 

The unequivocal answer is yes. In Kyiv, we have backup generators, sheltering capabilities, additional supplies for water, and other facilities.

If we are talking about the state of the global gaming landscape and the company’s place in it, Covid seemed to give some sort of a boost to gamedev with everyone staying home and playing games, what changed since then for gamedev companies? 

First of all, we take great pride in being able to support a lot of people through the time of COVID. Games were one of the very few forms of entertainment available to most people. You either watched Netflix or played games. We’re very proud of the contribution we made to people’s mental health. 

In our company, there was no question that remote working affected productivity.  What we found is certain types of activities and certain types of processes actually work better remotely. It’s often leaders and managers, who struggle to run a remote team integrated with an in-office team. But we all got better at managing during Covid. 

Now the majority of our colleagues attend the workplace almost full time, or at least three days a week. But there also are teams who continue to operate in whatever mode their leaders and managers feel best.

Are there any specific challenges for them now, financially speaking, especially with some sort of crisis going on in global IT?

All of us expect a decline the next year, certainly on the mobile side. But there are a lot of other forces and decisions at work here. For example, Apple’s decisions on privacy have severely impacted mobile game publishing. If you have an existing franchise as we do, the impact is not so visible. But we feel deeply sorry for people trying to bring a new mobile game to market. To launch a new mobile title now you’ll probably need $100 million of launch marketing. 

It is raising the cost of user acquisition, it’s hurting the economics of the games and it’s playing into the hands, to be honest, of big players like EA, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and so on. 

As for the decline in mobile gaming, unfortunately, I think we’ll continue to see this trend next year. Those who will be trying to break into the market will find it to be more challenging. 

Speaking about independent studios, you most definitely saw the recent conflict between Unity and its new business model and indie developers…

It’s fair to say I was surprised with their decision to pivot and become an engine/platform. It is more recession-proof to own an infrastructure that the industry runs on. So I think I understand their strategy. But I also think they have to find ways to support and help small players who might suffer from that. 

And that brings us to the rest of your question. From my personal point of view (not the company’s CFO), the economy’s now looking quite challenging for those small developers. 

In 2019-2020, and even 2021 globally we had incredibly low interest rates, and investors with huge amounts of liquidity they wanted to put to use. So then anybody who could spell ‘video game’ was getting funding just fine, whether the idea was good or bad. But lots of those games are running out of that funding. There are even huge titles that simply ran out of cash.

What you see is now an industry-wide reduction. At the same time, we are seeing great talents becoming available that weren’t available earlier.

People still believe that if they fund the right game, they’ll make x10, x30, but the reality is that one on maybe 100 games becomes a hit. If I had to summarize it, I’d say the market is correcting to become more normal.

I’d say we see some of the same trends we saw in Hollywood, where a shrinking number of studios and huge franchises pumping out similar stuff. Every now and then you could get a ‘Blair Witch’ project or a ‘Squid Game’ from an independent studio of course. And I think gaming is moving in that direction. 

The ability to develop a successful game for someone is still there, but it’s getting tougher and the availability of funding is going down. But I’d still encourage those startups to keep going. The breakthroughs in gaming are worth it and the immense pleasure they give gamers is worth it as well. 

According to CNN, citing an unreleased biography of Musk written by American journalist and author Walter Isaacson, the billionaire’s decision was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons.

• Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet.
• As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.
• Musk’s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by a fear that Russia will utilize nuclear weapons in response to the Ukrainian attack on Crimea. Important to note, this fear was driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials.
• Musk’s concerns over a “mini-Pearl Harbor” did not come to pass in Crimea. But the episode reveals the unique position Musk found himself in as the war in Ukraine unfolded.
• Whether intended or not, he became an influential agent who also allowed the Kremlin to influence his views and decisions. As a result, existential fears led Musk to reject Ukrainian requests for Starlink systems that they could use to attack the Russians.

• The Russian Army regularly uses three main models of drones: Shahed-136/131, Lancet, and Orlan-10. At the same time, Russia still relies heavily on foreign-made components, including microelectronics, in the production of UAVs.
• According to a study by the International Task Force, China is the main supplier of critical components for Russian drones, accounting for 67% of shipments, with 17% of them going through Hong Kong.
• Turkey and the United Arab Emirates account for 5% and 2% of the components, respectively. Components made in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, and other countries, including processors, chips, transistors, and other key components, were also found in the drones.
• At the same time, according to the International Task Force’s report, many details can be obtained through publicly available platforms, which complicates regulatory oversight.
• In regards to this, the experts called on manufacturers to do more to prevent Russia from accessing their products to circumvent economic sanctions.
• In particular, it is proposed to coordinate sanction lists among partner countries, to standardize lists of dual-use goods based on the Harmonized Systems, and to expand the categories of goods subject to sanctions based on the Harmonized Systems.

What connects GEM Capital, Gazprom, and VTB Bank

• GEM Capital was founded in 2017 by Anatoly Paliy. After getting his degree and working for PwC in Paris, he came back to Russia in 2005 to work as an assistant to the head of Gazenergoset (“Газэнергосеть”), Gazprom’s (“Газпром”) daughter company, and the deputy general director then up until 2013.
• In 2013, Paliy used his experience and finances made in Gazprom to create First Oil, which was later incorporated into GEM Capital.
• In 2019, GEM Capital sold its shares of First Oil to Yakov Goldovskyi, founder of SIBUR (“CИБУР”), taken over by Gazprom in 2002, and Korund-Cian (“Корунд-Циан”), a producer of a variety of chemical products for military, industrial, agricultural, and household use. Russian VTB bank, 75,5% of which is owned by the state, financed the deal.
• In 2021, Goldovskyi sold back Korund-Cian to GEM Capital. Once again, VTB participates in the deal as the owner of the quarter of the shares.

AIN.Capital reminds that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the VTB bank was sanctioned by Western countries, including the US, in order to limit the money the Russian government spends on the full-scale war it launched on February 24, 2022.

GEM Capital invests in Russian projects

GEM Capital is a Russian fund, which is also run by Russians, including Kirill Gurskiy and Roman Gurskiy as Managing Directors. The company doesn’t mention its ties to Russia in any way, highlighting only its international focus and offices in Paphos and Dubai. As a lot of examples show, Cyprus is one of the most popular jurisdiction Russians prefer to chose for moving their companies. GEM Capital is the investor of several game tech startups “originating” from Cyprus.

• Mundfish is one of GEM’s portfolio companies. The game studio was founded in 2017 by Russians in Cyprus and is best known as the developer of Atomic Heart, a USSR and communism-glorifying shooter that makes fun of the killings of Ukrainians, collects gamers data for the FSB, and is used to sell Russian military equipment.

• Owlcat Games is another company founded by Russian. It is the developer of Kingmaker: Pathfinder and Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader. On several occasions the company stated that it completely left Russian, moving to Cyprus, but was still hiring for its Moscow office.
• Other less popular companies include the Belarus developer Weappy (This Is the Police), Unfrozen Studio (Iratus: Lord of the Dead), and Eschatology Entertainment.

It is not the first case, when the investment fund positioned itself as international, but is closely tied to Russia. Previously, we investigated London-based Flashpoint’s year-to-year activities and shared the story of its transformation from $10 million Moscow-based Buran VC to the international technology investment firm with $500 million AuM and 7 offices worldwide.

• In Minecraft, a popular sandbox game owned by Microsoft, Russian players re-enacted the battle for Soledar, a city in Ukraine that Russian forces occupied in January. The whole thing was coordinated through the Russian-state-controlled social media platform VKontake.
• In May 2023, the players of the Russian version of World of Tanks, a multiplayer tank warfare game, recreated the Soviet Union’s parade of tanks in Moscow 1945, glorifying the Soviet army for the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
• In another popular gaming platform Roblox, a user created an array of Interior Ministry forces in June to celebrate the national holiday, Russia Day.

Molfar OSINT agency identified more than a dozen instances of pro-Kremlin propaganda in Minecraft, Roblox, Russian version of World of Tanks, World of Warships, Fly Corp, Armored Warfare, War Thunder, and others. Almost all extolled the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

These examples are only reinforced by the use of current war propaganda against Ukraine, like using the letter “Z”, a symbol of Russian invasion, in various multiplayer games or creation of groups in Discord and Steam to glorify the Wagner group, a Russian paramilitary terrorist organization.

• A recent example is Atomic Heart, a game financed by Gazprom, which strongly relies on communist agenda, facilitating the myths of Russian military superiority. In March, Atomic Heart‘s characters even appeared on shopfronts of Armrus, a Russian state military store. It also became known that the game cooperates with the FSB by collecting gamers’ data for the Russian agency via its website.
• Another similar Russian-developed game is Escape from Tarkov. The developers marketed their new DLC by showing a middle finger to the in-game model of a Ukrainian soldier. And on the game’s subreddit and forum, the moderators are erasing all references to the war in Ukraine, hiding the horrors of Russian invasion from the unsuspecting players.

The gaming industry is becoming more and more similar to the ideological battlefield, as pro-Ukrainian developers and gamers set off to combat the Russian misinformation campaign.

• In June, 2023, Finland’s largest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat hired two map designers to create a special de_voyna map in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It contained a hidden room detailing the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Eventually the map was banned by Steam for unknown reasons, however currently it can be downloaded again.
• Another Finnish initiative came from the Rockodile Games, supported by the German publisher Lesser Evil. The studio created Death from Above, a game about a Ukrainian drone operator fighting against Russian invaders.

Hendrik Lesser, CEO at Lesser Evil, believes that it is time to be overtly political, rather than avoiding difficult topics like most companies in the game development industry do. The game developers should respond to the challenges when the democracy is under assault. Especially, when Russian propaganda is trying to take roots in gaming industry.

What does Blizzard offer?

“Join Mila Kunis in supporting BlueCheck and their mission to provide critical humanitarian relief in war-torn Ukraine. Purchase a special, time-limited Pet Pack for Ukraine, and we will donate all proceeds from its sales to this important cause,”

Blizzard’s announcement says.

• The Pet Pack for Ukraine includes two pets: Sunny for World of Warcraft and Flurky for Wrath of the Lich King Classic, which have the same colors as the Ukrainian flag.

• Sunny, a golden retriever, occasionally chases her tail or… falls asleep if you take a break in your adventures. Flurky, a baby murloc, carries a sunflower, the national flower of Ukraine, and is followed by a colorful flower trail as he toddles along by your side.
• Both Sunny and Flurky will be applied to present and future World of Warcraft and Wrath of the Lich King Classic characters on a single regional Battle.net account. Sunny will appear in your Collections automatically. To redeem Flurky, complete a short quest from Innkeepers in any capital city, or speak with Landro Longshot in Booty Bay.

What is BlueCheck?

BlueCheck Ukraine, co-founded by actor and activist Liev Schreiber, was launched by a collective of humanitarian crisis response experts whose mission is to quickly identify, vet and support grassroots Ukrainian aid organizations that provide critical life-saving and humanitarian work on-the-ground.

The organization fast-tracks urgent financial funds to partners who deliver medical care, evacuate orphans, provide shelter for people driven from their homes, take care of senior citizens, supply drinking water, and quickly respond to many more urgent needs of Ukrainians affected by the war.

• The stream lasted for almost 8 hours. Initially, the goal was to collect about €64,000 (UAH 2,658,000) to buys just one drone, but according to the results of the fundraiser, the amount exceeded the goal three times. Only in the first hour he managed to raise more than €72,000 (UAH 3 million).
• According to the blogger, after an hour of streaming, the stream reached #1 on Twitch in the world. During the stream, Leb1ga and his followers joked that the next fundraiser would be to buy F-16s or the “the atom bomb”.
• Significantly, the Ukrainian-language stream became number one not only in Ukraine, but globally on the entire platform.

“It’s four in the morning and our fundraiser is closed. There are 6,000 people here at four in the morning on a Monday. For me, this is one of the best days of my life. You are the best people I have ever seen. This fundraiser is an example for those people who do not utilize their resources, do not do what they are able to do,”

the blogger said.

• Mykhailo Lebiha is a popular Ukrainian blogger and Tiktoker. He often moderates Dota 2 games or comments on reality shows. He has 134,000 followers on Twitch.

• In mid-April 2023, a diplomat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland sent an e-mail to various embassies announcing that he was selling a used BMW 5 Series sedan in Kyiv.
• However, the group of hackers APT29 or “Cozy Bear”, which is associated with the Russian Federation, intercepted and copied this announcement, inserted malware into it and sent it to dozens of other foreign diplomats working in Kyiv. The malware was disguised as a BMW photo album.
• The Polish diplomat said he sent the original ad to various embassies in Kyiv, and that someone called him back because the price looked “attractive.” “When I checked, I realized that they were talking about a slightly lower price,” the diplomat said. It turned out that the hackers listed a lower price for the diplomat’s BMW — €7,500 — to get more people to click on the ad.
• In 2021, US and British intelligence services identified APT29 as a unit of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. In April 2023, Polish counterintelligence and cyber security agencies warned that the group had conducted a “large-scale intelligence campaign” against NATO member states, the European Union, and Africa.
• Unit 42 researchers were also able to link the fake car ad to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service because the hackers used certain tools and techniques previously used by Russians.

• Yuriy joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a volunteer on the third day after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, on the first day of the formation of his brigade and battalion.

“We have lost one of the bravest, strongest, and most loyal heroes. Yura fought so well that he became one of the undisputed leaders of his unit. On his last combat mission, he took the first and fatal blow and at the cost of his own life gave others the opportunity to retreat,”

Olena writes.

• Yuriy has a family left behind: his parents and brother, so SoftServe launched a donation fund to support the family.

• Previously, Twitter was giving Blue checkmarks to verified accounts: users got used to the fact that it is a sign that the account can be trusted. “Blue ticks” were given to accounts of well-known media, famous personalities, and business accounts.
• After Twitter Blue became available as a subscription, a bunch of accounts with such a checkmark appeared, spreading false information about Ukraine and the full-scale war launched by Russia, aiming at the Western audience: Europeans and Americans.
• The BBC provides several examples of such misinformation. For example, Twitter Blue users spread information that allegedly during protests in France, policemen are being shot with American rifles brought from Ukraine. The publication is illustrated with a photo of two rifles. Posts gained millions of views. BBC traced the post to pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, and the photo itself turned out to be an image from the shooting competition near Moscow in 2012.
• Also, several blue ticks spread the information that Russia found factories in Ukraine that grow children up to 2-7 years old either for organs or for sexual slavery. As wild as this “news” sounds, due to the fact that it was posted by several accounts with a blue checkmark, it received thousands of likes and retweets:

• BBC Verify traced the news to The People’s Voice (also known as YourNewsWire), which fact-checking organizations describe as one of the biggest purveyors of fake news on the internet. The idea that in Ukraine people are used for organ trafficking is also actively promoted by the Russian media.
• At the end of June 2023, a Russian missile killed eight people in Kramatorsk. The blue ticks got to work here too, and spread misinformation that the missile was mistakenly launched by Ukrainians, it suddenly changed its trajectory and destroyed a military facility with foreign mercenaries:

• This post is a bingo of Russian propaganda: there are missiles that magically change their trajectory, and “foreign mercenaries”, and Ukraine, which shoots at its own population. The publication was viewed by a million users. Of course, there are no actual proofs.
• Another disinformation campaign appeared to work because few Western readers are interested in Ukrainian legislation. In an interview with the BBC, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that there will be no presidential elections in Ukraine in 2024, because according to the Constitution, presidential and parliamentary elections are not held until the martial law is ended. Loyal Russian blue ticks as well as American journalists carried this quote in the context that “Zelensky abolished democracy” (former Fox News host Tucker Carslon). Blue ticks spread this piece of misinformation and it was reposted hundreds of thousands of times.
• Twitter declined to comment on the matter when asked by BBC Verify.

Some other recent news about Twitter include the social media intentionally silencing tweets about Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as massively shadowbanning Ukrainian users.

• Traditionally, the European investors largely avoided supporting the military and defense tech industries, as the investments could’ve been considered unethical, Sifted writes. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused the sector to soar, as several companies managed to secure big money after the start of the war.
• The defense sector is currently connected to Ukraine in some way or another. In 2023, several huge funding cases came into being, including the $8 million investment in production of Dovbush T10 drones or Microsoft Ukraine ex-head’s 50% share acquisition of the AeroDrone company.
• It is also worth mentioning that a military tech accelerator D3 will be launched in recent months in Ukraine, and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, is among its LPs.
• Furthermore, NATO is also actively preparing to launch its €1 billion Innovation Fund. The initiative aims to support deeptech startups from 23 allied-countries that can have double-use in both civilian life and for the defense and security purposes.

• The EIF fund is supposed to be announced in Brussels on June 29 at an investor workshop and defense startups pitch session.

What is the de_voyna map about?

• The de_voyna map was created by Helsingin Sanomat, the largest newspaper in Finland, who paid two map designers to create a map with a hidden room detailing the horrors of the war in Ukraine. It was released on May 2, 2023.
• For some time, the map was one of the most popular custom-made map in the CS:GO workshop. Up until the block, de_voyna was downloaded over 24,000 times.

• Now, Steam has removed the map for reasons unknown. It is not clear whether the map violated any real community guidelines, or was it mass-reported by pro-Russian Steam accounts (which are plenty), or did Steam simply not like the idea that Russia’s illegal actions were put on international display.

Why does it matter?

It’s no news that Valve often faces community backlash from its dedicated users, and more often ignores them completely. It seems that the company would rather focus on making blunt profit, demonstrating their lack of moral agency. No wonder the Steam platform is home to many far-right communities, including Wagner terrorist group sympathizers.

Although, it’s somehow strange that Valve would block a map that displays the war horrors that groups like Wagner brought to a peaceful nation of Ukraine. And for some reason, these radical communities still thrive on its platform.

Russian companies still use Adobe products and don’t even pay

• User licenses that were purchased through the official Adobe online store have the option of auto-renewal after linking the card. The Russians assume that the company made such a decision due to the difficulties of paying with Russian bank cards.
• An employee of one of the Russian IT companies confirmed to the Russian mass media that he received a free license extension, but added that the auto-renewal option is not available for corporate versions.
• An employee of another Russian IT company added that the function of automatic renewal of the subscription became possible six months ago: “You cannot buy a new subscription — you can only renew it for those products that the user already has. It concerns only the subscriptions of individual users.”
• Yehor Sechynsky, CEO of the Russian game studio Ninsar.Games, previously spoke about the possibility of automatic extension of the subscription to Adobe products. He noted that the Adobe package subscription “is still active, but we haven’t paid for it in a year.”
• At the same time, back in March 2022, the Adobe company, referring to the sanctions of the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, announced that it would “immediately stop selling all new Adobe products and services in Russia.”

Why is it important?

Hundreds of Western companies stop their export to the aggressor country, as well as close Russian offices and try to sever all ties with the country. However, Adobe did not just shut down its products to Russian users — it actually provided them with unprecedented conditions — free of charge access to its software.

Residents of no other country in the world have such conditions. Adobe is an American company, but neither Americans nor Ukrainians suffering from Russian missile attacks have free access to its services (Ukrainians were indeed given 3 free months but just at the beginning of the war).

How such a policy of the company correlates with its statements from March 2022 about “the immediate termination of sales of all new Adobe products and services in Russia” is not yet clear.

Furthermore, Adobe is one of the companies wholove sponsoring academic conferences with Russian attendees, ignoring the pleas of Ukrainians, who are offended by such occurrences, to remove these people from such events.

• Back in June 2022, it became known that various types of Russian weapons use chips and elements from a dozen American companies, including Intel, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, and Onsemi.
• At the time, FBI and Commerce Department agents examined American tech companies to find out the origin of computer chips found in drones and other weapons that Russia is using in the war against Ukraine.
• However, judging by the photos of a custom drone captured by Ukrainian defenders as of May 2023, the situation has practically not changed, and the Russians continue to use Western technologies for the war in Ukraine.

• The photos show a product of the American company Intel — Neural Compute Stick 2, which, according to the manufacturer’s description, allows you to “deploy a computer vision system (for example, a gesture recognition system on drones or industrial robots), as well as artificial intelligence systems on various prototypes and IoT devices.”
• In addition, the Russians use the GP.1575.15.4.B.02 GPS/GALILEO patch antenna manufactured by the American Taoglas (or its analogue from the same manufacturer) and a Raspberry Pi single-board computer developed by the British Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Why is it important?

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, the United States and many allies banned all sales of microchips to Russian military buyers and sanctioned the sale of microchips to other Russian buyers in an attempt to prevent the country’s armed forces from accessing Western technology.

However, Russia has established the so-called “parallel import”, when the chips are not officially purchased by the Russian Federation itself, but by its neighbors. Thus, in the first half of 2022 alone, the export of smartphones from Kazakhstan to the Russian Federation increased by 2,100 times, microprocessors and controllers — by 121 times.

In order to really defeat Russia and prevent them from developing military technologies, the civilized world must effectively use restrictions on the supply of goods to Russia, and apply secondary sanctions, punishing those who help the aggressor country.

• On March 12, 2023, the Twitter user @the_Latis posted a screenshot of a Steam group named PMC Wagner Group, which had over 1,700 members at the time. Many of the members were active, having posted 12 pages worth of Ruscist symbols and messages of support for the terrorist group.

• Furthermore, this community of active war supporters is not unique. Several other groups with similar “interests” were found across the Steam platform. One of them has nearly 14,000 participants as of the time of the publication.

• Despite many appeals and reports, the Steam Support doesn’t seem to want to react properly. So far, Steam has neither acknowledged the situation, nor responded to the users who are disturbed by such communities freely existing on the platform.

There are more cases of Steam tolerating pro-Kremlin users

• Such offensive behavior is pretty common among Steam’s Russian community. In March 2022, Russian players started review bombing the cult Ukrainian game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on Steam after its developers, GSC Game World, took their games down from the Russian store segment.
• And later, in April 2022, Valve has completely stopped making payments for games to Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian developers. Back then, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine called on Valve to resume payments to Ukrainian game developers or provide a clear explanation of why the company can not make these payments.
• Earlier this year, Steam also didn’t pull from its platform Russian-made game Atomic Heart, created on the money from the US-sanctioned companies and individuals. The company didn’t anyhow react to the facts that the game was actively mocking the nation, that the Russian army was committing war crimes against. Another similar gaming experience, Escape from Tarkov, can also still be freely bought on the platform.

The accelerator will work in several directions:

• investments in early stage startups,
• acceleration,
• mentoring.

As part of the acceleration, D3 will also provide $125,000 to projects with the possibility of additional funding later in time.

The volume of the fund started with $10 million, and now it is more than $30 million. According to AIN.Capital, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, is among those who is financing D3.

In September 2022, Schmidt visited Ukraine and had a meeting with the Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov and the Chairman of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak. Eric Schmidt himself previously worked with the US Department of Defense on innovation and is currently a consultant to the US government on artificial intelligence.

According to the SCMP, in September 2022, after a 36-hour visit to Ukraine, Schmidt said that the civil technology sector is critical to Kyiv’s defense. Also in February 2023, Schmidt told Wired about his portfolio company Ishtari, which develops AI solutions for military purposes.

The accelerator’s activities will be overseen by Eveline Buchatskiy, who, according to information from open sources, lived in the USA and Brazil, but is of Ukrainian origin. Her track record includes Eastlabs, TA Ventures, and TechStars. Her LinkedIn already lists a new position at D3, which she appears to combine with a position as VP of Special Projects at AirSlate. To confirm the information, the AIN.Capital editorial staff asked the accelerator, but Eveline Buchatskiy refused to comment.

The accelerator is entirely focused on military-related startups, although the directions of the projects may be different. From what AIN.Capital knows, D3 will invest in AI solutions for intelligence, cybersecurity, and military tech, namely UAVs, EW, communications, navigation, and precision munitions technologies.

Representatives of the accelerator promise that they will work in close cooperation with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. To apply, please write to: apply@d3.vc.

Who was Daniil Safonov

Daniil Safonov moved from Donetsk to Mariupol in 2014 after the Russian hybrid invasion of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine. He became a soldier of a separate artillery brigade and fought Russian mercenaries for 3 years. After that, in 2019 he returned to Mariupol and joined the patrol police.

Safonov defended Mariupol since the first day of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In his Twitter Daniil shared the details about how military men and civilians lived on the territory of the Azovstal plant, surrounded by Russian occupiers, and the course of battles for the city. He died on May 2, 2022, during a combat mission together with two comrades.

Suddenly, a couple of days ago, Daniil Safonov’s account on Twitter was blocked for “violating the community rules”. This is weird since Daniil made his last post about a year ago, before his death. What rules could the fallen hero possibly violate after a year since his death is yet unclear.

The blocking caused outrage among users, who accused Twitter of trying to cover up Russian crimes by deleting the evidence of it from social media.

The company didn’t respond to a single one of those tweets.

Daniil is not the only one who was blocked

Daniil Safonov’s account is not the only one blocked by Twitter recently. The account of fallen Hlib Babich @Hlibovy-Baiky was also blocked for similar reasons.

Hlib was a Ukrainian poet and author from Mykolaiv, blogger, volunteer, and participant in the Russian-Ukrainian war since 2014. He died on July 28, 2022, together with three comrades, as a result of an explosion on an anti-tank mini-vehicle of the “Loki” intelligence complex near Izyum, in the Kharkiv region.

His Twitter account is now completely empty, as well as Daniil Safonov’s.

Why is the company doing this?

In recent months, Twitter’s policies changed. On May 8, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced that the social media platform will remove accounts that have been inactive for several years. He said that the action is “important to free up abandoned handles.” But both accounts mentioned above are inactive less than several years, and the reason for blocking was “violating” some rules, however it is unclear which ones.

Since Elon Mask became in charge of Twitter, Russian propaganda entered a new golden era on the platform for spreading lies about the war in Ukraine. The company, which previously tried to fight misinformation by at least labeling Kremlin-backed media, now seems not to care about it at all, instead banning the voices of Ukrainians who struggle to convey the truth and disseminate evidence of Russian war crimes.

Is it the truth that violates Twitter’s policy, or what was the actual reason for blocking the account, which remained silent for a year?

AIN.Capital spoke with CEO of the startup, Hoan Ton-That, about how Clearview AI helps to identify perpetrators of the war crimes and look for missing people, as well as about plans to open a Ukrainian office.

Are you planning to launch an office here in Ukraine?

We are considering it right now – there is so much great talent here for software development. Also, it’s an excellent place to test new products, especially security related because there is a stronger need for security products here now than anywhere else. Your guys have to develop drone-based tech, AI, and other digital warfare really quickly. 

And all the Ukrainian software developers I’ve met here are really great, as a software developer I can confirm that. There’s a lot of potential here, after, and even during the war. 

You are working with the Ukrainian government. How it all started?

When the war started we reached out to them, thinking that our tech could be helpful, though we didn’t understand at the time the scope of its potential usefulness here in Ukraine. We passed a message to Ukrainian agencies with a former ambassador and a week later got an email from the Ukrainian Border Service and Ministry of Defence. 

During the Zoom call, we demonstrated how it worked. They sent me some test photos and right away our service identified who the people in those photos were. So Border Service started using it, and the word spread amongst other agencies. During my first visit to Kyiv, I met some of the people I had seen only via Zoom. 

Now 14 government agencies are using it, it’s been used to identify thousands of war criminals and over a thousand missing people. That’s just one Ukrainian agency using it. And IAd I think there’s a potential for more collaboration. We are constantly learning new ways to use our software so we can improve it. 

Our Board Guard Service said they were able to identify 10 000 Russian war criminals via ClearView. Is it accurate?

I think they meant 10 000 identifications overall. It includes 50 people involved in the recent human trafficking of Ukrainian children put up for adoption in Russia, more than 700 civilian prisoners of war, and over 3,900 servicemen of the Russian Federation. The National Police of Ukraine also worked a lot with Clearview to identify war criminals. In previous wars, there was little or no way to identify who the person committing war crimes was. Now we have photo and video footage. So for the first time, there is an option to run the search and find a VK profile or other related information. And after the verification, they know who did this. 

Do you have datasets of photos of Russian soldiers and other representatives of the occupation forces?

We have over 2 bln images from VK. And that was before the war, now we have much more data from VK and other social media sites. 

How accurate is your tech? There was this horrid video of Russians decapitating a Ukrainian POW. Could your tech identify them?

I saw the video at the meeting with Ukrainian government agencies and I just couldn’t make myself look. But our tech is quite accurate and surprisingly effective in such cases, if there is a face or part of a face visible. 

I could show you some examples we cannot share. There were photos of dead Russian soldiers with faces and bodies mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable but still, Clearview was able to match those with VK profiles. 

Even as software engineers we are constantly surprised by what AI can do, it’s on the verge of magic.

There is an agency in the US called the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that tests thousands of algorithms o facial recognition. And ours is the second best in the world, number one is a Chinese company. One of the tests is to pick a particular photo out of 12 mln. So our accuracy is about 99.85%. 

 And even if our service should make a mistake, Ukrainian agencies always make sure to verify the info.  

Are there cases of people being identified and prosecuted due to your tech?

There was a video of Ukrainian POWs shot in the head on CNN and I remember texting a National Police representative about it, and Clearview was used successfully in that identification. 

There is another thing to it because with this level of deanonymization if you are on the Russian side you might just start thinking – do you really want to go to war if they know who you are? This might be the very first-time war criminals have nowhere to hide. 

Also, Clearview could be used to find missing and kidnapped kids. We have a feature that gives an alert when a particular missing child has another photo appears on the internet. 

What are non-warfare use cases for your service?

Missing persons, and missing IDs, there’s a strong security need for such tech, even after the war ended. For example, If I’m opening a bank account and opt-in to use face recognition to log on to it, that could prevent loads of scams and fraud schemes. 

Many opinion leaders in tech share their concerns about AI use, because it is not quite controllable. What do you think?

Our philosophy is that AI should be a regulated technology. That’s why we only sell it to government agencies and law enforcement. If we’d sold it to anyone it would be a lot more of a misusage. ChatGPT has lots of potential and many people use it, but we still do not know all the bonuses and downfalls of such tech. I think there’s gonna be a lot more positives than negatives about it. But still tech companies should be more responsible about it. They hold lots of power and responsibility comes with it. But I’m still a huge believer in AI. 

This war has been named the war of technologies many times. Do you agree? 

There’s a lot of new tech that could help to win a war. And I believe Ukraine will win it. The first reason is the resolve of Ukrainians and morale being really high. But I do think that it is one of the first wars in history where digital tech has a lot of impact, the first digitally enabled war. 

It is basically streamed online and it helped Ukraine to gather so much support and isolate Russia. War atrocities are hard to look upon but being constantly present online they are hard to look away from. All the imagery from cell phones, satellites, and CCTV could also be used in future trials to condemn those who are responsible.

“Imagine a morning when you wake up to the familiar sound of the air raid siren, getting ready for another day at work, and find that all access to your work environment has been revoked. Without any explanation or warning. Without any communication or exposition. Unfortunately, lots of people in my country don’t need to imagine this because it is our reality. The situation described above affected me and my colleagues from the Ukrainian office of Edible Brands (Edible Arrangements). For many months, the Ukrainian team of this company has been working during the evacuation from the occupied territories, during air raids, and moving to other countries in search of peace and safety for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, on November 17, 2022, Edible Brands abruptly stopped working with us,”. 

Pavlo wrote in a LinkedIn post.

As stated by Buidenkov, the company’s CEO, Tariq Farid, promised to pay 100% compensation in exchange for corporate equipment. In response, Ukrainian Edible Brands team members sent equipment at their own expense from different parts of Ukraine and abroad. However, after six months, the Ukrainian team received only more requests for confirmation of the tasks they had completed and another audit from the Ukrainian law firm they had hired.

The team collectively appeals to Edible Brands and urges their representatives to settle their accounts with people honestly and transparently.

The company has not commented on the post yet, as well as on the AIN.Capital media inquiry. Edible Brands also denied access to its website to people from Ukraine. Meanwhile, you can freely browse it from Russia and other countries.

Why is it important

People in Ukraine are experiencing the most terrible and cruel war since WW2. Under constant shelling and bombing, they continue to work in order to feed their families, while many of Ukraine’s citizens had to change their keyboards on riffles and defend the country. For employers, Ukrainian offices now became a risk factor, and it is understandable when they decide to stop working with their loyal teams just because of that. Nothing personal, just business. But any breakup can be less painful if done right. In the corporate world, it means fair pay, transparent layoff procedures, and some empathy to the people, who worked for you for years and now experiencing hard times.

Seemingly, for Edible Brands that is not the case, because people here are treated just as a labor force and that’s it. And no Ukrainians are even allowed on the company’s website.

• Seadora allowed the customers to order fish and other seafood directly from the fishing place. Thanks to this approach, the delivery time was reduced to 2-3 days instead of 10-14.
• The startup had partners all over the world. After a set of orders, the startup did fishing and organized air transportation. At the same time, the seafood was not frozen, but only cooled and stored at a temperature of +3-5 degrees Celcius.
• As Forbes reported, before the start of the full-scale war, the startup had good results: 10,000 regular customers. The average check was UAH 1,200 in the high season from October to March, UAH 850 in the low season. In 2020, the startup finished with barely $250,000 in proceeds, and in 2021, it made $1.5 million.
• However, after the start of the full-scale invasion, Seadora’s $3 million investment round collapsed. All the fish in the warehouses was donated to the Armed Forces. And the importers didn’t immediately figure out how to restore supply lines.
• According to AIN.Capital, the restart of the operations in the UAE did not meet the investor’s expectations, so the fund decided to write off the investment. Andriy Drohobytsky, the founder of Seadora, did not abandon the idea of developing the project in other markets, but SMRK decided not to continue cooperation.

• This change was particularly noticed by Ukrainian users who had moved from destroyed or occupied cities, returning to the maps to see what their hometowns looked like before the full-scale war.

• Similar pictures are now displayed on the maps of Mariupol, Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel, Stoyanka, Moschun, and other Ukrainian cities destroyed by the Russians.

• In some cases, the pictures are no longer relevant, because, for example, after the de-occupation of the cities of the Kyiv region, they began to be rebuilt.
• Peaceful photos of these cities can still be viewed in Street View mode. Presumably, they will stay there for a long time, because it is unlikely that the Russians will allow the Google cars that take these panoramic pictures.
• Also, thanks to the map update, new mass burials in Mariupol became visible, in particular, at the Novotroitsky cemetery.

Why is it important?

Updated Google Maps satellite images of Ukraine are further clear evidence of Russians’ crimes in our country. From now on, everyone can see what Russia did to Ukrainian cities — some of them are completely destroyed. This data is proving once again that the full-scale war in Ukraine is real (yes, there still are skeptics in the West, who spread different conspiracy theories about it), and the hashtag #RussiaIsATerroristState appeared reasonably.

The goal of the project was to make a cheap UAV adapted to solving combat tasks. Particularly, in regard of overcoming the EW and anti-aircraft defence of the enemy. According to Yatsenko, there was a case when one of the drones handed over to the army could not be shot down by the enemy for 10 days. So, to destroy it, they used a BUK missile. That is, they spent $200,000 on a basic UAV model costing $5,000.

The editorial staff of AIN.Capital publishes a small interview with Yatsenko about how production operates now and how good the drones are at work.

You said that the goal of the project: cheap and efficient drones. Is it possible to make a UAV that costs, say, less than $100,000?

Yes, the Dovbush T10 UAV costs UAH 500,000, and I believe that mid-range UAVs with conventional optics should not cost any more. Anything that sells for more than $15,000 is speculation on war.

At what stage is the project now?

Currently, Dovbush is a mid-range UAV on an operational-tactical level with the ability to work as an artillery adjuster at a range of up to 35 km, in particular, using its inertial navigation system if there is no GPS signal, or as an impact drone with a payload of up to 12 kg of munition.

Is it possible to purchase components?

Almost all of our components are of our own production.

How are your drones performing on the front line?

Usage on the front line depends on the skill of the operators. The omnipresent use of EW significantly raises the bar for such skills. But it solves the tasks that it is capable of.

Can you talk about the scale of production, how many UAVs are produced per month?

Unfortunately, I cannot provide figures on the scale of production. But for now, these are industrial volumes.

What happens with the drones after? Sell or transfer to the military?

All aircraft are handed over to the Armed Forces free of charge after training and passing exams. There is a request for the purchase of our UAVs from the Ministry of Defence.

What do you plan to do next?

We plan to double the production capacity. The total investment in the equipment has now exceeded $3 million, the total investment is $8 million. The plans are to start production of a DJI Mavic analogue but with the use of a EW-protected control channel.

• The conference is sponsored by internationally recognized companies like Grammarly, Liveperson, Amazon Science, Bloomberg, Duolingo, Adobe, and Babelscape. These companies represent the countries which previously imposed sanctions against the education system of state that invaded Ukraine.
• The list of participants and even workshop organizers includes not just Russians, but individuals affiliated with sanctioned companies such as:
  • Sber/AIRI, the largest state-owned bank (Tatiana Shavrina, Vladislav Mikhailov, Oleg Serikov, Vitaly Protasov, Ekaterina Voloshina).
  • Kaspersky, which is an instrument of Russian intelligence agencies (Katerina Vylomova).
  • Skolkovo, a leading science cluster of the Putin regime (Alexander Panchenko, Varvara Logacheva).
• After the correspondence with the organizers, they confirmed the participation of sanctioned individuals, supporting their access to the global scientific community and the development of technologies.
• The same technologies can now be actively used for military and police use in Russia, a state recognized by many countries as a terrorist, in its goal to conduct genocide and terror against Ukrainian civilians.

Why does it matter?

By allowing the sanctioned companies to participated in such events, ACL increases their reach and attractiveness, which will help them come up with more solutions, hire more employees, and make more bloody money off of killing innocents.

• The map is displayed in the Spotify for Artists section, where artists can see a world map of Top Countries with highlighted countries and cities where their tracks are being listened to the most.
• In 2021, users already noticed that Crimea is marked as the territory of the occupying state. However, as we can see, there have been no significant changes in the policy of the service.
• Of course, Spotify can claim that Crimea is currently not controlled by Ukraine, and the service itself does not work there (and Spotify is indeed turned off in occupied Crimea). However, in general, the service should not change the borders of the states. Crimea is a part of Ukraine, which is now illegally occupied by an aggressor state.

AIN.Capital tells more about what is the Play by the Rules campaign by ICRC about, and why choosing a Russian-made game to promote it was a bad decision.

What is Play by the Rules campaign about

Among all possible ways of protecting people on battlefields and war area in real life, the International Committee of the Red Cross has decided to launch a campaign that addresses violence against POWs, civilians, and infrastructure in none other than video games.

“Every day, people play games set in conflict zones right from their couch. But right now, armed conflicts are more prevalent than ever. And to the people suffering from their effects, this conflict is not a game. It destroys lives and leaves communities devastated. Therefore, we’re challenging you to play FPS by the real Rules of War, to show everyone that even wars have rules — rules which protect humanity on battlefields IRL,”

the campaign website explains.

According to the ICRC, there are four rules of war, which gamers were urges of following:

• No thirsting, which is supposed to protect prisoners of war.
• No targeting non-violent NPCs, which corresponds to civilians protection.
• No targeting civilian buildings.
• Use med kits on everyone, which is meant to bring attention to helping wounded.

As a part of the campaign, ICRC invited FPS Twitch streamers to show what does it mean to play by those four rules of the war on the example of such title as PubG Battlegrounds, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone and Escape from Tarkov. The last one is the Russian-made game, which mocks the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

What is wrong with Escape from Tarkov

Previously, AIN.Capital published an article talking about the game and explaining what is wrong about it. Here’s a short reminder:

• The events of Escape from Tarkov unfold in the universe “Russia 2028”, where the EU and Russia are in conflict. The developers of the game are the Battlestate Games studio that claims to be located in London, UK, but at the same time is headquartered in Russia. The game is completely Russian-made, with the developers actively consulting with the Russian military.
• In December 2022, these developers were actively making fun of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, by showing the middle finger to the stylized soldier of the AFU to advertise the newcoming DLC.

Why is it important

Instead of dealing with real world issues, the International Committee of the Red Cross would rather start a crusade against violence in video games. ICRC seems to be only interested in sharing Russian propaganda, while for the most part ignoring real war crimes committed by the Russian occupiers against Ukrainian civilians. No wonder such actions are causing an uproar among many Ukrainians.

As reported by NV, due to this policy, users are less likely to see posts about Ukraine in their feed, and accounts dedicated to the war coverage will receive less engagement.

What is wrong with Twitter algorithms?

Users, who often tweet about the war in Ukraine, have seen less engagement on their accounts since Musk took over the platform last October.

“First, we had issues with Ukrainian numbers on Twitter. Now, after Twitter revealed it’s algorithm, we see that posts about Ukraine are downgraded.

No biggie, just posts about a country that was invaded & where people keep fighting for their lives daily…wonder who this benefits,”

UNITED24.media wrote.

It is important to note that it is impossible to clearly determine the logic of work of the Twitter algorithms from the published code, as well as to state unequivocally that they impact on the downgrading of the tweets about Ukraine. However, according to researchers, posts about Ukraine are labeled as misinformation, and everything that is classified as misinformation is downgraded.

What is wrong with Elon Musk?

Musk himself, on the one hand, provides Ukraine with Starlink satellite terminals, which we use to maintain communication, and on the other hand, he regularly promotes theses of Russian propaganda and offers to reduce aid to Ukraine in order to “not escalate the conflict.”

For example, commenting on a 2014 article by American scholar John Mearsheimer, called the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2013-2014 a coup d’état. To clarify, it is a rhetoric of the Russian government. In response, Ukrainian authorities recommended Musk stop reading Russian newspapers.

Previously, we also wrote about Maye Musk’s participation in We Convention conference, an event organized by Russian-founded organization Women’s Empowerment Council. That move looked like a controversial and incomprehensible decision as well, considering the fact that she has expressed their admiration for the courage of Ukrainians and called for donations to support the Ukrainian army on her Twitter right back in April.