Marta Trotsiuk – Ukrainian art ambassador. Gallery 101 founder. Expert in international art projects and cultural diplomacy. She is also a leading expert on art consulting and curating and has been highly active in the effort to promote Ukrainian identity and art as part of the fight back against Russian aggression and cultural imperialism. LINKS: https://www.instagram.com/marta_trotsiuk https://www.f6s.com/member/marta-trotsiuk https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-trotsiuk-569497254/ ---------- Or...
Sep 16, 2024•30 min•Season 3Ep. 482
What a week – Russian media manipulation networks uncovered in the US – conservative influencers seem to be more influence by hard Russian cash than principles, however. Vance leaks the Trump plan to ‘stop Ukraine war in 24 hours’, and it turns out to be an appalling plan to appease Putin. Putin threatens WWIII, but with what army does he plan to fight it. And the big focus for this episode, despite overwhelming evidence of guilt for multiple felonies – here we are again with Trump the GOP candi...
Sep 14, 2024•45 min•Season 3Ep. 503
With the blocking of YouTube in Russia, and pressure on other platforms, are we seeing the emergence of a Digital Gulag? The more efficient way to entrap and control a population than the real-world Gulag of watch towers and razor wire? ---------- Ian Garner is an historian and analyst of Russian culture and war propaganda. He is motivated by two questions: what drives Russia’s obsession with war, and why have so many Russians in the past and present fallen for militarism. Ian Garner is also a w...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 3Ep. 497
2024-09-13 | According to Putin and his minions, NATO countries are on the brink of war with Russia. Is this more hollow bluffing and bluster from the diminutive tyrant in the Kremlin, or are we about to cross the first genuine Russian red line of this war? Evidence points to it being another empty threat, if we ignore the threatening words and look at Russia’s actions and capabilities. ---------- The first action based was for Russia’s FSB security service to revoke the accreditation of six Bri...
Sep 13, 2024•17 min
Today I’m speaking with Operator Starsky, a Ukrainian National Guardian, blogger, and inspiration for everyone who is following the war, and supporting a Ukrainian victory. He has created one of the most popular and original YouTube channels dedicated to the international community. I’m not sure you need an introduction – I’m sure most people watching this channel will have seen your videos! ---------- LINKS: https://www.youtube.com/@PropagandaStudyInstitute http://psi-eu.org/ https://www.youtub...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 3Ep. 500
Michael Sheridan is the Author of a new history of Hong Kong and China, and has a new book out called “The Red Emperor – Xi Jinping and his China”. He is a long-time foreign correspondent in Asia, Middle East, and Europe. He was the Far East Correspondent for the Sunday Times for 20 years, based in Hong Kong, and later Bangkok. He covered the rise of China and the handover of Hong Kong, upheaval in Burma and the fall of Suharto in Indonesia. ---------- LINKS: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-...
Sep 11, 2024•55 min•Season 3Ep. 496
2024-09-11 | Outrage has erupted over a film created by Russian Director and propagandist Anastasia Trofimova, called ‘Russians at War’. Calls for its screening to be pulled from the Toronto International Film Festival have intensified; surely festival organizers should have reacted when the film was showcased at the Venice International Film Festival, despite the public uproar it caused. ---------- Breaking news, as this episode was being recorded, the Canadian broadcaster TVO made a statement ...
Sep 11, 2024•27 min
Susan Grunewald is an Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University. She was the Digital History Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh World History Centre from 2019 to 2022. Susan earned her Ph.D. in History at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, US). She specializes in Soviet and German WWII and post-war history, digital humanities, and GIS. We’ll discuss her engaging book “From Incarceration to Repatriation. German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union.” ------...
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 499
2024-09-10 | Z-blogger Yegor Guzenko who publishers under the name of Thirteenth, seems to have lost his mind. Or at least, is losing faith in the masters of the Kremlin and the SVO. ---------- “Everything that is happening now is treachery.” He screams, in several video messages posted in his Telegram channel this week. “Traitors are sitting in the Kremlin!” Some have been permitted to criticise underlings and intermediaries of the Tsar. Governors and even Ministry of Defence. But hurling abuse...
Sep 10, 2024•16 min
Russia has shown in its response to the Kursk counter-offensive, that it can't engage in manoeuvre warfare, suggesting a theory of victory for Ukraine. ---------- Kevin Leach is the main director for Sabre Training Advisory Group, a professional military training non-profit. Their aim is to give Ukrainian defenders the skills to come home alive. Kevin is a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, with a long history of working in Ukraine and in military affairs. He served as a sergeant from 2008-2018, spe...
Sep 09, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 498
Svitlana Morenets is a Ukrainian journalist and a staff writer at The Spectator. She was named Young Journalist of the Year in the 2024 UK Press Awards. She is author of the weekly newsletter ‘Ukraine in Focus’. ---------- LINKS: https://x.com/SvMorenets Ukraine in Focus: https://www.spectator.co.uk/ukraine/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/svitlana-morenets/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/svitlana-morenets/ ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.p...
Sep 08, 2024•55 min•Season 3Ep. 495
2024-09-08 | It was reported earlier this year that Russia destroyed the Chersonesus in Sevastopol, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They are in the process of erecting vast new buildings on the site of the archaeological remains. Since the occupation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has been systematically destroying historical sites. It’s alleged the invaders moved many archaeological artefacts to Russia, and indeed there are reports that museums on occupied Ukrainian territory have been comple...
Sep 08, 2024•7 min
2024-09-01 | There is no end in sight to the death and suffering that Russian is willing to unleash on Ukraine. In less than a week, 60 people have been killed by Russian strikes on Ukraine. ---------- Russian army strikes on numerous Ukrainian cities have killed dozens of civilians and left hundreds wounded. The single deadliest attack of the war to date was in the city of Poltava in central Ukraine. A Russian missile struck a military educational facility on Tuesday killed 53 people and left m...
Sep 07, 2024•28 min
Anastasiia Zagoruichyk is an expert on Energy and Climate Policy. She is a Graduate of Oxford University, in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment. Pacific Northwest National Lab. ---------- LINKS: https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/green-politics-ukraine-smith-school-msc https://euromaidanpress.com/author/anastasiiazagoruichyk/ https://earthjournalism.net/fellows/anastasiia-zagoruichyk https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/ukraine-russia-we-are-a-freedom-loving-people-but-we-are-fight...
Sep 05, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 494
Georgijs Ivanovs started the Ukraine Matters channel in 2007, and it has garners 11.5 m views. He started the channel to explain the situation surrounding the war in Ukraine in simple terms. Like myself, he is not Ukrainian, nor is he a military expert. But he has been to Ukraine many times and seen it almost fully (except for Odesa region). He has a lot of good friends in Ukraine, and in fact his wife is Ukrainian, and so feels extremely connected to the invasion that scaled up in February 2022...
Sep 04, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 493
The world order is crumbling. The concept of finding a balance between great powers is redundant, as an alliance of autocratic states seeks to challenge global democracies more aggressively and directly and the institutions that underpin their societies. Of the four, three can be classed as quasi terrorist states, pariahs that seeks to maximise chaos and violence inn the world to further their own ends. Iran, North Korea and Russia. Do we need a new concept of global power to survive in this era...
Sep 03, 2024•50 min•Season 3Ep. 485
Andrew Chakhoyan is a Ukrainian American based in the Netherlands and is a vocal and articulate champion of Ukraine and its cause. ---------- LINKS: https://x.com/ChakhoyanAndrew https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/andrew-chakhoyan/ https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-incrementalism-russia-war-president-volodymyr-zelenskyy-truth/ ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND: Sa...
Sep 03, 2024•51 min•Season 3Ep. 491
Jonathan MS Pearce is a philosopher, author, columnist, and public speaker with an interest in writing about almost anything, from scepticism to science, politics, and morality, to the environment. Essentially because everything is philosophy. He is a former teacher and is now battling primary progressive multiple sclerosis. He can no longer play football with his twin boys, but he can still write a good column and book. And remarkably, and very bravely, he has just come back from an arduous jou...
Sep 02, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 492
2024-09-01 | We are enabling a lottery of death to take place in Ukraine, daily, and it’s both stupid and immoral. Our timidity must stop, otherwise Russian aggression will only escalate. ---------- Ukraine has conducted the largest drone assault on Russian infrastructure of the war so far. Fires are reported at two power plants and oil refinery in Moscow region, with 158 Ukrainian drones targeting multiple regions, including Moscow, Tver, Voronezh, Tula, Kaluga, Bryansk, Belgorod, Lipetsk, and ...
Sep 01, 2024•12 min
Ukraine is competing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris from 26 July to 11 August 2024. It is the nation's eighth consecutive appearance at the Summer Olympics in the post-Soviet era and the first since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A total of 140 athletes competed amid the Russian invasion, the lowest number in the history of Ukraine's participation in the games. ---------- DW Phillips is a documentary filmmaker and constitutional attorney with Ukraine Story, a nonprofit foundation for jou...
Aug 31, 2024•29 min
2024-08-30 | Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region seems to have triggered a meltdown among Russia’s propagandists and the talking heads on state TV. Despite the usual exhortations to violence, and denigrations of Ukraine, their ire this week seems to have turned on their own leaders, in the wake of Ukraine’s success in grabbing and holding Russian territory in Kursk Oblast and now Belgorod and Bryansk. ---------- Phrases which are only usually heard by the most ‘extreme’ liberal opposition co...
Aug 30, 2024•20 min
Today I’m speaking with Jake Broe, a United States Air Force veteran who served for six years as a Nuclear and Missile Operations Officer. But you may know him better as one of the most prominent voices on YouTube throughout the war, someone with absolute moral clarity about who the victim of the war is – spoilers, it’s Ukraine – and who brings direct military experience to his detailed analysis of the unfolding conflict. Do please subscribe to his channel for videos updates on the war in Ukrain...
Aug 29, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 489
Bonus video from this discussion with Ben Hodges available only on the https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconWafers channel, on the topic of "Top tactical priorities to ensure a Ukrainian victory". ---------- Ukraine is successfully conducting multi-domain operations, in accordance with NATO training and strategic precepts. Successful long-range precision strikes against Russian energy and transportation infrastructure, a land-centric counter-offensive in Kursk that is changing the war’s momentum and ...
Aug 28, 2024•5 min•Season 3Ep. 488
Bonus video from this discussion with Ben Hodges available only on the https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconWafers channel, on the topic of "Top tactical priorities to ensure a Ukrainian victory". ---------- Ukraine is successfully conducting multi-domain operations, in accordance with NATO training and strategic precepts. Successful long-range precision strikes against Russian energy and transportation infrastructure, a land-centric counter-offensive in Kursk that is changing the war’s momentum and ...
Aug 28, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 488
2024-08-27 | Civilians has been killed and injured as Russia launches a large-scale attack on Ukraine for second night, on 27th August 2024. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, this was possibly the largest attack on Ukraine since start of full-scale invasion. Russia launched 127 projectiles and 109 drones, while Ukraine downed 102 projectiles and 99 drones, estimated the Air Force. Russian strikes hit several civilian, energy, and fuel facilities, including a dam in Kyiv, part of the Kyiv Hyd...
Aug 27, 2024•18 min
Oleksiy Goncharenko was born in Odesa, and is a Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian parliament, member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Vice President of the PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, founder of a Ukrainian network of educational and cultural centres. In 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the party list of Petro Poroshenko Bloc. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Goncha...
Aug 26, 2024•40 min•Season 3Ep. 487
The approach to supporting Ukraine which Western leaders have been taking so far has been „as long as it takes“. The lack of a clearly defined end goal impacted the pace and scale of the assistance, as well as raised questions on its efficiency. It cannot last this way in the protracted war as Ukraine’s mobilisation potential and resources are shorter than Russia’s. Instead, a clear commitment of the West to aid Ukraine with „whatever it takes for a fast victory“ is the only way to return sustai...
Aug 24, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 484
Shaun Pinner is a former British soldier and Ukrainian Marine. He has written an extraordinary first-hand account of the war in Ukraine, his capture, imprisonment, and torture by the Russian invaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Pinner https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/300663/shaun-pinner https://www.instagram.com/snowy_ua/ https://x.com/olddog100ua ---------- Macer Gifford is a British veteran of the Ukrainian Army are whose dispatches from the frontlines of this conflict were of tremen...
Aug 23, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 3Ep. 486
2024-07-12 | It has been said that Russian corruption is Ukraine’s greatest ally. But it seems that the interfering bureaucratic mindset of Russian politicians and officials is also a great aid to the Ukrainian war effort. ---------- The Russian parliament adopted a law in July hiking the penalty for the unauthorised use of personal internet devices, and in fact any internet enabled gadgets, by frontline Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. The new law follows reports the Russian army is experi...
Aug 23, 2024•13 min
Cormac Smith has worked in Public Relations and Corporate Communications for over three decades. In 2016 he travelled to Ukraine to take up a special appointment as the ‘Strategic Communication Advisor’ to Pavlo Klimkin, then the Foreign Minister of Ukraine. He was attached to the British Embassy in Kyiv but was embedded in Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the first foreigner to hold such a position. While in Kyiv, he also advised and provided training for five other government ministries ...
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 3Ep. 483
