(es) Vienna, August 1, 2022
Reuters reports that the first grain ship has just left Ukraine for Lebanon. Is this, finally, a glimmer of the hope promised after the painstaking agreement reached under UN auspices in Istanbul?
Maybe it will bring some relief to the starving in the Horn of Africa.
Meanwhile, a terrible reckoning has to be made about the killing of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners-of-war in Russian-held eastern Ukraine. Each side blames the other.
On a more cheerful note, Vogue has published a bright and intelligent interview with Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska (photographed by Annie Leibovitz). The president’s wife is also in peacetime his colleague as a comedy writer and has become a key element in the diplomatic and social media campaign to defend Ukraine.
Less cheerfully, Russia immediately deployed an army of trolls to ridicule this powerful portrait of a brave woman.
- Reuters today, 01/08/22 on first grain shipment
- Guardian, 01/08/22 Day 159 of the Putin war – what we know
- Vogue 26/07/22 portrait of Olena Zelenska
- Reliefweb.int, 01/06/22 worst famine in decades