Woman and ATM
© Marcus Lam/Los Angeles TimesWoman walks away from a crowded line for the ATM
What follows is a series of updates from my long-time personal assistant, Katya. She's smart, thoughtful, and totally honest.

Forget the propaganda you see on twitter or Fox/CNN/MSNBC. If you want to know what it's really like to be in the middle of the mess in Ukraine, listen to what Katya has to say:

From Katya in Ukraine:

It is true that the draft decree was issued and men aged 18-60 won't be allowed to leave the country. At the same time there's an opinion that drafting regular untrained people doesn't make sense, it is just for the sake of "doing something".

There are at least three types of Ukrainian "armed forces" right now. One is the regular army, the other is battalions that consist mainly of people with deeply nationalistic ideas, and third one is "territorial defense" groups that were formed over the past few days. Those who sign up for this third group are handed out guns without any checks or registration.

According to some news reports, 18,000 guns were handed out just in Kiev in that manner over the past 24 hours.

There was a report earlier today that one of those "territorial defense" groups shot a family in Kiev that was driving by in their car - supposedly they wanted the car to stop and it didn't, possibly the driver sped up because he was afraid of people with guns trying to stop them, in response the group killed everyone while the car was on the move because they might have been a "sabotage group".

Another report said that regular army troops were shot by members of "territorial defense" when descending from helicopters in a southern city - for some reason they thought these were Russian soldiers and fired. I don't know how true this is, and this is not from the official news, but then the official news is unlikely to report things like that. And the official sources, instead of warning the civilian population to get food and stay inside, are saying things like: if you see Russian military equipment passing by - go outside and try to stop it, go out into the streets with Ukrainian flags, make and throw Molotov cocktails from the windows if there are Russian tanks passing by.

This is what they are telling people through the media.

Something else is that the troops intentionally locate in and shoot from residential areas, so that the Russians would shoot back into the residential areas, or hoping that they won't since these are residential areas.

This morning a fragment of something fell onto an apartment building in Kiev. Ukrainian news says that this was a piece of a Russian missile that they "liquidated", Russian news says that it was a piece of a Ukrainian airplane mistakenly shot by Ukrainian forces...

Yesterday morning when I saw the news about Russia destroying military objects with missiles in different parts of Ukraine I thought it was fake. Then I checked the Russian news and it appeared to be true.

Russia says the goal is "demilitarization and denazification" of the territory. Today Ukraine said it's ready for "neutrality", no NATO. Russia answers by asking - why couldn't you say that same thing two days ago.

The latest news is that Russia and Ukraine are trying to agree on the time for the talks. Possibly both sides are trying to buy time to advance further / keep positions to have more up their sleeve when they meet... but it's hard on people on both sides.
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Matt: "Katya, this information is extremely useful. Would you mind putting this in essay format for me to share?"

From Katya in Ukraine:

I'm not much of a writer... and it would be just difficult to be writing about these things right now... I'll just share what I'm hearing.

There is an opinion that Ukraine's leadership is ready to give up some of the territories but before that they want to make the territories 'toxic' by handing out guns and ruining the infrastructure. As of yesterday, in Kiev alone they have handed out 25 thousand guns to "anyone who wants to protect the city from occupants". These "anyone" are mostly younger people, and based on some videos from these past three days - they shoot people so easily as if they were playing a computer game.

Anyone who's outside during the curfew hours is considered an intruder and they are allowed to shoot. So these are civilians with guns are prompted to be killing Russian troops. If Russian troops respond to their fire and kill some of them, it will be all over that Russians are killing civilians.

According to the official report this morning, the president refused talks on the grounds that the location for talks suggested by Russia is Minsk. In other words, he'd rather have this mess going on than have a delegation go to a 'hostile country'.

Ukraine's current government seems to want the territories but not the people. Russia in its turn would like to get rid of the threats that might be coming from Ukraine's territory, technically it doesn't want NATO troops located on its border but Ukraine kept insisting. So it's possible that neither are interested in talks at the moment. (The most recent report about an hour ago, however, said that the Ukrainian delegation is supposedly going to Minsk.)

Both Russian and Ukrainian news are full of propaganda, so it's difficult to know what's going on. For example, there is Zmiinyi Island in the Black Sea that the Russian troops took over on the first day. Ukrainian news reported that all soldiers positioned on the island were killed by Russian forces. Russia said that about 80 soldiers surrendered, are alive, were taken captive and brought to Sevastopol, and posted a video. Yesterday Ukrainian news said that the soldiers 'might be alive'.

Then there is the building hit in Kiev on the 25th I had mentioned, Ukraine says it was a Russian missile, Russia says Ukrainian forces hit their own plane and it fell on the building, regular people have no way of knowing.

Another building was hit in Kiev on the 26th - Ukraine says it's a Russian missile, Russia says it was hit by a Ukrainian surface-to-air system, and regular people have no way of knowing. But there were reports that the Ukrainian side had a missile system positioned next to that building. (I'm not strong on military terms, so this may not be an accurate name for what was there.) So the missile might have been a response to their shooting.

It is true that some of the Ukrainian forces are positioned in the midst of apartment buildings. There is a journalist that has information coming in from his sources and viewers in different places across Ukraine and he's been doing live streams these past three days checking and sharing that information. Yesterday during the stream he was receiving multiple reports and photos from people in Severodonetsk showing military equipment positioned near buildings, and the people were asking him to publicize this information and ask the troops to move away. A couple of hours later the equipment was still there (according to reports) but they eventually moved it closer towards the evening.

So yes, they are using population as a live shield. Probably not all, but some do. As I had mentioned, there are at different types of armed forces in Ukraine, and some of them are not really controlled by the government. Probably just the regular army is.

There were some reports that in Mariupol people were blocked from leaving the city by (by Ukrainian side), and there was a video circulating yesterday where people in uniform stop a car, drag people out and shoot them, supposedly these were people trying to evacuate from Mariupol (city controlled by Ukrainian forces), and again there is no way to know who really did that, and highly likely no one will be held responsible.

During the night a fire started at oil storage in Vasilkov, about 35km from Kiev, supposedly from a missile. It would make sense that the missile is Russian, since the storage is a strategic object. At the same time in 2015 there was a fire at the same location.

The Ukrainian side has blown up a number of bridges, supposedly to hinder Russian transport. During one of the such "controlled" explosions five civilian cars fell from the bridge, four injured and a child died.

The other case I had mentioned where "territory defense" fired at a car with people trying to evacuate, thinking they were intruders, briefly came up in the news yesterday but now I can find just this mention. It was a family of five, the parents and one child killed, two children in hospital.

On Friday, the national bank of Ukraine decided to revoke licenses from banks with Russian capital. It was the same day decision. Money became instantly unaccessible to the clients. In other words, during the time like now, the government chose to close access to funds for its citizens, and didn't give even a few hours of warning.

The TV is showing how to make "molotov cocktails", and announcements inside stores are asking people to bring empty glass bottles. TV and some officials are telling people that if they see Russian troops, they should try to "quitely shoot them from behind". First, how can they be asking things like that of civilians with no training, this is almost as if trying to get them killed. Second, this is not a situation where it is obvious who's Russian and who's Ukrainian, and the probability of mistakes is high. It's not WW2 when telling who's German and who's not was easy.

Some cities are blocked, with so many guns out it is dangerous to be on the roads, this creates shortage of drivers. This creates delivery problems, including deliveries for hospitals. So more people suffering because of this mess.

We are not even trying to follow the world news right now, protests, sanctions against Russia, etc. as it doesn't seem to matter. All that matters to most people here is that both sides would stop. Both sides are hurting people. Russia took the visible step by entering Ukraine's territory. But it's not possible to say that Ukraine didn't do anything to provoke it.

It seems kind of simplistic to think that Russia wants to restore the USSR or Russian empire. They seem to want to be certain of their security. Ukraine keeps causing trouble. Russia wants to take care of that trouble. According to them it means destruction of military infrustructure and getting rid of nationalistic military groups. This is not to justify Russia in any way. This is to say that Ukrainian politics seems to be aimed at irritating Russia and also at handing them perfect excuses to do this and that.

The latest example was the president talking about restoring the nuclear status, at the Munich conference. The Russian media blew up at once saying that yes, Ukraine has the technologies and potential to do it and it's about to become even more dangerous for us now.

Back in 2014, before Crimea and Donetsk/Lugansk independence referendums, Ukraine's new leadership's rhetoric was that Russian nationals and Russian language should be eradicated from Ukraine's territory. Of course this made the people want to separate from the government that wants to eradicate them, and Russia was quickly there. Was this short-sightedness on Ukraine's part to be taking that stand, or was this done intentionally...regular people have no way of knowing.

At some point early on, the USSR began to cultivate nationalism in non-Russian republics, mostly by cultural means, but more importantly, they actually created these republics - Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, etc.

Supposedly the goal of this was to contrast from the Russian empire, and show that all nations are now free to live according to their own ways as "brothers" within the USSR. They also introduced "nationality" graph in passports. Russian empire documents didn't have that graph, if I'm not mistaken, everyone was just a Russian citizen.

After the USSR fell apart, political doctrine of practically all post-soviet countries became based on contrasting themselves from Russia. So they did the same thing that the USSR had done, cultivating nationalism, developing nationalistic ideas, loathing anything associated with Russia. So what's going on has deeper roots.

Nationalistic groups in these countries are used to suppress anyone who's not "patriotic". For example, present-day Kazakhstan has so-called "language patrols" that go around and harass people who speak Russian in public places - store ladies for example, make videos of that, call the police to report that fact.

Not so long ago the same thing was happening here quite a bit - by law, employees of stores, restaurants etc are required to speak Ukrainian, and some customers were actively reporting employees who spoke Russian to them, there is a fine for that.
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There is an official report that some prisoners will be let out, armed, added to battalions.

In Kiev, on Friday curfew was announced from Friday night until Monday morning - people taking shelter in the metro at the time are still down there not able to leave, no food, cold. Same about people at the train station who were not able to leave. Reports about moms with little kids sitting in the basements, no food, kids getting sick.

Mariupol, Militopol on the verge of humanitarian crises. Volnovaha almost destroyed, people begging for a "green corridor" to leave. Largely result of the troops' hiding in the cities.

Supposedly the countries agreed on the talks but they still have not started.
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In some places, dialysis, insulin and other medicine-dependent people not able to get what they need. Fuel shortages, dangerous to be on road, curfews, destroyed infrastructure - shortages.