Elections must not be labeled as a dirty process or a toxic topic. In fact, elections are about political participation instrumental to the democratic progress in society. Otherwise, it degenerates. Olha Aivazovska, Chair of the Board at the Civil Network OPORA shared her opinion during the Ukrainian Women’s Congress  on July, 20.

In the era of Twitter and Facebook just about anyone can create a new media resource with just a few clicks. It’s simple and cheap. This kind of democratization of the information space allows the new media to quickly carve out a niche and promote themselves to attract the attention of target audience, but it also leads to negative consequences by bringing the methods of manipulating public opinion to a whole new level. Over the past few years, Ukrainians have been subjected to many manipulation methods. These include coordinated networks of social media pages, clickbait headlines that trigger emotional reaction and help both truthful and fake news go viral, as well as sock-puppet farms – networks of fake user accounts that comment on social media posts to create an illusion of their popularity. Although the social media companies treat such activities as a violation of their standards, we still see hundreds of fake pages that are using these tools.

The city of Energodar and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have been occupied by the Russian army since the early days of the full-scale invasion despite the heroic resistance by local residents. Both the Russian diplomacy and the Russian military have a significant strategic advantage to take the identified dangerous object hostage, since the risks of an accident threaten the nuclear security of the entire region. On March 3, 2022, the Russian army entered Energodar and occupied Zapor...

Laws for voting abroad stipulate that Ukrainian citizens must travel in person to a polling station (located at an embassy or consulate) to cast their ballot on election day. Not only would this require many Ukrainians to travel hundreds of kilometers in some countries, but it would completely overwhelm the capacity of the polling stations to count them. As Aivazovska explained to Foreign Policy in an interview, diplomatic facilities “don’t have the human or financial resources for [holding v...

Last week (July 10–16), the NATO Summit was held in Vilnius. The participants adopted some important decisions for Ukraine. The allies approved a multi-year program of support for our country. They decided to establish the NATO-Ukraine Council and agreed to remove the requirement to implement the Membership Action Plan. During the summit, Ukraine received security guarantees from G7, several countries announced new military assistance packages worth more than 1.5 billion euros. The Allies ann...

Last week (July 3–9), Ukraine actively worked to get guarantees of NATO ⁠accession at the Alliance summit in Vilnius to be held on July 11–12. Five commanders who defended Mariupol returned from Turkey to Ukraine. This caused public hysteria in the Kremlin, as well as the decision taken by the United States to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

In view of the aforesaid, it is critically important to get an understanding of the specifics of media consumption habits assumed by different groups  of civil society of Ukraine. Indeed, any measures aimed at disseminating reliable news from official sources and counteracting disinformation will prove ineffective, if they are not implemented on the platforms actively used by civil society for media consumption purposes. Therefore, we take this opportunity to present the results of a research...

Human rights lawyers, public and cultural activists discussed human rights during the war, their cooperation over the year of joint effort, achievement and accomplishments during the All-Ukrainian Human Rights Forum “Legion of Law.” The event was organized by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets. The event was opened by a UNDP Resident Representative Jaco Cilliers, Ambassador of Japan to Ukraine Matsuda Kuninori, and Ambassador of Denmark Ole Egberg Mikkelse...