Kyiv Post Daily Thread – The Latest News From and About Ukraine on March 29

Ukrainians have voiced their overwhelming confidence in the country’s eventual victory over Russian forces, a strong desire to join NATO, and a firm belief in their leadership’s behind-the-scenes conversations with U.S. and other Western officials, according to a recent poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in Ukraine.

 In an interview with Kyiv Post, the program director of the IRI – which seeks to foster and support good governance and democracy in countries around the world –  Michael Druckman, said he was surprised and encouraged by the data.

Read the full story here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that international sanctions imposed following Russia's offensive in Ukraine could have "negative" consequences, after months of insisting Moscow was adapting to the new economic reality.

"The sanctions imposed against the Russian economy in the medium term can really have a negative impact on it," Putin said in a televised meeting with the government.

Historical Background – Survival in an Oppressive Context

For generations, the Christian Church in Ukraine has been essential in preserving Ukrainian culture, language, and identity. Prior to Ukraine’s independence in 1991, this country was controlled by foreign powers. When Ukraine was under foreign rule until 1991, many of these empires attempted to diminish or eliminate Ukrainian language and culture.

From the 1600s to the 1930s, western Ukraine was ruled by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then Poland. Meanwhile, the Russian Empire controlled southern and eastern Ukraine from the late 1600s to 1917. The Soviet Union then ruled much of Ukraine from the 1920s and from 1945 onwards all of it until 1991.

You can read more here. 

Brazilian Viktor Ferreira was elated in May 2018 when he was accepted into the elite Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington.

“Today we made the future... WE fucking did it!!!” he wrote a colleague.

But Ferreira was no normal student: according to a US indictment, he was a Russian spy under deep cover, an “illegal” whose real name was Sergey Cherkasov. The colleague he wrote to was his handler.

SAIS was his dream school: closely entwined with the US diplomatic, military and intelligence communities, it would place Cherkasov just a few steps from America’s secrets.

You can read more here. 

Good morning from Kyiv. It might be nearly April but another cold snap has descended on Ukraine; snow once again blankets the streets and the capital’s tireless municipal workers have spent all night clearing roads and pavements.

Aside from the snow, it was a relatively quiet night across the country with no air raids or alerts in the capital.

What’s happening today?

 The ongoing tussle between the International Olympic Committee and Kyiv continues after Olympic chiefs on Tuesday recommended the return to competition of Russian and Belarusian athletes as individual neutrals, but refused to give a timeline on their potential participation at next year's Paris Olympics.

You can read more here.