Hello, and happy Friday! The next edition of this correspondence will arrive during the first week of Ramadan, which can only mean two things: First, I will be severely under-caffeinated the next time I write this. Please excuse any errors or typos. Second, we are approaching the second anniversary of this newsletter!
OG readers will recall that I started this correspondence at the height of Britain’s first COVID-19 lockdown and at the tail end of what was undoubtedly the most unusual (but nonetheless meaningful) Ramadan I’ve ever experienced. The world has changed a lot since then and I’m grateful to have this space to discuss it all with you. Thanks for reading and, to all those observing, Ramadan Kareem 🌙
In podcast news: I joined this week’s Bunker panel to discuss Ukraine, how the war is being perceived by everyday Russians, the freeing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and more. You can tune in via all good podcasting apps (find yours here).
What I’ve written
As a digital iron curtain descends on Russia, I wrote about how international news organizations are trying to exploit its technological gaps to reach the Russian people:
Perhaps no outlet is better placed to overcome these challenges than Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The broadcaster was founded during the Cold War with the explicit purpose of reaching audiences behind the Iron Curtain. Despite the Soviet Union’s efforts to jam broadcasts, “people still found a way through the static,” Jamie Fly, the president of RFE/RL, told me. “I meet people all the time who remember sitting by the radio, literally turning the dial, trying to find the one frequency that had not been jammed.” Today, RFE/RL, which is funded by (though editorially independent from) the United States government, is directing its audience to utilize a number of circumvention tools, including VPNs and Telegram. Keep reading here
It has been one full month since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. I wrote about why the war is unlikely to end anytime soon:
At the moment, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has riveted the world, drawing more attention than the ongoing slaughters in other nations—a double standard that has been widely noted. But that gap in coverage is likely to become even more striking the longer the conflict continues, because the factors that make a long war in Ukraine seemingly inevitable are the same ones that make it unlikely to slip from the world’s collective radar. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
This harrowing account from Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka, the last journalists to leave the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol (AP)
“If they catch you, they will get you on camera and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie,” he said. “All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain.”
The officer, who had once begged us to show the world his dying city, now pleaded with us to go. He nudged us toward the thousands of battered cars preparing to leave Mariupol.
It was March 15. We had no idea if we would make it out alive.
This elegiac essay on the big and the small things that war takes away from people (The Financial Times)
For the first time since Bashir founded the shop in 1977, the shelves were empty: one of Syria’s greatest record shops had become another victim of the war and its fallout. As the world watches while innocent Ukrainian civilians are forced to flee the war and seek refuge elsewhere, I cannot help but think about the small things with which they will have to part ways.
This fascinating piece on what the effort to boycott Russia can learn from the Palestinian-led BDS movement (Jewish Currents)
Over years of following boycott and divestment efforts, I have observed that their impact far exceeds the dollars and cents they extract in lost revenue. Instead, the greatest contribution of these initiatives is that they force a conversation about accountability in spaces where those conversations would otherwise be absent, moving people to take action.
What I’m thinking about
This moving address from Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Russian people:
Until next time,
Yasmeen