“I am calling to let you know an important message. I do not know if rather a lot about what is definitely occurring proper now in Ukraine,” Stonyte says within the name final month, her voice trembling as her 1-year-old daughter babbles within the background.
There’s silence on the opposite finish of the road.
That is certainly one of dozens of chilly calls that Stonyte and her husband make on daily basis to folks in Russia from their residence in Lithuania as a part of a volunteer initiative geared toward penetrating Russia’s so-called digital iron curtain.
Russia’s ongoing onslaught in Ukraine has seen cities bombarded, civilians killed, and greater than 4 million flee the nation. However at residence, many Russians know little about what’s unfolding.
Russia has banned state media from calling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “particular navy operation” an “invasion” or a “battle,” and people who criticize the offensive can face extreme punishment.
A Moscow courtroom banned Fb and Instagram for finishing up “extremist exercise,” and a brand new censorship regulation made publishing “pretend” details about the invasion punishable by as much as 15 years in jail. The stress has pressured unbiased information shops to drag out or shut down, leaving a void for state media to fill with propaganda and disinformation.
Determined to interrupt by way of, folks around the globe try inventive methods to attach with Russians. On-line activists Anonymous claim to have hacked Russian TV channels to broadcast footage from Ukraine.
Others, like Stonyte, try a extra particular person method. They’re chilly calling or messaging strangers in Russia, hoping their private pleas will disrupt the Kremlin’s propaganda — and doubtlessly even assist put an finish to the lethal battle.
‘Make a very powerful name of your life’
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When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, documentary filmmaker Stonyte and her husband Mantas Kazlauskas watched the information from their residence within the Lithuanian port metropolis of Klaipeda.
Stonyte, 30, grew up in Lithuania after the Baltic state declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Whereas she does not bear in mind Russia’s occupation, the Russian menace by no means actually went away, she stated.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Stonyte stated she felt “a way of desperation and helplessness.”
The couple started calling companies, museums and eating places in Moscow and St. Petersburg, hoping to inform them about what was occurring. Days later they stumbled throughout CallRussia.org, an initiative launched March 8 with the tagline: “Make a very powerful name of your life.”
Co-founded by Lithuania-based inventive company director Paulius Senūta, the initiative goals to chilly name 40 million cellphone numbers throughout Russia. The workforce gathered publicly out there cellphone numbers in Russia and created a platform that randomly generates a cellphone quantity from the listing. A person can decide to name over the cellphone, Telegram, or WhatsApp, and on the finish of the decision, a web site pop-up asks the person whether or not they received by way of, and if that’s the case, if the decision went effectively.
The concept relies on Senūta’s perception that Russian folks have the facility to finish the battle if they’ve entry to free data and perceive the human struggling in Ukraine.
“There’s a variety of help (in Russia) for this (battle),” Senūta informed CNN final month. “However the humorous factor about it’s they do not know this battle. They do not know, a whole lot, hundreds of individuals killed, bombs dropped, kids killed, ladies giving delivery in metros — they know nothing about it.”
With the assistance of psychologists, Senūta’s workforce of about 30 folks put collectively a script to information the calls. They did not need to get right into a confontation — as an alternative the purpose is to “convey the human tragedy and the truth that they do not know about it.”
In only one week after the CallRussia launch, hundreds of volunteers made 84,000 cellphone calls, he stated.
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Stonyte says few folks hold up. As a substitute, most fall into certainly one of two classes — those that argue again, and people who pay attention, she stated. Stonyte believes many individuals could not need to reply out of worry the decision could possibly be monitored they usually may face punishment.
One name to a museum in Moscow caught together with her, Stonyte stated, although the one who picked up the cellphone stated little or no. Her husband — who speaks some Russian — helped to translate the phrases conveying the horror of Putin’s battle.
“I imagine that even silence between my husband and that girl was actually essential,” Stonyte stated. “I imply, she did not hold up the cellphone. She waited for a very long time, she needed to listen to each single phrase.”
‘They exist in one other actuality’
It is not simply strangers that Ukrainians try to achieve.
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A few days into the battle, Ukrainian restauranteur Misha Katsurin puzzled why his father, who lives in Russia, hadn’t known as to test on him.
However when he known as his father himself, Katsurin discovered one thing disturbing: his father merely did not imagine there was a battle.
At the same time as Katsurin described being woken by blasts and hiding in a bomb shelter, his father remained incredulous. “They exist in one other actuality,” he stated. “He needs to imagine me, however he can not,” he stated.
Misha Katsurin calls his father in Russia. Source: Papapover
Katsurin’s father consumes Russian state media, which has been presenting a really completely different narrative of how the battle is unfolding. On March 2, for example, when Russian navy strikes hit colleges and cathedrals in Ukraine’s second largest metropolis, Kharkiv, banners on Russian state TV channel RT claimed 40 Ukrainian cities and villages had been liberated.
Even the impacts of Western sanctions — which at the moment are being felt by atypical folks in Russia — aren’t talked about in Russian each day information stories.
To assist others in an analogous place, Katsurin began an internet site known as Papa Consider which provides tips about the way to discuss to family and friends concerning the battle in Ukraine. For individuals who falsely declare, as Putin has completed, that Ukrainian authorities leaders are “Nazi,” he recommends telling them Zelensky is from a Ukrainian-Jewish household. When folks declare the invasion shouldn’t be a battle, however a “particular operation,” he recommends explaining that one nation has crossed the border of the opposite and is shelling and capturing cities.
In a recording of a subsequent name along with his father, revealed to his web site, Katsurin tries to counter his father’s concepts — that Russians in Ukraine are oppressed, that america is making Slavic folks kill one another.
Firstly of the decision, Katsurin appears harm. “I am calling to let you know what’s been occurring in my life and in my nation, issues that I see with my very own eyes, however you do not imagine me.” By the tip of the decision, his father appears swayed. “I sincerely perceive your emotions and I am so anxious for you,” he tells his son.
However convincing a stranger might be even more durable.
Henkka, a Finnish man primarily based in Estonia, who requested to solely be recognized by his first identify, set his location on courting app Tinder to St. Petersburg, received tipsy, and went on a mission to inform Russians concerning the battle in Ukraine.
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Though Instagram and Fb have been blocked, courting apps are nonetheless accessible. “How To” guides have sprung up on social media platform Reddit, advising folks the way to use Tinder’s passport characteristic — which permits customers to attach with folks in different nations — to share details about Ukraine with Russians. Customers share tips about the way to create a reputable pretend account and match with as many individuals as potential with out getting banned by the Tinder algorithm — Tinder says it could delete accounts utilizing the app to advertise messages.
With every match, Henkka opened the dialog with “Hello! Have you ever heard the information about Ukraine?” Henkka stated he was shocked by how lots of the folks he spoke to knew concerning the invasion however remained lukewarm concerning the situation or had been merely confused by conflicting accounts in Russian and Western media.
“They really did not know what to belief,” Henkka stated.
‘Some adjustments goes to occur’
Chilly calling does not all the time have the specified impact.
Serge Kharytonau, a Belurusian now primarily based within the US, the place he works as a media knowledgeable on the Worldwide Strategic Motion Community for Safety, says he has made about 120 calls to Russia since early March as a part of the CallRussia initiative — however thus far, he hasn’t had the influence he hoped for.
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Fewer than a handful of the calls he is made have been profitable, Kharytonau says. Usually the respondent turns into aggressive or shortly ends the decision. Kharytonau says that what’s been most stunning is that Russians he has spoken to do not simply reject different data — however deny the actual fact it exists in any respect.
He says that whereas Russian persons are victims of the propaganda that is imposed upon them, it will be “an amazing mistake” to suppose they bear no duty.
“On one facet, they’re the victims of the propaganda. However on the opposite facet, it is their determination to belief the propaganda and to disclaim even not simply the choice Data, however even the truth that different data exists.”
The fact, although, is that talking out in Russia can doubtlessly include heavy penalties.
A Russian journalist, for example, was discovered responsible of organizing an unauthorized public occasion and fined 30,000 rubles ($370) after protesting the Ukraine invasion throughout a reside tv broadcast. Greater than 14,763 protesters have been detained in 151 Russian cities because the begin of Russia’s invasion, in line with OVD-Data, an unbiased human rights protest-monitoring group.
Stonyte, the Lithuanian chilly caller, is extra sympathetic to the difficulties for Russians. Her hope is that Russians unfold the reality of what’s occurring in personal, and ultimately, they may be capable of protest in opposition to Putin’s regime.
“In the meanwhile, the issue is that solely a comparatively small share of persons are in opposition to battle,” she says. “The federal government can simply silence and arrest them. They could not arrest the entire nation (if the Russians had been united).”
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For now, she’s simply targeted on calling. And the decision with the Russian girl final month is likely one of the extra profitable she has made.
Hearken to extra of Marija Stonyte’s name
Word: Voices have been altered to guard the identification of the particular person interviewed. Source: Marija Stonyte
In the course of the name, as Stonyte begins recounting what’s occurred in Ukraine, the lady seems to agree with what she’s listening to, in line with a recording of their name shared with CNN. She tells Stonyte she is aware of every part however is afraid to behave on it as a result of she has a child. She and her accomplice are fascinated with leaving Russia, she says.
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As they discuss, their kids might be heard chattering within the background — and each ladies are moved to tears.
“I actually hope you can find a method and you can be secure on this scenario,” Stonyte tells the lady.
“We’re each moms and we perceive how essential is the security of our youngsters. Once we reside with these sorts of governments, it’s inconceivable to be fully secure, to really feel secure in your individual residence. So I simply actually hope that some adjustments goes to occur.”
Incoming White House “border czar” Tom Homan speaks during Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest 2024 in Phoenix on Dec. 22.
Jos Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
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Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan said large-scale raids as part of President-elect Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration are set to begin as soon as Tuesday.
In an interview with Fox News on Friday night, Homan did not offer further details, but he did confirm that Chicago will be one of the cities targeted.
“On Tuesday, ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE,” he said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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Homan, a former acting head of ICE, added that immigration agents will focus on the “worst first, public safety threats first, but no one is off the table. If they’re in the country illegally, they got a problem.”
The anticipated raids in Chicago were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. It comes after Homan visited the city in December and threatened to prosecute the city’s mayor if he refused to cooperate.
On Saturday, Homan told The Washington Post that the incoming administration was reconsidering launching raids in Chicago because details had leaked in the media, but had yet to make a final decision.
Chicago is one of the hundreds of sanctuary cities and counties in the U.S., which typically prohibit local resources from supporting federal immigration enforcement.
The prospect of raids in Chicago echoes Homan’s past remarks that he will not allow sanctuary jurisdictions to hinder the incoming administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
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On Saturday, Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, said the news that immigration raids could start in Chicago on Tuesday “wasn’t a surprise,” but that “hearing confirmation made it more real, more concrete.”
She said the city is prepared. In addition to community agencies holding “know your rights” events all over, she said Chicago leaders have met with city departments and sister agencies, such as the police and public school district, to detail existing city policies.
An estimated 11 million immigrants live in the U.S. without legal status.
Both Homan and Trump have vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But the plan is expected to face legal and logistical hurdles, including where to house millions of people once they are detained.
In Chicago, community organizers and elected officials scramble to encourage residents to not panic
On the city’s Southwest Side, Any Huamani, a community organizer with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, was fielding requests for Know Your Rights Trainings and leading a rapid response team via private group chat. Team members are ready to be dispatched in case ICE agents arrive in her community.
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“Obviously each scenario is different,” Huamani said. “If they’re there to detain someone, rapid response teams respond in a different way. We have to yell out ‘These are your rights. You know, who can we call? Give us a phone number.’ And we’re also trying to record … ICE agents, if there’s an ICE truck or if it’s an unrecognizable truck.”
Meanwhile, 20 requests for trainings had come in.
The biggest fear among immigrants who don’t have a legal status in the U.S., Huamani said, is leaving their children behind.
During Trump’s first administration, his “zero tolerance” policy separated more than 5,000 children from parents who crossed the border, without systems to track and reunite families. Some also fear being detained or held in cities or states unfamiliar to them. Huamani has been advising people at risk of being detained by ICE to memorize at least three phone numbers so that they can be located if taken into ICE custody.
Organizers are worried that ICE agents could target the city’s Southwest Side and execute workplace raids in nearby suburbs, where there are also large concentrations of immigrants without legal status.
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Garien Gatewood, Chicago’s deputy mayor of community safety, said the police department has been working under a welcoming city ordinance for 40 years, which stipulates that immigration enforcement is up to the federal government.
Chicago’s police department does not document immigration status, nor share information with federal immigration authorities, said spokesman Don Terry in a statement. But he added that police “will not intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing their duties.”
“From the top down, everybody at CPD understands the roles that they play,” he said. “This is not the first time that they’ve had interactions with federal agents acting about immigration status.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office did not provide a response to news that immigration raids were going to start in Chicago next week. The office provided a transcript of the governor’s statement at a Dec. 11 press conference where he said he “believes it is his obligation to protect” immigrants without legal status who have not committed violent crimes.
WBEZ has more on how Chicago is preparing for the incoming Trump administration.
Some climbed into buses in the wee hours of the morning. Others boarded planes from across the country or drove bleary-eyed through the night. No matter how they got to Washington on Saturday, they shared a common goal: to protest against President-elect Donald J. Trump.
Just two days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, thousands of people attended the People’s March across Washington. Despite the damp and chilly weather on Saturday, demonstrators came out to rally against Mr. Trump’s hard-right plans for the country and show support for causes like civil rights, racial justice, immigration and gun violence prevention.
“I am angry and frustrated,” said Jillian Wheat, who came to the march from Columbus, Ohio, with her 14-year-old daughter, Emma. “I’m worried that he is going to dismantle our democracy.”
It was a sequel of sort to the Women’s March in 2017, right after Mr. Trump was sworn in for his first term, a protest that focused on women’s reproductive rights. But the march was rebranded and expanded to include more people and a wider range of issues. Various sponsors, including the Sierra Club and Time to Act, a group against authoritarianism, backed the event on Saturday.
With signs that called Mr. Trump a felon, an oligarch and a danger to democracy — one read, “such a disaster that even grandmoms have to take to the streets to resist” — protesters yelled chants such as, “Stand up! Fight back!” and “No justice, no peace, no Trump,” at times injecting an expletive into the chant.
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Many, if not most, attendees said they were nervous that Mr. Trump would try to roll back more rights they valued than he did in his first administration, during which he nominated Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. They were hoping that he would not strip away climate change protections and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and that he would not follow through with his threat to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Debbie Pierce, a gerontologist from Tampa, Fla., wiped tears from her eyes as she held up a photo of a young relative who recently told her that she might be a lesbian.
“I’m here for her,” said Ms. Pierce, referring to her relative. “With this new administration, I don’t know if she will be safe.”
Alana Eichner, co-director of the local chapter of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, came to the march with more than a dozen women who work as caregivers for children and the elderly. She said she hopes that Mr. Trump realizes that domestic workers — including many who are undocumented — are essential to the American economy and help the country function.
“We’re here to make sure these workers are protected and valued,” she said, as the women she came with nodded in agreement.
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On the dawn of a second Trump presidency, marches also were held in other cities, including New York, Nashville and Portland, Ore. All were different — and felt different — than the ones held to protest his first term.
The Women’s March eight years ago was much bigger than the People’s Marches on Saturday. More than 470,000 people had packed into the nation’s capital in 2017, ready and energized to fight after his surprise defeat of Hillary Clinton. The protest turned into a sea of pink as many attendees wore pink knitted hats.
This time, the crowd in Washington was smaller and the pink hats were sparse. Mary Griffin, who flew to Washington from Seattle for both Saturday’s march and the one in 2017, said she was troubled by the lower turnout, adding that people were squished together shoulder-to-shoulder at the 2017 march. She said she suspects that voters for Vice President Kamala Harris are still in shock and “in the doldrums,” frozen about how to show their resistance to the new administration.
“We need to get our energy back,” said Ms. Griffin, a 63-year-old lawyer. “I think once Trump starts moving in the direction I think he’s going in, the pendulum will swing back and people will be energized again.”
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
President-elect Donald Trump said he would “most likely” extend the deadline for ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to divest the video app which faces a nationwide ban that is set to come into effect on Sunday.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump said he was considering issuing a 90-day extension to the deadline. His comments come one day after TikTok warned that its 170mn users would face an imminent blackout after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the divest-or-ban law that Congress passed last year to address China-related national security concerns.
“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation . . . If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday.”
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On Friday, Trump said he had spoken to President Xi Jinping and discussed TikTok with the Chinese leader. Chinese state media said the two leaders had spoken but did not specify if TikTok was part of the conversation.
The Biden administration on Friday said it would leave decisions about enforcement of the law, which comes into effect at midnight on Saturday eastern time, to the incoming Trump administration.
That means the companies that provide the video platform — including Apple, Google and Oracle — have to decide whether to risk violating the law between the midnight deadline and Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Apple and Oracle declined to comment, while Google did not immediately respond.
TikTok said statements from the Biden administration “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans”.
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It also warned that the video app would “go dark” on January 19 unless the Biden administration “immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement”.
In an overwhelming bipartisan vote last March, Congress passed a law that required ByteDance to divest TikTok to avoid a nationwide ban on the app.
Lawmakers and US security officials believe that Chinese ownership of the app poses a national security risk because it could be used for espionage and disinformation by the Chinese Communist party. TikTok has denied that the Chinese government has any influence over the app.
In his first term, Trump issued an executive order to block TikTok from operating in the US, but it was stymied by the courts at the last minute. In early 2024, he came out in opposition to the congressional divest-or-ban measure on the grounds that it would help Facebook, which banned him from its social media platform for two years.
Trump has appointed several China hawks who oppose Chinese ownership of TikTok to his administration, including Mike Waltz, a former green beret and Florida congressman, who will serve as national security adviser.
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Earlier this week, Waltz said the incoming administration would put “measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark”, saying the legislation allowed for an extension as long as a “viable deal” was on the table.
Following the TikTok statement on Friday, Rush Doshi, a former senior Biden administration China official, wrote on X that the company only had itself to blame.
“TikTok had 268 days to sell itself so it wasn’t operated by China. That would have solved everything. But they didn’t even try. China wouldn’t let them,” Doshi said.
“Now, with time short, they want Biden to ignore a bipartisan law SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) upheld 9-0. If they shut down, it’s on them.”
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy and Michael Acton
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