 Thanks for joining us today for our discussion of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I'm Candice Rondeau and I'm the director of the Future Frontlines program at New America, a public intelligence service for next generation security and democratic resilience. I think I speak for many, if not most of the world today. When I say that I wish we did not have to be having this discussion, I wish that Ukraine, Russia, and the world was not in such a precarious situation. But here we are on the precipice of a new order, and also in the middle of probably one of the most devastating conflicts in recent history and in recent memory. Even as we meet here today with our colleagues from Civic and Bellingcat, Russian forces continue to press forward into major cities like Harkiv, Pearson, Kiev, and the scale of civilian harm has been significant. And unfortunately, we may only see this get worse as the fighting continues. Some of you may know that the UN has been releasing different casualty estimates over the last several days, and the estimates are a little bit all over the map. But as recently as yesterday, we saw casualty figures as many as 400 killed so far in six days of fighting, and obviously hundreds injured, but even the UN has to acknowledge and has acknowledged that that number is probably low. And that the scale of the harm already has been much, much more significant. And we also know that 500,000 people at least have been displaced by the conflict and the invasion so far, and that many, many more may still come to be displaced as the fighting continues. And the correlation on Russia's part has real consequences, obviously beyond Ukraine for Europe and for the United States and for the world in general. But before we dive into all that, and I introduce our panelists, I want to make sure that we hear from folks on the ground and most importantly, we're so lucky today to be joined by Lisa Baran, the country director for Ukraine. I know that the Center for Civilians in Conflict. She has been there for many years and last time I saw her was just before the pandemic began. And we were living in a different world, but fearing perhaps that this one, this day would come. Lisa. I know this has been tough for you. But you know, I also know that this is an important moment for you to tell us what's happening. So thank you for joining us. Maybe give us just a quick debrief from the ground. Thank you, Candice and thanks for inviting me to this event. You know when I was invited and I was thinking normally people who know me they know how logical I am and you know like I have very clear talking points in, you know, like and they're very logical canvas to build on. This is the first time in my life and it's really difficult. It's just, it's, it's just beyond comprehension what is happening. You know, like we obviously, you know, like as a professional at Civic and just a normal person when we saw these escalations starting with the late last year. We were doing some scenarios, right, you know, like developing different scenarios, and part of the scenarios was obviously, you know, like to think forward about the potential risks to civilians, what we are doing in civic protection of civilians but also we were working on contingency planning for our safety of all the stuff. And, and I remember all these you know like when we were going into the very extreme scenario, it was like, Oh, no, it will never happen. I mean it's just crazy. It's just, you know, it's just not normal. It just won't happen. And at that time, it's, you know, like, since we had our colleagues pushing us to think through all the scenarios and just to prepare for anything, right, you know, like it's better to be prepared rather than, you know, like going around and thinking what you're doing. And I was, I was moving to my hometown in Western part of Ukraine, the safest place in Ukraine at the, at the moment. And I just left my car with the keys in the office just for the very extreme situation if somebody if my colleagues have to flee from Ukraine and I was, I was 100% sure that it will never ever happen. And so I was living this peaceful life in, in Uzhgorod. When I would, when I received this call at five a.m. from one of our military officers who we work with who said that it started. He's like, what started. He's like, the airport barista is burning. The other training center is burning. Call all your colleagues. They have to be ready to move to go to the shelter or whatever, you know, like off to free any moment, just call them. I still thought I still couldn't believe that it's happening. I went on the news, you know, like we started calling each other. Basically, it took us several hours to make decisions for some people to leave. Luckily, again, my car was there, one of my colleagues was able to collect his whole family, six people in the, you know, like totally they, they were jumped in the small Toyota car to flee here with a small child and the cat. Others waited for longer. I still have one of my colleagues in Harkiv. She, she was, she's originally from Lugans. She had to flee in 2014. And then she said that she's not fleeing the second time. This is her homeland, and she's not running away again. And she, luckily she sent her children to Dnipro to chat to children with an excuse me, with the evacuation convoy from the state emergency service. But she, she decided to stay with her husband in Harkiv. And during the first two or three days, they basically didn't come out from the shelter. And she was saying that, you know, like it's such a abnormal life when everybody, you, you come out, you walk, you walk your dog, you see your neighbors. And then around midday, it all starts, the siren starts, and then everybody's in the shelter just sitting there for, you know, basically until the next morning. My three other, three other colleagues are still in Kiev. And we are, you know, like on chatting every day. And the only thing I can do is just checking that they are fine, you know, like, and, and the all these posts, like, oh, you know, like, there is an explosion. It's really close to me. I mean, I know that it's a coping mechanism that is, you know, like turning on when you cannot be scared all the time. When they start to start joking, you know, like, oh, they missed the TV tower, you know, like it still stays and, you know, like it didn't fall or anything else. But it's just, it's just, it's just insane. Another colleague is not far from Cherkassi, and, and she knows that she's stuck there because now she cannot go on the roads, you know, like it's very, you don't know where you end up with either under an air strike or a strange checkpoint or these crazy Russians who are killing civilians on the roads. They just killed a shot at a regular civilian boss in the here's one area hockey area. People are stuck there. Some obviously, you know, like they just don't want to move because they feel that it would be a surrender and they want to stand up for their own hometown. Others are just, you know, like, they just don't have any other choice. Before the war, we were working with communities along the contact line on civil military dialogues, the community based protection initiatives, and we are still in contact with them through Facebook. And they were telling what is going on with their villages there somewhere I just burned down there just don't don't exist anymore. Some are heavily shelled. There's looting going on even the villages where the Russians came in there just looting those houses they're doing, you know, like it like they what they are telling us they're just full of hatred. You know, like it's not it's not just, you know, like just go and grab some food there. They're doing really crazy stuff to people's houses and their belongings. There is no some villages don't have electricity. Some villages have very limited mobile connection right now. In some villages people just cannot move out because they have immobile parents relatives and there is no obviously because of, you know, like the hostilities are the fighting is still going on. There is no way to evacuate them in any ways. And the same corridors are not provided to get people out. I don't know I can go on and on and on and on and on, you know, like when when this whole thing started with civic started tracking civilian casualties we put together this nice Excel sheet, you know, like monitoring all the news. Yesterday we just realized that we cannot keep up. It's just, you know, like it's just becoming it's just like a geometric progression, you know, like more and more. And since we are not the organization who does monitoring and triangulation which is, you know, we just don't have the capacity is just becoming huge. And, and, and the other crazy thing is that the latest trend is it's clear that they started using civilians and as human shields. We are having examples when they are using a mental hospital. They in Turkey in China give up as they put all the patients and the stuff in the basement they locked them. And they put some radar military radar, and then, you know, like our intelligence knows about it but they are not hitting them because of, you know, like those people they don't, you know, they don't want to hurt them but that's the deliberate usage of hospital for their military purposes. And in other, you know, like there is, I just received the news that in one of the settlements they are going around with white banner, and going closer to civilians and they're just shooting at them. I told you a civilian bus was shot that today. They're, they're placing the toys and matches, you know, with explosives. I keep, you know, like on these, all the chats where the government and the military and everybody supplies, you know, provide some instructions what to do or not to do that, you know, like that is coming up all the time recently that they don't have any things because, you know, they're explosives there, or the, the, the new thing is, they pretend that they are evacuating civilians, they, they plan, you know, they put them. I mean, I don't know. I didn't see whether it was true, but our intelligence told us several times and they want all the civilians to be careful because they're putting on uniforms of Ukrainian, you know, like state emergency service or police or whatever. And then they pretend that they're doing, you know, like organizing evacuation of people and they plan to use them as a shield to was there 10 times to come in. I mean, it's like they're using the ISIS playbook, you know, like to do all these things. And we clearly see that the longer it goes, the more cruel they are becoming. I don't know whether it's related to the fact that all of a sudden they realized that nobody was waiting for them here, probably something that they were told that, you know, like we will be meeting them here with flowers and happy to see them. And obviously, you know, like the military officers probably are, you know, like, becoming more angry that they cannot fulfill whatever their tests, I don't know, but it's clearly become really, really bad and devastating and it's like a massive evil which was, you know, like, collecting his power for many, many years, all of a sudden, you know, like the I don't know, I can, again, you know, like I can go on and on and on and I will leave my colleagues to provide a more logical and, you know, like an analytical approach to explain all these things that just like I just, I just cannot do it right now, but I'm just proud that Ukraine stands for in surrender. I just pray that my colleagues stay safe in Harkiv and in Kiev. And, and that tomorrow morning during our regular check in, you know, like I will see them all again. Sorry. Lisa, thank you. I know that this is extremely difficult and I want to thank you one for your courage to just even take the time to be with us and talk about what is happening on the ground and give us that perspective. And I can imagine how much pain and stress and fear you're coping with your colleagues are your family, not knowing the answer to what will come tomorrow. I really want you to know that we feel that we're grateful for your contributions to this conversation. Let me introduce our other colleagues and see if we can open up the conversation a little bit. First let me introduce Beatrice Godefroy, good friend, long time friend. Almost, almost too much crisis in our lives isn't it Beatrice. Beatrice is the director for Europe for the center in the civilians of conflict. And she works very closely with Lisa she has of course been tracking the conflict in Ukraine for a very long time. She also has spent many years on the front lines for leadership positions with doctors without borders. You name it, she has probably been there, some sort of crisis or disaster or another. I also want to introduce Eric toller, who is a director of research and training at Bellingcat, a collective investigative collective that has focused very closely on conflict in Ukraine for many years, and famously of course reported on the Malaysian airline commercial jet MH17 using open source techniques, as well as the poisonings of the Scribbles and Alexei Navalny more recently. He joins us today from the middle of America. We're happy to have him here today. I also want to introduce my colleague Ben Dalton, an open source investigative fellow with the future front lines program. In addition to being a proud graduate of NYU journalism school just like I am. He also holds a second degree in Russian and Slavic studies. He has reported also from Ukraine on and off for many years. We also have in common, being alumni from international crisis group, where we have covered lots of different conflicts around the world. I just recently worked with me on a story about Russian mercenaries that we have been tracking, who had signal that they were planning to to join in the fray in Ukraine early on, a story about the Wagner group or contingent of the Wagner group known as usage. And their, their plans to join the fray in Ukraine so really great to have you all on board for this conversation. Given, you know, given circumstance and given sort of this description that Lisa has given us in terms of the tensions on the ground, the challenges for civilians. I do want to ask want to turn to you first Beatrice and just sort of open up the floor and talk a little bit about what you think we need to be thinking about in terms of the challenges. There's been talk of, you know, the need to open a humanitarian corridor potentially out of Q, potentially out of Kharkiv, Kyrsyn and so forth. What are the prospects and what would that mean in terms of, you know, civilian protection and the challenge there. Well, thank you Candice and thank you for inviting us to this conversation. It's obviously very hard to be speaking now from Geneva after Lisa has shared her experience and that was very strong. Thank you. Thank you very much Lisa for taking the time and for the courage to do this with us today. So, no, I mean just to first to re-emphasize some of the points that Lisa mentioned. So we've been trying to track just internally as civic what were the patterns of civilian harm since the beginning of this, of this attack of this invasion and, you know, while on the first couple of days maybe or maybe for the 76 hours what we were, you know, collecting or tracking was, let's say more instances of collateral damage or incidental harm, due to the fact that there was fighting and shelling happening in urban areas. So as we know from previous conflicts, it's indeed situations where based on the types of weapons and the types of tactics that you use the risk of collateral damage or indiscriminate attacks is higher in these environments, but definitely starting from, let's say, the week I mean it's very hard to put it, let's say over the weekend we could see emerge these patterns that Lisa was mentioning, which are at a very intense space it's very hard to keep track so in terms also of, you know, what message is to push and to prioritize for us as a, you know, civil society community. There are so many of them at the moment. And Lisa mentioned some of the most acute trends that we're seeing emerge. Some of them of course it's very hard to triangulate the information so some of the examples that Lisa mentioned we're still, you know, trying to understand the risks which are being highlighted by local authorities or which are actual whether there are actual incidents who have already happened, but definitely this trend of human shield of direct targeting of civilians evacuating areas with no under heavy fighting as well as booby trapping and targeting civilian infrastructure with particular risk to civilians like nuclear sites for instance of fuel deposits. These are really trends that we have seen emerge and accelerate in the past few days. And, and so this is direct or indirect targeting to civilians. This is unlawful practice and this must stop. In the very immediate way what's what's the main way all of us can can you know try and help civilians at the moment, all of us which are not direct humanitarian actors right. And so, I think we should, we should put all our strengths and do whatever we can do to, to try and advocate for this humanitarian corridors to be put in place, going in and out of areas where there is intense fighting at the moment should be the top priority for but also for humanitarian actors and humanitarian supplies in those areas where there is heavy fighting. For some of them, it's been really hard on impossible to bring in food or essential supplies or medical supplies since already six days and as the days are going to go. They seven eight nine 10 the intensity of the gap is going to increase. So, once again, and I know this is such a difficult ask actually are the difficult thing to achieve at the moment but this is a top priority to improve the protection of the population. Yeah, in those in those areas and they're under intense fighting at the moment. And, and again I want to insist also on trying to do everything we can to support the evacuation and providing their foods for civilians, as well as improving the, let's say ramping up the capacity to bringing essential humanitarian supplies where they are needed. Like just to add as well a line on and Lisa mentioned the hospital. We have also collected data and have been also reported in the media of ambulances being hit. And, and medical supplies being hit by medical facilities are being hit as well. And, and we have seen in the past few years extremely worrying trends on medical facilities medical staff medical personnel being targeted or hitting the context of urban of war happening in urban areas. And so we should definitely do everything we can to advocate for the protection of medical personnel medical facilities and I'm sorry there's a little bit of noise in the background. No worries, no worries. Well, thank you. Listen, I, I think that's right. We, you know, as a, as those who visited the edge of the humanitarian community, right, I think advocating for, you know, opening the lines of for humanitarian assistance is going to be key. We have to continue to keep up that message and that and the pressure. I am reminded, as, as both you and Lisa are talking. You know, unfortunately, you know, I've spent too much time studying sort of Russian military history, you know, I fear, unfortunately, we're seeing replication of some of the tactics that we saw in Afghanistan, you know, butterfly lines and all kinds of things aimed at booby trapping, you know, objects that children would pick up essentially, you know, people who would really be deeply affected for the rest of their lives. And it would change a complete generation. Right. And we saw that in Afghanistan. We've seen that in Chechnya. We've seen that in Syria. And these tactics are, I guess, just part of the doctrine, even, even if it is not an express doctrine and that is, of course, frightening. I want to turn to Ben because he has I think some historical perspective on that to share as well as just also open it up to Eric to talk a little bit about kind of what, what these tactics mean, and how we're seeing that kind of that transformation, unfortunately that translation, I should say, from all these different previous conflicts where Russia has been the chief aggressor. How should we interpret that then. Yeah. I'll say that. So we've been monitoring for for months now, a lot of the social media channels associated with as Candace mentioned, these Russian mercenary groups that are sort of collectively referred to as the Wagner group, but there's all these various contingents. And, you know, the part that that I'm seeing now that is maybe the most worrisome on these channels, particularly on places like telegram of contactia is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde. Like, on the one hand, there's like appeals to, you know, this imagined sympathetic Ukrainian audience to sort of feed them intelligence but on the other hand there's this sort of really blood thirsty desire for punitive measures. That that clearly is as we heard from from Lisa is already being carried out on the civilian population. And, you know, this was signaled well in advance of the invasion we saw. There was a intelligence report that they were drawing up lists of people who were affiliated with, you know, the government or the Euro Maidan revolution. And he came himself in his speech from, I guess it was just about a week ago, just took a particularly like punitive tone. I think he in his mind is very like sincere when he when he says that he wants to denotify Ukraine, by which he means, you know, either arrest or liquidate these people that he sees as, as, you know, having corrupted the country. And now on social media we're already seeing sort of so far I think unconfirmed reports of people going around with lists of locals in parts of the country that have been under, you know, Russian control. So, yeah, I mean this feels very reminiscent of what took place in Chechnya throughout the 90s. This goes way back. Sure does. And that's, unfortunately, I think the expression has these echoes of, you know, a kind of final solution tone that really is quite scary. Eric, let me turn to you. You know, yesterday, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Korean Khan said he was planning to open a new line of investigation. You know, of course the ICC, the International Criminal Court has been investigating the downing of MH17, as well as other incidents in and around the Donbass area. But now, you know, he seems to have indicated that this is this is beyond the pale and that the invasion calls for a new line of investigation. So in your background, your experience, what are the challenges now that we face with trying to develop kind of an evidentiary in line, given the extreme scale, the overwhelming scale of just what's happening that Lisa just described. A lot of the lessons learned from Syria are being adapted here now, and also at the end and that there's an overwhelming as you're mentioning, that information coming in across Ukraine of clear, you know, human rights abuses and things that are actionable, I guess you could say from the ICC's perspective, and there's been a big shift in the ICC in the last five or so years and that they're now using more or accepting more user generated data to include for their, you know, in combination with the things they normally, you know, their bread and butter witness accounts and things like that. They're using a lot more user generated content coming from social media. Kind of the landmark case about this that a lot of people talk about is an arrest warrant was issued for a Libyan commander, a while ago, I think, I think he's dead now for folly. But the basis of the first, there's two awards put out for him, but the very first one that came out was entirely just based off of Facebook, Facebook posts, because he had posted videos of some executions that were carried out against election ISIS fighters outside of Benghazi back five or six years ago. So, you know, starting with that, with this entire arrest warrant based entirely off of Facebook videos which obviously could be geolocated and verified and known to be, you know, that could be used in court. I mean, it's now a lot more essential because you don't have, you know, witness accounts are obviously important for this sort of thing. But the user generated content is, you know, it's literally video from civilians and sometimes participants so the conflict that show exactly what happened that it could be verified the place time location and so on. And what's going on right now is often in the collection verification and preservation of this evidence and they're a handful of people working in this and at the ICC they have a lot of mechanisms doing this now. The UN has a bunch of mechanisms within their various teams on, you know, they don't have a, you know, they don't have a team setup as far as I know, specifically for, you know, the same way they have for like the, they don't have a BLIM with Syria or the double I double M with Myanmar, as far as I know they don't have one for Ukraine yet like this. But those mechanisms are in place to specifically to, to gather, verify and preserve this evidence and use it for whatever comes next, either now or in the future. So the big challenge right now is with this overwhelming flood of information. This is the highest level of gathering, collecting, verifying and preserving this stuff. You know, this is the, you know, the mile high view of how things are going, but from a much lower level of, you know, just stuff you see on social media and the journalists and things like that stuff that won't be years in the future with, you know, with the history books and with court cases and all that stuff. There's a lot of grassroots efforts going on right now from to, you know, to curate and collect and gather this stuff up we're doing some stuff with Bellicat I know other organizations are as well. I just understand the conflict as it's happening right now. So those are the kind of the two fronts when you talk about the propagation of user generated content, kind of the grassroots level here are people just trying to understand what's happening and knowing you know what's what's actually real what's just what is older cycle content from 2014 and so on. So for example, there are two videos, at least two I've seen of people throwing models of cocktails, you know, from at Russian tanks and one of them is from 2014, and one of them is recent they both have 5 billion views all the time but you know they're kind of on equal footing right now. And that stuff is relatively low stakes because honestly what does it matter if you see those videos I mean obviously we should have clean information ecosystem but you know, there's bigger words about there's a lot bigger words right now than fake videos coming out. For the future for, again, like the mile high view of you know international justice and accountability, having preserved verified copies of this user, user generated content is stuff that it will be thankful that we have in the future. Let me let me dig into that just a little bit more because I do think, you know, there's kind of this balance here between what's happening now on the ground, needing to document it, ensuring that there's accountability for lots of different reasons for your potential reparations for, you know, civilian harm all kinds of reasons why we should be interested in these questions. I remember that during the escalation of the Syrian crisis, you know around 2014 15. There was this real battle to get YouTube to preserve some of this information and yet this is, we're in this very tricky situation, where, you know, Russia clearly also considers, you know the internet to be part of the front. And that you know that information is the second front is what I saw on a couple of telegram channels the other day. And so that really complicates matters. I want on a couple of levels one from a accountability level but I also want to turn to Lisa here also, and touch on just sort of the psychological impact on Ukrainians of this kind of dual track that we have where the information flowing online. People are kind of disconnected from each other because they're, you know, hunkered down music. Can you talk a little bit about that. Yes, sure. And, you know, like I know that, you know, like sometimes I go into these tears and this is I'm, and I even didn't witness, you know, like, probably, compared to my, you know, like other, you know, like citizens and friends and whatever were in the main part and the other part of the country. I didn't witness and I didn't experience all this right you know like I was here from the very beginning of this year was just working remotely from my hometown here. So when this whole happen thing happened I was here. So, but, but the fact that, again, as I told you, you know, like I'm in constant constant contact with my colleagues and it's not just, you know, like chatting is just knowing that they are on the thread every day so you know like and having in, you know, I was here receiving and hosting several IDP families and hearing to their stories, how they were fleeing, how long, you know, like it took them several days to get out of, you know, from here to Uzhgorod because because of the huge traffic jams because of the checkpoints. This family of several military officers, they had to pack of six people, three women and the three children in a minivan and this poor student, I mean, a tender young young student 21 year like small girl who barely could drive she just you know I got her driver's license she was she was put, you know, like to drive this minivan because there was nobody else to, you know, take out these women and children out of Kiev. And they were, you know, like it was the second the third day already it's like the, the end of this, the probably one of the last batches of you know like people who can still move around in the, in the road. There is no gas on the road. They're, you know, like the fuel tank is signaling that, you know, no gas, they're panicking. They're reaching the nearest city, which is, they don't let them in to the city because there is a signal the alarm signal, you know, like air strike is coming in. It took them several, you know, like like 1015 minutes to persuade the checkpoint, you know, that this is the only shelter and they had a family who was ready to host them so they reached that family they just grabbed them and took them to the to the shelter and that's why they where they spend the whole night. They hit the road the next day was, you know, like some military luckily, you know, like giving the landing them, I mean, giving them some fuel, you know, like so that they can get at least to the nearest city. And, you know, like, and again, three, three days of this type of travel and, and they, you know, like when I told them that, okay, here's the washing machine you can use is like, they don't have anything to wash. This is all the only dress we have on us. It's just, and again, you know, like I'm sitting in the safest place in the country. I can't even imagine what other people are going on through right now in Kiev and Harkiv and other places where they, I have the chat where they're telling us the when the alarm system goes on in each city so that people can see. It's just, it's never stops. It never stops. Every, every five minutes there is another alarm, you know, like, and people are called to go to shelter here, there, you know, the whole country now, the whole country except for transcapacities. It's, I, it's, I don't know, I, you know, like, if somebody told me that in the 21st century, this type of work and what happened, I would never, I mean, I think nobody believed that it would happen. And, and, and what almost 40 million people are under all the stress right now. I, yeah, I, you know, like the other thing is huge lines of the water crossing, like I yesterday I was going, you know, like to visit my father in the hospital and it's that way it's, I don't know, it's at least 10 kilometers that that the line of the cars and people are sitting in those cars with children again you know that you know that men are not allowed to do that. So these are women and children. I, I'm, I'm pretty sure that everybody who went through this will will have this trauma throughout their, the rest of their life. Yes, maybe it won't be that painful to talk about, you know, like it hopefully in some period of time, unfortunately, we don't know how long it will last. Unfortunately, it doesn't turn, it doesn't look like it's just a matter of days or even weeks that it's as it stands right now. So, yeah, I mean, I, it's, I don't know the, the consequences of the mental health of people is just devastating. It's just, it's just, you know, just huge. Yeah, the psychological effects have to be huge. Living through it, not having the information that you need being cut off. And I, I really, you know, you can say you feel it but I know what you mean. It's, you feel distance from the real war but you are in it, you know, and we all recognize that. Yeah, just to add of the information flow, you know, from one hand, so what our every day starts with the first days, I would wake up at around like for a, we barely slept because of anxiety. And because you know, like you're watching all the news, all the news everywhere, what's happening, what's happening. And, and that's another part, you know, you're in this news the whole day. You are not, you are looking, you are watching your, you know, like, so basically you don't have even a couple of, probably when you are sleeping, that's the only time when you are not, you know, like watching news and not, not, you know, like, seeing what's happening around. That's another thing. I know, and probably, you know, that's what the psychologists keep telling us on TV that you have to detach, you have to go back to your routine, whatever, but you can't because, you know, like, because you don't know what's, you know, like, what's next and what's what's going on. And then, you know, like in this other city. So, yeah, it's just crazy. Yeah, that that state of hyper vigilance, I think is a big part of living through and, and surviving. I think many of us still still cope with that because you wanted to touch on something to also about the information warfare piece, and how it's affecting logically, and what we should sort of take away from the impact on civilians. Yeah, no, I mean, just to reinforce the fact that I mean, unfortunately, that trauma and psychological pressure had started already before the actual start of the, of this invasion. But as if it was happening in a blank sheet, we had documented that civic were produced actually last year report on protection of students and hybrid warfare in Ukraine. And looking at what was the impact of using hybrid warfare and especially information techniques in the context of of Ukraine, and, and actually what came out very strongly was psychological harm as a main consequence for civilians of using information warfare, being, you know, tensions being filled constantly and being exposed to fake news and not knowing where the situation is going to also manipulation of data on children casualties, it was, it was happening before the invasion. And so, indeed, we see this sort of tactics being reinforced like a million times since the beginning of this, of this attack. And, and I can imagine how complicated and at the stress and the trauma it creates or so for, for everybody in Ukraine to have to be confronted on an hourly basis to this is its information, what is happening, is this true, is this not true. And to have to try and double check the information, etc. This is this, I mean, uncertainty on information is always happening in the midst of this very intense conflict but in the context of hybrid and informational warfare it's being demultiplied and that's contributing to emphasizing this. Yeah, this trauma. And just wanted to go back to some of the really important point that Eric mentioned earlier on investigations and challenges. So first I wanted to thank that in cat for the work they are doing it's unvaluable it's very, very important and very useful actually for all of us to try and try and create some of this information. Also mentioning that indeed before this phase of the conflict, OHHR monitoring mission and OSCE SMM were doing really very important work. I understand that that OHHR maybe ramping up their capacity at the moment it's very important work monitoring and investigation in country and let's say finding in country should be supported through any means by international community at the moment. Also, there is there's going to be discussions at the Human Rights Council in 48 hours on creation of a potential inquiry commission independent commission for Ukraine. Let's see what what form and shape it should take but it's that typically, yeah, indeed a context where independent fact finding mission should be supporting input in place in order to document what's happening but also work on accountability going forward. Really key. I want to turn to Ben because I know he has quite a few thoughts on this because we've been soaking in this stuff for quite a while. Yeah, so I wanted to say something just to add to that about these telegram groups that we're monitoring that are all, you know, connected to one way or the other to these these private mercenary groups. They are explicitly saying that they're engaging in info war like they actually will use the term they they think of themselves as being sort of like on the frontline of the info wars. And they are, these are not small groups either right like many of them have tens and some cases hundreds of thousands of followers they're like a major part of how you know Russian speakers are getting their news about this conflict. And we are seeing, you know, false, decontextualized deliberately misleading content that is that is being posted there, you know, for instance, photos and videos of civilian casualties that, you know, were from years past or in some cases like from Syria. So far, like so back in 2014 2015, there was this strategy that some of these mercenary groups employed like so you mentioned usage where they would actually post their own atrocities that they were committing in a way that felt very reminiscent of what ISIS was doing around the same time. And so far, I have not seen that on these major channels they seem to be mostly trying to sort of like paint the the Ukrainian side is like the ones who are who are you know, doing all of the evil. But as you know they move in and particularly if this conflict draws out, you know, I would not be surprised if we see a return to sort of this like terrorizing kind of content that was being posted a lot. You know, back in the origins of this war. I mean, we have one person in particular who's very well known, Igor, Igor Gurkin, who is now, you know, basically tweeting from St. Petersburg and he is of course one of the progenitors of this strategy in this war, dating back to 2013 14. On the one hand, you know, it's important to be able to look into the psychology, the warped psychology of those who are kind of pervading this information more but at the same time, it's a very delicate balance. We are, you know, only 15 minutes out and we have so many questions here I want to make sure we get to the q amp a. First of all, let me just say, you know, important for you Lisa and I can important for the world to understand that there is a lot of passion and emotion and support for Ukraine right now. And I can see it here in the questions. The courage and the bravery of the Ukrainian people has been on display for years but obviously this week in particular, I think has focused the minds of many in the world on sort of like what that actually means and how it manifests and, and I think it has inspired many so I just want to say that note that as many have here in our in our questions. There are a couple things I think that you know to consolidate some of these questions. You know, one of the big questions is, how can people outside of Ukraine civilians just every day folks how can they help to support, you know, protection for civilians at this stage. And I'll turn to you visa and Beatrice, and then then Eric. So, one thing is that huge support that we are seeing and, you know, like I've been working in this humanitarian field for almost 20 years I worked in Iraq in Nigeria and so many countries. And, yes, I was in crisis you know different types of crisis all the time I was in Baghdad in 2013 when there is you know like I could hear these explosions all the time. But it wasn't it was still you know like a bit different right it wasn't your own country behind each explosion you. You didn't expect any of your family members you know like to be be heard or your house you know like exploded. You know, like this is the first time when you're I'm going through this and and the amount of messages I personally received from all over the world, you know, like people from Iraq offering me to move there in their safe space right now. I know it's ironic, but this is how you know like this is a new reality that we are having. So that's that's huge. This whole support you know like on a personal level on the country levels, what we are seeing the actual things that the countries finally had their courage to introduce sanctions and different other measures. And private companies were making decisions. Yes, these are huge losses, but this is, this is one of those things or moments when we have to look beyond money. It's just you know like the identity it's a it's a totally new world that will be you know like emerging after after this war. Huge and this is something that adds to people's courage, you know, like to their determination to continue. And, and something that we hope that will just, you know, like the even more and more as we go in terms of assistance I think it's very important what Beatriz already said that you know like to call and to make and I don't know how it would be possible to put more pressure so that these people can be evacuated provided supplies and and all the needed so that they can survive basically they're cut off of basic, you know, like services and food. I think, you know, like it's most probably there won't be, hopefully, you know, like shortage of the items and food that the humanitarian organizations can provide. But the fact that it's very difficult to do it because of the fighting in most of those places so that's something to very important to look at. In terms of protection of civilians what you're doing you know like the investigations and looking into the actual things and informing the whole world about the actual reality because I, I took the courage to have a satellite and tenant to watch the Russian today I could, I could, I could do it only for like 1015 minutes because the reality they are showing I mean this is, it just, you know, like, so they're liberating us from fascism. That's it, that's their narrative. So I think it's really important that other organizations provide proof of what exactly what we, what is the reality what is going in Ukraine and informing the people including Russia. I don't know how to get this information to ordinarily Russians and others, you know, like, but probably there should be something done. Obviously, you know, like, we continue our work on the ground. We have, yes, we have our, my colleagues hiding in the shelter most of their life. I mean, days. But, but we continue we work with our, you know, like civilians that we supported before the war we continue collecting and talking to them to better understand you know like their needs and trying to channel them to their own organizations. And, and hopefully, you know, like at some point when it this whole thing stops we can be will be in a good position to have a really thorough analysis and make sure that you know like in the future, nothing. I mean, at least some of these things don't happen again. Some lessons. Beatrice, I'll turn to you and then Eric just briefly what what is needed right now to help with the civilian protection mission. Yeah, thank you Candice I mean Lisa said a lot already and it's a very, very hard question. But I would say the, of course, the top priority at the moment is survival and physical security. So, well, Lizette said it all in terms of safe passage and corridors and, and, and the other top priority which goes with survival is humanitarian supplies as I mentioned. And just going forward I wanted to reemphasize maybe to I mean just to mention two points, I think the risk. So today, we've seen that all of us as you know humanitarian actors we've been going through the sideration first the first day is trying to just care for the safety and security of our staff and progressively let's say since Sunday probably Monday. The humanitarian community is trying to kind of get back to coordinating and scaling up ramping up especially that there are humanitarian needs that can be addressed in host communities in Ukraine but also out of Ukraine in neighboring countries. The paradox and the challenge that the assistance can be available in those areas but cannot be available in the other area where we cannot step foot outside at the moment and when I say we it's not only civics. Literally everybody apart from very, very few occasions where some of us, you know, I NGOs we can put a step out. And the way who is responding it's the military civil administration, the state emergency services. So I think, very immediately, the very next steps at the tactical level so to say for the ground level for us is going to be how can we support this efforts because these are the ones which who are the responders today. And, and it's going to be to try and tune into their network and their needs and their, their capacity gaps at the moment and and support them the best that we can. Yeah, I mean I was as you were thinking as you were talking I was thinking about President Zelensky's, you know, kind of Trichelian moment you know I don't need to ride any ammunition but we also clearly need something more than just ammunition at this stage. We're moving into a different phase of the war. We need, you know, supplies medical supplies we need food we need, you know warm clothing we need this kind of assistance and it needs to come now. I also want to, you know, raise an issue just as one of the few people of color out here who's actually like reporting in crisis zones around the world. I think that there are a lot of Africans and Middle Easterners who have, you know, traveled to Ukraine to go to university, and because it is a wonderful educational system there. And so many resources available people from all over the world. I remember that very distinctly spending time in Kiev, how many Nigerians and Sudanese and Somalis and now here they are struggling to get out at the border. And they're being turned away or being pushed to the macro the line as if they were not human beings. So just want to point out that there's this kind of strange dichotomy that we find ourselves and yet again, when it comes to European policies on on refugees and asylees, and that needs to change immediately as well. Eric, there's a question here. I'll turn to you on this. You know, we have, you know, as we were mentioned before we've seen this movie before in Afghanistan Iraq Syria. What, and we've also seen even, you know, during the most recent phase of the conflict and done boss before the invasion. We've seen foreign fighters come in and kind of change the calculus on the ground. And we, and we know that Russia likes to use that oftentimes as a kind of as a justification for even more cruelty in the battlefield. What do you anticipate Eric, in terms of that. Do you mean foreign fighters coming to fight inside of Ukraine. Yes. I want to say because there's been a huge influx of people interested in coming to fight on the side of Ukraine and we saw this and obviously in 2014. But a lot of them, they, the only places for them to join or the far right groups like right sector ourselves, the ones that everyone knows about C 14. And, you know, some of these people who are joining were, you know, far right, you know, at fascist my supremacist whatever who fit in relatively nicely with some of the more fringe elements within those groups but other people were just people who, you know, were veterans who just, I don't know who just like to fight for whatever reason. Yeah, so it's a it's a mixed group. Now the group you're seeing the similar thing right now. The thing is, Ukraine is taking everyone in and they're not, you know, coordinating them off into these more fringe groups that are just right, you know, down in the middle by Mariupol and stuff like before, like in 2014 and 15. So, yeah, it's it's fascinating to see how I mean fascinating in the most terrible way of how Russia could respond to these things because you've seen how they've responded to, you know, Western weaponry and the initial stuff coming in and just saying the entire, you know, the entire country is Western and NATO because they get you know bullets from Bulgaria, or, you know, guns from Lithuania or whatever. And there are a lot of fighters coming in from all over. There have been some very unconfirmed very shady reports about American far right groups sending people in. Though I think a lot of that is just kind of big talk rather than follow through they'll probably some people will come through right but for every 100 proud boy proud boy who talks about going to fight in Ukraine maybe one will actually go through. Maybe he'll probably get stuck in Germany or something on this way over. And a lot of people coming over and but even more so I think it's maybe more interesting as you're hearing tons and tons reports about you, Ukrainian expats who are coming back home to take up into fight you hear a million anecdotal stories online and I've heard myself from, you know, people who are working in Poland or the UK or Spain or whatever and then they just they're just leaving there's dropping everything and they're going back home to fight. And people coming in the fight aren't just foreign fighters, you know, either the kind of the wacko weirdos who are coming to fight to maybe we're previously fighting in Syria, you know, who knows what they have going on back home. The red relatively normal again relatively is doing a lot of work because if you're going to fight abroad you're, you're kind of a strange person probably one way or the other, like the French Legion that sort of thing. You know, people just coming home, fighting, either people who are Ukrainian or have Ukrainian heritage. And that's probably those people probably outnumber the foreign fighters who were coming in. So it's worth thinking about those as well. So, could this be uses justification for, you know, more cruelty and more targeting of civilian infrastructure and all that. I mean, maybe, I mean Russia doesn't really need an excuse to do that they're going to do it and then make up an excuse afterwards right so I don't think that I don't think that what they're doing there really matters because they're going to do what they're going to do, and they'll, you know, make up a reason later to justify it if it's not this it'll be something else. But, but now it'll it'll be interesting to see exactly who actually makes it over there and how, and how Ukraine organizes these influx of fighters whether it's, you know, 100 or 1000, or if you count in people coming home for expats, 10s of thousands. Just note on the Russian side, you know, this is, I guess, we tend to sort of monitor the other side of the white supremacist movements, where we've been looking at the Russian imperial movement the Legion, the partisan, the russage, etc, etc. You know, the nexus between these organizations, and Adam Waffen division is very well known. The base as well, obviously, you know, Ronaldo, Zara, still in St. Petersburg as far as we know, potentially, potentially maybe he's made a decision to join the Ukraine. So what's, what's interesting about this I think is, you have kind of ethnic motivations of all kinds that are drawing people in. That are drawing people into the conflict, and weirdly sort of unlike Syria, or, you know, or even Afghanistan where you have foreign fighters. You see a lot more empathy from Europeans from Americans for those folks who are joining the fray I was born and raised in Chicago, lived in Ukrainian village. I can imagine now the conversations that are going on there and the tough choices that people are also making, because many people still have you know family ties and it's it's a difficult situation that I think we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, we are at time. There is probably like a million more things we could discuss right now. And I know that we will be having this conversation again. First, let me just thank Lisa one more time. Thank you for staying with us for being with us for your courage. I love Ukraine. Let's hope for better days ahead. And thank you, Eric, Ben Beatrice for being with us and thank you to the audience. You're very thoughtful questions. I'm afraid to say it but we probably will be back here again. And we'll see you soon. Thanks.