English translation can be read here: open.substack.com/pub/deborahf...

UN adds Israel and Russia to blacklist for sexual violence in conflict

If in Budapest and keen on critical debates on European and global knowledge hierarchies, join us at OSA for my talk on the persistent patterns of epistemic injustice, and the urgent need to recenter and reconnect dissent knowledges and scholarship from Europe’s East in debates about Europe’s East

Meetings, phone calls, statements of condemnation, security guarantee memoranda, words of solidarity or polite disapproval have never in history stopped Russian imperialism. That’s the reality that needs facing head-on, not by evading and hoping it ends on its own. Why would it?

BREAKING: A Russian attack drone has struck a residential building in Galați, Romania, according to reports from the scene. Romania is a NATO member state. Initial reports indicate multiple people were injured.

UN adds Israel to sexual violence in conflict zones blacklist, ambassador says www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

This cannot be good An Increasing Number of Immigrants in the US Are Avoiding Going to the Doctor sciencepolitics.org/2026/05/27/a...

Turns out women don’t rush to procreate in a structurally coercive environment that criminalises abortion even for health reasons, and where pregnancy complications regularly involve the medical system letting them die. Who would have guessed. How are the ‘fertility rates’ going across the US..?

Why on earth are russian scholars reviewing Kyrgyz textbooks to begin with?! At a meeting in Moscow, no less. The decolonization road is long. Read @ericamarat.bsky.social ‘s timely oped.

“The perception of RU in Kyrgyzstan has changed significantly since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Intellectuals in Bishkek no longer debate whether Russia’s occupation of the region was colonialism. Today’s decolonial discourse in CA focuses on exposing the atrocities committed under RU rule”

Words of concern don’t make a change

Free Sakartvelo

Dear Omer… Selma Selman’s art in Budapest

If in Warsaw…

🇺🇦 Words do matter & the narrative on Russia's war of aggression is getting worse: there is no equivalence between Russian strikes on Ukraine & Ukrainian strikes against Russia's military infrastructure. Russia doesn't "respond", it attacks. 🎥 My video here 👇 www.instagram.com/reel/DYuYs2P...

Russians destroyed the Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv during an overnight missile attack. A renewed exhibition had only recently opened there to mark the 40th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant tragedy.

Russia also bombed the Chornobyl museum in Kyiv today . 40 years after causing the tragedy , Moscow bombs the very museum that remembers it . This is just so Russia

💔 Russians destroy National Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv, museums, churches, theatre and universities also damaged

Just as in the Sde Teiman affair, with the accounts describing the egregious abuse of a Palestinian detainee,the public's shock was not a result of moral disgust over the violation of human rights, but rather over the videos having reached foreign media Jack Khoury www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026...

This will be an insightful hybrid event with many incredible speakers, including Angéla Kóczé. The conference is organised as part of Khamoro, the world’s largest Romani cultural festival, that has been held annually in Prague since 1999

The results of impunity

“Verónica Cruz Sánchez, founder of the Mexico-based feminist abortion rights organization, Las Libres, points to solidarity, mutual support and shared responsibility to work toward a common goal, as key. But grassroots solidarity requires courage and trust to bridge differences and take bold action”

Sneak peek: forthcoming with OUP, open access. This book features perspectives on digital health transformation and issues of justice, including from Indonesia, Brazil, India, and Ghana, as well as First Nations expert analyses on health and Indigenous Data Sovereignty from Aotearoa and Australia

Here’s a recent report written by Indigenous and decolonial researchers and activists that offers a historically and empirically substantiated analysis of the socio-political position of Indigenous populations in Russia-colonised territories It’s open access: assets.zyrosite.com/kvOYI6NwLEJ3...

I can imagine it. There’s a constant stream of content framing the USSR as “progressive” or “not that bad,” which hinders understanding of Russian imperialism and its past to present genocides, while gaslighting those who have opposed them and are warning about what’s to come. So yeah, there’s that

Very excited about our 1st featured panel at the 2026 RUTA conference in the Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, especially as someone currently writing a book that puts Seye Abimbola’s critique of the foreign gaze in dialogue with resonant critiques written by Czechoslovak feminist theorists in the 90s

“Russian propaganda on Bluesky first became notable during Germany’s elections last year, when the Kremlin sought to bolster Germany’s far right, led by the Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD.” #giftlink #disinformation #propaganda

Well well well, some of us have obviously haven’t been hacked yet

Summoning all powers for this. Dissent knowledges and the impact of state socialism and Russian-Soviet occupations on the health and wellbeing of directly affected populations across Europe’s East, Central and Northern Asia. OSA Archivum The project that is expanding: archivum.org/academics/fe...

Just finalising proofs for the forum Looking Back, Moving Forward: Decolonial Dialogues on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and reading Selbi Durdiyeva's words on how the reframing of racial Russian-Soviet oppression as class oppression constitutes a form of epistemic violence, and it strikes me…

A tragically urgent read

Recommending this text by Maria Sonevytsky on the meaning of house keys for Crimean Tatars, following 1940s Soviet deportations and genocide under Stalin, and the Palestinians since the Nakba. Maria read it at our RUTA conference in Ukraine last summer and it was so incredibly powerful and moving

Key texts on Crimean Tatar history and the harmful legacy of Russian-Soviet colonialism and genocides

Here’s a recording of our RUTA webinar in solidarity with Crimean Tatars under Russian occupation - deeply insightful discussion with Emine Ziyatdin, Mariia Shynkarenko and Elzara Halimova, moderated by Martin Kisly, founder of the Crimean Studies Center of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

Qırım serbest olacaq!

Looking forward to reading

Finally made it to the Arab World Institute

This was a really insightful and powerful discussion worth listening to

The secret mission to rescue the UN’s vital Palestinian refugee archive Millions of documents chronicling generations of trauma saved from Gaza and East Jerusalem in 10-month Unrwa operation www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

"Weinberg was awarded Germany’s order of merit...but handed it back last year when a parliamentary vote calling for many more migrants to be turned back at Germany’s borders passed with the help of a far-right party. The motion was put forward by Friedrich Merz, who is now the country’s chancellor."

Every year, we receive far more applications from scholars, artists and social justice advocates than we can include in the program. Still, we want all waitlisted and fellow keen thinkers to be part of the conversation. Now, we finally have a venue with greater capacity—join us in the RUTA audience!

Truth Under Siege: How Russian Disinformation Fuels the Far Right Join our emergency forum after the UK elections on how Russian disinformation fuels the far right, undermines solidarity with Ukraine, and erodes democracy. 🗓 Wednesday 20 May, 7:30pm 🎟 Register: bit.ly/russiadisinfo

Really interesting article by a brilliant group of scholars. Very excited that Chenchen Zhang is doing the next #LeftRenewal webinar on Saturday (10 am BST I think) cc @terezahendl.bsky.social @amit-singh.bsky.social leftrenewal.org/wi/

This was so meaningful to witness with the crowd outside the parliament. Then an openly lesbian Romani singer Ibolya Oláh performed outdoors. What a way to mark the end of Orbán’s far right anti-LGBTQ autocracy. Gives one hope that the new government is less “right wing conservative” than expected

This regime change was so good to witness! Glad to be here for the multigenerational hope, it’s so electrifying. Foreign commentators who relativise the scenario don’t grasp the shift from an authoritarian to a democratic governance model. So happy for Hungarians and fingers crossed for the future!

This Pavel Braila 💔

Orbán’s out and double rainbow’s in!

Zhanna Kadyrova’s Security Guarantees confronts the legacy of the Budapest Memorandum not as a distant chapter in history, but as a living reality shaped by the consequences of its collapse. Rather than retreating into abstraction, the project follows the concrete paths left by these broken promises

One BIG problem though. Kazakhstan pavilion in Venice was supposed to have this work of Asel Kadyrkhanova on Stalinist repressions as one of the central pieces at the exhibit. The vice minister of culture of Kazakhstan came to “inspect” it the day before pre-opening & ordered to remove it

A rather unexpected Pussy Riot and FEMEN collab at the Venice Biennale