Rome: City and Empire

We visited the Rome exhibition at the National Museum of Australia on Sunday afternoon (a tip: go late in the day and you won’t have to wait in a queue for an hour – but there’ll be some fingerprints on all the glass cabinets!).

Here are a few more shots:

The entrance (with me!).

The Emperor Augustus, who looks suspiciously like Vladimir Putin!

And I was SO happy to see they’d labelled Crimea as Ukraine, despite what Russia is currently up to.

Russia fires on and seizes Ukrainian ships.

Here’s your Monday reminder that Russia is still actively invading and committing acts of war against Ukraine, and that tweets from Trump’s toilet aren’t the most important thing happening in the world right now…

X

Some history…

And a reminder Russia is once again occupying Crimea and committing acts of ethnic cleansing against the Tatars.

The world is almost okay again.

What I am sure most of you are unaware of is that the moment Ukraine named a Crimean Tatar singer as their Eurovision entry, Russia applied to have Ukraine banned from the song contest.

Ukraine didn’t even enter after Russia invaded, and that year, Russia nearly won. Ukrainians were being massacred, and Europeans were voting for the people responsible for it!

So this win is a Major, MAJOR win against Vladimir Putin’s propaganda campaign and ongoing invasion.

Also funny that if the runner-up had won, next year Eurovision would have been hosted in my hometown, Canberra! (Unless there’s some rule the competition cannot leave Europe.)

Why did anyone vote for Australia? We have no business being in the contest!

However, it makes me sick to my stomach that Russia came close to winning – for the second year in a row. People who voted for Russia: do you remember these words: Georgia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Moldova, Syria, gay rights, human rights? Obviously not.

War Victims

A display of some of the Ukrainian soldiers killed in the Russian invasion. It is in front of St Michael’s in Kyiv. It is out of date, and newer victims have been added in temporary memorials as the war continues.

In one month alone, 684 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and that doesn’t include all the civilian deaths.

And yet in the coming days, the world will get worked up about the Russian entry in Eurovision, vote for them, and not care about human lives, or rights.

In Kyiv

We flew into Ukraine’s capital city this morning  and visited the main square for the first time since the revolution (the square where there were the burning tyres, and had the drums, and then all the demonstrators were being shot by the pro-Russian authorities).

We are now in a Crimean cafe on the square, one we have visitied plenty of times in the past. They are flying Ukrainian and Crimean flags together; the Crimean Tatars don’t want to be ruled by Russia!

A couple of things to keep in mind this weekend…

I know people who are continuing to book holidays in Russia. Take a look at these things and ask yourself how you can have ANY morals and continue financially contributing to Putin’s Russia…

The bodies of 500 civilians have been found in the cellars of residential buildings in Debaltseve, Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as of the 6th of March

 

 

Goodbye 2014

Some of my favourites from 2014.

Ukraine is not Russia!

Here is a picture of us protesting at the Russian embassy in Canberra, Australia just after Russia invaded Crimea. In this picture you can see me, my two Ukrainian aunts and my (over ninety) grandmother. Beside me (but you can’t see) is a group of Crimean Tatars, protesting that Crimea is Ukraine, not Russia.

Russian lies about Ukraine

I don’t know what is sadder: that Russia is doing this, or that in 2014 – with so much information at their fingertips – so many Russians are silly enough to believe it.

Top 20 lies about Ukraine in the Russian media.