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Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the soaring melody of Ukraines national anthem has been heard worldwide, from antiwar protests in Moscow to the stages of major concert halls, from N.B.A. basketball arenas to TikTok posts.

Known by its opening line, Ukraines glory has not perished, the anthem is being heard daily in Ukraine too, played by military bands in the middle of bomb-damaged cities, sung tearfully by women sweeping up debris in their homes and, on Saturday, in a vital open-air performance by an opera company in the port city of Odessa, despite fears of an imminent Russian bombing campaign.

And on Monday night, the anthem shook the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, whose white travertine exterior was draped in an enormous Ukrainian flag and bathed in blue and yellow lights for its Concert for Ukraine.

Alyona Alyona, one of Ukraines biggest rappers, said in a Skype interview from her home in Baryshivka, a town east of Kyiv, that she was hearing the anthem about 20 times a day on Ukrainian TV, where it was being used to rally the country. She had contributed to a compilation of the countrys music stars singing it, she added. This song has a very big meaning, she said.

Even in Russia, Ukraines anthem has been heard, with some antiwar protesters in Moscow having been filmed defiantly singing it while being arrested.

Paul Kubicek, a political scientist at Oakland University who has written extensively about Ukraine, said the anthem was penned in the 1860s when much of what is today Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire. It was a time of cultural awakening, Kubicek said, with elites looking to revive and celebrate a Ukrainian heritage that was at risk of being lost to a process of Russification.

Those elites included Pavlo Chubynsky, an ethnologist and poet, who in 1862 wrote the lyrics after being inspired by patriotic songs from Serbia and Poland. The following year, a composer and priest, Mykhailo Verbytsky, set Chubynskys words to music.

Rory Finnin, a professor of Ukrainian studies at Cambridge University, said Chubynskys song was one of a host of texts that worried the Russian authorities around that time. In 1863, they began censoring almost all Ukrainian publications, Finnin said. Soon, Chubynsky was expelled from the country for disturbing the minds of the public, Finnin added.

The Russian Empires efforts to quash Ukrainian identity didnt meet with much success. After World War I, Chubynskys song was briefly made Ukraines anthem (in 1918, The New York Times published its lyrics) until the country was absorbed into the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities later gave Ukraine a new anthem, claiming the country had found happiness in the Soviet Union.

It was only after the Soviet Union collapsed that Chubynsky and Verbytskys work returned as the national anthem., and it has been a vital part of Ukrainian life ever since. In 2013 and 2014, it was sung hourly in Kyivs Maidan Square at protests against President Viktor F. Yanukovychs push to make the country closer to Russia. Finnin said he was present at some of those protests and the anthem was almost used for counting time.

Now, the anthems being used to inspire once more, both within the country and abroad. Below are some of the more notable international performances from the past two weeks:

To open a recent performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos said he wanted to play Ukraines anthem as a sign of respect and solidarity with the country. What starts as a gentle, almost brittle, rendition, soon brings out the melodys power.

Paavo Jrvi. The Estonian American conductor was in Moscow, leading rehearsals for an engagement with a Russian youth orchestra, when Russia began its attack on Ukraine. When he decided to stay there not to disappoint the players, many criticized his choice.

Anna Netrebko. The superstar Russian sopranowill no longer appear at the Metropolitan Operathis season or the next after failing to comply with the companys demand that she distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Potanin. The Guggenheim Museum said that the Russian businessman and close associate of Mr. Putin would step down as one of its trustees, a position he took on in 2002. While noreason was given for the decision, the museums statement referenced the war in Ukraine.

Alexei Ratmansky. The choreographer, who grew up in Kyiv, was preparing a new ballet at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow when the invasion began, and immediately decided to leave Moscow. The ballet, whose premiere was set for March 30, was postponed indefinitely.

Grard Depardieu. The French actor, who became a Russian citizen in 2013 and is one of the closest Western celebrities to Mr. Putin, tooka surprising stance when he denounced the war during an interview.

The Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Marin Alsop

Marin Alsop appeared intense as she conducted the Orchestra de Paris in the anthem earlier this month, and with players standing to perform, she gave the anthem verve and power.

As well as the above standout performances, the anthem has filled concert halls in the Netherlands, Britain, Poland, France, Germany and other nations across Europe, as this video compilation shows.

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Ukraines National Anthem Reverberates Around the World - The New York Times

American intelligence officials have discovered that the barrage of ballistic missiles Russia has fired into Ukraine contain a surprise: decoys that trick air-defense radars and fool heat-seeking missiles.

The devices are each about a foot long, shaped like a dart and white with an orange tail, according to an American intelligence official. They are released by the Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles that Russia is firing from mobile launchers across the border, the official said, when the missile senses that it has been targeted by air defense systems.

Each is packed with electronics and produces radio signals to jam or spoof enemy radars attempting to locate the Iskander-M, and contains a heat source to attract incoming missiles. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters, described the devices on the condition of anonymity.

The use of the decoys may help explain why Ukrainian air-defense weapons have had difficulty intercepting Russias Iskander missiles.

Powered by a solid-fuel rocket motor, the Iskander can reach targets more than 200 miles away, according to U.S. government documents. Each mobile launcher can fire two Iskanders before it must be reloaded.

Photographs of the dart-shaped munitions began circulating on social media two weeks ago. They had stumped experts and open-source intelligence analysts many of whom mistook them for bomblets from cluster weapons based on their size and shape.

Richard Stevens, who spent 22 years in the British Army as an explosive ordnance disposal soldier, and later worked as a civilian bomb technician for 10 years in southern Iraq, Africa and other regions, said he had been exposed to plenty of Chinese and Russian munitions, but I had never seen this.

Mr. Stevens posted photos of the munitions to a site for military and civilian bomb disposal experts that he started in 2011, and found that no one else seemed to have seen these mystery munitions before either.

That Russia is using that size of weapon the Iskander-M and quite a few of them I believe, thats why were seeing this now, Mr. Stevens added. Its just that, post-conflict in the past 10 to 15 years, no one has had the opportunity to see this.

The devices are similar to Cold War decoys called penetration aids, the intelligence official said, that have accompanied nuclear warheads since the 1970s and were designed to evade antimissile systems and allow individual warheads to reach their targets. The incorporation of the devices into weapons like the Iskander-M that have conventional warheads has not been previously documented in military arsenals.

March 18, 2022, 11:45 a.m. ET

The minute people came up with missiles, people started trying to shoot them down, and the minute people started trying to shoot them down, people started thinking about penetration aids, Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., said in an interview. But we never see them because theyre highly secret if you know how they work, you can counteract them.

The use of the decoys may point to some level of carelessness or urgency by Russian military leadership, Mr. Lewis said, given that Russia knows they will inevitably be collected and studied by Western intelligence services so that NATO air defenses can be programmed to defeat the Iskanders countermeasures.

An attack in the west. A missile strike rattled the outskirts of Lviv, a western city that has been a haven for people fleeing areas under siege. The mayor of the city said several missiles had struck an aircraft repair plant at the airport in Lviv, destroying the buildings.

A looming energy crisis. The International Energy Agency said that the repercussions of Russias invasion of Ukraine arelikely to intensify over the next several months, and nations around the world should respond by reducing their use of oil and gas.

And it is highly unlikely, he said, that the version of the Iskander that Russia has sold to other countries would contain these decoys.

That suggests to me that the Russians place some value on keeping that technology close to home and that this war is important enough to them to give that up, Mr. Lewis said. Theyre digging deep, and maybe they no longer care, but I would care if I were them.

I think that there are some very excited people in the U.S. intelligence community right now, he added.

William J. Broad contributed reporting.

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Russia Deploys a Mystery Munition in Ukraine - The New York Times

In June 1998, Clinton declared a national emergency under the pretense that the governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia, with respect to Kosovo, were threatening to destabilize countries of the region and to disrupt progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina in implementing the Dayton peace agreement, and therefore constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.

NATO intervened, ended the war and brought an end to most of the immediate suffering.

This poses the question: When does America have a moral obligation to intervene particularly for humanitarian reasons in conflict? And which factors contribute to the choices we make?

America and NATO have a clear geopolitical interest in Ukraine: President Vladimir Putin of Russia cannot be allowed to get away with such unprovoked, naked aggression. What kind of precedent would that set? And whos to say that he would stop there?

But when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke via video to Congress on Wednesday, part of the appeal he was making was a moral one, an appeal to the American belief in and commitment to the very idea of democracy.

He said:

Peace in your country does not depend anymore only on you and your people. It depends on those next to you, on those who are strong. Strong does not mean big. Strong is brave and ready to fight for the life of his citizens and citizens of the world. For human rights, for freedom, for the right to live decently and to die when your time comes, not when it is wanted by someone else, by your neighbor. Today the Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine, we are fighting for the values of Europe and the world, sacrificing our lives in the name of the future.

The question is how far is America compelled to go. President Biden signed off on $13.6 billion in aid on Tuesday and announced on Wednesday that $800 million in military assistance would be sent to Ukraine as part of that funding. These are not trivial amounts. Furthermore, America and its allies have imposed stiff economic sanctions on Russia. The sanctions could contribute to inflation, which means that Americans may pay even more than what the administration is pledging in direct assistance.

I say that the United States must supply military aid and should supply humanitarian aid. But I also say that we must be more consistent in determining who deserves outpourings of our humanitarian impulses.

Human suffering is human suffering. It has been a constant in the story of mankind. Sometimes it overlaps with our national interests, and sometimes it does not. But our sense of morality must remain constant, and in it we must find a place for equity.

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Opinion | What Is Our Moral Obligation in Ukraine? - The New York Times

An international anti-war zoom meeting on February 26 attended by thousands and organized by CODEPINK, Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the No To NATO network agreed to an international day of anti-war action on Sunday, March 6. We call on everyone who opposes this war to take to the streets on March 6 in a massive display of global opposition to the war and the warmongers.

The war in Ukraine is a disaster for the people of Ukraine and a terrible threat to us all, including increasing the danger of nuclear war. We oppose the Russian invasion and call for the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops. We recognize that the expansion of NATO and the aggressive approach of Western states have helped cause the crisis and we demand an end to NATO expansion. We also oppose sanctions that will harm ordinary Russians and call on all countries to welcome refugees fleeing the war.

There have already been many anti-war demonstrations in Russia and many other countries. What we need now is a massive, unified response by peace-loving people around the world to say No to War in Ukraine; Yes to Negotiations and Peace.

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About - Peace in Ukraine

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Ukraines economic freedom score is 54.1, making its economy the 130th freest in the 2022 Index. Ukraine is ranked 44th among 45 countries in the Europe region, and its overall score is below the regional and world averages.

Five years ago, the Ukrainian economy was gaining strength, but growth slowed in 2019, and the economy contracted in 2020. Growth resumed in 2021. During that half-decade, economic freedom has generally trended upward. Aided by score increases in labor freedom and monetary freedom, Ukraine has recorded an impressive 6.0-point overall gain of economic freedom since 2017 but is still in the middle ranks of the Mostly Unfree countries. Fiscal health is somewhat positive, but investment freedom, financial freedom, and rule of law exhibit weaknesses.

IMPACT OF COVID-19: As of December 1, 2021, 91,860 deaths had been attributed to the pandemic in Ukraine, and the governments response to the crisis ranked 40th among the countries included in this Index in terms of its stringency. The economy contracted by 4.2 percent in 2020.

Long known as the Breadbasket of Europe because of its fertile black soil, Ukraine is located in Eastern Europe north of the Black Sea. In the eight years since the Maidan revolution, Ukraines political landscape has been transformed. Rival businesspolitical networks continue to exercise significant influence, but a generational change is in progress. Actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a political newcomer, won the April 2019 presidential election, and his party won an absolute majority in July 2019 parliamentary elections. Russias illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and destabilization of the eastern Donbas region continue to damage the Ukrainian economy, which relies heavily on the production of wheat and exports of industrial and energy products.

Property rights and secured interests are protected by law, and the recording system is generally reliable, but enforcement is undermined by corrupt courts. In 2021, in an effort to unleash productivity and investment, the government ended a 20-year moratorium on the sale of farmland. The judiciarys susceptibility to political pressure, corruption, and bribery weakens public confidence. Government integrity remains severely compromised.

The top individual income tax rate is 20 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 18 percent. Other taxes include value-added and property taxes. The overall tax burden equals 19.2 percent of total domestic income. Government spending has amounted to 43.0 percent of total output (GDP) over the past three years, and budget deficits have averaged 3.5 percent of GDP. Public debt is equivalent to 60.7 percent of GDP.

Regulatory decisions are characterized by a high degree of arbitrariness and favoritism. A change has been made to speed up the review and issuance of patents. There is a skilled computer software workforce. Most state-owned enterprises rely on government subsidies to function and cannot compete directly with private firms. Subsidies for natural gas were reimplemented in 2021.

Ukraine has 20 preferential trade agreements in force. The trade-weighted average tariff rate is 3.2 percent, and 150 nontariff measures are in effect. Despite progress, lingering bureaucracy deters much-needed growth in private investment. Nonperforming loans continue to be a drag on the banking system. The capital markets lack of development limits financing options.

Excerpt from:
Ukraine Economy: Population, GDP, Inflation, Business ...