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Russia has more Arctic land area than any other nation. But since the invasion of Ukraine, it has been harder for Russian scientists to share data about how climate change is affecting the region. This tiny chapel is on the grounds of the Northeast Science Station near the Russian town of Chersky. Arthur Max/AP hide caption

Russia has more Arctic land area than any other nation. But since the invasion of Ukraine, it has been harder for Russian scientists to share data about how climate change is affecting the region. This tiny chapel is on the grounds of the Northeast Science Station near the Russian town of Chersky.

Lack of data about conditions in the Russian Arctic is already hampering climate science, and will cause ever-growing gaps in our understanding of how climate change affects the fastest-warming region of the planet, scientists warn.

The Arctic is warming up to four times faster than the Earth as a whole. And Russia has more Arctic land than any other nation. But, since Russia invaded Ukraine, it's been increasingly difficult for climate scientists in Russia to collaborate or share data about conditions in the country's vast frozen areas.

That includes basic measurements of temperature and snowfall in the Russian Arctic, as well as more sophisticated details about greenhouse gas emissions and what's happening to plants and animals in the region.

Excluding such data from climate models makes them less accurate, and the problem will get worse over time, a new study warns. "By neglecting Russian sites, we decrease our chances to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change," says Efrn Lpez-Blanco of Aarhus University in Denmark, who is one of the authors of the paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

In order to build climate models that can accurately predict what will happen to the Arctic in the future, scientists need measurements from across the Arctic. If the available data is concentrated in a few places, like Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia, and excludes Russia's vast Arctic expanses, then the models will be increasingly inaccurate, the study finds.

"It's a huge landmass," says Ken Tape, an ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "You can't ignore it."

Beaver access has been cut off for western scientists

Tape is already seeing the negative effects of the war on his area of research. He studies beavers, which are moving into the tundra and are often unpopular neighbors.

"It's like an intruder," he says. "The connotations are not positive, you know? Especially if fish is a big resource for you, you're going to be very skeptical of someone who comes in and dams up fish-bearing streams."

Scientists like Tape are studying where beavers are showing up, and trying to understand how far North the population will move, how quickly and at what scale. Such research can help local communities manage the animals: beavers are notorious for turning streams into bogs, for example, which can affect water quality for humans nearby.

The research is also important because when beavers build dams, they can disturb frozen ground, which can release trapped greenhouse gasses as it thaws.

A few years ago, Tape helped start the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, so scientists all around the Arctic could collaborate and share data. But with the invasion of Ukraine, the dream of Russian collaboration in the project stalled, he says. "We're having a meeting at the end of February," he says, "and it's basically Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia. There's no one from Russia coming."

On top of that, western scientists no longer have access to field sites in Russia, he says. Instead, they have to rely on what they can see from space, from satellite images of beaver dams. "You can do a lot from space, but you need to have some boots on the ground confirming what you're seeing," Tape explains.

People walk next to a cracked panel apartment building in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk in 2018. Climate change is causing permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, to thaw across the Arctic. When the earth thaws, it can destabilize building foundations, roads, pipelines and other infrastructure. Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

People walk next to a cracked panel apartment building in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk in 2018. Climate change is causing permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, to thaw across the Arctic. When the earth thaws, it can destabilize building foundations, roads, pipelines and other infrastructure.

For some, it's a reminder of Cold War science

For Russian climate scientists who started their careers in the Soviet Union, the current situation can feel eerily familiar.

"In the past like, Soviet Union past the data from this part of the world was also limited," says Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who trained in Moscow. In the mid-1970s, young scientists had virtually no contact with western collaborators, he remembers.

But when things opened up in the 1990s, he says, his field exploded. "During that time, lots of data became available from the Russian permafrost regions," he remembers. International scientists started collaborating with Russian scientists to investigate how permafrost was changing.

And the research findings were explosive. Permafrost is the permanently frozen ground found across the Arctic. As it thaws, it creates massive problems for infrastructure built on top of it, causing roads to buckle, building foundations to crack and pipelines to break.

It can also release enormous amounts of planet-warming gasses that are trapped within the frozen earth. Scientists now warn that virtually all surface permafrost could be gone from the Arctic by the end of the century.

But now the data that is so crucial for permafrost science is drying up, Romanovsky says.

In the past, he and other western scientists received temperature and soil measurements from Russian research facilities. "This year, there may not be any data," he says. "If this will continue into the future, eventually it may have some impact on our understanding [of permafrost changes.]"

Romanovsky is also concerned about young Russian scientists who are important to the future of climate research in the region. "It's very discouraging," he says. "Eventually, I believe that we will be able to communicate openly again."

Original post:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is hurting climate science - NPR

Kyiv has dismissed urgings by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico that Ukraine give up territory to the countrys Russian invaders.

Lets be honest: No security in Ukraine means no security in Slovakia or Europe as a whole, said Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko.

We must work together to bring Ukraines victory closer.

Nikolenko was commenting on Saturday remarks by Fico, in which Slovakias newly elected, pro-Moscow leader pressed Kyiv to be more realistic. There must be some kind of compromise. Why do they [Ukrainians] expect the Russians to leave Crimea, Donbas, and Luhansk? It is not real, Fico said.

But Kyiv wasnt having it. There can be no compromise on territorial integrity. Not Ukraine, not Slovakia, not any other country, Nikolenko countered. Ukraine and its partners are making efforts to remove Russians from Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk, so that they do not go further, in particular to Koice [and] Pryaiv [Preov, both cities in eastern Slovakia] and other Slovak regions.

The tense exchange occurred shortly before Fico is due to meet his Ukraine counterpart, Denys Shmyhal, on January 24. Alleging that Ukraine was under the total influence of Washingtonand was one of the most corrupt nations in the world, Fico promised he would tell Shmyhal that Slovakia intendedto veto Ukraines bid to join NATO and to halt weapons supplies to Kyiv.

Previously, during a press conference last week with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn, Fico saidRussias war on Ukraine has no military solution.

Fico started his fourth term as Slovak prime minister in December after his leftist-populist Smer (Direction)party won a September 30 general election. His campaign touted opposing sanctions against Russia and ceasing weapons shipments to Ukraine under the slogan, Not a single round.

Sergey Goryashko is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.

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Ukraine to Slovakia's Fico: No, we won't give up land to Russia - POLITICO Europe

Prominent jailed Kremlin critic 'forced to listen to pro-Putin singer at 5am every morning'

Alexei Navalny has faced a series of hardships, apparently as a result of his role as Vladimir Putin's most prominent political rival.

Having previously been poisoned, assaulted and deprived of proper medical care, the jailed Kremlin critic today revealed he faced a new challenge: being forced to listen to a pro-Putinpop singer at 5am every day.

The 47-year-old, a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning the Russian president's elite circle and voicing allegations of vast corruption, is currently in a prison about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

He is sentenced to stay in prison until he is 74 on charges widely thought to be trumped up to keep him out of politics.

But now Navalny has revealed that his morning regime consists of listening to the Russian national anthem before being played I am Russian, a patriotic song performed by a pro-Putinsinger called Shaman.

Shaman, whose real name is Yaroslav Dronov, has ridden a wave of war-fuelled patriotism to become a staple on state TV and is one of the celebrities officially puttingPutinforward to run again for the presidency in March.

His signature song, which he sometimes performs dressed in a black leather outfit with an arm band in the colours of the Russian flag talks of how Russians cannot "be broken", and will "go to the end" and carry the blood of their fathers.

The 32-year-old singer courted controversy in November when he simulated setting off a nuclear bomb at a concert broadcast on state TV, pushing a red button in a mock nuclear suitcase before fireworks erupted around him.

In a message on X facilitated by his allies, Navalny described a surreal morning routine.

"The singer Shaman came to prominence when I was already in prison so I could neither see him nor listen to his music," he wrote.

"But I knew he had becomePutin's main singer. And that his main song was I am Russian.

"Of course I was curious to hear it, but where could I listen to it in prison. And then they brought me to Yamal [the location of his Arctic prison].

"And here, every day at 5 o'clock in the morning, we hear the command, 'Get up!', followed by the Russian national anthem and then immediately afterwards, the country's second most important song is played - I am Russian by Shaman."

The irony, said Navalny, was that state propaganda had once highlighted the fact that he used to march with Russian nationalists on annual marches and now, years later, he was being played an ultra-nationalist pop song for educational purposes while doing his morning prison exercises.

He quipped: "To be honest, I'm still not sure that I correctly understand what post-irony and meta-irony are. But if that's not it, what is it?"

Read more:
Ukraine war latest: 'Particularly concerning development' for the West as Russia changes nuclear thinking; Putin faces ... - Sky News

BERLIN When Russia turned to Kim Jong Un of North Korea to help it through its war with Ukraine, it came with a big shopping list that included 1 million rounds of artillery to shoot at Ukrainian troops dug into trenches across the south and east, and dozens of North Koreas newest, barely tested missiles.

Now those weapons are beginning to show up, deeply worrying U.S. and European officials who say they fear the Norths ammunition could prove important on the battlefield at a huge moment of vulnerability for Ukraine.

While many of the North Korean artillery rounds are proving to be duds some appear to have been manufactured decades ago they are giving the Russians something to fire at Ukrainian forces, who are rationing their own dwindling supply. European nations promised Ukraine a huge resupply, but for now seem to have been able to scrounge up only 300,000 or so artillery shells.

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But it is the missiles that raise the most concern, from the Pentagon to NATOs headquarters in Brussels. In interviews, a range of officials said they fear the Russians hope to use missiles to overwhelm Western air defenses. While so far the number of missiles transferred is small, likely fewer than 50, U.S. and European officials believe there could be far more to come.

And unlike with the artillery rounds, North Korea is not shipping its older equipment. An analysis by Conflict Armament Research, an organization that has documented the arms used in Russias war in Ukraine, showed the missiles being provided to Russia are more recent in their design. And U.S. officials say the missiles are proving as accurate as Russias home-built equipment. Three barrages of North Korean-made missiles targeted Ukrainian positions around the new year, U.S. officials say, and they believe more were used on the battlefield Sunday.

In South Korea, officials and analysts say the Ukraine war is giving the North something it desperately needs: a testing ground to see how its new missile arsenal, designed for a conflict with South Korea and the United States, fares against Western-designed air defenses.

The turn to North Korea, as the war approaches its second anniversary, reflects Russias own struggle to keep up with the pace at which both sides are burning through their stocks of arms. Russia has also turned to Iran for drones, and is reportedly seeking Iranian missiles as well though there is no evidence it has yet gotten them.

The bulk of the missiles being fired at Ukraine are still produced in Russia. But if North Korea steps up its supply, Ukraine could be forced to shoot off precious rounds of air defenses, a development that could be devastating to Ukraine if additional military funding is not approved by Congress, U.S. officials said. The imports have especially alarmed leading members of NATO, who have declined to speak publicly but say they worry the infusion of the North Korean arms could prove particularly troublesome at a time when Ukraine is uncertain about when, or from whom, it will receive its next supplies.

For now, the air defenses are holding. Last Tuesday, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that he believed the Ukrainian military had enough air defenses to survive the winter, two senior U.S. officials said.

But if North Korea increases its missile shipments, and Congress fails to pass additional aid, that calculation could change.

Russia has already obtained several dozen North Korean missiles and is hoping to acquire more. President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he planned to visit North Korea soon, according to North Korean state media. Russia has fired North Korean missiles against Ukraine at least three times since late December, including attacks on Dec. 30, Jan. 2 and Jan. 6.

The missiles come on top of a steady stream of artillery shells, as many as 1 million rounds, that North Korea has agreed to ship to Russia. But the quality of those rounds is poor. Some have exploded inside Russian guns, and many of the rest have fallen harmlessly in underpopulated areas.

Quantity itself, however, matters on the battlefield. Last summer, Ukraine was firing as many as 7,000 artillery shells a day and had managed to damage Russias ammunition supplies to the point that Russia was firing about 5,000 rounds a day, according to U.S. and other Western analysts. Now the Ukrainians are struggling to fire 2,000 rounds daily, while Russian artillery, augmented by the North Korean shells, is reaching about 10,000 a day, analysts said.

Still, U.S. officials are far more worried about North Korean missiles.

After the first barrage, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, began working on an intensified effort to gather international support condemning the weapons transfer, and trying to increase pressure on North Korea to stop providing the missiles.

U.S. officials believe that at times since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, U.S. disclosures of North Korean shipments have caused North Korea to halt or delay further transfers.

The Russian transfers are coming at a critical time in the war in Ukraine, as further U.S. support hangs in the balance, subject to intense political debates on Capitol Hill. Ukraines ammunition needs will be a main focus of a virtual meeting of the countrys allies on Tuesday, to be led by Austin.

The United States has provided myriad air defense systems and ammunition to Ukraine. And U.S. officials have said those systems including Patriot batteries have proved capable of blunting the damage of Russian missile attacks.

But U.S. officials said that in order to provide more air defense systems and ammunition, Congress needs to approve an additional aid package.

U.S. officials say Ukrainian air defenses are a critical area of concern. After initial setbacks because of Western sanctions, Russia has rebuilt its industrial capacity and stockpiled missiles. But if Russia can get even more North Korean missiles, it will be able to more easily overcome Ukrainian defenses.

The Ukrainians continue to get attacked, John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said Wednesday. They continue to come under artillery shell, air attacks, ballistic and cruise missile, as well as drone attacks from the Russians.

It will be difficult for the United States to stop those additional shipments. North Korea has been taking a more belligerent position in its foreign policy in recent days. It has declared that it would no longer seek reconciliation with the South, prompting some experts to speculate that the country may be seeking to provoke a new conflict although the evidence for that is fragmentary at best. Without question, though, it has focused on strengthening its ties with Russia.

Yet the nature of the renewed relationship is not clear. Russia is promising an array of technology in return for the Norths ballistic missiles, including aircraft and advanced technological know-how. But U.S. officials do not believe Russia has yet provided the weaponry or additional ballistic missile technology.

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A New Concern on the Ukrainian Battlefield: North Korea's Latest Missiles - Yahoo News

Ukraine will take steps to research, publicize, and protect the histories of Ukrainians living in parts of modern-day Russia that have been historically inhabited by Ukrainians, according to a decree signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Jan. 22.

Zelensky announced he had signed the decree during his address on Unity Day, a national holiday celebrated on Jan. 22 that marks the unification of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic in 1919 into one independent country.

The decree "On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians" stipulates that the government should cooperate with international experts to create a plan "to preserve the national identity of Ukrainians" in specific territories of what is now Russia.

The decree listed the regions of Kuban, a historical region to the east of the Crimean Peninsula, Starodubshchyna, to the north of Chernihiv, and northern and eastern Slobozhanshchyna.

Also known as Sloboda Ukraine, Slobozhanshchyna was a significant and semi-autonomous region under Tsarist rule that extended across what is now northeastern Ukraine, predominantly Sumy, Kharkiv, and Luhansk oblasts, and southwestern Russia.

Krasnodar Krai covers most of what was once Kuban, while Starodubshchyna now lies predominantly in Bryansk Oblast.

The decree also declares that the government should preserve the history of Ukrainians in these regions. Their testimonies on the forced Russification, political repression, and deportations they suffered should be recorded, according to the decree.

More work should also be done to counter "disinformation and propaganda of the Russian Federation regarding the history and present of Ukrainians in Russia" and to develop relations between Ukrainians and other "peoples enslaved by Russia," the decree says.

The government should work with the National Academy of Sciences to develop materials about the "more than a thousand-year history of Ukrainian state formation, the historical connections of lands inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians, and Ukrainian national state formations in various historical periods."

The "true history of ethnic Ukrainians in the lands historically inhabited by them within the borders of the Russian Federation" should also be included in educational textbooks, according to the decree.

Everything you didnt know about Ukraines flag

At a small exhibit at the National History Museum in Kyiv on Ukraines flag, one notices something particular about the flags from the Soviet times and early days of independence: theyre homemade sewn by hand with different fabrics of slightly different blues and yellows, the result of a

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Zelensky signs decree recognizing some Russian territories as historically inhabited by Ukrainians - Kyiv Independent