Worried or wondering about what’s happening in Kyiv?
Let’s speak with two calm experts: DEBORAH FAIRLAMB, American mil-tech investor in Kyiv and MAKSYM ERISTAVIM, Ukrainian expert in cognitive warfare and resistance to Russian imperialism.
Watch or listen to our weekly COALITION OF THE DOING podcast from Under Fire News:
Russia is now bombing Kyiv like it’s a frontline city, with near-hourly air-raids. so, what’s it like on the ground?
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Deborah Fairlamb (Green Flag Ventures; Kyiv) and Maksym Eristavi (author of Russian Colonialism 101; Prague) join JP Lindsley to break down what’s actually happening on the ground: shopping malls emptied mid-back-to-school, food warehouses hit with a fabricated “famine” narrative behind it, and 13 million Ukrainian books burned in just two months.
REVIEWS:
This was great. I needed to rally for my own efforts and this conversation delivered. LFG! TOGETHER TO VICTORY!
“Such good interactions between these three panel members on the several issues discussed. I appreciate [JP’s] penetrating questions that opened up such a wealth of information. [Deborah’s] analysis and particularly the points she made about the resilience of the Ukrainian people from the very outset of this war—going all out to provide what is needed for their relatives, friends, and defenders on the front lines. Maksym’s additional and supportive information and reflections also [are] very much appreciated.”
Timestamps:
▶00:00 – Intro
▶00:37 – Under Fire News Substack
▶01:19 – Setting the scene: nonstop air raids in Kyiv
▶02:11 – The bingo game: how many alerts today?
▶02:57 – Shopping malls become a target, back-to-school disrupted
▶04:40 – Food warehouses hit, the "famine" narrative debunked
▶06:02 – 13 million Ukrainian books burned
▶09:02 – Stop calling it “retaliation”
▶11:35 – “Putin is cornered?” Media narrative pushback
▶14:02 – Why sanctions alone aren't enough
▶15:34 – Should top U.S. officials visit Kyiv instead of Moscow?
▶19:19 – The Fedorov dismissal and the protests
▶27:47 – How Ukraine's defense tech ecosystem was built from zero
▶29:37 – The Trump supply cutoff that changed everything
▶37:08 – The air defense gap and the Shahed drone evolution
▶44:12 – How to actually fund Ukrainian defense tech
▶45:30 – Closing thoughts: fighting the noise
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We also dig into why calling these strikes "retaliation" gets the war backwards, why "Putin is cornered" headlines in outlets like The Economist may be doing Moscow's work, what real cultural and political isolation of Russia would actually look like, the fallout from the Fedorov dismissal and the protests that followed, and how Ukraine's defense tech industry went from nonexistent to building its own drones, missiles, and rockets — accelerated by the moment the U.S. cut off direct supply.
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