Front Burner

Peering inside Russia – and it’s complex web of state propaganda – presents a very different view of the war in Ukraine and who the real victims are.

As nations around the world condemn Russia’s invasion, many within Russia are supporting Russian president Vladimir Putin. How is Putin selling the war to the Russian people? Will thousands of anti-war protesters challenging the Kremlin make a difference to the government?

This week, Nothing is Foreign takes you inside the alternate reality being created by Russian state propaganda, explores how fear and new laws have choked off dissenting voices and listen in on the difficult conversations between a Ukrainian son and a Russian father in the war over disinformation.

Featuring:

Alexey Kovalev, investigative editor of Meduza.

Sergey Utkin, researcher and head of strategic assessment at Primakov Institute of World Economy and International relations.

Misha Katsurin, Kyiv resident and creator of Papapover.com.

Yulia Zhivtsova, anti-war protester in Moscow.

Oil prices in Canada skyrocketed this week as sanctions on Russian energy effectively shut the world’s third largest oil supplier out of the market following its invasion of Ukraine. The United States and the United Kingdom moved to ban Russian oil imports. Even the European Union, Russia’s biggest oil customer, announced its plan to slash Russian oil imports by two-thirds this year.

Although Canada has never really relied on Russian oil, the impact of sky-high oil prices is already being felt in Canada, as prices at the pumps remain at record highs across the country. It’s forcing a moment of reckoning inside Canada’s oilpatch, an industry facing a choice — transition away from fossil fuels or ramp up production. Today on Front Burner, we speak with CBC’s Kyle Bakx about the fork in the road for Canada’s energy future.

As he declared his war on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin made an odd promise to a country with a Jewish president and an annual Pride parade: He said he was doing this to "de-Nazify" the country.

Sam Sokol, a reporter with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was taken back to a time moments eight years ago — when Russian media advanced fictitious stories about Jewish communities targeted in Ukraine, around the time that Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Sokol is the author of Putin's Hybrid War and the Jews: Antisemitism, Propaganda, and the Displacement of Ukrainian Jewry. He has covered Ukrainian far-right movements in depth — and explained how those groups have been weaponized by Russian propaganda to legitimize the mass violence we are seeing today.

He's joining us to separate Putin's rhetoric from Ukraine's reality, and to break down what all this means for Ukrainian Jewish communities.

As pandemic restrictions continue to lift across the country, we’re joined by Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases physician at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, for a look at where we are with COVID-19 in Canada, and how to weigh the risk factors for yourself. (And we promise — there’s plenty of good news!)

In a flash, a view of Ukrainian civilians fleeing down a street in Irpin becomes only concrete dust.

The scene captured in a video Sunday shows a mortar shell falling in the street, killing three family members and a family friend — including two children.

This is the kind of danger looming over the people of Ukraine. Some have decided to leave their homes and loved ones behind to risk an escape. Others who must stay are helping to ready a resistance to the overwhelming Russian military power.

CBC senior correspondent Susan Ormiston is in the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine, where she’s been talking to Ukrainians, both those who are fleeing and those getting ready to fight. Today, she brings us to a train station, a border crossing, a bomb shelter and a barricade, and explains how Ukrainians have made these impossible choices — if they had any choice at all.

A new battlefield in Ukraine has opened up as each side fights to control the narrative of the ongoing war.

Some experts say Ukraine and its allies are winning the information war by implementing a multifaceted strategy that includes pushing David and Goliath stories – even ones that may not be true – and creating a phone line where Russian parents can check in on their conscripted sons.

On the other side, Russia – a country known for its relative success in shaping international media narratives – is clamping down.

Today on Front Burner, Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow with the New America think tank, takes us to the front lines of the information war and explains why this fight matters.

More than a million people have fled Ukraine into countries to the west, as Russian attacks continue. The refugee crisis has spurred an outpouring of international support, as neighbouring European countries open their borders and homes. But the support this time is strikingly different from how some countries have responded to refugees from other conflicts — like Syria and Iraq — who were kept out, in some cases with violence.

The distinction is especially stark, after stories have emerged of some Black and Asian refugees fleeing Ukraine facing violence, harassment and racism at the border.

This week on Nothing is Foreign, CBC’s new, weekly world news podcast, we hear from people on the ground including those who have experienced discrimination and explore how governments can treat skin colour as a visa.

Featuring:

Tatiana, Alexandra, Nastia, Rubi, Ahmed, all refugees from Ukraine.

Sara Cincurova, a journalist covering humanitarian issues at Ukraine-Slovakia border.

Chris Melzer, the senior spokesperson of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Poland.

You can’t understand the chaos in Ukraine without understanding Vladimir Putin. The Russian president rose to power as a wartime leader, and that legacy has shaped his approach through decades.

Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin, and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. He spoke to us about how Putin sees the world and what his past could tell us about Ukraine’s future.

Before launching his latest military attack on Ukraine last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin waged a counterfactual war on a century of the country’s history.

In a nearly hour-long address, Putin claimed that modern Ukraine was an invention of founding Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and that Soviet Moscow gave Ukraine its independence in a historic mistake. Ukraine overwhelmingly voted for its own independence in a referendum in 1991.

While Ukraine’s modern history has since been marked by corruption, Russian influence and episodes of violence, its people have also staged protests and even revolutions to protect their independence.

Today on Front Burner, what two decades of Ukraine’s struggles with Russia tell us about why Ukrainians are still fighting today. Former NPR Moscow correspondent and current Wilson Center fellow Lucian Kim brings us the key events, many of which he reported on from Russia and Ukraine.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last Thursday, Western powers have remained steadfast on one point: They will not engage Russia in a hot war to defend Ukraine. Instead, they are piling on an increasingly punishing slate of economic penalties.

Today, we’re going to break down some of the key sanctions, and look at their current and potential impacts.

First, Giles Gibson, a correspondent for Feature Story News, will give us a view from Moscow, where people are already starting to feel the effects of the penalties. Then, we’ll speak to Ian Talley from the Wall Street Journal about what exactly these sanctions are — and whether they’ll work to limit Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions.