Genocide in Ukraine: The Holodomor | Into Context | War in Ukraine 01

I'm Astrid Deinhard

I'm Spartacus Olsson

I'm Iryna Dulka

This is a TimeGhost special release of our new format Into Context

about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

I'm from Ukraine, and I work at TimeGhost as lead editor for WW2.

When the Russians invaded my country I was staying here in Germany

for a month to work on some new projects.

My family is still back home in Western Ukraine.

They spend their nights in the cellar to shelter,

and the days trying their best to prepare for what will come next.

The area we live in has been shelled already, but the ground invasion hasn't reached them yet.

They have decided to stay in the country they love.

I thought many times in the past few days about how I can get back home to help the defense of my country.

The country that is more united than ever with incredible people

fighting and dying for our motherland, our democracy, our freedom.

That is the situation of millions of peaceful, normal civilians in Ukraine this week

as they face the unprovoked aggression of a superpower armed to their teeth.

In the past days we have talked a lot about what we can do, how we can help Iryna and all her countrymen.

Finally we decided that together we can all do more here at TimeGhost than she can contribute alone,

especially since at this point it would be a long, maybe impossible journey back.

I think every minute of how I can help, and I have decided to try

to do my part here, together with the rest of the TimeGhost team.

Over the years, while documenting past conflicts, we have witnessed ongoing wars in Syria,

Afghanistan, and other places, we have seen massive human rights abuses in places like China and Sudan.

We have followed Vladimir Putin's meddling to destroy democracy in other countries,

his suppression of freedom in Russia, and his invasion of Ukraine in the Donbas and Crimea.

Yet we had a feeling that what I keep saying to "never forget" was the foundation

of a growing world order based on peace and mutual respect - especially founded in Europe,

the lands where so many terrible historical conflicts,

and abuses of humanity, began and then impacted the whole globe.

But now that Putin is carrying out the biggest invasion in Europe since WW2,

we see the locations on the Eastern Front that we talk about on our show every week in flames

once again, soldiers and civilians are suffering and dying there for a conflict

born from dreams of domination, and hatred by the powerful few with armies and arsenals of death at their disposal.

We asked ourselves what can we do? We are historians, we don't cover current affairs.

And the historic events we do cover - we don't take sides

we document as best and as completely as we can, and let you judge for yourself.

But we are also subjects of democracies.