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Protesters march while carrying placards and chanting slogans in the "Feminists March Against Femicide" in Kenya.
Hard Numbers: Kenyans march against femicide, Corruption costs Ukrainian defense, Germans protest far right, Evergrande tries to avoid liquidation (again), Say more than ‘Oui’ to Paris!
14: So far this year, 14 women have been murdered as a result of gender-based violence in Kenya, and thousands took to the streets in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on Saturday in response. Nearly a third of Kenyan women face physical violence at some point in their lives, while 13% are victims of sexual violence, according to a 2023 government report.
40 million: The country’s security service, SBU, says five employees from a Ukrainian arms company have been charged with conspiring with officials to embezzle nearly $40 million from defense coffers. The money, meant for buying mortar shells to aid the fight against Russia, has been seized and returned to the defense budget. But the incident signals how Ukraine’s battle against corruption continues.
100,000: Protests were held in 30 German cities on Saturday, with up to 100,000 people demonstrating against far-right extremism in Deutschland. The protests – coincidently held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day – were a rebuke of the anti-immigrant rhetoric peddled by the increasingly popular Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, just months ahead of three major regional elections in eastern Germany where the AfD tends to do well.
$300 billion: A court in Hong Kong ordered Chinese property development giant Evergrande to liquidate as it struggles to restructure debts to service over $300 billion in liabilities. It is unclear whether China will allow foreign investors to seize Evergrande assets, and there are fears of major ramifications for the Chinese economy as a whole.
A2-B1: If you dream of moving to Paris, you’ll need to dust off your Petit Larousse and embrace the subjunctive. While French competence was previously only required for those seeking French citizenship, a new law passed on Saturday requires anyone applying for multi-year residency to prove they understand French at the A2 level (advanced beginner). And a 10-year residency card now requires a B1 (intermediate) level of proficiency.
Foreign warriors make a “big impact” in Ukraine
In a forest outside of Kyiv, a small group of Ukrainian soldiers with machine guns pads around silently, listening intently and sniffing the tree trunks.
“If you walk past a tree and it smells like urine,” says Jay, 30, a stoutly built former special forces soldier from Denmark, “that’s because urine starts to release a gas roughly 15 minutes after someone pisses on the tree.”
Jay is giving combat training to the Ukrainian soldiers, and in this lesson, he is teaching them how to detect the presence of Russian troops and patrol frontline areas.
“I want to see you move slow, silent, deliberate,” he tells the men as they fan out among the leafless trees, practicing their patrols and doing evacuation exercises.
Jay, who asked us not to use his last name, is one of the thousands of foreigners fighting alongside the Ukrainians as part of the country’s International Legion. He has seen combat on every major front of the conflict since signing up last March, just days after Russia invaded.
Training sessions like these are among the most important contributions that foreigners are making to Ukraine’s war effort.
One reason that training is so important is that many of the Ukrainians now fighting had no combat experience at all before Kyiv called a general mobilization in response to Russia’s invasion.
“There are some incredible fighters here,” says Michael, 38, an American who co-founded Task Force 31, a non-profit that helps to train Ukrainian troops. “But a lot of the people that are absorbing a lot of this fight were bakers, dentists, doctors.”
Getting the right equipment is also a challenge. For all the headlines about Europe and the US giving the Ukrainians advanced weapons like Leopard tanks, HIMARS rocket systems, and perhaps, soon, even fighter jets, many units in Ukraine still suffer shortages of simpler things like basic training and equipment.
“The Western support is mostly big, heavy armor and artillery pieces,” says Jay. “This is very needed as well, but it doesn't necessarily help the guys on the ground who have to go buy their own boots and buy their own helmet.”
René, a 20-year international legion member from Germany, is part of the effort to rustle up basic gear. He was a bike messenger before the war, but after seeing a now-famous video of a Ukrainian refugee child crossing the Polish border with a bag full of toys, he decided to go fight for Kyiv.
Today he is a drone operator attached to a unit that has seen combat in the Donbas. But he also works to secure, maintain, and repair pickup trucks, which are crowdsourced from elsewhere in Europe, painted in camouflage, and sent to the front.
DIY efforts are commonplace in this war. “It's not only the military that is fighting,” says Rene, “it's also civilians that are doing volunteer work, employed in cars, painting cars, organizing humanitarian aid, helping the civilians at the frontline, helping the animals that got left behind at the frontline.”
Why is Ukraine still in need of such DIY efforts even after a year of war and tens of billions of dollars in support from the US and Europe?
The scale of the effort that’s required to fend off a much larger adversary is one reason.
“They're still fighting a country that spends ten times as much on its military as Ukrainians do,” says Liam Collins, a retired US Special Forces officer who has advised the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. “So they're going to be behind even with a $100 billion investment by the U.S.”
Supply chain and distribution problems may also play a role, as Kyiv still struggles to apportion huge amounts of equipment to the right units at the right time.
There is also the specter of corruption. Despite improvements in recent years, Ukraine still ranks a lowly 116th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
And while there is so far no evidence of graft significantly affecting the provision of equipment, President Volodymyr Zelensky last month sacked senior defense officials implicated in the misappropriation of funds.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the work of guys like Jay, Michael, and René continues. If the money isn’t there, they raise it. If the training isn’t sufficient, they do it. If the trucks aren’t there, they find them.
“You don’t have to be shooting to be fighting,” says Jay. “When we train other people, they then pass that knowledge on to their friends. And that way we can make a big impact in this war.”
Michael Tucker contributed reporting to this piece from Ukraine.
Ukraine's killer dune buggies
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, metalworker Volodymyr Sadyk specialized in making gates at his shop in western Ukraine, near the Romanian border. But in his spare time, he and his friends also built and raced dune buggies.
When the war began, Volodymyr had an idea — he offered some of the buggies to the Ukrainian army, which was looking for ways to even the playing field against a much larger enemy. The response from Kyiv was immediate: send us more.
Today, Volodymyr and his crew of 7 men have made close to 60 custom buggies for the Ukrainian army. Light, rugged, and agile, the Mad Max-style vehicles are perfect for sniffing out Russian positions, swarming Russian columns with anti-tank fire, or evacuating wounded soldiers.
In December, GZERO World had a chance to visit his workshop to check out the buggies and learn more about Volodymyr’s work.
EU fast-tracks Ukraine membership application
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Washington.
First question, what happened to Ukraine's application for EU membership?
Well, that's a process that takes a long time, but what was decided by the heads of state and government of the European Union yesterday was to send it immediately to the European Commission for its assessment. That's a process that normally takes some time, but the fact that it was done immediately is as strong a signal as you can get for a process that unavoidably takes a substantial amount of time.
Secondly, what can we do to support better Ukraine, militarily?
Well, there has been a question of fighter aircraft. That's a more complicated thing. I don't think the US is particularly keen on that because of the risk of escalation. And the key thing I would say is to have a very rapid supply of anti-tank weapons. That's been supplied by the US, by Sweden, by the UK and by others, and the more we can increase that supply, because they will use them, the more they will slow down and possibly stop the Russian advance. More complex weapons take time, require training, will not be effective immediately. Anti-tank weapons that's what's needed for peace in Europe.