A series of atrocity sites of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia have been formally entered onto the World Heritage list, as part of the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee.
This is not only important for Cambodia, but also raises important questions for atrocity sites in Australia.
Before this, the World Heritage list only recognised seven “sites of memory” associated with recent conflicts, which UNESCO defines as “events having occurred from the turn of the 20th century” under its criterion vi. These sat within a broader list of more than 950 cultural sites.
In recent years, experts have intensely debated the question of whether a site associated with recent conflict could, or should, be nominated and evaluated for World Heritage status. Some argue such listings would contradict the objectives of UNESCO and its spirit of peace, which was part of the specialised agency’s mandate after the destruction of two world wars.
Sites associated with recent conflicts can be divisive. For instance, when Japan nominated the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, both China and the United States objected and eventually disassociated from the decision. The US argued the nomination lacked “historical perspective” on the events that led to the bomb’s use. Meanwhile, China argued listing the property would not be conducive for peace as other Asian countries and peoples had suffered at the hands of the Japanese during WWII.
Heritage inscriptions risk reinforcing societal divisions if they conserve a particular memory in a one-sided way.
Nonetheless, the World Heritage Committee decided in 2023 to no longer preclude such sites for inscription. This was done partly in recognition of how these sites may “serve the peace-building mission of UNESCO”.
Shortly after, three listing were added: the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, a former clandestine centre for detention, torture and extermination in Argentina; memorial sites of the Rwandan genocide at Nyamata, Murambi, Gisozi and Bisesero; and funerary and memory sites of the first world war in Belgium and France.
A number of legacy sites associated with Nelson Mandela’s human rights struggle in South Africa were also added last year.
Atrocities of the Khmer Rouge
The recently inscribed Cambodian Memorial Sites include prisons S-21 (now known as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) and M-13, as well as the execution site Choeung Ek.
These sites were nominated for their value in showing the development of extreme mass violence in relation to the security system of the Khmer Rouge in 1975–79. They also have value as places of memorialisation, peace and learning.
The Khmer Rouge developed its methods of disappearance, incarceration and torture of suspected “enemies” during the civil conflict of 1970–75. It established a system of local-level security centres in so-called “liberated” areas.
One of these centres was known as M-13, a small, well-hidden prison in the country’s rural southwest. A man named Kaing Guek Eav – also called Duch – was responsible for prisoners at M-13.
Shortly after the entire country fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975, Duch was assigned to lead the headquarters of the regime’s security system: a large detention and torture centre known as S-21.
Under his instruction, tens of thousands of people were detained in inhumane conditions, tortured and interrogated. Many detainees were later taken to the outskirts of the city to be brutally killed and buried in pits at a place called Choeung Ek.
The sites operated until early 1979, when the Khmer Rouge was forced from power.
The S-21 facility and the mass graves at Choeung Ek have long been memorialised as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre.
However, the former M-13 site shows few visual clues to its prior use, and has only recently been investigated by an international team led by Cambodian archaeologist and museum director Hang Nisay. The site is on an island in a small river that forms the boundary between the Kampong Chhnang and Kampong Speu provinces.
Further research, site protection and memorialisation activities will now be supported, with help from locals.
From repression to reflection
The Cambodian memorial sites have been recognised as holding “outstanding universal value” for the way they evidence one of the 20th century’s worst atrocities, and are now places of memory.
In its nomination dossier for these sites, Cambodia drew on findings from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to verify and link the conflict and the sites.
In 2010, the tribunal found Duch guilty of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Duch was sentenced to 30 years in prison (which eventually turned into life imprisonment). He died in 2020.
While courts such as the International Criminal Court have previously examined the destruction of heritage as an international crime, drawing on legal findings to assert heritage status is an unusual inverse. It raises important questions about the legacies of former UN-supported tribunals and the ongoing implications of their findings.
The recent listings also raise questions for Australia, which has many sites of documented mass killing associated with colonisation and the frontier wars that lasted into the 20th century.
Might Australia nominate any of these atrocity sites in the future? And could other processes such as truth-telling, reparation and redress support (or be supported by) such nominations?
Rachel Hughes has consulted to UNESCO Cambodia.
Maria Elander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Long before pesticides reach lethal doses, they can disrupt hormones, impair brain function and change fish behaviour. Many of these behaviours are essential for healthy ecosystems.
In a new study, my colleagues and I found that pesticides affect many different behaviours in fish. Overall, the chemical pesticides make fish less sociable and interactive. They spend less time gathering in groups, become less protective of their territory, and make fewer attempts to mate.
Imagine the ocean without the vibrant schools of fish we’ve come to love – only isolated swimmers drifting about. Quietly, ecosystems begin to unravel, long before mass die-offs hit the news.
Australia is a major producer and user of pesticides, with more than 11,000 approved chemical products routinely used in agricultural and domestic settings. Remarkably, some of these chemicals remain approved in Australia despite being banned in other regions such as the European Union due to safety concerns.
When a tractor or plane sprays pesticides onto crops, it creates a mist of chemicals in the air to kill crop pests. After heavy rain, these chemicals can flow into roadside drains, filter through soil, and slowly move into rivers, lakes and oceans.
Fish swim in this diluted chemical mixture. They can absorb pesticides through their gills or eat contaminated prey.
At high concentrations, mass fish deaths can result, such as those repeatedly observed in the Menindee Lakes. However, doses in the wild often aren’t lethal and more subtle effects can occur. Scientists call these “sub-lethal” effects.
One commonly investigated sub-lethal effect is a change in behaviour – in other words, a change in the way a fish interacts with its surrounding environment.
Our previous research has found most experiments have looked at the impacts on fish in isolation, measuring things such as how far or how fast they swim when pesticides are present.
But fish aren’t solitary — they form groups, defend territory and find mates. These behaviours keep aquatic ecosystems stable. So this time we studied how pesticides affect these crucial social behaviours.
Pesticide exposure makes fish less social
Our study extracted and analysed data from 37 experiments conducted around the world. Together, these tested the impacts of 31 different pesticides on the social behaviour of 11 different fish species.
The evidence suggests pesticides make fish less social, and this finding is consistent across species. Courtship was the most severely impacted behaviour – the process fish use to find and attract mates. This is particularly alarming because successful courtship is essential for healthy fish populations and ecosystem stability.
Next, we found pesticides such as the herbicide glyphosate, which can disrupt brain function and hormone levels had the strongest impacts on fish social behaviours. This raises important questions about how brain function and hormones drive fish social behaviour, which could be tested by scientists in the future.
For example, scientists could test how much a change in testosterone relates to a change in territory defence. Looking at these relationships between what’s going on inside the body mechanisms and outward behaviour will help us better understand the complex impacts of pesticides.
We also identified gaps in the current studies. Most existing studies focus on a limited number of easy-to-study “model species” such as zebrafish, medaka and guppies. They also often use pesticide dosages and durations that may not reflect real-world realities.
Addressing these gaps by including a range of species and environmentally relevant dosages is crucial to understanding how pesticides affect fish in the wild.
One of the experiments in our study involved convict surgeonfish, which gather in large groups or ‘shoals’. Damsea, Shutterstock
Behaviour is a blind spot in regulation
Regulatory authorities should begin to recognise behaviour as a reliable and important indicator of pesticide safety. This can help them catch pesticide pollution early, before mass deaths occur.
Scientists play a crucial role too. By following the same methods, scientists can produce comparable results. A standardised method then provides regulators the evidence needed to confidently assess pesticide risks.
Together, regulatory authorities and scientists can find a way to use behavioural studies to help inform policy decisions. This will help to prevent mass deaths and catch pesticide impacts early on.
Leave no stone unturned in restoring our waters
Rivers, lakes, oceans and reefs are bearing the brunt of an ever-growing human footprint.
So far, much of the spotlight has focused on reducing carbon emissions and managing overfishing — and rightly so. But there’s another, quieter threat drifting beneath the surface: the chemicals we use.
Pesticides used on farms and in gardens are being detected everywhere, even iconic ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef. As we have shown, these pesticides can have disturbing effects even at low concentrations.
Now is the time to cut pesticide use and reduce runoff. Through switching to less toxic chemicals and introducing better regulations, we can reduce the damage. If we act with urgency, we can limit the impacts pesticides have on our planet.
Kyle Morrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
“Imagine her tenderly pressing her soft lips against yours”, writes one incel on Reddit, before concluding, “you will never get to experience this because your skeleton is too small or the bones in your face are not the right shape”.
In his debut book, The Male Complaint, Simon Copland escorts his readers through the manosphere and into the minds of its inhabitants. He illustrates how boys and men who are “terrifyingly normal” become attracted to the manosphere’s grim logic – and the cognitive distortions of anti-feminist influencers like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.
While mainstream debates often cite toxic masculinity as the cause of online misogyny, Copland, a writer and researcher at the Australian National University, shifts the blame to a deeper cultural malaise. It’s caused, he argues, by the cruel optimism of the manosphere, the multiple social and economic crises of late-stage capitalism and a collective nihilistic misery in which complaint becomes futile and destruction “the only way out”.
Review: The Male Complaint – Simon Copland (Polity)
The manosphere is a network of loosely related blogs and forums devoted to “men’s interests” – sites like The Rational Male, Game Global and the subreddits ForeverAlone, TheRedPill and MensRights. These online communities, separate in their specific beliefs, are united by their misogynistic ideas – and anti-women and anti-diversity sentiments.
They’re also united by the growing tendency of the men in these communities towards nihilistic violence: not only against others, but also against themselves.
In The Male Complaint, Copland relays his dismay at discovering “a constant stream” of suicide notes on Reddit, including a subreddit, IncelGraveyard, which catalogues close to 100 suicide notes and letters posted by self-identified incels.
Since I was a kid I was fed up with ‘Don’t worry, it will get better’, ‘You will find someone’ […] it’s not even that I want a SO (significant other) anymore. Women are awful. People are awful. I have no friends.
For Copland, the violence incels inflict on themselves is a form of passive nihilism. Incels “don’t just express disgust and despair at the world, but in themselves – their looks, body, lives, personality, intelligence, and more”.
Who’s in the manosphere?
The manosphere includes men’s rights activists, pick-up artists and “Men Going Their Own Way” (male separatists who avoid contact with women altogether). And of course, incels: men who believe they are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner due to their perceived genetic inferiority and oppression.
Incels also blame their problems on women’s alleged hypergamy: the theory women seek out partners of higher social or economic status and therefore marry “up”. Put another way, hypergamy, a concept rooted in evolutionary psychology, is the belief “women are hard-wired to be gold diggers”.
Rollo Tomassi, the so-called “godfather of the manosphere”, complains on his blog that “women love opportunistically”, while “men believe that love matters for the sake of it”.
According to Tomassi, the “cruel reality” of modern dating is that men are romantics who are “forced to be realists”, while women are realists whose use “romanticisms to effect their imperatives”. Tomassi complains:
Our girlfriends, our wives, daughters and even our mothers are all incapable of idealized love […] By order of degrees, hypergamy will define who a woman loves and who she will not, depending upon her own opportunities and capacity to attract it.
Ten years ago, these communities were largely regarded as fringe groups. Today, their ideology has infiltrated the mainstream.
On Sunday, ABC TV’s Compass reported that misogyny is on the rise in Australian classrooms, with female teachers sharing their experiences of sexual assault and harassment on school grounds – ranging from boys writing stories about gang raping their teachers to masturbating “over them” in the bathrooms. One student even pretended to stab his pregnant teacher as a “joke”.
A 2025 report published by UN Women shows 53% of women have experienced some form of technology-facilitated, gender-based violence. The dark side of digitalisation disproportionately affects young women aged between 18 and 24, LGBTQI+ women, women who are divorced or who live in the city, and women who participate in online gaming.
‘Biologically bad’?
Copland argues that simplified critiques of toxic masculinity minimise the problem of male violence. They fail to consider the context and history of gendered behaviour, assuming toxic traits are somehow innate and unique to men, rather than the product of social expectations and relations.
This, in turn, promotes the idea that male violence derives from something “biologically bad” in the nature of masculinity itself. As Copland explains, “this is embedded in the term ‘toxic’, which makes it sound like men’s bodies have become diseased or infected”.
Blaming toxic masculinity for digital misogyny also embraces a form of smug politics in which disaffected men are dismissed as degenerates who are fundamentally different to “us” (meaning the activist left and leftist elites). They are “cellar dwellers”, “subhuman freaks”, or “virgin losers” who need to be either enlightened or locked up. “We”, on the other hand, are educated, progressive, superior.
This kind of rhetoric, as Copland explains, is unhelpful. It does not create the conditions for changing the opinions, narratives and futures of manosphere men because it does not allow people to understand their complaints and where those concerns come from – even if we do not agree with them.
Belittling attitudes and demeaning discourses alienate men who already feel socially isolated. This pushes those men further to the fringes – into the hands of “manfluencers” who claim to understand.
‘Not having love becomes everything’
The manosphere, Copland observes, is not “an aberration that is different and distinct from the rest of the world”, nor is it a community that exists solely on the “dark corners of the web”.
Rather, the manosphere, as an echo chamber, enables and encourages what Copland calls “the male complaint”: a sense of collective pain or “injury” so intrinsic to the group’s identity, it cannot be redressed.
As injured subjects who believe their problems are caused through no fault of their own, manosphere men cannot mend the “wound” they believe society has inflicted upon them. Their “marginalisation” and injured status are the lens through which they view themselves and the world.
In the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) community, for example, some men talk about the movement as a hospital where “physicians of the male soul” use different “methods of healing” to treat the “illness of gynocentric-induced disease weighing them down”. These methods include “self-improvement” strategies that are designed to build men’s power and wealth: purchasing gym equipment, investing in the stock market, even abstaining from pornography and sex.
Others in the MGTOW community are vocally anti-victim: “You can live an extraordinary life,” one man says to another, “but you’re wasting your time on complaints and negativity”.
Even when they disagree, though, manosphere men frame women and feminism as the enemy. In this way, the machinery of the manosphere capitalises on men’s discontent, reflects that messaging back to them and displaces their anger and hurt onto an easy scapegoat.
As Copland observes, it is easier for men to blame women for their unhappiness than it is to blame the complex systems of capitalism: “if love and sex is everything, then not having love becomes everything as well”.
Blackpilled incels, lookism and anonymity
This preoccupation with intimacy is central to the incel community. It is exemplified by the various artefacts Copland embeds in his book – memes and posts from the manosphere itself.
Blackpilled incels are a subgroup of incels who believe their access to romantic and sexual relationships is doomed because of “lookism”: the belief women choose sexual partners based solely on their physical features.
Blackpilled ideology attributes romantic failure to genetically unalterable aspects of the human body, such as one’s height or skull shape. Some blackpilled incels, who call themselves wristcels, even blame their lack of sexual success on the width of their wrists.
This logic is countered by research that demonstrates men, in fact, show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness than women, with women tending to prioritise education level and earning potential.
On Reddit, incels often imagine and bitterly dismiss the potential for love and intimacy because of their looks. Ohsineon/Pexels
The manosphere, however, amplifies this type of thinking and filters out information that challenges these ideas and opinions, increasing group polarisation. Despite its promise of solidarity, the manosphere isolates boys and men, and ultimately distances them from their wider community. This segregation results in a deep sense of alienation – these boys and men become stuck in a perpetual cycle of ideological reinforcement.
The manosphere thrives on anonymity, writes Copland, which only reinforces the idea it is not designed to foster deep relationships or connections.
No silver bullets
The sense of community the manosphere claims to offer is a sham; its alienating structures do not offer boys and men genuine belonging and connection, or real solutions to their problems.
“From one day to the next, the ability to communicate depends on the whims of hidden engineers,” writes media studies professor Mark Andrejevic of online networks more broadly. The manosphere, like other virtual constructs, is subject to manipulation by those who control the infrastructure and the rules of engagement.
More than this, the manosphere does not provide an alternative to complaint. When complaint is the only option, writes Copland, nihilism and violence are the inevitable result.
When nothing matters, there are no consequences to anything, including violence […] Manosphere men do not look to convince others, but rather seek their destruction. Destruction is the outlet they find to deal with their complaint.
That’s what makes the manosphere so dangerous.
‘Popular boys must be punished’
In 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, a British-American college student, embarked on an hours-long stabbing and shooting spree in the university town of Isla Vista, California, killing six and injuring 14. On the morning of May 23 – the “Day of Retribution” – Rodger emailed a 140-page “manifesto” to his family, friends and therapists. He also uploaded several YouTube videos in which he lamented his inability to find a girlfriend, the “hedonistic pleasures” of his peers and his painful existence of “loneliness, rejection, and unfilled desires”.
In his memoir-manifesto, Rodger – the supposed “patron saint of inceldom” – explains the motive for his violence:
I had nothing left to live for but revenge. Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such a magnificent gentleman as myself. All of those popular boys must be punished for enjoying heavenly lives and having sex with all the girls while I had to suffer in lonely virginity.
Four years later, in April 2018, Alek Minassian, a self-described incel, drove a rented van onto a busy sidewalk in Toronto, killing 11 (nine of them women) and injuring many more. On Facebook, Minassian explained that his actions were part of the “incel rebellion” led by the “Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger”. Later, Minassian told police, “I feel like I accomplished my mission”.
Rodger, too, ended his final YouTube video with a similar message: “If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you”.
In his book, Copland even draws a parallel between the Westfield Bondi Junction attack and the explanation for attacker Joel Cauchi’s violence, put forward by his father just two days after the attack: “To you, he is a monster. To me, he was a very sick boy […] he wanted a girlfriend and he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain”.
In fact, Cauchi suffered from treatment-resistant schizophrenia and had been unmedicated at the time of the attack: “after almost two decades of treatment, Cauchi had no regular psychiatrist, was not on any medications to treat his schizophrenia and had no family living nearby”. The multifaceted causes of Cauchi’s crime are more complex than misogynistic violence.
Indeed, the pieces of the manosphere puzzle, when put together, reveal a sobering image of the male complaint. However, they demonstrate misogyny is bad for everyone – not just women and girls.
As Copland concludes:
The manosphere promises men that it can make their lives better […] But it really cannot deliver. The promises it offers are not real, and in many cases make things worse […] This is how cruel optimism works, always offering, but never delivering.
‘It’s the combinations’
Recent evidence suggests there is no single route to radicalisation, and no single cause of violent extremism. Rather, complex interactions between push, pull, and personal factors are the root causes of male violence.
The Netflix sensation Adolescence – the harrowing story of a 13-year-old boy who is arrested and charged with murder – is powered by a single question: why did Jamie kill Katie?
In attempting to answer this question, critics and fans have offered a range of explanations: bullying, low self-esteem, emotional dysregulation, obsession with love and sex, deprivation of love and sex, the manosphere. The real answer is less obvious and infinitely more complex. It can be found in a simple line of dialogue, spoken at the end of the series by Jamie’s sister.
“It’s the combinations,” Lisa says. “Combinations are everything.”
In this moment, Lisa is justifying her outfit to her parents as they await Jamie’s trial. But subtextually, her statement doubles as the most likely explanation for his actions. And it’s the closest explanation for why some boys and men commit extreme acts of violence: the combinations.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Kate Cantrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
It was a surrender widely foreseen. For months, rumors abounded that Paramount would eventually settle the seemingly frivolous lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump concerning editorial decisions in the production of a CBS interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.
On July 2, 2025, those rumors proved true: The settlement between Paramount and Trump’s legal team resulted in CBS’s parent company agreeing to pay $16 million to the future Donald Trump Library – the $16 million included Trump’s legal fees – in exchange for ending the lawsuit. Despite the opinion of many media law scholars and practicing attorneys who considered the lawsuit meritless, Shari Redstone, the largest shareholder of Paramount, yielded to Trump.
Specifically, when the Trump administration assumed power in January 2025, the new Federal Communications Commission had no legal obligation to facilitate, without scrutiny, the transfer of the CBS network’s broadcast licenses for its owned-and-operated TV stations to new ownership.
The FCC, under newly installed Republican Chairman Brendan Carr, was fully aware of the issues in the legal conflict between Trump and CBS at the time Paramount needed FCC approval for the license transfers. Without a settlement, the Paramount-Skydance deal remained in jeopardy.
Until it wasn’t.
At that point, Paramount joined Disney in implicitly apologizing for journalism produced by their TV news divisions.
Earlier in 2025, Disney had settled a different Trump lawsuit with ABC News in exchange for a $15 million donation to the future Trump Library. That lawsuit involved a dispute over the wording of the actions for which Trump was found liable in a civil lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said the CBS interview with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was ‘fraudulent interference with an election.’
It’s not certain what the ABC and CBS settlements portend, but many are predicting they will produce a “chilling effect” within the network news divisions. Such an outcome would arise from fear of new litigation, and it would install a form of internal self-censorship that would influence network journalists when deciding whether the pursuit of investigative stories involving the Trump administration would be worth the risk.
Trump has apparently succeeded where earlier presidents failed.
Presidential pressure
From Jimmy Carter trying to get CBS anchor Walter Cronkite to stop ending his evening newscasts with the number of days American hostages were being held in Iran to Richard Nixon’s administration threatening the broadcast licenses of The Washington Post’s TV stations to weaken Watergate reporting, previous presidents sought to apply editorial pressure on broadcast journalists.
But in the cases of Carter and Nixon, it didn’t work. The broadcast networks’ focus on both Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis remained unrelenting.
Nor were Nixon and Carter the first presidents seeking to influence, and possibly control, network news.
President Lyndon Johnson, who owned local TV and radio stations in Austin, Texas, regularly complained to his old friend, CBS President Frank Stanton, about what he perceived as biased TV coverage. Johnson was so furious with the CBS and NBC reporting from Vietnam, he once argued that their newscasts seemed “controlled by the Vietcong.”
Yet none of these earlier presidents won millions from the corporations that aired ethical news reporting in the public interest.
Before Trump, these conflicts mostly occurred backstage and informally, allowing the broadcasters to sidestep the damage to their credibility should any surrender to White House administrations be made public. In a “Reporter’s Notebook” on the CBS Evening News the night of the Trump settlement, anchor John Dickerson summarized the new dilemma succinctly: “Can you hold power to account when you’ve paid it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?”
“The audience will decide that,” Dickerson continued, concluding: “Our job is to show up to honor what we witness on behalf of the people we witness it for.”
During the Iran hostage crisis, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite ended every broadcast with the number of days the hostages had been held captive.
Soon, SkyDance Media will assume control over the Paramount properties, and the new CBS will be on the airwaves.
When the licenses for KCBS in Los Angeles, WCBS in New York and the other CBS-owned-and-operated stations are transferred, we’ll learn the long-term legacy of corporate capitulation. But for now, it remains too early to judge tomorrow’s newscasts.
As a scholar of broadcast journalism and a former broadcast journalist, I recommend evaluating programs like “60 Minutes” and the “CBS Evening News” on the record they will compile over the next three years – and the record they compiled over the past 50. The same goes for “ABC World News Tonight” and other ABC News programs.
A major complicating factor for the Paramount-Skydance deal was the fact that “60 Minutes” has, over the past six months, broken major scoops embarrassing to the Trump administration, which led to additional scrutiny by its corporate ownership. Judged by its reporting in the first half of 2025, “60 Minutes” has upheld its record of critical and independent reporting in the public interest.
If audience members want to see ethical, independent and professional broadcast journalism that holds power to account, then it’s the audience’s responsibility to tune it in. The only way to learn the consequences of these settlements is by watching future programming rather than dismissing it beforehand.
The journalists working at ABC News and CBS News understand the legacy of their organizations, and they are also aware of how their owners have cast suspicion on the news divisions’ professionalism and credibility. As Dickerson asserted, they plan to “show up” regardless of the stain, and I’d bet they’re more motivated to redeem their reputations than we expect.
I don’t think reporters, editors and producers plan to let Donald Trump become their editor-in-chief over the next three years. But we’ll only know by watching.
Michael Socolow’s father, Sanford Socolow, worked for CBS News from 1956 to 1988.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rachel Engler-Stringer, Professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan
This spring, as part of a sabbatical project, I had the privilege of visiting school food programs and meeting with school food researchers in six cities in France, England and Scotland.
I got to eat school lunches, visit central kitchens in two cities where meals are prepared for thousands of children, visit school kitchens and discuss school food with the countries’ leading experts.
2) One important benefit of school food programs globally is to encourage picky eaters to try new foods due to the social pressure of all kids eating the same foods together. In three cities in France I visited, and one in England, school lunches look like home-cooked meals. One main dish with meat is served (and in England, a vegetarian alternative), and kids can choose if and how much of the side vegetables and fruit to take.
In the other two locations in England and Scotland, kids choose from multiple main dishes — something that adds cost to the program and does less to encourage kids to try new foods, given one choice is always something basic like a cheese sandwich.
Kids need to have some autonomy when it comes to eating, but school food programs should not be facilitating eating the same food every day. Nor should school food programs aspire to a model where broad choice is afforded from a large menu.
3) With care, planning and sufficient resources, centralized kitchens can prepare thousands of servings of a main dish daily. The French central kitchens I visited prepare 6,000 to 10,000 servings a day of high-quality food following strict food safety protocols.
I ate two simple yet delicious meals cooked in municipally owned central kitchens. In the three cities in France where I visited, they used central kitchens where main dishes were prepared and chilled to be delivered for heating at the school level. Central kitchens also delivered the salads and sides (like chopped veggies, bread, cheese and fruit) and dressings.
In the small school kitchens, the salads were dressed, and the cheese and fruit were cut for service.
The central kitchens were also used in at least one city to prepare food for daycares and for seniors who were home-bound — something to consider for Canadian cities.
Centralizing kitchens can reduce costs and provide a way for high-quality food to be produced from basic ingredients without commercial kitchens in every school capable of preparing meals for hundreds of children at a time.
4) When designed with requirements for purchasing foods from local farmers and other Canadian producers, school food programs can benefit the agricultural sector and multiply their benefits to communities beyond direct school food jobs. In France, for example, there are specific percentages to be purchased from local and sustainable sources. Percentage requirements for local and sustainable purchasing should be enacted now in Canada as its program establishes itself, perhaps beginning with 20 per cent and growing over time.
I have many more reflections from my visits, both positive and negative, but the four I have discussed are important for Canada to learn from as it begins to design the National School Food Program to meet the needs of diverse communities from coast to coast to coast.
Rachel Engler-Stringer receives funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and received a University of Saskatchewan International Travel Award for program visits. She sits on the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Healthy School Food.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephan Blum, Research associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen
Beneath the epic tales of heroes and gods, Troy’s true story is written in something far less glamorous – its rubbish.
When we think of Troy, we imagine epic battles, valiant deeds, cunning tricks and the wrath of gods. Thanks to Homer’s Iliad, the city is remembered as a stage for romance and heroism.
But long before Paris stole Helen and Achilles raged on the battlefield, the people of bronze age Troy lived ordinary lives – with extraordinary consequences. They built, cooked, stored, traded and, crucially, threw things away. And they did it right where they lived.
Today, waste is whisked away quickly – out of sight, out of mind. But in bronze age Troy (3000–1000BC), trash stayed close, often accumulating in domestic dumping grounds for generations.
Having spent more than 16 summers excavating and analysing the bronze age layers of Troy, I’ve learned to read the city’s history this waste.
Hundreds of thousands of animal bones from cattle, sheep, fish – even turtles – were found alongside vast quantities of pottery shards, ash, food scraps, and human waste. Sometimes, these layers were reused to level floors or build walls, showing how closely intertwined daily life and refuse management were.
Archaeology’s dirty secret
This wasn’t laziness or neglect, it was pure pragmatism. In a world without rubbish trucks or sanitation systems, managing refuse was neither chaotic nor careless, but a collective, spatially negotiated – and surprisingly strategic – effort.
The excavations I have worked on as part of the University of Tübingen’s Troy Project, which has been going on since 1988, have revealed just how deliberate these routines were. Where people chose to dump, or not to dump, speaks volumes about status, social roles, and community boundaries. Waste is the diary no one meant to write, yet it records the intimate rhythms of daily life with unfiltered clarity.
Far from a nuisance, Troy’s waste is an archaeologist’s treasure trove.
Over nearly 2,000 years, Troy ended up with 15 meters of built-up debris. Archaeologists can see nine major building phases in it, each made up of hundreds of thin layers, which formed as people lived their everyday lives. These layers act like snapshots, quietly recording how the city changed over time. Some capture hearth cleanings, others record the rebuilding of entire city quarters.
By analysing the layers and their ratios of bones to pottery, ash concentration, presence of storage jars, grinding stones, or production debris, specific spaces of activity become visible: kitchens, workshops, storage areas, rubbish pits. What appears chaotic turns out to be a carefully structured map of everyday routines – showing where meals were prepared, tools made, and discarded objects left behind.
A schematic cross-section through the settlement mound of Troy, revealing centuries of construction, destruction, and renewal. University of Tübingen/Frank Schweizer, CC BY-NC-SA
The story these remains tell is one of profound transformation. Troy began as a modest agrarian settlement, shaped by the steady rhythms of farming, herding, and small-scale craft. Over time, it grew into a thriving regional centre.
The archaeological record, rich in refuse, traces this long arc of change. Exotic imports fashioned from stones such as carnelian and lapis lazuli begin to appear, revealing distant trade connections. Specialised metalworking tools emerge alongside monumental architecture. some buildings stretched nearly 30 metres, signalling growing ambitions and expanding capabilities.
This rise unfolded gradually, reflected not just in grander buildings, but in shifting tools, trade, and how people dealt with what they left behind. Waste management became more organised, with designated areas for different types of waste. This reflects broader shifts in how the community structured space and managed its economy.
Yet this ascent was interrupted. By the mid-third millennium BC, signs that things were becoming smaller appear. Architecture simplifies, household inventories shrink, production debris declines suggesting economic slowdown or political instability.
Still, Troy endured. By the mid-second millennium BC, the city revived. Refined ceramics, luxury imports and evidence of social complexity marked a new chapter of recovery and reinvention. This splendid settlement later became the stage for Homer’s Trojan War where Greek warriors faced the daunting task of climbing towering mounds of debris built up over centuries just to reach the palaces.
A heap worth climbing
These insights allow us to see Troy not just as a city of walls and towers, but as a living organism shaped by daily routines, unspoken norms and social negotiation. The waste left behind is a remarkably honest archive of bronze age society – beneath myths, stones, and poetry.
Troy’s trash heaps are the bronze age’s search history. To know what mattered 4,500 years ago, don’t ask poets – ask the garbage. From broken tools to shared meals, from imported luxuries to scraps, this waste reveals the pulse of everyday life and society’s evolving structure.
Ironically, these mundane refuse layers preserved the bronze age world for us. Without them, we’d know far less about early Troy’s people. Their depth and composition trace changes in economy, technology, and social structure. From scraps to towers of pottery shards, waste archaeology is key to understanding early urban complexity.
So next time you picture Achilles storming Troy’s gates, remember: the heroes might have been divine, but their city smelled very human.
Stephan Blum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pinar Dinc, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science and Researcher, Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University
The historic disarmament ceremony on July 11 where members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) laid down their arms marked a pivotal moment in a decades-long conflict in Turkey. The ceremony was described by many who attended as a profoundly symbolic and emotional day that may signal the beginning of a new era.
During the disarmament ceremony in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, 26 PKK guerrillas alongside four senior commanders and leaders of the movement, symbolically laid aid down their arms and burned them. The audience included officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), plus politicians, journalists and international observers.
For more than four decades the PKK has been embroiled in an armed conflict with Turkey that has claimed more than 40,000 lives and shaped Kurdish identity and politics across the region.
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The PKK disarmament ceremony also could mark a new era for the Kurds, one of the largest stateless groups in the world with over 30 million people living across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The PKK has said it will now shift from armed resistance to political dialogue and regional cooperation.
Strikingly, the day after the ceremony, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan acknowledged the state’s historical failures in addressing the Kurdish issue. He listed past abuses of Kurds – state-sponsored abductions and extrajudicial violence, the burning of villages and the forced displacement of families – as examples of policies that had fuelled, rather than quelled, the conflict.
This hints that the road ahead might include a period of transitional justice. This could compose of different tools used by societies to address past violence and human rights abuses during a shift from conflict to peace and democracy. These may include legal actions such as trials, as well as other efforts to heal and rebuild trust in society.
Erdoğan also underlined the regional dimension of the agreement: “The issue is not only that of our Kurdish citizens, but also of our Kurdish brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria. We are discussing this process with them, and they are very pleased as well.”
PKK fighters take part in a symbolic peace ceremony.
International dimensions
While the PKK may be laying down arms, the Kurdish political movement should not be expected to disappear. On the contrary, it is likely to become more active in the democratic sphere — both in Turkey and in other parts of the Middle East where Kurdish people live. It is no secret that the current peace process is the result of shifting geopolitical realities.
Growing tensions between the US and Iran, Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, the ousting of the Assad regime in Syria, and shifting power dynamics across the region have all contributed to a geopolitical landscape in which prolonged armed conflict has become increasingly unsustainable — for both Turkey and the PKK. In this context, the current peace process is not merely a domestic initiative.
It represents a strategic recalibration in a rapidly changing Middle East. For Turkey, stabilising its southeastern border and reducing internal security pressures is essential amid regional volatility.
Turkey has long maintained strong ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) (the official ruling body of the Kurdistan region) in Iraq. However, the situation for Kurds in Syria remains more complex, as Turkey continues to view the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (a region that has in effect been self governing since 2012 and where many Kurds live) as a security threat along its border.
Meanwhile, negotiations continue between the new Syrian government under current president, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led coalition in Syria, which has been historically backed by the US. The SDF seeks to maintain its military autonomy and have its own independent political system — both of which are opposed by Damascus.
Western nations, particularly the US, remain influential in these talks. The US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, is reportedly uneasy with the lack of progress in the talks between al-Shara, and the SDF. He said: “The SDF, who has been a valued partner for America in the fight against ISIS, well-respected, bright, articulate, has to come to the conclusion that there’s one country, there’s one nation, there’s one people, and there’s one army.”
Another factor here is that a strong Arab-Turkish-Kurdish alliance is unlikely to align with Israeli strategic interests, which may favour a more fragmented Kurdish presence in the region.
For now, Turkey faces the complex task of overseeing a comprehensive disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process. This requires not only the decommissioning of weapons and the disbanding of armed units, but also the social and political reintegration of former combatants. The success of this will depend on legal reforms, institutional trust and a genuine commitment to democratic inclusion.
Erdoğan has been critised for his government’s ongoing non-democratic practices such the appointment of state trustees who replace elected officials and the imprisonment of elected officials.
And, despite the symbolic disarmament, the Turkish government persists in using the words “struggle against terrorism” — an approach that risks undermining the peace process by criminalising political dialogue and delegitimising Kurdish demands.
Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan reiterated that the PKK’s broader network, including the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), a group representing Kurds across Iraq, Syria and Turkey, must cease to pose a threat. “We will remain vigilant until every component of the KCK is no longer a danger to our nation and region,” he stated.
For the PKK, the changing alliances and uncertainties in Syria and Iraq may have made armed struggle a less viable path forward. Yet the sustainability of peace will depend on more than disarmament. It will require ending the criminalisation of Kurds in political institutions and within civil society.
What comes next will determine whether this moment becomes a historic turning point or another missed opportunity.
Pinar Dinc is the principal investigator of the ECO-Syria project, which receives funding from the Strategic Research Area: The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW) at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dale Pankhurst, PhD candidate and Tutor in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast
The British government announced in early July that a far-right group called the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) will be banned under terrorism legislation. This will make it a criminal offence in the UK to be a member of the group or to express support for it.
The RIM was at the centre of a string of letter bomb attacks targeting high-profile people and institutions in Spain in 2022. These included a bomb addressed to the official residence of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, which was intercepted by his security detail.
Six more letter bombs were mailed to targets including the American and Ukrainian embassies in Madrid, military installations, and weapons manufacturing companies that supply arms to Ukraine. No one was killed in the attacks, which US officials considered to be acts of terrorism.
Investigators soon announced that they suspected the RIM of being involved. US and European officials alleged that the group was directed to carry out the attacks by Russian intelligence officers.
What is the RIM?
The RIM is an ultra-nationalist, neo-nazi and white supremacist organisation based in Russia. It was created in 2002 by Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, a Russian national who is designated a terrorist by the US government.
The group seeks to create a new Russian empire, and uses the Russian imperial flag as its sign. The previous Russian empire (1721-1917) encompassed all of modern-day Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic states, as well as parts of China.
The movement does not recognise Ukrainian sovereignty. It sees Ukraine as part of what it calls a global Zionist conspiracy designed to undermine Russia and promote Jewish interests. The RIM has engaged in Holocaust denial and is formally outlawed in the US, Canada and now the UK.
It also has a paramilitary wing called the Imperial Legions, which operates at least two training facilities in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The US State Department believes these facilities are being used to train RIM members in woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons and hand-to-hand combat.
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Denis Valliullovich Gariyev, the Imperial Legions’ leader, has in the past called on “young orthodox men” to join the Legions and defend Novorossiya – a term used to describe Russia’s claim over Ukraine. As of 2020, the Imperial Legions was estimated to have several thousand members.
The RIM and its paramilitary wing have engaged in a wide range of activities and operations. These range from passive alliances with other far-right groups in Europe to providing paramilitary training for terrorist organisations. They have also participated directly in bomb attacks.
Since 2014, when the conflict in eastern Ukraine began, the movement has trained and sent members as mercenaries to bolster the pro-Russian separatist groups fighting there. Its members have also actively supported the Russian armed forces in Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in 2022.
After the invasion, posts related to the RIM on various social media platforms such as Vkontakte and Telegram revealed a ramping up of recruitment to join operations in Ukraine. Its fighters have posted videos of themselves in Ukraine armed with weaponry from sniper rifles to anti-tank missiles.
According to analysts, the movement also maintains strong ties with the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group. Imperial Legions fighters are believed to have operated alongside Wagner mercenaries in Syria, Libya and possibly the Central African Republic.
Outside of these activities, the movement has been active in supporting far-right organisations in Europe. These include the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden and similar groups in Germany, Spain and elsewhere.
It provides training to these groups through its so-called “Partizan” (Russian for guerrilla) programme. The training includes bombmaking, marksmanship, medical and survival skills, military topography and other tactics. According to the UK government, the Partizan programme aims to increase the capacity of attendees to conduct terrorist attacks.
Two Swedish nationals who took part in the programme later committed a series of bombings against refugee centres in Gothenburg, a city on Sweden’s west coast, in late 2016 and early 2017. The men were convicted in Sweden, with the prosecutor crediting RIM for their terrorist radicalisation and training.
The RIM has also provided specific paramilitary training to far-right groups in Finland. Some members of these groups have fought on Russia’s side in Ukraine, while others have attempted to establish a Finnish cell of the international neo-nazi Atomwaffen Division. Police raids in 2023 also unveiled plans to assassinate the then Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin.
Links with the Russian state
The movement has previously been critical of the Russian government. It initially believed the approach of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, to Ukraine was too soft, while the group’s promotion of white supremacy and neo-nazism is at odds with Putin’s pragmatic nationalism within Russia.
In 2012, the RIM even took part in discussions with other far-right groups in Russia to form an opposition movement called New Force to challenge Putin’s rule. However, the crisis in Ukraine that erupted in 2014 after pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power has caused the Kremlin and RIM’s political objectives to converge.
Indeed, the group can now be viewed as one of the core Russian proxy paramilitaries operating in Ukraine at a time when Putin needs more recruits to continue the war. Western intelligence agencies now believe it has a relationship with officials from Russian state intelligence.
It is difficult to pinpoint the total number of RIM fighters operating in Ukraine as the involvement of mercenary groups there is a closely guarded secret. However, based on previous intelligence reports on the group’s activities, it is reasonable to assume the number is in the hundreds to low thousands.
The decision by the British government to proscribe the RIM indicates concern that the far-right group is increasing its operational capacity both in Ukraine and throughout Europe. With its extensive network, the movement will become an increasing threat to security if it is allowed to continue acting as a proxy for Putin’s foreign policy objectives.
Dale Pankhurst does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The election of Zambia’s president, Hakainde Hichilema, in 2021 was widely interpreted as a victory for democracy. Zambia had suffered rising repression under former leader Edgar Lungu, but Hichilema promised democratic accountability. However, there are now concerns that his government is promoting constitutional changes that would entrench ruling-party dominance.
Hichilema has proposed a bill that would increase the number of MPs by over 60%. It would also introduce elements of proportional representation to create a “mixed” electoral system, and create reserved seats for women, young people and those with disabilities.
Zambia’s ruling United Party for National Development (UPND) claims the amendments are needed to correct historical exclusion. But many civil society groups believe this is “gender washing” – using inclusive rhetoric to mask an authoritarian agenda.
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This scepticism is rooted in recent political developments and the text itself. The bill has emerged alongside other legislation that would tighten state control over civic and political space, at a time when infringements on fundamental freedoms in Zambia are growing.
Many of the bill’s provisions are also vague and some undermine democratic checks and balances, while the progressive aspects are ill-conceived. This makes the proposed reforms, in the words of well-known Zambian constitutional expert O’Brien Kaaba: “deeply problematic and counterproductive”.
I take no pleasure in saying this. The last time I wrote such an article about Zambia, it was to condemn the persecution of Hichilema after he was arrested in 2017 on trumped up treason charges. I was honoured to receive a letter of thanks upon his release.
Like many Zambians and international observers, I was hopeful for the new administration. Yet, while the government has kept some campaign promises and negotiated a difficult deal on the country’s debt burden, efforts to restore democracy are now going backwards.
Weakening a fragile system
As prominent Zambian civil society leaders like Laura Miti and Linda Kasonde have warned, a number of the proposed changes could enable the government to all-but-guarantee itself a majority in the next elections scheduled for 2026.
First, the bill would add 55 new constituency-based MPs – more than the total number to be elected through proportional representation. There are concerns that most of these new constituencies will be created in UPND strongholds, helping the party retain a majority even if it loses support.
These fears have been magnified by the government’s failure to release the Boundary Delimitation Report, which sets out the redrawing of electoral boundaries. This has prevented independent scrutiny of the process and its motivations.
Second, the rule that parliament must be dissolved 90 days before elections is also being revoked on the basis that this unfairly shortens office terms for MPs. Although MPs would not be supposed to conduct parliamentary business after this point, such a change would exacerbate existing problems. These include the use of government resources and vehicles in the ruling party’s campaign.
And third, the constitutional amendment increases the number of MPs the president can appoint from eight to ten. In a system already adding reserved seats for underrepresented groups, this lacks justification. Taken together, these changes threaten to further empower the government and explain why a collective of civil society groups recently demanded “an immediate halt” to the process.
At the same time, the government has not taken the opportunity to remove problematic clauses from Zambia’s constitution. These include the right of the president to dissolve the National Assembly if it fails to “reasonably” perform its duties.
The government has justified the bill by emphasising the historical underrepresentation of women and marginalised groups in Zambian politics. This is a serious problem, but the bill will not fix it.
The amendments only create 20 seats for women, 12 for young people, and three for those with disabilities. In a 256-seat chamber, this will do little to address the imbalance and falls well short of the Southern African Development Community’s target of 30% female representation.
Poorly designed quotas can also reinforce marginalisation. Parties may push women toward quota seats, limiting their participation in regular constituency races. The amendment may thus create a new ceiling: if women only run in reserved seats, female representation would almost halve from 15% now to just 8% in the next parliament.
A similar issue arises with the proportional representation system more broadly. When only a small proportion of seats are allocated this way, it fails to deliver the benefits of fairness that are associated with true proportionality.
In other words, the constitutional amendment bill gives the appearance of inclusivity while carefully preserving the government’s incumbency advantage.
A constitutional rush-job
Perhaps the most striking flaw in the bill has been the process itself. The amendments have seen such scant public consultation that, in June, the Law Association of Zambia called for them to be withdrawn.
This concern is shared by the constitutional court, which recently found the government had failed to meet constitutional requirements for public participation. The court recommended restarting a more inclusive process.
Hichilema, perhaps aware of the likely verdict, preempted the ruling by announcing shortly before the court’s decision that he would pause the process to allow for wider consultation. This is a welcome, but insufficient, development. As the Law Association has argued, the amendments are so badly designed that they do not represent a viable foundation for constitutional review.
Compounding its other flaws, the legislation is poorly written and vague. In many cases, it also fails to explain how new provisions would actually work in practice. The bill therefore needs to be withdrawn, not revised or deferred.
Zambia needs a new constitution, but it deserves one that is rooted in evidence, consultation and democratic principles. Anything less threatens to undermine the country’s hard-won democratic gains and Hichilema’s own legacy.
Nic Cheeseman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Clearly angered by the intensification of Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine, Donald Trump has pivoted from the suspension of US military assistance to Ukraine to promising its resumption. Russia’s strikes on major cities killed more civilians in June than have died in any single previous month, according to UN figures.
Over the past two weeks, the US president has made several disparaging comments about his relationship with Vladimir Putin, including on July 13 that the Russian president “talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening”.
Not only will the US resume delivery of long-promised Patriot air defence missiles, Trump is now also reported to be considering a whole new plan to arm Ukraine, including with offensive capabilities. And he has talked about imposing new sanctions on Putin’s regime.
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This is the background against which the eighth Ukraine Recovery Conference took place in Rome on July 10 and 11. The event, attended by many western leaders and senior business executives, was an important reminder that while the war against Ukraine will be decided on the battlefield, peace will only be won as the result of rebuilding Ukraine’s economy and society.
Ending the war anytime soon and on terms favourable to Kyiv will require an enormous effort by Ukrainians and their European allies. But the country’s recovery afterwards will be no less challenging.
According to the World Bank’s latest assessment, at the end of 2024 Ukraine’s recovery needs over the next decade stood at US$524 billion (£388 billion). And with every month the war continues, these needs are increasing. Ukraine’s three hardest-hit sectors are housing, transport and energy infrastructure, which between them account for around 60% of all damage.
At the same time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided a relatively positive assessment of Ukraine’s overall economic situation at the end of June, forecasting growth of between 2% and 3% for 2025 – likely to grow to over 4% in 2026 and 2027. But the IMF also cautioned that this trajectory – and the country’s macroeconomic stability more generally – will remain heavily dependent on external support.
Taking into account a new €2.3 billion package from the EU, consisting of €1.8 billion of loan guarantees and €580 million of grants, the cumulative pledge of over €10 billion (£8.7 billion) made by countries attending the Ukraine recovery conference is both encouraging and sobering.
It is encouraging in the sense that Ukraine’s international partners remain committed to the country’s social and economic needs, not merely its ability to resist Russia on the battlefield.
But it is also sobering that even these eye-watering sums of public money are still only a fraction of Ukraine’s needs. Even if the EU manages to mobilise its overall target of €40 billion for Ukraine’s recovery, by attracting additional contributions from other donors and the private sector, this would be less than 8% of Ukraine’s projected recovery needs as of the end of 2024.
As the war continues and more of the (diminishing) public funding is directed towards defence expenditure by Kyiv’s western partners, this gap is likely to grow.
Overcoming the trauma of war
Money is not the only challenge for Ukraine recovery efforts. Rebuilding the country is not simply about undoing the physical damage.
The social impact of Russia’s aggression is hard to overstate. Ukraine has been deeply traumatised as a society since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Generally reliable Ukrainian casualty counts – some 12,000 civilians and 43,000 troops killed since February 2022 – are still likely to underestimate the true number of people who have died as a direct consequence of the Russian aggression. And each of these will have left behind family members struggling to cope with their loss. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of war veterans.
Even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there were nearly half a million veterans from the “frozen” conflict that followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine. By the end of 2024, this number had more than doubled to around 1 million. Most of them have complex social, economic, medical and psychological needs that will have to be considered as part of a society-wide recovery effort.
Returning refugees
According to data from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), there are also some 7 million refugees from Ukraine and 3.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs). This is equivalent to one quarter of the country’s population. The financial needs of UNHCR’s operations in Ukraine are estimated at $800 million in 2025, of which only 27% was funded as of the end of April.
Once the fighting in Ukraine ends, refugees are likely to return in greater numbers. Their return will provide a boost to the country’s economic growth by strengthening its labour force and bringing with them skills and, potentially, investment. But like many IDPs and veterans, they may not be able to return to their places of origin, either because these are not inhabitable or remain under Russian occupation.
Some returnees are likely to be viewed with suspicion or resentment by those Ukrainians who stayed behind and fought. Tensions with Ukrainians who survived the Russian occupation in areas that Kyiv may recover in a peace deal are also likely, given Ukraine’s harsh anti-collaboration laws.
As a consequence, reintegration – in the sense of rebuilding and sustaining the country’s social cohesion – will be a massive challenge, requiring as much, if not more, of Ukraine’s partners’ attention and financial support as physical reconstruction and the transition from a war to a peace-time economy.
Given the mismatch between what is needed and what has been provided for Ukraine’s recovery, one may well be sceptical about the value of the annual Ukraine recovery conferences. But, to the credit of their organisers and attendees, they recognise that the foundations for post-war recovery need to be built before the war ends. The non-military challenges of war and peace must not fall by the wayside amid an exclusive focus on battlefield dynamics.
Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
