The relationship between China and Russia seems to grow closer as the U.S. and China look at each other with hostile eyes. At what point does this become scary? Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, toasts with Chinese President Xi Jinping prior to the Conference...
Our correspondents and youth voices tackled many facets of this complicated conflict. We give out the breadth of our Ukraine coverage to help you sort it out. People in Brovary, Ukraine on 19 February 2023 kneel at a funeral procession for the body of a man killed...
As the world marks the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve put together a compilation of News Decoder coverage of the war this year. Help your students decode this complicated news event with a look at the conflict through the eyes of refugees, expats, international law and neighboring countries.
Exercise: Begin with a class discussion around the unifying question, “How might war affect countries beyond combat on the battlefield?” Students might come up with answers like: food rationing, being forced to relocate etc. Then, divide your class into four groups, each corresponding to one subheading of the article compilation (i.e. Ukrainians united, Russia responds, Refugee havens and Beyond Ukraine’s borders). In each group, have students choose one article to read together from their respective subcategory, taking notes as they go. As students read, have them synthesize the main idea of the article to share with the rest of the class. Have 1-2 spokespeople from each group share out after all students finish reading, framing their contributions around the initial class question.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Canadian diplomats fled Kyiv, leaving Ukrainian staff behind and raising questions about their role in war. The U.S. embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, 12 February 2022. The United States, like Canada and some other nations, ordered the...
Soldiers have seized power in Burkina Faso and Mali, setting back democracy as jihadists threaten security in West Africa. Young men carrying a Russian flag chant slogans against France in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 30 September 2022. (AP Photo/Sophie Garcia) Waking...
Russia’s president has raised the prospect of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. That’s a frightful notion. But it might not violate international law. Russian RS-24 Yars ballistic missiles in Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow,...
A conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is heating up as the war in Ukraine prompts geopolitical realignments, with implications for outside powers including the West and Russia. Azerbaijani soldiers carry portraits of soldiers killed during fighting over...
“It is easy to pay little attention or to even ignore regional conflicts, but they can hold the key to understanding larger political currents in the world.” Correspondent Bryson Hull’s words remind us of why a simmering conflict in the Caucuses between Armenia and Azerbaijan has potential implications for all of us. News Decoder is premised on the notion that young people know a great deal, through headlines on their screens, about what is happening in the world but, because they are young, can have difficulty connecting the dots and understanding why far-away events matter to them. Hull offers a clear explanation of why fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh appears periodically in those headlines, and then disappears, only to reappear some day, like so many other intractable conflicts in distant places.
Exercise: Ask your students to identify a regional conflict that became a proxy for armed competition involving stronger powers.
Marie Colvin started as a journalist writing for a New York trade union. She ended up a war correspondent who changed people’s lives. Medical staff examine Marie Colvin in Colombo’s eye hospital in Sri Lanka, 17 April 2001. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) A...
Susan Ruel reflects on the life and career of Marie Colvin, an accomplished foreign correspondent killed in Syria in 2012. Colvin reported on major conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, believing someone has to go there and see what is happening. “She always told the stories of the ordinary men and women who bore the consequences of the power struggles and wars waged by political leaders,” Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Robert Mahoney said. With more journalists murdered or missing this year than in nearly all of 2021, the rights of journalists in war zones cannot be taken for granted.
Exercise: Ask students to discuss how media coverage of war and conflict zones has evolved and what they think accounts for the increased threat against journalists.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed the global total of refugees to over 100 million. Refugees are like you and me — but not always welcome. The author (center) with two Afghan refugees at Branko Pešić school in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2019. (Photo courtesy of...
Dmytro Shelukhin is a Ukrainian working for a UK investment bank. But like many émigrés, he is finding meaning helping his home nation fight Russia. Dmytro Shelukhin on the way to Ukraine with war materiel (photo courtesy of Dmytro Shelukhin) For the past eight years,...
Like many big global news stories, the war in Ukraine has released a tsunami of ink, making it difficult for journalists to find a fresh angle. Jeffrey Mo, a fellow at the University of Toronto, manages to break new ground with a simple story about a Ukrainian émigré who sends war matériel to armed forces in his embattled home country. Mo lets Dmytro Shelukhin, a Ukrainian working for a UK investment bank, be the protagonist of the story, which discreetly underscores both the high stakes involved in the conflict and the depth of Ukrainian defiance.
Exercise: Ask your students to identify an issue dominating the news around the world – such as climate change or human rights – and to find a local angle. Then they should interview someone directly involved in the local matter and write a story capturing that person’s experiences and thoughts.
How we perceive events like the war in Ukraine depends on our news sources. While never perfect, news media perform invaluable services. Russian President Vladimir Putin appears on a television screen at the stock market in Frankfurt, Germany, 25 February 2022....
