Relocation of business in Ukraine. May 2022. (Credit: Ihor Zenchenko)

Ukraine Stories #Week14: Ukraine at Davos, businesses flee war and stolen grain in Luhansk In this week's blog, Ksenia Novitska, a Ukrainian correspondent from the occupied city of Starobilisk, reports that the occupying force is working on a railway line to export all the grain produced in the region to the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic. Among our other blog entries, we hear how Ukrainian businesses are relocated to safer parts of the country, and – Ukraine is making the headlines at Davos, with President Zelensky calling for maximum sanctions on Russia.

The bombing of Azovstal: how civilians survived. Russia’s three-month siege of Azovstal steelworks, the last bastion of the port city of Mariupol, approached a bitter end last week after the last Ukrainian troops holed up inside surrendered to pro-Russian forces. Our colleagues from Holod media interviewed Andrey and Anna, who spent weeks sheltering in the Azovstal bunkers with their families while Russian forces bombed the city.

Odesa’s opera and ballet theatre. May 2022. (Credit: Tetiana Bezhenar)

Singing over the sirens: Odesa’s opera house prepares world premiere. Russian missile strikes and shelling of Ukraine’s maritime capital did not intimidate the employees of the historic theatre where work is in full swing for the long-awaited premiere of “Kateryna”, a poem from the father of Ukrainian literature Taras Shevchenko.

📌 30 May | The war in Ukraine seen through the lens of sanctions plus the humanitarian, finance & banking, and commodities & trading sectors. This British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce public debate aims to provide insights into, and answer difficult questions about, crucial issues which the war has brought to the fore. For example, humanitarian, commodity trading, banking & finance, all of which operate together, during the gravest military conflict in Europe since 1945, in this international city of Geneva. Speakers include Dr Daniel Warner, former deputy to the director of the Graduate Institute Geneva, and ICRC vice president Dr Gilles Carbonnier.