Putin must think he’s winning the propaganda war after listening to Musk and his pals on Twitter

On my 2022 trip to Kyiv, I met Stas Aseyev, a Ukrainian journalist who had spent two and a half years in a secret, illegal prison in Donetsk, where he was tortured, electroshocked, placed in long solitary confinement and subjected to mock executions.

His crime?

Working as a stringer for the US-funded Radio Liberty, writing dispatches about life in the Russian-occupied territories.

Stas was among the lucky ones.

He was released in December 2019, scarred and malnourished, as part of a prisoner exchange instead of serving his full 15-year sentence, issued by the bogus “Supreme Court of the Donetsk People’s Republic.”

Stas’ story encapsulates why Ukrainians fight.