On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what he called a “special military operation.” The brutal aggression involved Russian troop advancements as well as relentless cruise and ballistic missile attacks on military and civilian targets. The impact on all Ukrainians was devastating and instantaneous. As the war raged on, the role of China — which had just signed a joint statement with Russia — often seemed unclear. In most Chinese media, Russian talking points dominated news reports about what was officially called a “crisis.” Immediately after the invasion, however, a group of experts from the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists felt sure they could find a way to better communicate with the Chinese. David Bandurski sat down with the association’s chairman of the board, Vita Golod, to hear the story of Ukraine’s sinologists in the face of the Russian invasion.

At the turn of the century, a confluence of developments in China, including rising citizen consciousness and the emergence of affordable digital video technology, led to a vibrant independent documentary movement. The forced closure in 2013 of one crucial forum for such films, the Yunnan Multicultural Festival, signaled the start of what would become a sustained campaign in the early Xi Jinping era against filmmakers working outside the system. To mark the anniversary of the last independent festival hosted in China, the Beijing Independent Film Festival held exactly a decade ago, David Bandurski sat down this month with Chinese indie filmmaker and curator Huang Wenhai to gaze back on the movement and changes in the past decade.

In an increasingly polarized world, can emerging neuroscience offer the universals necessary to bridge the gap and defend liberal democracy against authoritarianism? We ask political scientist Liya Yu about “the greatest cognitive challenge of our time” and the critical role media play in humanizing others.