SpaceX launched its sixth Starship rocket Tuesday, proving for the first time that the stainless steel ship can maneuver in space and paving the way for an even larger, upgraded vehicle slated to debut on the next test flight.

The only hiccup was an abortive attempt to catch the rocket's Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in South Texas, something SpaceX achieved on the previous flight on October 13. The Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world, reaching an altitude of 118 miles (190 kilometers) before plunging through the atmosphere for a pinpoint slow-speed splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The sixth flight of the world's largest launcher—standing 398 feet (121.3 meters) tall—began with a lumbering liftoff from SpaceX's Starbase facility near the US-Mexico border at 4 pm CST (22:00 UTC) Tuesday. The rocket headed east over the Gulf of Mexico, propelled by 33 Raptor engines clustered on the bottom of its Super Heavy first stage.

A few miles away, President-elect Donald Trump joined SpaceX founder Elon Musk to witness the launch. The SpaceX boss became one of Trump's closest allies in this year's presidential election, giving the world's richest man extraordinary influence in US space policy. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was there, too, among other lawmakers. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top commander in the US Space Force, stood nearby, chatting with Trump and other VIPs.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, President-elect Donald Trump, and Gen. Chance Saltzman of the US Space Force watch the sixth launch of Starship Tuesday. Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

From their viewing platform, they watched Starship climb into a clear autumn sky. At full power, the 33 Raptors chugged more than 40,000 pounds of super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen per second. The engines generated 16.7 million pounds of thrust, 60 percent more than the Soviet N1, the second-largest rocket in history.

Eight minutes later, the rocket's upper stage, itself also known as Starship, was in space, completing the program's fourth straight near-flawless launch. The first two test flights faltered before reaching their planned trajectory.

A brief but crucial demo

As exciting as it was, we've seen all that before. One of the most important new things engineers wanted to test on this flight occurred about 38 minutes after liftoff.

That's when Starship reignited one of its six Raptor engines for a brief burn to make a slight adjustment to its flight path. The burn lasted only a few seconds, and the impulse was small—just a 48 mph (77 km/hour) change in velocity, or delta-V—but it demonstrated that the ship can safely deorbit itself on future missions.

With this achievement, Starship will likely soon be cleared to travel into orbit around Earth and deploy Starlink Internet satellites or conduct in-space refueling experiments, two of the near-term objectives on SpaceX's Starship development roadmap.

Launching Starlinks aboard Starship will allow SpaceX to expand the capacity and reach of its commercial consumer broadband network, which, in turn, provides revenue for Musk to reinvest into Starship. Orbital refueling enables Starship voyages beyond low-Earth orbit, fulfilling SpaceX's multibillion-dollar contract with NASA to provide a human-rated Moon lander for the agency's Artemis program. Likewise, transferring cryogenic propellants in orbit is a prerequisite for sending Starships to Mars, making real Musk's dream of creating a settlement on the red planet.

Artist's illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

Until now, SpaceX has intentionally launched Starships to speeds just shy of the blistering velocities needed to maintain orbit. Engineers wanted to test the Raptor's ability to reignite in space on the third Starship test flight in March, but the ship lost control of its orientation, and SpaceX canceled the engine firing.

Before going for a full orbital flight, officials needed to confirm that Starship could steer itself back into the atmosphere for reentry, ensuring it wouldn't present any risk to the public with an unguided descent over a populated area. After Tuesday, SpaceX can check this off its to-do list.

"Congrats to SpaceX on Starship's sixth test flight," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson posted on X. "Exciting to see the Raptor engine restart in space—major progress towards orbital flight. Starship’s success is Artemis' success. Together, we will return humanity to the Moon & set our sights on Mars."

While it lacks the pizzazz of a fiery launch or landing, the engine relight unlocks a new phase of Starship development. SpaceX has now proven that the rocket is capable of reaching space with a fair measure of reliability. Next, engineers will fine-tune how to reliably recover the booster and the ship and learn how to use them.

Acid test

SpaceX appears well on its way to doing this. While SpaceX didn't catch the Super Heavy booster with the launch tower's mechanical arms Tuesday, engineers have shown they can do it. The challenge of catching Starship itself back at the launch pad is more daunting. The ship starts its reentry thousands of miles from Starbase, traveling approximately 17,000 mph (27,000 km/hour), and must thread the gap between the tower's catch arms within a matter of inches.

The good news is that SpaceX has now twice proven it can bring Starship back to a precision splashdown in the Indian Ocean. In October, the ship settled into the sea in darkness. SpaceX moved the launch time for Tuesday's flight to the late afternoon, setting up for splashdown shortly after sunrise northwest of Australia.

The shift in time paid off with some stunning new visuals. Cameras mounted on the outside of Starship beamed dazzling live views back to SpaceX through the Starlink network, showing a now-familiar glow of plasma encasing the spacecraft as it plowed deeper into the atmosphere. But this time, daylight revealed the ship's flaps moving to control its belly-first descent toward the ocean. After passing through a deck of low clouds, Starship reignited its Raptor engines and tilted from horizontal to vertical, making contact with the water tail-first within view of a floating buoy and a nearby aircraft in position to observe the moment.

Here's a replay of the spacecraft's splashdown around 65 minutes after launch.

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting sixth flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/bf98Va9qmL

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 19, 2024

The ship made it through reentry despite flying with a substandard heat shield. Starship's thermal protection system is made up of thousands of ceramic tiles to protect the ship from temperatures as high as 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius).

Kate Tice, a SpaceX engineer hosting the company's live broadcast of the mission, said teams at Starbase removed 2,100 heat shield tiles from Starship ahead of Tuesday's launch. Their removal exposed wider swaths of the ship's stainless steel skin to super-heated plasma, and SpaceX teams were eager to see how well the spacecraft held up during reentry. In the language of flight testing, this approach is called exploring the corners of the envelope, where engineers evaluate how a new airplane or rocket performs in extreme conditions.

“Don’t be surprised if we see some wackadoodle stuff happen here," Tice said. There was nothing of the sort. One of the ship's flaps appeared to suffer some heating damage, but it remained intact and functional, and the harm looked to be less substantial than damage seen on previous flights.

Many of the removed tiles came from the sides of Starship where SpaceX plans to place catch fittings on future vehicles. These are the hardware protuberances that will catch on the top side of the launch tower's mechanical arms, similar to fittings used on the Super Heavy booster.

"The next flight, we want to better understand where we can install catch hardware, not necessarily to actually do the catch but to see how that hardware holds up in those spots," Tice said. "Today's flight will help inform 'does the stainless steel hold up like we think it may, based on experiments that we conducted on Flight 5?'"

Musk wrote on his social media platform X that SpaceX could try to bring Starship back to Starbase for a catch on the eighth test flight, which is likely to occur in the first half of 2025.

"We will do one more ocean landing of the ship," Musk said. "If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower."

The heat shield, Musk added, is a focal point of SpaceX's attention. The delicate heat-absorbing tiles used on the belly of the space shuttle proved vexing to NASA technicians. Early in the shuttle's development, NASA had trouble keeping tiles adhered to the shuttle's aluminum skin. Each of the shuttle tiles was custom-machined to fit on a specific location on the orbiter, complicating refurbishment between flights. Starship's tiles are all hexagonal in shape and agnostic to where technicians place them on the vehicle.

"The biggest technology challenge remaining for Starship is a fully & immediately reusable heat shield," Musk wrote on X. "Being able to land the ship, refill propellant & launch right away with no refurbishment or laborious inspection. That is the acid test."

This photo of the Starship vehicle for Flight 6, numbered Ship 31, shows exposed portions of the vehicle's stainless steel skin after tile removal. Credit: SpaceX

There were no details available Tuesday night on what caused the Super Heavy booster to divert from its planned catch on the launch tower. After detaching from the Starship upper stage less than three minutes into the flight, the booster reversed course to begin the journey back to Starbase.

Then SpaceX's flight director announced the rocket would fly itself into the Gulf rather than back to the launch site: "Booster offshore divert."

The booster finished its descent with a seemingly perfect landing burn using a subset of its Raptor engines. As expected after the water landing, the booster—itself 233 feet (71 meters) tall—toppled and broke apart in a dramatic fireball visible to onshore spectators.

In an update posted to its website after the launch, SpaceX said automated health checks of hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered the aborted catch attempt. The company did not say what system failed the health check. As a safety measure, SpaceX must send a manual command for the booster to come back to land in order to prevent a malfunction from endangering people or property.

Turning it up to 11

There will be plenty more opportunities for more booster catches in the coming months as SpaceX ramps up its launch cadence at Starbase. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, hinted at the scale of the company's ambitions last week.

"We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years," she said at the Barron Investment Conference.

The next batch of test flights will use an improved version of Starship designated Block 2, or V2. Starship Block 2 comes with larger propellant tanks, redesigned forward flaps, and a better heat shield.

The new-generation Starship will hold more than 11 million pounds of fuel and oxidizer, about a million pounds more than the capacity of Starship Block 1. The booster and ship will produce more thrust, and Block 2 will measure 408 feet (124.4 meters) tall, stretching the height of the full stack by a little more than 10 feet.

Put together, these modifications should give Starship the ability to heave a payload of up to 220,000 pounds (100 metric tons) into low-Earth orbit, about twice the carrying capacity of the first-generation ship. Further down the line, SpaceX plans to introduce Starship Block 3 to again double the ship's payload capacity.

Just as importantly, these changes are designed to make it easier for SpaceX to recover and reuse the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage. SpaceX's goal of fielding a fully reusable launcher builds on the partial reuse SpaceX pioneered with its Falcon 9 rocket. This should dramatically bring down launch costs, according to SpaceX's vision.

With Tuesday's flight, it's clear Starship works. Now it's time to see what it can do.

Updated with additional details, quotes, and images.

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Yesterday, Prusa Research officially unveiled their next printer, the Core ONE. Going over the features and capabilities of this new machine, it’s clear that Prusa has kept a close eye on the rapidly changing desktop 3D printer market and designed a machine to better position themselves within a field of increasingly capable machines from other manufacturers.

While some saw the incremental upgrades of the i3 MK4 as being too conservative, the Core ONE ticks all the boxes of what today’s consumer is looking for — namely high-speed CoreXY movement with a fully enclosed chamber — while still offering the build quality, upgradability, and support that the company has built its reputation on. Put simply it’s one of the most exciting products they’ve introduced in a long time, and exactly the kind of machine that many Prusa fans have been waiting for.

Unfortunately, there’s one feature that’s ominously absent from the Core ONE announcement post. It’s easy to overlook, and indeed, most consumers probably won’t even know it’s missing. But for those of us who are concerned with such matters, it’s an unspoken confirmation that an era has finally come to an end.

With the Core ONE, Prusa Research is no longer in the business of making open source 3D printer hardware, but that doesn’t mean that the printer isn’t hackable. It’s complicated, so read on.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

To say that Prusa Research pivoting away from the open source hardware (OSHW) principles that guided the company, and indeed the 3D printing community, through its early years is a disappointment would be quite an understatement. It’s a crushing blow. One which critics will use to call into question the viability of building a sustainable business model around OSHW. But it’s also not hard to see how we got to this point.

The first warning sign came back in 2021, with the announcement of the Prusa XL. With this new high-end printer, the company seemed uncharacteristically hesitant to open things up, which frankly wasn’t entirely unreasonable. The pricing of the XL put it closer into the professional market than a traditional hobbyist machine, and there were some new features like tool changing and a  segmented heated bed that were unique enough that they’d want to keep the details under wraps until the machine at least got a foothold in the market. So if Prusa wanted to play this one a little closer to the chest, so be it.

But things took a concerning turn last year with the release of the i3 MK4. Although Prusa still called the printer open source in their marketing, the reality was a bit more complicated. While at least some of the printer’s technical information was made available, especially the elements that were inherited from the earlier i3 models, there were several rather large omissions.

Printable parts were available only as STLs, there were no design files released for the printer’s control board, and the Nextruder (which was introduced with the XL) remained all but completely proprietary. Many argued that the MK4 didn’t meet the standards that Prusa had set with their previous printers, and that continuing to call it open source was misleading.

If it wasn’t already obvious that Prusa’s commitment to open source was beginning to waiver, Josef’s post on the Prusa Blog made his position abundantly clear. Framed as a call for discussion, the post outlined his feelings on the open source community and what he perceived as the failures of common licenses such as the GPL. While he said that the company still intended to make their machines open, the writing was clearly on the wall.

A New Chapter for Prusa

To be clear, the Core ONE is of critical strategic importance to Prusa. The company needed a revamped machine to combat increased competition from Chinese printer manufacturers, and while it’s not being marketed as a replacement for the i3 MK4, it’s not hard to see the direction the market is moving in. The i3 is a workhorse, and won’t be going away anytime soon, but the chances that it will see a MK5 at this point seem exceptionally slim.

But the Core ONE also represents a mostly clean slate design, one that shares relatively little with the i3. This frees Prusa from any obligation, perceived or otherwise, to continue releasing the printer’s design files. Indeed, the term “open source” only appears once in the announcement post for the printer — and that’s when referring to the firmware and slicer code, which are.

Although we don’t have documentation or an assembly guide for the Core ONE or the MK4S->Core upgrade kits yet, it looks as if very little of Prusa’s remaining open source hardware has been brought forward.

Potentially the Core ONE is using some variation of the CC BY-SA 4.0 licensed MK52 magnetic heated bed, but beyond that, we already know that Prusa is still keeping the design files for major components such as the Nextruder and xBuddy 32-bit control board under wraps for the time being.

Not Open, But Hackable

So we know that Prusa isn’t advertising the Core ONE design as open source hardware, and that only limited technical data has been released for the few components and subsystems that it inherits from the XL and MK4S. But what does that actually mean for users like us?

That’s where things get a little tricky. While Prusa’s newer printers certainly do not meet the literal requirements of OSHW, they’re still remarkably transparent in a world of proprietary black boxes. We might not get the design files for the printed parts in these new machines, but you’ll get STLs that you can run off if you need a replacement. We can also be fairly sure that Prusa will continue their tradition of releasing wiring schematics for the Core ONE as they’ve done with essentially all of their previous printers, which is more than we can say for the vast majority of consumer products.

While the lack of design files for these new Prusa printers is unfortunate on a philosophical level, it’s hard to argue that they’re any less repairable, upgradable, or hackable than their predecessors. In fact, Prusa’s actually made at least one improvement in that department — announcing that breaking off the control board’s “Appendix” security device and installing a new firmware will no longer void the printer’s warranty.

We should also consider that even Prusa’s earlier printers have not always been as open as the company would perhaps like us to believe. Sure, for the Prusa Mini you could hop on GitHub and grab the KiCad files for its mainboard, and the design files for the i3 up until the MK3 are available as GPLv2 licensed OpenSCAD code. But the company has never actually provided a complete Bill of Materials for their printers, and even after years of requests from the community, they have still yet to release the source code for their bootloader as they consider it a separate project from the main GPL-licensed firmware.

Prusa has always used a somewhat piecemeal method of releasing the source and design files for their products. But it’s worked for them up to this point. The bottom line is, makers and hackers will still have plenty to work with, even if things aren’t quite as open as we’d prefer.

Becoming Your Own Enemy

On a personal note, I find myself conflicted. I’d argue that the i3 MK3 is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the “Prusa Experience” — support, reliability, upgradability — is worth spending the extra money on. I’m also confident that the Core ONE is precisely the kind of machine Prusa needed to remain competitive in today’s market.

At the same time, there were issues that I was willing to overlook because the company was producing open source hardware. When a shipping date slipped, or a firmware update introduced a new issue, I let it slide because it was for the greater good. But now that they’re no longer calling their printers open source, I can’t help but feel some of that goodwill evaporating — and I’m probably not the only one having similar thoughts.

Ultimately, the part that bothers me the most about this change in Prusa’s approach is that it all seems predicated on a bogeyman that I’m not convinced actually exists. The company line is that releasing the source for their printers allows competitors to churn out cheap clones of their hardware — but where are they?

Let’s be honest, Bambu didn’t need to copy any of Prusa’s hardware to take their lunch money. You can only protect your edge in the market if you’re ahead of the game to begin with, and if anything, Prusa is currently playing catch-up to the rest of the industry that has moved on to faster designs. The only thing Prusa produces that their competitors are actually able to take advantage of is their slicer, but that’s another story entirely. (And of course, it is still open source, and widely forked.)

So will the Prusa Core ONE be a good printer? Almost certainly. Will I buy one? Very likely. But part of me will always be disappointed that the guy with the open source hardware logo tattoo took his ball and went home as soon as the game starting getting tough.

Editor’s Note: We will cover every element of the war. Ukraine is so much more than just lines on a map. We focus on the human stories to illustrate the news: culture, military, cuisine, music — that’s The Counteroffensive’s mission. Upgrade now to follow along!

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It’s a cold early spring morning in Kyiv – March 25th, 2024. 

At 10:25 a.m. two women enter Maria's cafe and order coffee. Maria is making espresso when she hears the first explosion. 

Later, the air raid siren goes off. Maria decides to finish her coffee and move to a safer place. 

But she doesn't have time...

At 10:29 a.m. there is another terrible explosion. A window in the café is blown out and shards fall on her. Maria immediately crouched down and covered her head with her hands. The only thing that saves her from the broken glass is that she was wearing a thick, warm hoodie. 

She did the only thing she knew to do: She stood behind the bar and started making coffee again. 

Video showing the moment of explosion:

Coffee culture in Ukraine is more than just a habit.

In times of political change, coffee has become a symbol of resilience and unity: from discussions about the country's future in coffee shops during the Revolution of Dignity to mobile coffee shops on the front lines. 

The rapid growth of coffee shops, artisan roasters and local brands reflects the country's openness to new ideas and its desire to develop even in difficult times.

Coffee was first brought to Ukraine through Lviv at the end of the 18th century, then a major trading city in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lviv's coffee shops were among the first in Europe, paving the way for coffee to spread throughout modern Ukraine. The first independent coffee shop opened in Lviv in 1829. It was called the  ‘Vienna’ coffee shop. 

After the Second World War and during the Soviet era, coffee was a more limited commodity, but remained popular, especially in the form of the powdered root of the chicory plant due to the shortage of real coffee.

With Ukraine's independence, the coffee market opened up to foreign competition and imports. Coffee culture has become more diverse with the emergence of numerous international and local coffee shops.

There are around six thousand coffee shops in Ukraine. Interestingly, during the full-scale war, the number of coffee shops in Ukraine has increased by 35 percent.

Maria Yevsstafieva came to Kyiv in 2022 after entering the university to study journalism. Almost immediately she realized that she wanted to ask her parents for less money, so she started looking for a job. Maria imagined it would be something in the catering industry. It didn't require any special skills and was easy to combine with her studies. 

So Maria found a job as a barista, but she actually had to perform the duties of a barista, a waitress, a cleaner, and a florist. She stayed there for a couple of months.

And then she practically found her dream job. She was also a barista, but at a third-wave coffee shop called the Macaco Cafe. Third-wave coffee shops are places that use high-quality beans and professional equipment to popularize coffee culture. These cafes have an individual approach to preparing drinks and offer customers alternative coffees.

"I was interested in learning what roasts are, all the different Ethiopian and Colombian roasts and how they differ, and drawing latte art," Maria said.

Like in the United States and Canada, asking someone to go for a coffee is shorthand for asking them to get together.

"It is as if everyone can choose their own coffee at home. Going somewhere and having that coffee made for you, maybe watching other people, is a kind of ritual. And it adds such stability to your life. We feel more secure when we have a routine. And it gives us so much support," said psychologist Yana Hryvchuk.

But unlike in North America, it’s common for Ukrainians to drink coffee in the evening, because Ukrainians really like the taste of coffee. They don't drink it just to wake up, but just to enjoy it. And they don't care what time it is. 

It’s also a cost-effective alternative to meet up with friends.

“We do live in a very poor country. It's cheaper to get a coffee [in the evening] than a meal at a restaurant. I guess that's the easiest explanation there can be," said Yaroslav Druzyk, the former editor in chief of The Village, a Kyiv lifestyle publication.  

Regardless of the time of day, Maria loved the job – the way she made coffee, her relationship with management, and her regular customers. 

But her particular café was hit during the Russian attack in March 2024.

There are no bomb shelters nearby, so there was a rule that if a major attack was underway, the cafe would open after the alarm. On that ominous day, everything was quiet, so Maria opened as usual.

The explosions happened very suddenly, even before the alarm was sounded. There was no time to hide. 

In just a few minutes, rescuers and paramedics arrived on the scene. At first, they did not let anyone in, not even the residents of the buildings: they were afraid that the building was in a state of disrepair and might collapse. 

Meanwhile, Maria tried to call the owners of the cafe. 

"When I finally got through to them, they were shocked and probably just teleported to the cafe. They were there within five to ten minutes," Maria said.

All of her friends and regular customers started calling and texting her. 

Maria's phone could not handle the load. 

"I went out and bought a new phone two days later," Maria recalls with a laugh. 

While clearing the rubble, one of the rescuers approached the café and asked for coffee. At first Maria and the owner, Andrii were confused, but then they remembered that the coffee shop had a coffee filter that would make 4-5 cups.   

Inside the cafe, everything was in ruins, with pieces of glass and pennies lying everywhere, which people put into a jar as a small tip. Everyone who was around began to clean up and dismantle the wreckage.

Maria was still in shock and was given a sedative.

Although the cafe itself was a mess, the equipment was intact. So Andrii decided to make coffee and give it to the people for free.

People refused the complimentary coffee, and began to pay. Soon, there were so many people that he could not keep up. 

"We have never had so many people in the coffee shop," Maria said.

So she started helping Andrii, mostly to distract herself. She worked the whole shift there, until 7 pm. 

"Andrii came to me and said: 'Go have a smoke, relax, I'll do your shift. I went outside, took an iqos [a vape-like device], it was raining a little bit. And I sat down, leaned my back against the door and just thought about what had happened. And I started to cry, because somehow I hadn't cried all this time, and I realized that it could have been very bad," Maria said with a smile on her face. 

But it was not the situation itself that shocked her the most, but the outpouring of support. 

"People I don't know, who don't know me personally, foreigners, wrote me all kinds of nice things. They sent me gifts, goodies, some cosmetics as a sign of support. I would come home with these packages. I stood in front of the dormitory and cried for half an hour because I was not expecting this," Maria said. 

Maria no longer works at the café, but she still remembers it fondly. Especially when she goes there for coffee. The coffee shop is operating as usual, and the window has already been replaced. 

Ukrainians have a special perception of coffee because of the war: it is a safe place where we can feel that we are in the life we had before the full-scale invasion. We forget ourselves and can live in the pre-war rhythm. 

Barista Maria believes that coffee drinking is fashionable in Ukraine. That's why when something new comes out, Ukrainians are quick to try it, even if it's tasteless or bitter, as is the case with filter coffee.

Yana, the psychologist, emphasizes that this may also be because Ukrainians like to be in company - while drinking coffee, they communicate, and share experiences, and this is how they alleviate their worries despite the war.  

NEWS OF THE DAY: 

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. 

MOSCOW STRUCK BY LARGEST DRONE ATTACK TO DATE: Moscow was attacked by upwards of 34 “airplane-type" drones, reports Reuters. One person was injured and dozens of flights were diverted from three Moscow airports. 36 drones were also shot down in other parts of western Russia according to the defence ministry. In conjunction with this, Russia launched 140+ drones towards Ukraine last night, with Kyiv able to down 62 of them. 

50,000 RUSSIANS AND N. KOREANS ASSEMBLE NEAR KURSK: A recent US assessment states that Russia has amassed 50k soldiers to take back Ukrainian gains in Kursk, reports NYT. A major attack involving North Korean troops is expected in the coming days as missile strikes and artilley fire ramps up on Ukrainian positions, per Ukrainian officials. Russia has been able to slowly amass this force without drawing significant resources from other fronts. 

POLISH PM PLANS MEETINGS WITH ALLIES AFTER US ELECTION: Polish PM Donald Tusk referred to Trump's reelection as "a serious challenge for everyone" and plans new meetings with NATO, EU, and UK allies, reports Politico.

"This new political landscape is a serious challenge for everyone, especially in the context of a possible end to the Russian-Ukrainian war," Tusk said. Worries remain that a decision will be reached by the U.S. and Russian presidents without Kyiv's involvement.

CATS OF CONFLICT:

Today’s cats of conflict are two little kitties that Mariana’s neighbors are feeding up as winter approaches. 

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Myroslava

The darkness frightened me at first. 

I even thought I could see something in it, as my brain struggled to accept that there was a complete void. My imagination began to create outlines of objects: the walls, and the size of the room itself. 

This went on until the first touch made me realize that my brain had been deceiving me — I truly couldn’t see anything.

Walking around in total darkness in a museum designed to help you experience the lives of blind people, I confronted this blankness for only an hour and a half. But thousands of people in Ukraine live by touch for many years.

According to various estimates, there are currently between 70,000 and 300,000 people with serious visual impairments in Ukraine. With the outbreak of war, this number will only increase as Ukrainians face the constant threat of death or disability from landmines and missile strikes. But nobody has compiled these statistics yet.

Struggling to find shelter or respond to air raid alerts, people with blindness are at greater risk of falling victim to Russian attacks. But those visual impairments are only a minority of people with disabilities who have day-to-day struggles heightened due to Russia’s ongoing invasion. By learning about their challenges, we also learn about the kind of society Ukraine is – and what sort of society its most vulnerable want it to become.

Despite the increasing number of people with blindness in Ukraine, the country has yet to fully adapt to this growing need. 

There is currently no systematic governmental support for people with visual impairments in Ukraine. In particular, there are no state-run rehabilitation centers that provide services specifically for individuals who have lost their sight.

The situation used to be better, as the state used to support a voluntary organization, the All-Ukrainian Society of People with Blindness. The organization provides social support and has established libraries, sports clubs, and cultural centers for those with blindness. It also assists people with visual impairments in finding employment. However, after the outbreak of full-scale aggression by Russia, state aid to the organization ceased completely.

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