- From Russia without love again - 5th June 2026
- Law unto himself - 3rd June 2026
- Crime pays unfortunately - 3rd June 2026
It has become clear that The Eye name or ‘i’ features prominently in exposing wrongdoings linked to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and its use is a huge comfort to our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry.
Names make news.
This was always drummed into me when I started in journalism in 1983.
The mantra was meant, of course, in relation to the names of people, but it can equally well apply to titles of websites like my own, or television programmes.
So we have The Eye, Eye Investigations or i.
Its use has been pivotal, it seems, in exposing the number of foreign fighters tricked into fighting Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as the terrible conditions they endure, and I applaud this fact.
In, for example, ‘Eye Investigations. Into The Void: Putin’s Foreign Fighters‘, on i-player, we were shown how mainly Indian people were lured into the Russian army to become, effectively, cannon-fodder in Ukraine on the false promise of a passport or visa.
Now we have disturbing news of the number of African people in the Russian army, recruited using a similar deceiving reason, and with an identical purpose, although governments in the host countries are becoming uneasy about this.
According to iStories, a Russian investigative outlet in exile, Russia has drawn up a list of 36 ‘friendly’ countries, including African ones, where recruiters are barred from seeking fighters.
Endorsing this, Kenya’s government has closed hundreds of unlicensed recruitment agencies and called on Russia to stop enlisting its citizens.
Ghana’s foreign minister Samuel Ablakwa has met Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, to lobby for the release of two Ghanaian prisoners of war.
So whenever you see The Eye, or something similar, take notice.
It could be IMPORTANT!
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism (when commenting on important stories like these was always paramount), as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – how the owner of media outlets covering north and south Wales condemning the BBC as a “threat to…independent journalism”, highlights extraordinary scandals that have hit the giant corporation, although executives there have REFUSED to answer The Eye’s questions about them.
