The Embassy of Ukraine in the USA asked the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra (ASO) on 25 August to cancel Russian-born violinist Vadim Repin's participation in its Forces of Nature concerts on 6–7 November at Maryland Hall, citing his involvement in Russian state-sponsored and state-linked cultural initiatives.

Since 2022, Ukrainian diplomats have turned individual concert bookings into an object of foreign policy, arguing that a performer carrying Russian state honors and state money brings the state onto the stage with him. Western institutions have answered case by case rather than by policy, so every booking is renegotiated from scratch, and what one venue cancels, another can quietly restore.

The embassy said Repin performed with the State Kremlin Orchestra on 21 February 2024 at a concert the Kremlin Foundation staged for Defender of the Fatherland Day, a Russian military holiday, framed as a tribute to Russia's "great defenders." It said his Vadim Repin Foundation for the Development of the Arts has received substantial funding since the start of the full-scale invasion from Russia's Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, a state-established institution supporting Russia's cultural policy.

The embassy's request comes four years after the Annapolis Symphony dropped Repin from a March 2022 program and staged a tribute to Ukraine in his place—a decision the orchestra said at the time reflected both the war and respect for Repin's apolitical stance and the safety of him and his family.

The orchestra has not addressed the reversal directly, but the program notes for the concert argue that Shostakovich wrote the concerto for Ukrainian-born David Oistrakh under Stalinist repression and that it "calls on listeners to reject the politics of revenge and hate while embracing the healing cycle of forgiveness." The embassy is asking ASO to reaffirm what it describes as the solidarity with Ukraine shown in 2022.

"We hope the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra will give these concerns careful consideration and reaffirm the solidarity with Ukraine it demonstrated in 2022, when it withdrew Mr. Repin from its program and replaced his performance with a musical tribute to Ukraine," the embassy said.

In March 2022, days after Russia's full-scale invasion began, ASO replaced Repin's planned appearance. The orchestra's then-executive director, Edgar Herrera, told WTOP that the decision was not only a response to the war but also "out of respect to Repin's apolitical stance and concerns for the safety of himself and his family."

The embassy noted that Germany's Mannheim Philharmonic, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, and Florida's Palm Beach Symphony have all reconsidered working with Repin this year, and that Palm Beach canceled his performance in March. Mannheim dropped a February concert after a request from Ukraine's embassy in Berlin, and the Hungarian orchestra replaced him at its Budapest season opening in June. A Change.org petition launched in June by Ukrainian Cultural Front DC had already called on ASO to cancel the November concerts.

Neither ASO nor Repin has commented publicly on the embassy's request.

While Cavan and Quinn Sullivan star in MLS with the Philadelphia Union, brothers Ronan and Declan have connected with their South Asian heritage

Ronan Sullivan had tried a panenka twice in his life. Both attempts were at practice on the other side of the world, and one hit the crossbar. But his twin brother, Declan, was hardly surprised when Ronan turned to him and told him he’d chip the fifth penalty of a shootout that could win a scoreless tournament final, as millions tuned in online to see his Bangladesh side play against India in the Under-20 South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship.

“He didn’t even need to say it. I knew he was gonna do that the whole time,” Declan remembered, sitting next to his brother on the couch of their dorm room at Saint Joseph’s University. “I knew that if he got the last pen to win it, he was gonna do that. That’s just the him thing to do.”

A New York networking company sold radios that let signals travel 100 kilometers. Ukrainian civilians say Russian drone crews used them to hunt people in Kherson, and they are asking a Manhattan jury to hold the company responsible.

Ukrainian civilians and relatives of people killed by Russian drones sued Ubiquiti Inc. in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 11 August, alleging the company's wireless equipment became the backbone of the command network behind Russia's "human safari" against civilians.

The case rests on a comparison that the plaintiffs draw themselves. In February 2026, Starlink terminals that Russian forces had mounted on reconnaissance and strike drones were shut off after Ukraine and SpaceX built a whitelist of authorized terminals. Ubiquiti, the complaint alleges, had the same technical and contractual power over its own devices and did not use it.

That precedent cuts both ways. SpaceX had denied for years that Russian forces were using Starlink systematically, and the whitelist came together only after Ukraine's newly appointed defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, approached the company directly. The fix was technically possible—and it took a government to force it.

What the lawsuit claims

The law firm DiCello Levitt LLP filed the case, Kovalenko et al. v. Ubiquiti, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-06838. The plaintiffs are Ukrainian civilians who were maimed, displaced, or forced to live under drone surveillance, along with family members of civilians killed in drone attacks. They are seeking a jury trial.

Ubiquiti, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as UI, makes long-range wireless "bridges" widely used for internet access in areas without cable. Its radio bridge antennas and airMAX technology are subject to US export restrictions on Russia. The complaint alleges the devices kept reaching Russian forces through intermediary supply chains, and that they now link reconnaissance units, drone operators, attack units, and commanders across roughly 100 kilometers of encrypted battlefield network.

"Battlefield communications are the central nervous system of the Russian occupation forces: without them, they could not coordinate the human safari or maintain the occupation," Scott Gilmore, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs and a partner at DiCello Levitt, said in an interview with Euromaidan Press.

The complaint cites US export-control restrictions, Russian import data, public reporting, Russian military statements, battlefield images and video, and Ubiquiti's own device telemetry. It alleges the company held location data showing where its devices were operating, including inside Russia and occupied Ukrainian territory, and that it was repeatedly warned its products were being smuggled across the border.

It further alleges Ubiquiti continued issuing firmware updates and technical support that kept those devices running, and that it could have cut the pipeline off—by geofencing, by terminating distributors tied to sanctions-evasion routes, or by building a remote-disable feature into its firmware.

"Companies cannot willfully blind themselves when sanctions and export controls are being breached, and their devices are being foreseeably used in dangerous ways," Gilmore said. "US law is clear that companies bear legal responsibility when they entrust dangerous devices to end users who they know or should know are hurting people. This case is not about standard warfare: it's about murdering civilians."

The plaintiffs bring eight causes of action, including negligent entrustment, public nuisance, strict products liability for design defect, negligent product design, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and aiding and abetting assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Explore further

Russian drone kills 84-year-old goat herder who refused to abandon her animals

How the radios got to the front

The lawsuit follows an investigation published in January 2026 by Hunterbrook Media, which documented widespread use of Ubiquiti products by Russian forces. One Ukrainian communications officer told the outlet that an estimated 80% of the Russian bridges he had observed near the front line were Ubiquiti devices.

Analysis of trade records found the value of Ubiquiti shipments crossing into Russia rose by 66% after the full-scale invasion, despite US and EU export controls, and that the shipments included models released after the bans took effect. The goods moved mainly through distributors in third countries such as Kazakhstan and Türkiye. Russian units often received the bridges from volunteers who bought them with crowdfunded money.

Ubiquiti has been here before. In 2014, the company paid a $504,225 settlement to the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control after its products were delivered to Iran in violation of US sanctions between 2008 and 2011.

The campaign at the center of the case

Russia's "human safari" is a campaign in which small drones hunt and attack civilians, concentrated in Kherson and other front-line areas. Operators use drone cameras to track people, vehicles, and rescuers, and sometimes strike the same target twice.

UN investigators concluded in September 2025 that Russian short-range drone attacks on civilians along the west bank of the Dnipro River amount to the crimes against humanity of murder and forcible transfer of population. The finding covers more than 300 kilometers across Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts. The complaint cites it as evidence.

Ukraine's Security Service has since charged 10 operators from Russia's 404th Motorized Rifle Regiment with war crimes in absentia, in a case that included explosives dropped on ambulances at a city hospital and a double strike on rescuers.

The incidents in the complaint include a married couple attacked in their car, a firefighter hunted and wounded by a drone while responding to a colleague, and an energy worker killed in a double-tap strike as colleagues tried to reach him.

"The human safari is one of the most horrific crimes against humanity of the 21st Century," Gilmore said. "We intend to present evidence of the widespread and systematic nature of this campaign in court, including international documentation. These coordinated attacks do not happen randomly: they require communications systems and a chain of command. That is precisely why the United States banned the export of Ubiquiti's radio bridge antennas to Russia—because they are necessary for Russia's war machine."

Russian state media has shown the equipment in use.

Zvezda, the television channel run by Russia's Defense Ministry, aired footage on 3 July 2025 of a Ubiquiti UISP Litebeam 5AC device; a TASS report in October 2025 showed a serviceman logging into Ubiquiti's airOS operating system, and a Rossiya-1 segment that month showed one climbing a tower to mount an antenna carrying the company's logo.

A Russian seller supplied Hunterbrook with letters she said came from Russian military units, thanking her for wireless bridges they described as necessary for connections over long distances.

Ubiquiti has said nothing

Ubiquiti did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Neither the company nor its chief executive, Robert Pera, has publicly commented on the January investigation, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. No US or EU authority has announced an enforcement action against Ubiquiti over Russia, and the company has not been formally accused of sanctions violations tied to Ukraine. The allegations in the complaint are untested, and Ubiquiti has not yet filed a response.

Explore further

Inside Human Safari: the film that captures Russia’s drones hunting Ukrainians like prey

What the case would establish

If it survives, the suit would test whether ordinary US product-liability law reaches a manufacturer whose equipment ends up in a documented atrocity—a theory that does not require proving the company intended any of it, only that it knew or should have known and failed to act.

"The question is this: what would a reasonable company do if it learned its devices were being used to coordinate murder?" Gilmore said. "If it fails to follow reasonable safety measures, shouldn't it be held liable to the civilians who get hurt? Those are the questions we intend to put before a New York jury."

Gilmore, who has investigated war crimes for two decades, said the legal framework needed already exists at national and international levels, and that in mass-atrocity cases from Syria to Sudan, investigations, jurisdiction, and remedies take years. He said he expects accountability for Ukrainian victims to come through criminal prosecutions, civil litigation, and regulatory enforcement together.

"Our clients want to shine a light on the atrocities being committed against civilians in Ukraine and to remind companies that compliance with sanctions and export controls is not a mere technicality: it's a matter of life or death," he said.

"We are at the tip of the spear."

Editor's note: Euromaidan Press correspondent Zarina Zabrisky, who conducted this interview and reports from Kherson, co-developed draft US legislation on the drone campaign—the Liability for Operators and Responsible Authorities (LORA) Act—which would impose targeted sanctions on identified drone operators, restrict exports of drone components, and require public attribution of perpetrators. She has no connection to this lawsuit or to the firm that filed it. Her documentary Kherson: Human Safari is available free at khersonhumansafari.com.