Zaporizhzhia today. if i needed an illustration of what my soul looks like after three years of russians slowly erasing my native city, house by house, block by block, street by street, a loved one after a loved one. this is calibrated torture technique to erase any physical anchors for your memories, any evidence that you ever inhibited that land. tested by russians on dozens of Ukrainians cities and thousands of cities across hundreds of nations before us

messaging with Syrian friends today and hearing all about their unexpected joy — they made me remember one of the most important lessons in my life. several days before our Maidan revolution in Ukraine culminated in russia-sponsored mass murder and subsequent collapse of russia-backed tyranny, i went for a quick trip to Berlin. there i stopped by a museum of GDR, a russian-controlled tyranny of East Germany in post WW2 times.

russians murdered Nika Kozhushko inside her own home. robbing all of us a vibrant, young talent, a queer joy. robbing Ukraine of brilliant future. let me share with you some of Nika’s work. please amplify so more people learn her name. so russians pay for this genocide

https://twitter.com/claramarchaud/status/1829726633726492713

“Боротьба/Fight” (24.08.2024)

“24.08 was always an important date, even when I was a child and I did not understand the special meaning behind these numbers. But now, having a full awareness of history, what was and what is now, I am grateful for being born in this country and grateful to all those thanks to whom this country is independent today”

the entire western industry of explaining russia has been a sham. for decades it cultivated the image of russia as this mysterious, chaotic and complex power, impossible to predict or explain it in simple terms and without the help of limited number of brilliant minds the power where every decision is a byproduct of complex minds of russian rulers, sinister but brilliant. hence 99% of this Western expertise would happen at micro-level psychoanalysing individuals but remaining totally blind to more complex phenomena of russian abusive culture

art is the best shortcut for understanding russian colonial nature. would you like me to share some cool Ukrainian movies with English subtitles that will enlighten you about colonialism? you’re in luck
🪆🪓 my absolute fav is Chornobyl 22 by Oleksiy Radynskyi, the brightest anti-colonial thinker in Ukraine. this doc is about russian failed occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear station in 2022. eco-terrorism has always been a fixture of russian colonial behavior
takflix.com/en/films/chorn…

together with thousands of other Ukrainian Roma, Oleksiy Tyrpak heroically fought to defend his home and Europe from fascism. young, brave and fearless, russian murderers stole his from us, too. he would turn 25 earlier this month earlier into the full-scale invasion, Oleksiy got seriously injured defending Ukraine and could retire from the army. despite persuasions from the family, he decided to return to the frontline after the recovery: “I simply can’t leave my battalion behind,” he told his loved ones

this Ukrainian woman risked everything to walk out of russian occupation in southern Ukraine — russians often execute running refugees. the moment when she shows her Ukrainian passport indicating she just wants to get home broke my heart in million pieces
@vgorunews Ukrainian soldiers also risked everything to evacuate her from a destroyed bridge at the frontline. your daily reminder that Ukraine stands for kindness and never leaves anyone behind

today we mark the Roma Resistance Day. the history of Ukrainian Roma fighting back against the colonial invaders, whether in 1945 or 2024, is integral to this story. however, it is also one of the least known. my latest essay for russian colonialism 101. the newsletter

Misha Biketov was a young artist writing electronic music for my favorite Ukrainian label @dnipropop. then russia came to his home and instead of art, he had to defend his family from genocide. Misha became a great drone operator instead. but russians still took him away from us Misha was just 24.

His label and frontline unit are fundraising to support his family in these trying times.

Please join:
Mono transfer send.monobank.ua/jar/42MA6VEmCg

from revolution to genocide. my generation of Ukrainians in just three pictures of Roman Ratushnyi.



Roman Ratushnyi
1997-2022

murdered by russia.

blood-chilling account of russia-facilitated famine in Ukraine in 1921-1923. moscow starved up to 2.5 million Ukrainians or approximately 7-8% of the nation — it still remains largely unknown and poorly-studied chapters of #RussianColonialism "There were many cases of suicide. Mothers threw their children into wells and rivers, killing themselves afterward. Hunger tormenting people so much that they became crazed."

“you better believe me, we still are going to win. we had two days of this terrible bombing and still passersby smiling at me. we won’t give up”

Nadiya Romaniv, a municipal worker from Kharkiv is your best reminder that you shouldn’t feel sorry for Ukrainians. feel proud of them Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom, their dignity, their right to live and love. Ukrainians are the pride of the free world.

And they are going to win with the help of your solidarity ✊🏼💙💛

Our arts and culture have always served Ukrainians as an anchor to fall back on during the darkest hours Empires, which tried to break and erase Ukraine. They come and go. But the Ukrainian spirit, values and resistance live on — often encapsulated in the Ukrainian art and culture
istpublishing.org/en/russian-col…

a 1989 work by a Ukrainian artist Maria Shnyder-Senyuk. titled "The 1930’s in Ukraine" it depicts the russia-made Holodomor genocide in Ukraine. russians stole the painting from a museum in Kherson in 2022 while their country and the society still deny genocide even happened systemic erasure of any evidence of russia-committed genocides is part of the #RussianColonialism toolbox of covering up for mass murders russians commit. throughout centuries it allowed russian society to evade any accountability for imperial violence committed in its name

and what pisses me off that while Ukrainians are fighting russian colonialism for the right to exist, we also need to constantly battle western colonial gaze that robs Ukrainians of agency and effectively victim-blames the entire nation in the face of genocide

https://twitter.com/mylovanov/status/1719489816297947413

the west has a collective power of ending this genocide in less than several weeks. but instead of a cover story about why the defeatist paralysis of the west brought the world to the brink of WW3, we are having another victim-blaming cover story about what is wrong with Ukraine

🤯a berlin gallery invites a russian to curate an exhibition about genocide in Ukraine. the curator steals and appropriates from Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who was murdered by russians — despite that Amelina was explicitly for boycott of collabs with russian citizens while appropriating and abusing Ukrainian art — including Ukrainian artists murdered or kidnapped by russians, the curator names the entire exhibition after Alexander Kluge, a german boomer who calls to stop weapons supply to Ukraine and leave Ukrainians to be mass-slaughtered

Svitlana and Khrystyna, two young singers performing on a street in my homecity Zaporizhzhia. an hour later russians will murder them with rockets.

how exactly these young Ukrainians were a threat to a nuclear state?

russia is a death cult.
💔😫 video is by a local Zaporizhzhia volunteer

vm.tiktok.com/ZGJgcM3aw/

Ukrainians are superheroes It has been over 12 hours for Andriy roaming toxic flood waters with no protection — answering every call for help he can hear, whether human or not

this video just shuttered me. Andriy from Ukrainian Kherson is my favorite human. It has been hours for him spending in toxic water rescuing any animals or humans trapped in the fallout of russia-made ecocide

instagram.com/andry_boxer?ig… the rest of the thread

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1666196353305698315

so having an openly-fascist president in the US for four years did not give Nazi symbols a mainstream life. but a couple of obscure patches on the frontline in Ukraine will. got it🫠

is anyone else tired of these self-righteous bs takes by western journalists, or is it just me? of course, the primary source of expertise in the article is not a Ukrainian expert on Ukrainian far-right movements but a fellow Westerner harboring an intense fixation on "Ukrainian Nazis." roger.

my grand-granddad was most likely from a mixed Kyrgyz-Kartvelian family. but his first language was Crimean Tatar. we will never know why and how — russians kidnapped and murdered him in 1930s and the family just never spoke about him since then
#RussianColonialism russians murdered my grand-granddad right at the offset of the Holodomor genocide, so his wife took three kids and ran away to husband’s relatives in a Qırımlı village — to survive. they sheltered her from the russian-made famine. I am alive today thanks to that kindness