Odesa, a major Black Sea port located in the south of Ukraine, was targeted by incessant drone and ballistic missile attacks in March 2024. After Russian President Vladimir Putin again announced Odesa [...] Continue Reading
Life and Loss in Kherson Two Years On
On Feb. 5, Russian artillery hit a southern regional center, Kherson, killing four civilians. With 70,000 Russian troops concentrated in Kherson and Zaporizhzhya oblasts along the Dnipro River, the [...] Continue Reading
Truskavets: Turbulent History and Ukrainian Resilience
Truskavets, a picturesque city 84 kilometers south of Lviv in Western Ukraine, is one of Europe’s oldest balneological resorts, offering unique mineral springs and a healing climate. Located in an [...] Continue Reading
Textile Workers Village Struggles to Survive
Poselok Tekstilshchikov, literally translated as Textile Workers Village, appeared in the 1960s in the Soviet Union. Almost 20,000 people, mostly women, worked at the Kherson Cotton Mill. The mill [...] Continue Reading
Kherson: A City in Ruins
The city of Kherson, located in the south of Ukraine, is facing extensive destruction due to Russia’s “scorched earth strategy.” This strategy involves the deliberate burning, destruction and removal [...] Continue Reading
Hasidic Rosh Hashanah in Uman
In 2022, amid Russia’s full-scale invasion, more than 23,000 Hasidic Jews marked Rosh Hashanah in Uman, Ukraine—which is, coincidentally, the city of the author’s ancestors. The pilgrims arrived from [...] Continue Reading
A Pearl by the Sea under Attack
On Aug. 14, Odesa faced yet another Russian military assault in the middle of the night. The Russians attacked the southern seaport with 15 Iranian-made Shahed drones and eight Kalibr missiles [...] Continue Reading
The Holodomor: Capturing History
In 2022–2023, Ukraine commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his communist government. In 1932 and 1933, millions of [...] Continue Reading
Just Peace for Ukraine
During 15 months of full-scale invasion in Ukraine, the Russian Federation exhausted its military resources. Instead of the planned seizure of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in three days, the Russian [...] Continue Reading
Ochakiv: A Year of Shelling
On April 7, at 5 a.m., the Russian military fired artillery and mortar fire at Ochakiv, a small Black Sea resort in the south of Ukraine located at the mouth of the Dnipro River and on the banks of [...] Continue Reading
Siversk: Spring in Donbas
When Galyna was in her 20s, she, with her husband and friends, liked to plant trees in their beloved town of Siversk. Chestnuts, apricots, cherries and acacias grew in her yard and along the quiet [...] Continue Reading
Donbas: In the Line of Fire
Donbas, an abbreviation for the toponym “Donetsk coal basin,” is an umbrella term applied to two regions of Ukraine: Luhansk (aka Luhanshchyna) and Donetsk (aka Donetshchyna). “These territories [...] Continue Reading