Six cats, thirty people, four mortar shells. Two weeks in the occupied Kyiv suburb

For almost two weeks – from February 24th to March 10th – me, thirty other people, and six cats were living in the dormitory of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the township of Vorzel’, an administrative part of neighbouring Irpin’, so a suburb of Kyiv’s suburb. The majority of the building’s denizens moved out throughout the first […]

The war in Ukraine and the Global South

Peace is not the absence of war but a virtue born of the strength of the soul. Spinoza The best of the West is outside the West, in young Iranian women who let their hair down and are murdered because of it. The best of Europe is outside Europe, in the young Ukrainians who unfurl their […]

Murky future. What would Putin do in case of his military defeat?

The tenth of March, at 5 a.m. marked exactly two weeks since the start of a full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine, shamelessly dubbed a “special operation” by the Kremlin. The war continues right at this moment with countless civilian deaths in Kharkiv, Mariupol, Izium, and other Ukrainian cities, and with Russian tanks burning at the […]

To Help Ukraine, Cancel Its Foreign Debt

In recent days, numerous governments have announced financial as well as military support for Ukraine, as it faces a devastating Russian invasion and an exodus of refugees already counting well over 1.5 million. Such reliance on outside help is not new. Since the 1990s Ukraine’s economy has lagged badly behind other former Eastern bloc countries, […]

Notes from Lviv in times of war

I am writing this text on the night of 7-8 March in Lviv. This is the fourth year of my living in Lviv, and I met the war here. It seems that my whole life has passed since my mother's morning call. She told me that “we are being bombed.” My life and the lives […]

US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes

Here in the post-Soviet world, we learned a lot from you. By ‘we’ I mean atomized or loosely organized communist, democratic socialist, left anarchist, feminist scholars, and activists from Kyiv, Lviv, Minsk, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, and other places that are plunging into the horrors of war and police violence. After our own Marxist tradition underwent sclerotization, […]

We need an international campaign for UN peacekeepers to enter Ukraine

In the future, historians will write books about what really happened during the current escalation. The archives will open, sources will talk. And the books will address what was discussed at diplomatic negotiations, what the Kremlin actually wanted as it made its unfulfillable demands, and why sources in the Western media ramped up the threat […]

Moscow and Washington should not determine Ukraine’s future

When the U.S. media began writing again in the fall of 2021 about the threat of a Russian invasion in Ukraine, the first reaction of many Ukrainians was a surprise. Until mid-December, it seemed that the Western media paid more attention to the issue and took it more seriously than the Ukrainian ones. Especially since […]

Armed Blackmail Will Never Bring Peace to Eastern Ukraine

Last month, Russia began to amass troops close to its border with Ukraine. Kremlin top brass’s media interventions seeking to explain the buildup of around one hundred thousand troops were ambiguous: from reassurances that these were simple military exercises to effective threats of a full-fledged war if Ukraine should join NATO. The demonstrative character of these actions […]