The beautiful old town of Bohodukhiv - “town of god’s spirit” - is being relentlessly bombed for several days by the Russian military. It is here that a famous Ukrainian writer Mykola Khvylovyi studied. The terror by shaheeds, bombs and drones is relentless, erasing everything.
Wrote a short essay on the battle for memory and culture in “Donbas”. With a salt - present of my dear @victoriadonovan.bsky.social in 2021.
substack.com/@vika4good/n...
After the night of drone and missile attacks I feel like a little plastic lamb in the Kharkiv Central Park. But the day is busy. I need to run for a training, then deadlines, and if the weather doesn’t curse us, an expedition.
Starting the most unique book for breakfast - a non-fiction story by two ethnographers in Izyum about Otaman Savonov, a Ukrainian who in 1918-1921 was fighting against both white russians and bolsheviks in Izyum. There is a chapter dedicated to him being “kharakternyk”, i.e. a Witcher 👀.
Russian state is consistently attacking cultural heritage of Ukraine. The 1835 Donets-Zakharzhevsky mansion survived two world wars, but not today’s russia. Colonel Donets was a Ukrainian Cossack settler in the 17th century Sloboda Ukraine. His family would become rich in centuries to come.
A small love song to the chalk fortress of Izyum and the way local are addressing the wounds of occupation.
open.substack.com/pub/vika4goo...
Dear all, for my birthday under the sounds of Shaheeds I’m fundraising for some important equipment, to join one of my favourite Kharkiv initiatives. Today you have a chance to win my book! Links to the fundraiser in comments! 👇👇
In the times when russian state agents return to cultural institutions across the world, it’s time to stand up against the injustice. Please sign and spread the word about the petition: c.org/SwJdbnCQ4n
Love early morning walks through the city. Assumption Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kharkiv on Gogol street. It is the main Catholic Church in Kharkiv.
I couldn’t help but analyze the russian gaze and the obsessive compulsion of russian intellectuals to write about Ukraine: open.substack.com/pub/vika4goo...
Woke up perfectly in time to hear a combined attack of russian missiles, shaheeds and m.gessens on Kharkiv.
Took advantage of a visa free regime
With our northern borders,
Rushed to us
Looking for political asylum
Our fatherland that winter
Was so cold,
That we had nothing left
But to freeze into it.
My awkward translation of a poem by Anatolii Kytchynskyi, a poet from Kherson, The Cold of That Winter (2005).
We called the cold of that winter “beastly”,
Because it was so freezing you could bark.
But language would save us.
There was a feeling
That all the colds in the universe👇
Starting this day in Kharkiv with a class of fly yoga was definitely a choice 😅. As we were swinging in hammocks after the threat of guided bombs subsided, the instructor asked if anyone watched the new adaptation of the Wuthering Heights already.
Happy pancake holiday. In Ukraine, it’s called either masliana (Масляна) or Kolodyi (Колодій). My kitchen is warm enough to cook again! Tried to make crepe suzette. Let’s burn the scarecrow of winter and approach spring.
This Kharkiv cat is a lightning, a Sunday messenger.
There is nothing like taking a relaxing hot bath in a cold ass winter apartment, and hearing a female voice from a street loudspeaker “attention, attention, missile threat, missile threat” 💀
It’s 0C outside, and I don’t see clouds of my breath in the apartment anymore🥳. Celebrated with some oven baked oatmeal with leftover barbecue meat. And my love - regional paper Slobidsky Kraj. “Sloboda” was a free settlement of Ukrainians in 17th century.
Update on my Kharkiv flowers. Banana is not doing well. It’s +7 inside, can see my breath. Today the new heater has to arrive 🙏.
It’s a cake that people in Lviv bought as a nostalgic move. Kharkiv biscuit factory needs to step up export. 😂
Breakfast in candlelight, watching Super Bowl halftime show using WiFi from a cafe on generator downstairs.
1,5 kilo of Kharkiv cake for breakfast.
“Don’t touch, sleeping till spring” - a plant in the hallway of Kharkiv School of Architecture says (now based in Lviv). I wish I could say that too.
An old orchid in my apartment is trying to bloom in -20 relying on a cold radiator it stands on. The way strength is born out of care, and violence out of great weakness of the criminal and indifference of the surrounding world.
Kharkiv groundhog Tymko IV predicted six more weeks of winter. Thanks for nothing, Tymko. We see you’re also embarrassed.
In -20 russian military purposefully destroyed the last energy facilities of Kharkiv. The attack lasted all through the night. Horrible cold, inhuman cruelty. Remember that when russian people will be crying in the court of justice how they were just following orders. They knew. They always knew.
Is it smoke in our yard? No, not us. A school was hit on another street. This time.
There is nothing more nerve-racking than reading in the news that your district was hit by a russian missile, that a school and a kindergarten nearby got hit, and knowing there is a school and a kindergarten nearby your parents’ house. Driving there with your heart shooting through your lungs 👇
