This is what Vovchansk looks like now, in the Kharkiv region, which is under constant Russian fire

PS: "Vovchansk" in Ukrainian means "Wolf town". Just thought English speakers might be interested to know. Remember the Wolf Town in the North of Ukraine. Because it is no more🥺💔

Illustration for the Russian fairy tale "The Princess Frog" (1930)

Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942)

Students of Mykhailo Boychuk Art Academy drawing their school that was hit by russian missile

russians once again prove that they are terrorists and criminals

«I wanted to give the camera to the owners, but couldn't find them. hope you can help» — journalists received this message from a Ukrainian soldier who found a stolen camera abandoned by russians running away from Ukrainian forces.

in addition to old photos of the Ukrainian family who owned this camera and several photos of the russians themselves, the journalists found a terrible video showing the russians capturing civilians, blindfolding them, tying them all together and chaining them up. adults, children and animals.

important clarification: this video was not shot on the camera mentioned in the message. that camera stolen by the russians just belongs to the residents of the village in the video!

full video with investigation ‼️

the russians kept the hostages in the basements for about a month without food and water, tortured them. this is what Ukraine will look like if our partners stop helping us.

we have already seen similar footage in which the russians led captured Ukrainians and then shot them.

it is scary to imagine what other russian crimes we are not aware of. please do not let russian propaganda push Ukrainians out of the information field. all these horrors can be stopped only by defeating russia. there can be no talk of any "negotiations" and peace agreements with russia. all that russia wants is to destroy Ukrainians as a nation. stand with us in this fight. stand with Ukraine!

Watched a documentary about the (now legendary) football games between the national teams of russia and Ukraine in 1998 and 1999. The sheer levels of imperialistic fascism the russians were displaying leading up to those games is just typical. And yes, both those games took place before putin came to power, russians have just always been like that.

Patches and pins "russian invasion of Ukraine 1998" were popular among the russian fans leading up to the first game in Kyiv:

The rhetoric in the russian media about Ukraine not really being a separate country intensified.

For the record, russia lost that game 3:2.

But all of this is nothing compared to the second game, in Moscow in 1999. Russia needed only to win in order to move on in the tournament. Ukraine could settle with a draw. And that is when the true madness unfolded.

Probably the best known episode was this headline in one of the biggest sports newspapers in russia:

You see, they had a player with the last name "Khokhlov". So, on the surface level, the headline says, "Kick, Khokhlov, save Russia!" However, if you read out the headline, it also says "Kick [slur word for Ukrainians], save russia!". The slogan is a paraphrase of one of the main slogans of the russian Black Hundreds (ultra-reactionary, ultra-nationalist pogromist monarchist movement in the russian empire in early 20th century), only in the original versions there was the slur for Jews there instead. The russians were very proud of that pun. It was everywhere at the time.

Vladimir Putin, who was the russian prime minister at the time, was present at the game. The way the russian commentators already went out of their way to keep singing his praises for no reason is a good indicator how russians tend to make a cult of personality around everyone who happens to be a figure of authority.

And then the game finished with a draw 1:1 after an unbeliavable goal by Andriy Shevchenko (and due to a mistake from russia's goalkeeper):

Putin got really upset. He stopped showing up at such sporting events for years after this.

The bus with the Ukrainian national team got attacked on its way to the stadium before the game (according to Shevchenko, russians threw bottles at it) and especially after the game (with all sorts of objects being thrown at it, from beer bottles to rocks).

Absolutely typical. And one of the clearest views of ruscism.

Woman combing her hair, 1840

By Pavel Alekseevich Desyatov

Ukrainian POV: you wake up from sounds of explosions, ring through all of your friends and relatives to make sure they are still alive, read comments from russians who celebrate deaths of innocent ukrainian civillians, read comments from americans with palestine flags in their bio about how you have it easy (they know better) and how dare you not talk about Palestine instead of another war crime you just barely survived, read a NYT article about russian "microprotests" with instagram posts of toys, then drink your coffee and are somehow expected to operate normally as if nothing happened.

Eternal gratitude to the ukrainian army for my privilege of being able to survive and sit here complaining, instead of dying under rubble from crush syndrome as yes-all-russians intended me to.

💔 source [here]

Russia still detains 204 Ukrainians (123 of them are Crimean Tatars), 150 are imprisoned.

one of them being Leniye Umerova, 25-year-old Crimean Tatar who was going to visit her cancer-stricken father in Crimea and is illegally detained by Russians in a pre-trial detention center

‼️ Russians fired at a recreation center in the Kharkiv region, five people were killed, including a seven-month pregnant woman — police of the Kharkiv region

16 people were injured, including an 8-year-old child. A police officer and an ambulance paramedic came under repeated fire while rendering aid at the scene.

Wanna see how Russians hunted civilian cars in Kyiv region in March 2022?

Surreal now that it was all happening some 15 km from where I lived and I followed the local chats crying that "People, don't evacuate by the road leading to Zhytomyrska highway! Russians are hiding among trees off road there and shooting down civilian cars!!" in real time - and now I can actually see it happening on recovered footage from street cameras. Surreal.

Andrey Vodopyanov and his wife Paraskeva,Kungur (June 12,1903)

Oleksandra Kostetska, widow of a fallen Ukrainian soldier Kostyantyn Miroshnichenko, did a photoshoot with the same photographer who took their pictures as a couple.

"I will show you my new reality. As a widow. Igor Yefimov, you started photographing us as a couple at the beginning of our relationship, now you have taken the end for me. Mirosh [Kostyantyn's military call sign] taught me a lot, now the last lesson is to live without him and remain strong. But it's hard without his warmth/smile/laughter/hugs/bedtime talks, and my favorite, running my fingers across his cheeks and stroking his beard. I love, but I am no longer loved".

Source

The Ukrainian Life Saving Center published footage of the evacuation of people after the russian chemical attack on Ukrainian territory.

just look at the condition of these victims. I can't imagine what they feel, and what a terrible pain it is.

unfortunately, the world leaders, who once guaranteed Ukraine complete protection, are trying to turn a blind eye to the fact that the russians are once again violating all international human and environmental laws.

I don't get tired of reminding and asking each of you not to stop supporting Ukrainians, spreading information about the russian war in Ukraine and not tolerating everything russian to show criminal russia and world leaders that you do not tolerate russian terrorism, its culture and products!

Historically, some of the biggest Russian opponents to domestic repressions are imperialists. Solzhenitsyn, most famously, is, on the one hand, bravely fighting the GULAG, and on the other hand - a vile imperialist with a sense of fascism. These aren't new phenomena, in many ways. Somehow one feels that [moving away from imperialism] is unlikely in Russia, because it goes so deep. This is just the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, this is not just one war, this has been going on for centuries. Russian imperialism is embedded in Russian humour, Russian literature, codes of thinking. It's not about statements. It's not just about policies. When Pushkin writes, I don't know, "Кавказ подо мною" ("The Caucasus lies below me"), one of his famous poems... the amount of imperialist psychology that goes into saying that - that goes very, very deep. So until those much, much deeper sort of deep cultural roots of Russian imperialism, racism and oppression are addressed, nothing is changed. So let's think what we have agency over, in a way. [...] we can change the way Russia is perceived globally and in the West. Because this idea that Russia is a great power that has the right to a sphere of influence and that has the right to suppress others because it's great - that sits very deep in people's heads across the world. We can start working on that. So why don't we start working on that? Let's get people in my world - Britain, America - to re-read the Russian classics and understand how much imperialism and oppression of others there's there. Let's start de-mystifying this idea of "the Russian mystic soul" and really start rooting it to very specific histories of violence and oppression. Let's start changing the way Russia is perceived, so it's no longer seen as inevitable and so vast and huge that you have to drop on your knees in front of it, which still sits in people's heads. That means changing the way the universities overfocus on Russia studies and completely silence the voices of Ukrainians, Georgians, Kazakhs... There's so much we can do that will make people's perceptions of Russia rooted in reality. And they will help gain self-confidence to say, "Stop, we're not dependent on you".

Peter Pomerantsev