Sakamaki Lilith

She/her, 20s

[panimoonchild]

Прекрасної афірмації всім нам на ніч 🌃🔥🤭🤌

Прекрасної афірмації всім нам на ніч Відео з @ svaroszych_erida

[wordswithoutaworld]

The issue of archaeological finds — and especially the museums that currently hold these finds, and those that are meant to preserve them — arises for almost all colonized peoples, so I want to share the Ukrainian experience and perspective on this topic too:

[littlearitan]

Pectoral my beloved

[suratan-zir]

Tonight, 7/30/2026, in the village of Radushne near Kryvyi Rih, a russian Iskander missile hit the home of a large family. The house was completely destroyed. Six people were killed, including three children: a 6-year-old girl and two boys aged 11 and 17.

[wordswithoutaworld]

Every month some new Russian slop starts trending, and far too many left-leaning Westerners happily jump in. It's always "not about politics", "just appreciating Russian culture" and so on.

The overwhelming majority of them never seem to listen to Ukrainian voices. Or, if they do, it's always: "We understand you're at war and going through a lot, but that's not what this is about".

I've noticed that these trends always become especially active whenever Ukraine is not only defending itself but also fighting back. Russia suddenly needs to restore cultural empathy towards "uwu poor ordinary Russians" — who, in most cases, were perfectly fine with what their fellow citizens were doing or simply didn't care. Now they're crying over the packages they lost from Wildberries while we've been burying our people for years.

But every single time I still can't get used to this level of indifference and hypocrisy. These same people would defend their favorite artist even if they walked out wearing an "I love Russia" t-shirt, insisting that it somehow wasn't support for Russia and that Ukrainians were just overreacting. Or they'll passionately defend a fictional Russian character while bullying real Ukrainians.

Since 2022, I've only become more disappointed in much of the Western left. We simply don't fit into their understanding of war, genocide, discrimination, or the victims of centuries of imperialism and colonialism. So, to them, we're just annoying people from an uninteresting country.

Their feminists don't care about Ukrainian women.

Their LGBT activists don't care about Ukrainian LGBT people.

And I don't even want to start talking about the Crimean Tatars. They're an Indigenous Muslim people who were forcibly deported from their homeland by the Soviet Union and have now, once again, almost completely lost their home in Crimea, where Russians are being settled instead. Many of those who remain are abducted or sentenced to impossibly long prison terms under horrific conditions. You would think this is exactly the kind of story this political camp always claims to stand for — but you almost never hear them mention the Crimean Tatars at all.

I used to believe that Ukraine's history and struggle naturally aligned with the values many on the Western left claim to defend. But with every passing year, I believe that less and less. At this point, I'm starting to doubt that even with enough time, our story will ever become something they genuinely care about.

I'm trying to see the good in people. I really am.

But I don't know.

Today is the Day of Remembrance of Ukrainian defenders and civilians who were executed or tortured in Russian captivity.

[kyrylo-kot]

insane pull at the flea market

[kyrylo-kot]

very beautiful illustrations

[kyrylo-kot]

[wistfulpoltergeist]

\(💙O💛)/

[sakamaki-lilith]

You know what’s hilarious? A ruzzian having Z on his clothes.

Very fitting. Very ruzzian

[vyvilha]

speaking on chornobyl, the word chornobyl, lit. "black-weed", is one of ukrainian folk names for wormwood. there is a legend about wormwood, described in vasyl tovstyi's book "legends and myths of ukraine". in this legend, a girl got lost in the forest and fell into a cave with vipers, who didn't eat anything, but when they got hungry they licked a stone. so when the girl got hungry herself, she licked the serpent's stone too, and from now on she understood the language of herbs and beasts. and so she lived in the cave until spring, and when the spring came, it was time for the serpents to leave the underearth and into the human world, and so the cave opened and stairs appeared, and the girl could leave. but the serpent tsarytsia told her: "you now know the language of beasts and herbs, but never say the word "wormwood" (chornobyl), or you will forget all this in an instant". the girl was excited to return home and ran to her village, but then, a voice came from behind her, and asked: "what is this herb, with the leaves all black?" and the girl, lost in her longing for home, answered: "chornobyl". and so all her knowledge was lost. this is why, the legend says, chornobyl is also called "zabudka" or "zabudiok" (forget-weed).

[folklorespring]

sometimes i'm reminded how old putin is, like this is a picture from 2000

[nucl3arxxiv]

home

[gwenllianwales]

Ситуація наступна

[unhonestlymirror]

+40 in summer. -30 in winter

In fact, you have to choose both, Neo

[tired-aori-15]

[folklorespring]

Rave parties in Kyiv in 1995-1997

[wordswithoutaworld]

Russian activism is much closer to what a large part of Western audiences are used to than Ukrainian activism or the genuinely heroic and compassionate actions Ukrainians take. That's because Russian activism often shares the same element of privilege that much of Western activism does.

The recent example of the Russian couple holding up an no war sign during a marriage proposal on top of a tower is probably the clearest example of this. It's the kind of thing that easily fits booktok aesthetics and inspires edits where people imagine themselves in that moment, while completely ignoring the fact that it didn't actually help anyone or change anything. In terms of real impact, it's on the same level as posting a black square on Instagram.

There was no attempt to raise money for actual aid or direct people toward organizations that are genuinely helping.

It's simply a nice gesture — an activist version of "let them eat cake", where having a beautiful, symbolic moment matters more than creating real change.

It's a form of privileged activism where actually changing the situation isn't the important part.

The actions of Ukrainians during a genocidal war are the complete opposite. They're focused on actually saving lives, which makes the contrast even more obvious by showing what genuinely helps and what doesn't. For people who are invested in this kind of activism, acknowledging that difference would require rethinking their own beliefs, so it's often easier to simply ignore those actions instead.

Another reason for this is that these Russians are living peacefully in other countries, in circumstances much closer to the everyday lives of Western audiences. They're simply easier for them to relate to than Ukrainians living through war.

I've also often heard Ukrainian activists say that they have to think very carefully about how to communicate with this part of the Western audience. For many of them, almost everything is considered "outside of politics" and the war is reduced to "two presidents having a conflict". Because of that, even lectures about Russia's cultural genocide against Ukraine have to be framed in ways that won't upset people who insist on separating Russian culture from politics, even when that framing directly contradicts the reality of Russia's actions against other nations.

Honestly, it reminds me of how many of these same activists reacted to the protests in Iran.

People whose lives are in danger don't have the luxury of focusing on big beautiful gestures. For them, activism is about survival, not about creating aesthetically powerful moments.

[sakamaki-lilith]

Нетфлікс придбав позачерговий продукт «мʼякої сили» русні. Супер. Просто супер. Коли вже вестерни висунуть руснявий ч*ен з роту 🫩

[wordswithoutaworld]

Watching how everyone is now actively talking about boycotting the new Harry Potter because of Rowling (which is completely justified and something I support), I can’t help but remember how there was basically no backlash when t.A.T.u.’s song was used in Heated Rivalry. That gave the band not only another wave of cultural exposure, but also money — yet no one really called for any kind of response from the show’s team, even though they also created several controversial moments that were uncomfortable for ukrainians.

People are so upset now when someone says they’re going to watch it because “it was my childhood” but back then it was totally fine to respond to us with — “it was part of my lgbt youth and growing up” and how it was such a “big moment for lgbt culture” both then and now.

Honestly, it just kind of feels like when something affects the ukrainian lgbt community, it’s not treated the same as when it affects the western one.

[redjaybathood]

we didn't even ask them not to watch the show, we asked them, at most, to watch critically, to understand - among other things - how scammy that choice of song was in regards to supposedly caring about queer oppression in russia, how gaysploitative it was. but they propelled tatu to the second most listened russian artist on spotify or something, a band that supported the invasion - the war against "Gayrope", to use russians' own words, - and band members of which proclaimed they would kill their own son if he turned out to be gay.

no gonna lie, it's kinda funny. wanna bet how much of these "don't watch the new hp show!" blogs also post about gay russian hockey player show? send me a list and i will multiply that number by ten and donate to sternenko as soon as i get paid in april.

[snovyda]

Also T.A.T.u. was never, EVER meant to be something genuinely pro-LGBTQ. It's two straight women, combined into a duo by a straight man producer to appeal to straight men with a fetish for girls in school uniforms making out with each other.

That was never even hidden. That was literally THE point.

The fact that those women themselves are homophobes, and one of them is literally the member of Putin's "United Russia" political party doesn't seem to matter to their Western fans either, not to mention their support of the russian occupation of Ukraine.

And none of this would matter to the Western stans, either. Because they don't see us as people.

[wordswithoutaworld]

Ukrainian history is incredibly complex, and it is even harder for foreigners to study because many foreign-language sources about Ukraine were not written by Ukrainians themselves, but often by people who viewed Ukraine through a colonial or imperial lens, or who were commissioned or funded by those same forces to produce such works, while at the same time supporting policies of disinformation against any open expression of Ukrainian identity.

But despite understanding all of this, I still find it emotionally difficult not to react when someone from abroad — someone who barely knew anything about Ukraine before 2022 — starts repeating claims they read "in some tumblr post", "on reddit" and so on, while never checking who exactly wrote it in the first place.

What also makes it worse is when these people do not understand the historical context of Ukraine's relationships with neighboring states, and, most importantly, the formation of people's identities across all of these countries, yet still project their own historical perspective onto someone else's history without any understanding of the differences.

For some reason, this can be incredibly fucking difficult for me emotionally. Because on top of the stress of Russia's genocidal war, you also feel that the world is constantly examining both you and your country piece by piece, freely criticizing and reshaping it according to its own views, pressuring you to see yourself the way they want you to see yourself, constantly weighing whether you are "a good nation or not" — all while knowing that they have this privilege over you, where their opinion of you can genuinely affect matters related to your protection and even your ability to stay alive.

And so you find yourself in a constant situation where you have to become your own advocate and historian for others, or else be consumed by the feeling that everything has already been decided for us.

[wintersmitth]