he/him | 🇺🇦
Art: “I See Your Deeds, Human” by Oleksandr Melnyk
Pfp: art by Vladyslav Yerko
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непостійний щоденник,
де думки йдуть поперед батька в пекло
In this quiet space, I wanted to talk about Ukrainian art, especially media, but the lens of my camera was shattered by the blast wave of Russia’s military invasion of my country.
So, like many other Ukrainians, I also write about the war here.
If any of my posts — or posts by other Ukrainians — resonate with you,
please consider donating to an organization of your choice:
https://ukrainewar.carrd.co/
People can only be interesting if they’re alive.
It would mean a lot if you helped us stay that way.
a rusalky post for rusalky week. i want to share some ukrainian folk stories about relationships between the rusalky and their living relatives. and if you don't know, rusalka is an undead natural spirit, usually (but not always) of a girl who died a violent death, or died prior or during the rusalka week. recordings of folk texts are taken from the work "ukrainian mythology" by volodymyr halaichuk, translated by me.
• a girl died before rusalka week. and her sister remained. the dead girl was buried in her clothes, but they forgot to give her her favorite skirt, that she wanted. she came back as a rusalka. she came to her sister, and asked: "oksana, can you get me my skirt?". oksana asked: "what do you need it for?" "i will go party". and so for the whole rusalka week, she visited her sister. every evening oksana left her the skirt on the hedge, and her sister took it and partied. but then the mother noticed it, as the skirt was constantly dripping wet. the rusalka sister told oksana to not utter a single word to her mother about what is happening. but once her mother pressured her, and the girl told her so and so. after that, the rusalka stopped coming.
• there was a good girl, and she died. she wanted to be buried in her silk skirt, but the mother didn't fulfill her wish. the girl died before rusalka week. then the neighbors started dreaming that the girl was asking "why didn't mother give me my skirt?". then, when the rusalka week came, the mother placed the skirt in the corner of the house. then, when the next day came, she looked at it, and the skirt was dripping wet. and so they knew that the rusalka girl came
• a girl died on rusalka week. and so a year came by, but the parents still mourned. but during rusalka week, they saw her khustka move, and so the father pounced on it, and hugged it tightly, and didn't let it go. turned out it was their girl. he placed her on the corner of the house. and so she stayed in one place for a whole year. only when the dziady (ancestors' holiday) came, she ate the steam from the food offering, and then again returned to her corner. but then when the rusalka week came, she looked through the window, and clapped her hands, and exclaimed "my people are coming!" — and she was gone.
• there was a dead girl of 15 or 16 years, who's parents catched her, and locked her in the house. she sat at the clay stove in the corner, her face to the wall, as she refused to turn her face to them. then they noticed that when they cook food, she disappears, and so they knew she was eating the steam from the food. from now on, they left the house before eating, so that she could eat the steam in peace. and so she lived here for a whole year. but then pentecost came, and then three days more, and then she jumped from the stove, and exclaimed "oh! oh! my people are here! my people are here!" — and nobody saw her afterwards.
• once a group of musicians returned from the party late at night, and their way was through the fields. and towards them another group of musicians walked on the same road. when they finally crossed paths, the living recognized that the other group was dead. the dead musician spoke "so what are we gonna do now? now we are doing a playing competition. the one who wins gets the girl from the others' group". and so they played, and the living won. the musician who won chose a girl and said "you're going with us". in that village was a mother, who's daughter drowned herself on the pentecost. when the rusalka got to the village, she recognized the girl as her daughter. she stood in the corner of the house for the whole rusalka week, never talking, facing the corner. and when the week passed, they never noticed when and how, but she disappeared.
I was there in 1997 when the second McDonald's opened in Kyiv, I worked near this place in 2005-2019, I bought food in the market near, had my lunch in Puzata Khata, shopped in the Kvadrat.
And turned out it was a military base, a Nato headquarters, not less, because why else would ruzzians hit it yesterday night?
Єбана підорусня. І всі, хто лижуть дупу русні єбані сучари.
As a result of tonight's savage russian attack on Kyiv—one of the worst I have experienced—a dozen cultural, educational, and scientific institutions were damaged.
Pictured here are the Chornobyl Museum, the Institute of Literature, the Stary Lev bookshop, and the National Art Museum of Ukraine. Several schools, bookshops, and the Kyiv School of Economics were also affected.
Not to mention dozens—if not hundreds—of residential buildings, markets, office buildings, and coffee shops.
Yet many people will continue celebrating "great russian culture" as if nothing is happening.
Russians don't give love to their children, but they steal and re-educate Ukrainian children with such perverse fanaticism
That's horrifying to watch… I almost threw up when I was downloading that video.
My little brother and I were kidnapped by Russia along with 19,000 other children when Putin invaded Ukraine. We need American help to save
The most painful quotes:
-When the Russians took me, I was sent to a technical school where I was subjected to daily false stories about Ukrainians and sometimes even insults. One day, I was called to the principal’s office and when I got there, she had citizenship documents ready for me to sign. I was stunned and disgusted. I had never been more afraid, but I refused to become a Russian citizen.
The principal glowered at me with hatred in her eyes. She berated me for being "stupid." Moments later, I was expelled and sent packing, in a country that I did not know, and that hated who I was.
-After Save Ukraine helped me return home, I needed to get my brother out too. I found him in a new foster family, but he was not the boy I knew. He had been subjected to months of Russian propaganda and manipulation. He was like a puppet, saying things that I knew he did not believe – that Ukraine was run by Nazis, that nobody in Ukraine cared about him and that he had no future unless he became a Russian citizen.
-When I begged him to return home with me, he refused. Hour after hour ticked by as we argued. As I was about to lose hope, he came to his senses and agreed to come home with me. We were lucky. But there are 19,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children still in Russia. The Russian government bombards them with propaganda and abuse to weaken their Ukrainian identity. Many are punished for speaking Ukrainian.
I'm in tears: "... I feel very sad and have no desire to live". Russians' obsession is to break Ukrainians mentally, including children.
Ukraine has handed over to Qatar a list with the names of 561 Ukrainian children who were taken to Russia.
This was reported by Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.
▪️Wait for the return of a group of Ukrainian children home. We are not disclosing details at this time.
▪️ Talking about the return of orphans and children deprived of parental care. Qatar agreed to work on the issue of their return to Ukraine. Preliminarily, there may be more than 3,600 such children.
▪️Qatar agreed to participate in negotiations with Russia on the return of civilians illegally detained by Russia.
Lubinets also once again refuted Russian propaganda: there were no direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. All negotiations are mediated by Qatar.
Only on 27 April 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recognized that the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia meets the criteria of genocide.
Happy International Family Day, but in Ukraine this holiday will always be with unbearable pain, grief, loss and destruction for many families. Don't forget about Russian crimes which never ended.
Ten torture chambers for children have been discovered in the Kherson region, four of which are in Kherson itself.
In one of the torture chambers, the russian occupiers had set up a so-called ‘children’s cell’ which consisted of nothing more than three thin foam mats on the floor.
This was announced at a press conference by Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights.
“They cut with knives and burned parts of the body”
The children were given water every other day, were barely fed and subjected to psychological pressure: they were told that their parents had abandoned them.
Those who were held in these torture chambers testify that everyone knew the children were being tortured.
One boy spent 90 days in one of the torture chambers. He was cut with a knife, had parts of his body burned, and was taken out to be shot, they fired over his head.
a sad, pathetic terrorist state, after being allowed to hold its sad, pathetic "victory day" parade, launches 1567 drones and 56 missiles during 30-hour attack to kill children and innocent people in their sleep, in their homes.
(most of the drones have been successfully intercepted, but ballistic missiles are extremely difficult to shoot down)
We talker about that person. Yes its cancelling, yes is for fucking reson.
Block her, not interact with HER
Mykozai post on answer on post where faenir post gun like gift from her husband.
the very husband that will not hide from going to the SMO and come to my country to kill and steal so you can sit your ugly ass in the warmth of your house because art should not be pol- oh wait what is that photo
i am so against politics that im gonna preach about rightfulness of the war my country started all while farming engagement from the fans of the game that was developed in spite of the devastations the gruesome war brought upon the ukrainian devs
im gonna support the occupation of ukraine and visit occupied regions and stand with my brave russian brothers and sisters all while using ukrainian sunflower imagery and symbolism to make a wanky cosplay while begging for likes and followers https://x.com/i/status/2054584829501428067
the lack of self-awareness and self-respect is astonishing but what do we expect from an "apolitical" figure that will gladly send her husband off to die in the trenches for the country that does nothing but ruins everything it glances at
Remember that behind every russian apolitical person there's usually silent (or not) support of their country's aggression. Engaging in Ukrainian game and seeking for attention of its fans while believing in war's justification is lunatic.
😡 У Дарницькому районі Києва росіяни зруйнували цілий підʼїзд із 18 квартир девʼятиповерхівки на метро "Харківська" і вдарили по АЗС "БРСМ" поруч - дивом резервуари з пальним не здетонували, що дозволило уникнути масштабної катастрофи. Відомо про 2 загиблих та 33 постраждалих, серед них одномісячна дитина, яка отруїлась чадним газом. Також зафіксовано перебої з водопостачанням на лівому березі через пошкодження мереж. Окрім цього, були удари по житловим будинкам і бізнес-центру в Оболонському і Дніпровському районах міста, а в Святошинському районі загорілись автомобілі.
📍Ворог також атакував і інші населені пункти: на Херсонщині в селищі Комишани загинула 79-річна жінка, на Бориспільщині в Київській області поранено 7 людей, 2 поранених в порту Одеси, 14 постраждалих в Шевченківському районі та 1 постраждала в Салтівському районі Харкова, в Кременчуцькому районі Полтавщини під удар потрапило автотранспортне підприємство, а на Чернігівщині енергетичний обʼєкт — знеструмлено 31 тисяча будинків.
Many people in the tags call this map weird, but I’m mostly just disappointed and sad that out of all the maps on the internet the one that was chosen is the one where occupied Ukrainian Crimea is marked as part of Russia.
Maybe for some people it’s not a big deal, but when you live in Ukraine and see Russians actively destroying Crimea and kidnapping, torturing, and basically killing everyone there who isn’t pro-Russian, maps like this just leave a sour taste in your mouth...
The end of Melania Trump's Washington Post piece for Mother's Day 2026.
She is not only going to help reunify Ukrainian children with their families, but also rescue all those imaginary RUSSIAN children! What russian children have been stolen in russia's genocide in Ukraine?
And then she's going to stop russia's genocide by achieving "peace through education".
Mstyslav Chernov, who won an Oscar for 20 Days in Mariupol, said while wearing a black memorial suit:
“I am grateful. But I will probably be the first director on this stage to say: I wish I had never made this film.
I wish I could exchange this for Russia never having attacked Ukraine, never having occupied our cities. I would give up all this recognition for Russia not killing tens of thousands of my fellow Ukrainians. I would give it up for them to release all the hostages — the soldiers who defended our land, and the civilians who are in their prisons”:
Meanwhile, a Russian “no to war” teacher, after receiving an Oscar for a film about how Russia prepares schoolchildren from an early age to go and kill Ukrainians:
Do they not feel sadness about what their work is based on?
Doesn’t it make them wish that, instead of receiving all these awards — including an Oscar — it would have been better if what they filmed had never happened at all?
At this point they’ll probably start framing the blessing of this Oscar as some kind of “holy mission.”
“Then let this be our rocket,” — said as a parallel to how Russians literally bless missiles before using them to kill Ukrainians. But in Talankin’s case, this isn’t treated as something tragic or criminal — something you shouldn’t joke about, especially as a Russian. No — it’s just “haha, what irony.”
And trying to place this Oscar among icons? The only reason he didn’t do it is because someone objected.
This feels like dancing on the bones of those killed by Russia’s actions: a Russian makes a film showing how the next generation is being prepared to take part in killing Ukrainians and occupying Ukraine, and then — as a “good Russian” against Putin — he simply goes on to enjoy his Oscar without putting any real effort into actually helping Ukraine, instead further turning himself into some kind of icon.
God, what the hell... This is some form of actual sickness, to worship one's own ego, and to turn the physical trophy into a sort of religious-fetish (in the original sense of the word)... Literally what any actual responsible representative of this idiot's own religion SHOULD call a "false idol." No wonder they conveniently "couldn't be found" when he went knocking at their churches. Insane that they actually found one. Everyone involved is so removed from reality and warped on the inside, on such a deep level. Like, what the fuck....
