Volume 1 - February 27, 2022
How to help, my recent writing on Ukraine, top English language sources, Zelensky dance reel, and more.
Dear friends,
I know that all of you are watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold with horror. As many of you know, I grew up in a Ukrainian family and have been studying, traveling, and living in the country for spells since 2003. I have lots of family and friends there. While many of them are in western Ukraine and are safe for now, others have not been spared the unbelievable scenes that you have seen online and on television: missiles whizzing by their apartment buildings, nights spent sheltering in the Kyiv metro.
As I write, I have family members queueing at the Polish border to flee the country with their children. They have just said goodbye to their father, brother, uncle, cousins, dogs, and lives as they know it. A week ago, these children had a future more secure and promising than any Ukrainian generation in history. They are now refugees. The men they left behind are waiting to be drafted. For the eldest generation of Ukrainians, this is stirring up memories of their childhood years during World War II and robbing them of the solace that they are leaving this world in better shape than it was when they entered it.
Everyone I know is shaken to the core, irrevocably changed, and mad as hell.
In effort to share my knowledge with you, my community, I’ve pulled together the resources below.
What to Do
1) Donate: There are lots of lists floating around of places to donate. My top three recs at the moment are the Ukrainian National Army, Nova Ukraina, and the Kyiv Independent.
2) Report Russian propaganda outlets to their online platforms so that they are taken down. Details here.
How to Talk About Ukraine and the Invasion
This is not the “Ukraine-Russia conflict” or “Ukraine crisis” or anything that suggests that the genesis of this was some kind of dispute. This is the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
My Writing on Ukraine
Yesterday I published an essay about the anguish of watching the Russian invasion unfold as a Ukrainian-American whose family has a history of war-induced separation. This joins several longform pieces about Ukraine that I have written in recent years that have new relevance. You may be interested in reading my accounts of:
Zelensky’s 2019 presidential campaign
the Ukrainian perspective on the Trump impeachment scandal and the first months of the Zelensky presidency
my family’s experience of Siberian exile during the Soviet regime for supporting Ukrainian nationalism
Recommendations to Read/Watch/Follow Etc.
1) President Zelensky’s address to the Ukrainian and Russian people just before Russia began its invasion. This extraordinary address has been widely covered in brief, but is worth reading in its entirety.
2) Why is Ukraine not in NATO? This brief starts to explain why.
3) Olesya Khromyechuk’s book, A Loss: The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister. It is short and powerful, and will give you a personal window onto the reality of the war in the Ukrainian Donbas, which sadly the country already has much experience with.
4) If you want to go deeper into new Ukrainian war lit, start with this Twitter thread from UCL lit professor Uilleam Blacker.
5) It is difficult to characterize a culture’s sense of humor, but it is one of the things that I love most about Ukraine—this article in the FT manages to capture it.
6) Top people to follow on Twitter for news: @christopherjm, @maxseddon—fast, smart, measured reporters with deep background in the region
7) Top English-language news outlets in Ukraine: The Kyiv Independent and English version of Ukrayinska Pravda
8) Zelensky rose to fame as a contestant in the Ukrainian version of Dancing with the Stars in 2006. Check out his (many) performances here.
A Note on This Letter
If you have found this useful, I’d appreciate you letting me know (and apologies if it takes me a while to get back to you). I may send out other volume(s) in the future. The image at the top is of the Kyiv Botanical Gardens.
As ever,
Megan