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Stories and ideas

The faces of resilience

Ukrainians are reclaiming their roots and identity, flooding cultural venues in defiance. This highlights a disconnect the West fails to understand. War here is not just about soldiers and weapons: it is a rallying cry for the entire society.

My trip back home to Germany, after visiting Kyiv and Lviv, awaits. But before leaving, I meet Olga Myrovych, head of the Lviv Media Forum. This non-profit organization champions media independence and public dialogue in Ukraine. In a warm Lviv café, the contrast to the weight of our conversation is stark. After a week of intense reporting, I ask the question that has grown ever more urgent: how can the world truly grasp Ukraine’s fight for survival?

May 5, 2025 - Isabelle de Pommereau

Peace, not surrender: under these conditions Ukrainians will return home

According to Ukraine’s ministry of national unity only 30 per cent of those who are abroad have said that they were ready to return home immediately. Another 40 per cent are waiting for the official end of the war and long-term security guarantees. The remaining 30 per cent have now said they would build their lives abroad.

Many Ukrainian refugees who are now spread around the world fear that even after a ceasefire the war could flare up again, putting their families at risk one more time. Diplomatic pressure without guarantees of a just and lasting peace that takes into account Ukraine's interests is perceived as something akin to surrender. Such a peace would not provide what Ukrainians need most: certainty that their lives will not be turned into rubble again.

May 5, 2025 - Halyna Khalymonyk

The contradiction of the female figure in Belarusian politics

In the months leading up to the 2020 elections, Alyaksandr Lukashenka's remark that the “constitution is not written for women” sparked significant public outcry. Operating within a deeply patriarchal paradigm, he rarely shies away from such sexist comments. Yet, he continuously underestimates the role of women and their potential in politics, as seen in recent Belarusian history.

Since 1994 Alyaksandr Lukashenka has held an unyielding grip on Belarus, often referring to himself as a “women's president”. This characterization is not without purpose; he strategically appeals to specific demographics within the electorate, many of whom find themselves in vulnerable positions reliant on state social support – predominantly women. One might wonder why he still seeks voter loyalty when elections are routinely manipulated and international observers repeatedly report ballot stuffing and significant violations in vote counting. The reality is that genuine support from even a fraction of the electorate simplifies his task. It allows for less money and administrative resources to be spent on falsification and for mitigating the impacts of dishonest elections. The mass protests of 2020 arose precisely because the scale and transparency of the fraud were too blatant to ignore.

February 28, 2025 - Nasta Zakharevich

Sandwiched between elections, Moldova’s indie artists are planning new futures

Moldova’s government and its independent art scene are tussling over competing visions of the country’s European future. As artists create for themselves a messy, participatory democracy with room for criticism, the country’s leaders appear more focused on maintaining their image.

The five-hectare ruins of Chișinău’s Republican Stadium, once a Cold-War era football arena in the centre of Moldova's capital, were overgrown and degrading when the US embassy stepped in, offering to pay. The space was perfect for a new embassy location: historic, central, and huge, with ample space for security. But artists and civil society groups wanted it to be made into a public park – a space for everyone that would pay homage to the city’s past. In the end, however, Moldova’s legislature struck a deal with the Americans with, according to detractors, little to no public consultation.

February 28, 2025 - Katie Toth

On the traces of Migjen Kelmendi, rock icon and Kosovar intellectual

Kosovo’s identity remains highly contested in spite of its declaration of independence all the way back in 2008. While many still hold on to an ethnic conception of the state, people like the musician and intellectual Migjen Kelmendi want a new country with new values. This aim can be traced back to a cultural milieu that overcame the divisions of Yugoslavia.

I met the journalist and writer Migjen Kelmendi in the Charlie Brown café near Bill Clinton Boulevard in Pristina, Kosovo. Forty years have passed since he founded the band Gjurmët, but the thin smile of the first Kosovar Albanian rock icon is still there. In the 1960s, Yugoslavia welcomed rock-n-roll, organized festivals and promoted Yugoslav artists via the Yugoton label. An unprecedented rock scene emerged during the following decade: Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana and Sarajevo became vibrant centres where punk and new wave flourished. Often mobilized by the state apparatus, the youth used rock to voice new aspirations. 

February 28, 2025 - Erik Da Silva

What “Travels with Pozner and Urgant” says about Russian society

For one evening in London last November, audiences left behind the weight of geopolitics to reconnect with two iconic figures, Vladimir Pozner and Ivan Urgant, whose humour and nostalgia offer a glimpse of life before 2022. Yet beneath the laughter and stories lies a deeper reflection on Russia’s society today, its divided sentiments and the struggles of cultural figures navigating a war-torn world.

Could a prominent Russian act or theatre troupe no longer dream of filling a 3,000-seat London theatre? In a word, yes. Several Russian performers, shows, and acts have, in fact, sold out theatres up and down the United Kingdom since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Slava’s SnowShow will be touring Britain this year after remarkable success in Russia’s regional theatre scene. Ahead of this, in 2024, were two of Russian television’s most recognizable faces: veteran journalist Vladimir Pozner and TV personality Ivan Urgant.  

February 28, 2025 - James C. Pearce

Life on the exhale

Life on the exhale is like knocking on a door, it carries an echo, and wakes up the dormant. People to whom it is written, like Victoria Amelina, transcend what we usually can, and what in Ukrainian is expressed by the word mohty. In truth, Vika, seeking justice, a home and a future, bore witness to the path to victory, in Ukraine's destiny fulfilling itself through pere-mohty, doing more than our strength and imaginings would allow.

The last inhale was Canada, a good job in the IT industry, studying creative writing in the United States, literary residencies in the West, vacations with her family in Egypt, the safety of her son Andriy in Poland. Vika (short for Victoria) crosses the Polish-Ukrainian border on February 26th 2022. In the evening she reaches Lviv, where her mother, a history teacher, lives. As soon as the Kyiv region is liberated, she moves east. On the train to Kyiv, she meets three women writers, as well as activists from the Revolution of Dignity, human rights activists and the journalists Larisa Denysenko, Svetlana Povalayeva and Olena Stiazhkina.

February 28, 2025 - Krzysztof Czyżewski

Life on the front: living and surviving in Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine

Scenes of conflict from Ukraine continue to dominate reports concerning the ongoing Russian invasion. Despite this, the war moves at a rather slow pace at the front. This reflects the local population’s adaptation to the conflict, with people stealing small moments of normalcy throughout their day-to-day lives.

On a cool, bluish-green river just minutes from the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, Ukrainian soldiers from a mortar brigade seek to relax. The dark green military 4x4 that brought them from the front now sits idle as they cast fishing lines into the water. The fishing is poor, yielding little more than ripples, but the catch does not matter. For these soldiers, the chance to grill meat, share drinks, and laugh in the open air is worth more than any fish they might pull out. Here, far from the war, time slows, and the simple act of being together in nature becomes a fleeting treasure.

November 21, 2024 - Joshua Kroeker

Gender stereotypes break down as Ukrainian women step up

With one million Ukrainians in the military, including hundreds of thousands on the frontlines, nine million displaced and thousands of men who once eagerly enlisted now hiding from military recruiters, the war shrunk and reshaped Ukraine's labour force. Indeed, it is likely to continue transforming society and women’s place in it for decades to come.

After years as a quality control engineer with big supermarkets and housing construction sites, Natalia Myronenko had yearned for change. Passionate about fashion, beauty, makeup and harmony, she saw her maternity leave after the birth of her second child as the perfect time to pivot. But the war intervened, thrusting her into a field she had never imagined entering: humanitarian demining. When she got the job as a quality control manager, she envisioned mostly office supervisory work. “Then I realized that war is my job, and I was shocked,” says the 40-year-old. Like in her old job, she has to check other people’s work. Only now, human lives are on the line. At stake is making the land safe again for farmers and people to live on, to survey each patch of farmland that had witnessed combat, carefully searching for and removing unexploded mines, missiles, artillery shells, bombs and other types of ordnance – all with the utmost caution. “It’s all about safety,” she says.

November 21, 2024 - Isabelle de Pommereau

Romanian community establishes roots in rural France

Westward migration in Europe is often associated with settlement in urban areas. Despite this, many workers from the region have found employment in small rural communities. The French town of Gramat and its surroundings, for example, have seen the arrival of a few hundred Romanians over the past decade.

Since the 2010s, the Causse of Gramat in south-western France (part of a group of vibrant, shimmering limestone plateaus) has witnessed the appearance of a substantial Romanian population. At first, the newcomers came in response to recruitment for work positions in slaughterhouses. Then, opportunities diversified, relatives joined and the community grew. First believed to be a temporary movement, permanent settlement was just around the corner for many. Today, Romanians represent one of the largest immigrant communities (if not the largest) in the area, bringing an Eastern European facet and thus diversity to this French countryside.

November 21, 2024 - Paul Mazet

Hungary makes its mark at the World Nomad Games

The annual World Nomad Games is now challenging established western definitions of sport. As a result, it is interesting to note the strong Hungarian presence at these events. A pseudoscientific theory from the 19th century is now helping Budapest to pursue links with the East in more ways than one.

A group of men in ethnic garments stood in a row waiting for a sign to shoot, rays of early autumn sun falling on their sculpted shoulders. When the order came, they lifted their bows and shot at the shields in front of them, their arrows cutting through the air with unnatural speed. To the joy of his national team, the winner – a Hungarian called Làszlò Koczka – won the gold medal in traditional archery at 60 metres, a sweet victory here in Kazakhstan, a country famous for impeccable archers.

November 21, 2024 - Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

How the plight of Russian feminists demonstrates the totalitarian terror of the Russian state

Women attending peaceful anti-war protests have been subjected to violence and torture and also threatened with sexual assault while in custody. Those arrested are forced to confront a criminal justice system with a severe bias against defendants. The crackdown on feminist activism has forced numerous organizations to cease operations and their organizers to flee the country.

August 1st 2024: aeroplanes touch down on a runway in Ankara, Turkey. The stage is set for the most extensive prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The release of high-profile prisoners such as the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and US Marine Paul Whelan, both of whom were found guilty of espionage, was a diplomatic boon for the West. However, some were critical that in return for releasing journalists, opposition figures, human rights defenders and peaceful protestors, Russia received an unrepentant FSB agent turned assassin, as well as notorious criminals and spies. One of the cases in particular stands out not only for its absurdity but for how well it demonstrates Russia’s draconian crackdown on dissent and protest. This is the story of the artist and musician Alexandra (Sasha) Skochilenko.

November 21, 2024 - Ailbhe Cannon

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