A dispatch from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, which has been under constant shelling for much of the war.

The inhabitants of Krasnopillia have been living under continuous Russian artillery fire from across the border, just 15 km away, since April 2022.

Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, is the longest serving minister in the country’s history. Appointed as an interim in the spring of 2014 he survived government reshuffles under President Petro Poroshenko and retained his seat under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Avakov was not an obvious candidate for political longevity, but a set of circumstances in Ukraine’s recent political history made him a golden shareholder.

The nickname of minister of everything was bestowed upon Arsen Avakov by public commentators after the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine and the formation of the first government under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Avakov was referred to as the only grown up in the government especially compared to the young, inexperienced Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, who was 35 at the time of his appointment.

A review of Yupak. By: Serhiy Serhiyovych Saigon. Publisher: Bilka, Kyiv, 2020

Interview with Belarusian filmmaker Vlada Senkova. Interviewer: Kateryna Pryshchepa.

Is the poll president Zelenskyy added to the local elections in Ukraine a violation of the election law or something else entirely?

An interview with Volodymyr Yermolenko, a philosopher and Editor-in-Chief at UkraineWorld. Interviewer: Kateryna Pryshchepa.

Review of Numbers. A film by Oleg Sentsov and Akhtem Seitablayev, Ukraine-Poland-Czech Republic-France, 2020.

An interview with Anton Kolumbet, the (former) first deputy minister for veteran affairs in Ukraine. Interviewer: Kateryna Pryshchepa
KATERYNA PRYSHCHEPA: A report recently published by the International Organization for Migration states that Donbas war veterans often face difficulties with access to services and benefits they are formally entitled to. In addition, they also face conflict situations in society. Is it possible to change these tendencies by legal means, or is there a need for information campaigns?

ANTON KOLUMBET: The problem stems from the fact that the current social guarantees and services for war veterans in Ukraine are still regulated by the law adopted in 1992. That law basically replicates the norms of Soviet legislation regarding the Second World War and Afghan war veterans. In the USSR the state was the principal property owner and the manager of social services: under our current free market economic conditions, some of those old benefits simply cannot be offered by the state anymore.

Interview with Anna Westerholm, Ambassador for the Eastern Partnership at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Interviewer: Kateryna Pryshchepa.

A conversation with Sviatoslav Yurash, a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the Servant of the People party. Interviewer: Kateryna Pryshchepa

KATERYNA PRYSHCHEPA: Can you tell us the story how you became an MP?

SVIATOSLAV YURASH: In February 2019 I joined Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his presidential run. It has a backstory, but I joined in February, and I have been with the president ever since. I think the president has his heart in the right place, and has the right team to put his mind in the right place – and the mind of the whole Ukrainian nation. And for me it was clear that a man like this could one, defeat Petro Poroshenko, and two, unite the Ukrainian nation. And that is what he has done.

The recently released book The Pages of Jewish history of Ukraine is an important achievement. Despite the fact that it was written as a textbook for high schools, it is accessible to readers from different backgrounds and gives a comprehensive overview of the 2,000 years of Jewish presence in Ukraine.

In May 2018 the Kyiv city council passed a decision to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Koliyivshchyna – a peasant revolt which spread through right-bank Ukraine in 1768-1769 and was a response to the Bar Confederation (a political and military revolt of the Polish nobility against the politics of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, a protégé of Catherine the Great which took place partially on Ukrainian territories resulting in victims among Ukrainian orthodox civilians). The Koliyivshchyna rebellion could be seen thus as an episode of Ukraine's religious wars.