It’s 0C outside, and I don’t see clouds of my breath in the apartment anymore🥳. Celebrated with some oven baked oatmeal with leftover barbecue meat. And my love - regional paper Slobidsky Kraj. “Sloboda” was a free settlement of Ukrainians in 17th century.

Update on my Kharkiv flowers. Banana is not doing well. It’s +7 inside, can see my breath. Today the new heater has to arrive 🙏.

Breakfast in candlelight, watching Super Bowl halftime show using WiFi from a cafe on generator downstairs.

1,5 kilo of Kharkiv cake for breakfast.

“Don’t touch, sleeping till spring” - a plant in the hallway of Kharkiv School of Architecture says (now based in Lviv). I wish I could say that too.

An old orchid in my apartment is trying to bloom in -20 relying on a cold radiator it stands on. The way strength is born out of care, and violence out of great weakness of the criminal and indifference of the surrounding world.

Kharkiv groundhog Tymko IV predicted six more weeks of winter. Thanks for nothing, Tymko. We see you’re also embarrassed.

In -20 russian military purposefully destroyed the last energy facilities of Kharkiv. The attack lasted all through the night. Horrible cold, inhuman cruelty. Remember that when russian people will be crying in the court of justice how they were just following orders. They knew. They always knew.

There is nothing more nerve-racking than reading in the news that your district was hit by a russian missile, that a school and a kindergarten nearby got hit, and knowing there is a school and a kindergarten nearby your parents’ house. Driving there with your heart shooting through your lungs 👇

Weekend my the Saltivka forest in Kharkiv. As russian drones hit residential homes, people play hockey on frozen water.

To sweeten the desperate cold of winter the famous Kharkiv cake is on discount in my supermarket. 😅

25 Shaheed drones hit my district overnight in Kharkiv. It’s strange but I always feel when they target civilians specifically. Everything sounds differently. I was born in the maternity hospital that was hit. I can’t sleep and can’t wake up. They do this on weekends so that people didn’t rest.

My friends who went to get water under russian bombs, then fled and found a job in a month in a foreign country had an office colleague who would tell her they are dating a russian soldier on tinder and laugh. Imagine laughing at the victims of violence. And we don’t need to imagine.

Modernist 1960s cafe Krystal in Kharkiv, was renovated in 2020. The problem with the renovation as you see are the pines that were enclosed in concrete and died. The cafe is famous for the Bilochka (squirrel) icecream - thick cream dessert with chocolate and lots of hazelnuts.

Palm tree that survived ww1 and ww2 in Kharkiv botanical garden. The greenhouse suffered from russian attack in 2022, and the tree for the first time was threatened. Now the garden is fragile as ever, as most of the homes are barely heated after continuous attacks.

David Lynch kind of days.

Derzhprom, my modernist love on an evening walk in a winter Kharkiv.

Check out one of our 2025 Nonfiction Selections, "What to do with all the Russion Books" by @brams884.bsky.social (Fiery Scribe Review) selected by Jen Soriano on bestofthenetanthology.com/2025-2/2025-nonfiction/what-to-do-with-all-the-russian-books/ #bestofthenetanthology #nonfictionwriting

This Kharkiv cat wishes all an adventurous Tuesday.

“Someone who could sit here is now in russian captivity”, - a sign on the bench along the Lopan river in Kharkiv.

Dear all, the first session in the Cities at War Lecture Series in 2026 will be given by Viktoriia Grivina on "Kharkiv is a Dream. Planning a Future During War". Join her timely talk on Wednesday, 07.01.2026 at 4 pm CET. register here -> lnkd.in/eSVGc5wD

My friend mending her artwork while 5 russian missiles hit the city in the distance. @kharkivisadream.bsky.social

Kharkiv pedagogic university decorated for the holidays. Hryhorii Skovoroda, baroque Ukrainian philosopher also got an image update.

Kharkiv snowperson reflecting my emotional state.

My dear Kharkiv Tractor Factory hood. 1930s-1940s were militant years for Soviet architects, even little windows in the hallways resemble medieval fortress loopholes.

Unique modernist neighbourhood in central Kharkiv hit by two russian missiles. From the early 20th century buildings with elements of Art Deco to 1920-30s constructivism, this is European architectural legacy destroyed along 16 injured lives.

My Christmas tree in Kharkiv. Even in this hellish year I couldn’t help running down the street to a tiny Christmas tree market and decorating my crooked little tree that nobody else wanted to take 😅.

On 1 January the russian military threw two guided bombs on the enclosures of birds and tigers of the Kharkiv eco park. Many birds killed, injured tigers are hiding in the destroyed enclosure.

Happy New Year greetings from a Kharkiv Christmas tram, friends! We shall overcome, one day ❤️.

Christmas carols’ choir in Kharkiv. Singing together Carol of the Bells makes my voice breaks, as home of this beautiful song, the city of Pokrovsk is dying before our eyes. But no, Carol lives and Pokrovsk lives in it.

Snow in my darling Kharkiv.

This Kharkiv cat wishes all a productive last Monday of the year (he knows it won’t be).

Reading stories from Sloboda Ukraine on a long train ride.

Beautiful book of recipes and stories of gardening from across Ukraine, result of a workshop at Jam Factory in Lviv.

Carol singers, snow, bombs, Ukrainian Christmas.

The detail of the old doors and a privilege to have something that wasn’t destroyed. I really appreciate the rustic vibes of Lviv.

As a kid when I heard the stories about the Soviet Union my grandparents told, I thought they were imagining that country, so bizarre its ideology and habits sounded. To think I could actually live there 😳. So happy USSR collapse day.

For some reason it is my holiday habit to be running out of airports coughing my lungs out and calling bus drivers to wait for 5 minutes (thankfully, Ukrainian bus drivers can take pity on you). Sorry, Europe, but you won’t stop me, I’m coming home! 😁🐈‍⬛

On the darkest days, I always write the most optimistic texts. This one is called “What Ukraine Should Do with Russia”. open.substack.com/pub/vika4goo...

Graham Greene lived through London Blitz, and his descriptions of the feeling of the world was approaching, and details are very on point to what I have seen in Kharkiv.

Christmas is the time to thank everyone who’s been with us! Don’t give up, the good will prevail in the end 🫶🫂. Just don’t lose empathy and attention.

Christmas Eve and the kind russian people hit power and heating stations in Kharkiv, a cemetery in Chernihiv, destroy the Black Sea ecology with oil spillages, and kill energy workers.

The only thing that the russian state built in the city of Donetsk in 12 years of occupation have been filtration camps. They recycled former Ukrainian art centres for this purpose at that.

Graham Greene as always understands war cities. From “The End of the Affaire”.

In every airport always 😂. Even if you think he’s not there, a western writer is already working on a new romantic putin face book for the travelers

A global assault by big states on small ones will not end the way big states think it will.

Language is important. When a war of aggression is called “[victim’s name] + conflict”, the focus on the aggressor is lost. Make sure to always remember and pronounce the name of the aggressor. It should not be “they-who-not-be-named”. Justice starts with small steps.

Found this book by accident at the university giveaway. Haven’t read it yet, but feel that it might be something on EU politics 😅.

In 2017, the architect Nina Furmanova recalled how working on this 1970s Kharkiv hotel, saying “I, a small woman, defended the project in front of men and secured approval for a high-rise!”. Says a lot about being a woman in the male-dominated skyscraper architecture 😅.

Besides being an important linguist, Yuri Shevelov was a fantastic essayist, and left an important very honest memoir, “My Meetings with Roman Jacobson”, that elucidate dual colonial lens and oppression of non-russian scholars in the US Slavic studies in 1950-1960s.