“I Tried To Explain That I Was A Musician But It Didn’t Work. You Say You Are A Musician And It Irritates

З різдвом!

Kids🤲🏻🕸🕷

A grieving mother saying goodbye to her daughter Zlata (4 y.o), who died from injuries following the Russian missile attack on Odesa. The parents asked everyone to be dressed in white because Zlata was an angel… RIP, dear angel

I’m so fucking tired.

We shouldn’t be “racist” to Russian. We shouldn’t be “xenophobic” to them. We shouldn’t be russophobic. We should have helped them. We should be more accepting. We must be forgiving. We cannot have a trauma response. We cannot avoid Russian.

We cannot do that and that. Also that.

We must do that and that. Also, that.

We cannot complain. We cannot show our suffering. We are at fault. We must negotiate. We must be silent. We have all deserved. We should have been destroyed. We need to understand. We need to be grateful.

Today I had to publicly defend a Ukrainian 14-year old child simply because he feels uncomfortable to engage with Russian art accounts. Child whose country for most of his life is at war with Russia. Child who spent night sheltering from rockets.

But he doesn’t have a right to be uncomfortable with oppressors.

He is xenophobic.

He is racist.

But Russians that arrived at his posts and started mocking him, are not.

“They are victims of bullying, so it is justified response”

Everyone can have a justified response. Everyone, except us. Because we must be a perfect victim. Or not victim at all? Maybe we are the one that attacked? Maybe we are nazis? There would be always 1001 arguments we do not deserve to be called victims.

World was watching us suffering for centuries. They disarmed us, left us defenceless and then, didn’t even help us a lot until we started screaming. Sometimes I feel that even now, people are still watching at us like at some drama, putting million expectations.

I’m feeling absolutely helpless. Whatever we do, we cannot do. No matter how we react, we should have reacted differently.

We owe everyone everything and no one owes us anything. Wonderful world to live in.

I’m losing motivation. I’m losing hope. I want to scream and cry. But it is also hopeless.

Why us? Why now? Why?

When I see some foreigners wholeheartedly say that Ukrainians shouldn't judge all russians by the actions of the russian army, I think they miss a couple of points.

Firstly, Western belief that there is good in every person leads to self-deception and naivety. Many people still want to believe that russian society isn't different from the ones they live in. "Well, of course they are just like us. Look at their cities, at their youth, look at the things their activists write and say. Army gets the orders from the government, that's it. Ordinary people are against this war" Well, I don't know about you, but in my country army IS a part of the society. In fact, it's a scaled down version of the society. Soldiers aren't grown in laboratories where they gain their own, separate mentality.

Of course, if you are lucky/unlucky enough to speak russian, you know that the image and the essence of the russian mentality are two different things. russians are extremely good at creating an attractive and somewhat alluring image of their country for those who don't go in too deep. People who still try to judge russians from their own, West-oriented perspective, make a huge mistake. They conclude that the ordinary russians strive to the same values and civilizational goals as a common folk from, let's say, Berlin or Copenhagen.

The second thing has to do with us, Ukrainians. For us it's not the time for the shades of gray. To survive and to gain the victory, we need to look at the enemy through a white and black lense. Here are us and there are them. If we start pondering which russian is better and which is worse, we risk to lose everything. Every living russian at this given moment is an enemy - either a current or a potential one. Those russians who were kids at the beginning of the war in 2014, grew up and came to kill us in 2022. So we don't have the privilidge of going through all of the life details of those russians who beat themselves in the chest and proclaim they are good. Besides, in most cases after a few crucial questions 'good' russians turn into the ordinary ones. And thus we return to the first point once again - it's improtant to understand that russians are extremely good at hiding their ugly core from those who don't study the topic deep enough.

🩵💛🤝🇺🇦 — may our occupied territories be free soon

In the past 24 hours, in Rafah alone, 11 homes have been struck and levelled on top of their residents. This resulted in at least 28 people killed, 11 of which are children and many remain missing under the rubble.

Israel never stopped but it is definitely intensifying its operations.

Keep your eyes on Rafah but also speak up about Rafah and about Gaza. Do what you can because millions of lives are facing a massive threat with absolutely nowhere to go.

People forget that while Ukraine isn't allowed to harm one hair on Russia's soil, Russia has been working hard to kill Ukrainians not just with misiles

- by destroying the medical infrastructure

- freezing or burning people to death by destroying the power grid that helps people survive during winter and increasingly hot summers

- by kidnapping and re-educating Ukrainian children and adopting them into Russian families

- by destroying Ukraine's food production capacity

- by targetting civilian areas, in broad daylight, such as shopping centres

- by destroying cultural institutions, museums, universities, schools

- by riddling farm land with mines it will take decades to remove that will maim and kill farmers and children

- by causing one of the worst environmental disasters when they blew up a dam

- by executing and torturing and raping men, women, children and elderly who are Ukrainian

- by creating generations of trauma and loss, some of which has and will end with people taking their own lives

- by convincing the whole world that it's ok for them to keep doing this without consequence whether in Chechnya, Syria, Ukraine, Georgia, Mali, Sudan, Central Africa, and the list goes on

And that all not even touching on how the operate in the actual battle field, using chemical weapons and white phosphorus, or executing POWs, and civilians in captured towns.

And this isn't touching on centuries of linguistic and cultural repression, political repression, forced starvation, forced labour, death by displacement, gulags, and summary executions.

Russia is a plague on the world. Hell, on its own people.

And it's been that way for centuries. Before Putin. Even before Stalin. Even before the Tzar.

Repression. Oppression. Violence. Totalitarianism. Subservience to power. Apathy in the face of it all. That's all it has to offer in its grotesque history, art and culture.