Kateryna Yakovlenko

We met with playwright Pavlo Arie in Lviv during the festival “Drama.ua.” At that time it was impossible to stage a drama of young authors on the stage of Ukrainian theaters, because conservatism was ruling. Pavlo got a refusal to stage it. His work Glory to Heroes! is dedicated to...

Oleksandr Chekmeniov is a documentary photographer, belonging to a rare profession in Ukraine, laureate and winner of European and international photo exhibitions, and author of two books, Donbass and Black-and-White Photo. He is now preparing to release another one, about people of the Euromaidan...

“Mom, where is my balaclava?” shouts 17-year-old Ukrainian patriotic guerilla Tai into the next room. He is one of the 20 youths who swore allegiance to the city on September 4, pledging to defend it against the terrorists and the Russian army, forming the bulk of the Mariupol Battalion...

“Miss, there is no working link to Avdiivka, there is ongoing fighting there!” an employee of Druzhkivka railway station shouted at me [Avdiivka is a suburb of Donetsk, partly liberated by the Ukrainian army on July 29. – Ed.].“Look up, please, when the suburban train from...

“Take apples, please, these are of Papirovka cultivar, they are very tasty,” pastor Fedir of the Druzhkivka’s Light of the Gospel church told us. The church is now caring about five displaced families, 14 people in all, who have fled Horlivka.“We have always helped low-...

How much time should pass for the countries that want to get rid of the prefix “post-” to realize and reflect on their Soviet past? Probably, this period of time is different for every country, depending on its readiness. Today Latvia is one of the few countries which can hardly be...

“Don’t cry, everything will be okay,” says the principal of the school to a Ukrainian mother, who came to learn about the studying conditions in the school, “We have good conditions. We love children like ours. We understand your situation.”During the long conversation...

Everything is the same in these photos: barricades, tires, blocking of state bodies, human chains, seizing of a TV channel, bringing the Lenin statue down, dispersal of peaceful demonstrators, and their happy faces after the desired victory. However, it’s not Kyiv of 2013-14, but Riga of late...

Euromaidan has had a strong effect on development of Ukrainian mass media. In this period the word “streamer” (a person who delivers content live over the Internet) is now used more often than “reporter” or “journalist.” The revolution made traditional, both...

How to have a real closure to our relationship with the Soviet legacy? How can we leave Soviet holdovers in the past and start building modern Ukraine without resorting to totalitarian legacy? What modern Latvia and Ukraine have in common? All these issues will be discussed by Ukrainian and Latvian...