Understanding the Russian war against Ukraine provokes puzzling questions. It beats our reservoir of simplistic answers and it often seems totally irrational. On the other hand: understanding this war is indispensable for putting an end to it and finding a way to a lasting peace.
It’s now day 149 of Russia’s War against Ukraine. War affects millions of lives of common people in, but also outside Ukraine. In the first place the young men and women who are fighting at the front of freedom. Overnight their common lives changed from peaceful living men and women doing his or her daily work, being brother or sister, mum or dad.
Two weeks ago we started our series on the Ukrainian Diaspora with Mychailo Wynnyckyi and Christiana Santore. The Ukrainian Diaspora as a Third Front is still our main topic of interest. Tonight we want to clarify the concept of diaspora itself.
Recently Orysya Bila made, on a conference on the future of Ukraine, a short but insightful statement on the difference between Russian and Ukrainian values. In this episode of Don’t give up Ukraine! we are going to discuss this statement.
The Ukrainian diaspora comprises Ukrainians and their descendents who live outside Ukraine around the world. Today more than twenty million Ukrainians live outside Ukraine. You can find them all over the world in post-Soviet states, as well as in other countries such as Poland, the United States, Canada, Brazil and, for example, the Netherlands.
How to make sense of the Russian brutal invasion, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine? Should we see it as a geo-political struggle for power and influence? Should we see it as a hunger for land and economic gain? Or is something different, more uncanny at stake?
On June 23 we welcome as our guest in Don’t Give Up Ukraine! Professor Alexander Etkind. Professor Etkind is author of a number of books on Russia. We will discuss two of his books which are especially relevant to the brutal war that is now going on in Ukraine.
Against the background of the war in Ukraine tonight we discuss classical Ukrainian literature with Elena Oranskaia and Dmytro Lytvynenko. Elena Oranskaia argues that classical Ukrainian literatuur from Skovoroda to Lesya Ukraïnka was ahead of its time.
Visual Arts have always been a powerful medium in which war meets the eye. We only have to think of Los Disastres de la Guerra of Francisco Goya sketching the cruelties during the Peninsular War, which began in 1808.
Friday is Day 100 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Friday it will also be 100 days since we started Don’t give up Ukraine!. No day to celebrate of course. Even not to commemorate. In these 100 days we gave voice to the experience of the war and reflected on what hit Ukraine and the world in such an unprecedented way.
Tonight we continue our conversation on Ukrainian literature which which we started last week with Iryna Starovoyt. With our guests Alena Muravska and Tobias Wals we focus on the question if Ukrainian literature has a recognizable voice and face which deserves to be heard outside Ukraine.
Tonight we shift our view to Ukrainian literature and poetry as a lens on Ukraine as a nation, the war, and Ukraine’s past and future. The crossroad of war, nation, victory, liberation and suffering has always been the dramatic background for some of the greatest works in literature and poetry.