ChiiAka

Tonight (24.05.2026) russia attacked my city (Kyiv, Ukraine) with drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. It's not anything unusual, and lately we've been getting better at deflecting these attacks, but not tonight. Due to the lack of defense weaponry, my city suffered a lot of damage. The worst damaged area – my neighborhood, Lukyanivka.

My neighborhood is famous for several things, among them is the first McDonald's in my country, an old farmers' market and a fine mall right by the subway station. Almost all of these things got destroyed tonight by ballistic missiles:

The mall:

The market:

The station suffered minor damages, but the smoke and dust from the explosions got underground to the people using the station as a shelter. They had to be evacuated to the nearest station to prevent suffocation or poisoning. I've experienced this before, you really feel like the whole 80 meters of earth above your head are going to cave in at any moment.

By the sheer force of luck me and my family happened to be outside of the city. We heard the missiles passing by and exploding in Kyiv. The explosions were so loud, we heard them clearly even being 50+ kms away from the city!

If we were home during the attack, we would have gone to the neighboring underground parking lot. One of missiles fell right outside of our neighboring building, the one with the parking lot. It shattered glass in several buildings around it, the explosion wave hitting my building as well. Some of my neighbors lost their windows as well from the explosion wave.

I am devastated to say the least. It doesn't feel real to see your home gone. Everything I grew up with, places I frequented with the people no longer with us, they're gone. I know we'll rebuild, but I can't shake off the guilt for not being here for my home.

Everything we knew in that town all our lives has pretty much ceased to exist - and, mind you, the town is not on the frontline. Nothing there has been destroyed, it's just been under occupation since 2014. Now our industrial bakery, meat processing plant, and coking plant - they all have stopped production under the glorious russian governance. Our steel mill - the main town employer (it's a monotown, everything is dependent on that mill) - has been put on "hot conservation," which basically means it's kept operational but produces nothing.

She says at all the border checkpoints (and there still is a border between the "DPR" and russia, despite them proclaiming it a part of russia in 2022), they check everyone's phones. Every phone has spyware on it, and every conversation is being listened to. She says sometimes she'll be talking to my father on the phone and then hear other voices commenting on what she has said, or just chatting in the background. I can't tell you if it's true or not, but I believe her.

Today, Ukrainians all around the world wear their vyshyvankas in celebration of our culture's perseverance! Before you ask, yes, you can wear a vyshyvanka, too! Though it would be best if you could buy it from a Ukrainian manufacturer.

And here's is mine!

this morning they shelled a vet clinic in kyiv, killing all the animals inside

yesterday my dad called me all worried bc our cats hadn't come home since russians had been shelling my city the whole day yesterday, non-stop

thankfully the cats came home during the call, the missile strikes haven't stopped tho, and more and more news of dead and injured all over the city and country are coming in

if so, u should check out the teaser linked below for the upcoming project called "not long before". the story is set in 2010, Donbas region, in a fictional city called Solyansk. This project aims to show the east of Ukraine in its full glory and colours; to culturaly deoccupy this region's history, make it alive and whole again; to show how life there was like before the invasion. and to just portray the beauty of Donbas, of it's people and their life not long before.

btw it also has a variety of subtitles in different languages.

The commissioner of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale is Anastasia Karneeva, the daughter of Nikolai Volobuyev, head of the Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec and a former general of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Earlier, on March 2, Russia’s representative for international cultural exchanges and former Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy confirmed to ArtNews that the Russian pavilion will open in May 2026:

“I would like to note that Russia has never left the Venice Biennale. The very presence of our pavilion — regardless of what happens there, whether it is exhibitions by our Latin American friends or the placement of an educational center for the entire Biennale — means the presence of our country in the cultural space of Venice. Therefore, since we never went anywhere, we are not ‘returning.’ We are simply looking for new forms of creative activity under the current circumstances.”

He added that Russia’s participation in the Biennale confirms that Russian culture is not isolated, and that “attempts to isolate it, carried out by Western political elites over the past four years, have been unsuccessful.”

Please sign and share the petition so that pro-government Russian cultural figures can not whitewash Russia’s crimes on the international stage by pretending Russian culture is outside politics and the invasion: