Notes and Essays -- John Brown

They Kyiv Independent Editor-in-Chief Olga Rudenko Dear reader, This is Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent. Feb. 24 is a day of change for every Ukrainian. It’s the day when all of us in Ukraine passed through a singular transformation that changed us profoundly. Everyone in Ukraine has a story that is special to them and that they have retold many times: It’s a story of where they were on the morning of Feb. 24, 2022. I’ve heard many variations of this story. A very common one is jumping out of bed from the sound of explosions. Others were woken up by panicky phone calls from their family or friends. I never tire of listening to these retellings. I’ve heard my friends’ stories many times, and have shared mine over and over. I think we do it because we are still catching up with how much that day changed us. It was a singular experience, and it has, in a way, forever made us different. There are people who have been woken by war, and people who have not. I didn’t ha...

Timofey Vorobyov  ·  Follow lives in Lviv, Ukraine  Updated Dec 22 Are Ethnic Russians indigenous to the Eastern Ukraine? No. Same as to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The ethnic Russian majority in the East of Ukraine (correction: ethnic Russians have a majority only and specifically in several big industrial cities of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, not overall) is a direct result of the Russian Imperial and, to a larger degree, Soviet colonization policies, mainly: Holodomor, which effectively worked as an ethnic cleansing there.  Once a large part of the indigenous Ukrainian population was starved to death, outright killed or deported to Siberia for refusing to join the collective farms, they were replaced by ethnic Russians from the poorest areas of Russia. Russification.  Not only ethnic Ukrainians were coerced or stimulated to speak Russian, but ethnic Russians were summoned to work as teachers, middle management, military, police and other important po...

By David French, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times ,  Feb. 26, 2026,  5:06 a.m. ET Credit... [image by George Douglas ] You’re reading the David French newsletter.   Reflections on law and culture, war and peace, and the deeper trends that define and divide America.  Get it sent to your inbox. Four long years. That’s how long Ukraine has been fighting for its life against Russia. The sheer scale and ferocity of the conflict is hard for us to comprehend. Russia has lost a staggering number of men.  The Economist estimates  that total Russian casualties number between 1.1 and 1.4 million .  Between 230,000 and 430,000 Russians have died. That’s one in 25 Russian men between the ages of 18 and 49 who’ve probably been killed or seriously wounded since the war began. Ukrainian losses have been far less severe in absolute numbers, but worse as a percentage of the population. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that Ukraine h...