When history is being made, you focus on the mundane details, such as the snow that swirled down on election day in Kyiv. At the local voting precinct, the first representatives of the electorate to...
As a holiday gift to myself and readers, I sat down recently to speak to my friend, translator, and Ukrainian feminist, Maria Dmytrieva, who's famous as Mary Xmas in LiveJournal circles. What follows...
Kyiv's Gogolfest has both grown and remained distinctly itself - not the easiest feat to pull off. Combining theater, music, visual art and workshops, the festival is the brainchild of Vlad Troitsky,...
The face of anti-GLBT activism in Ukraine is not necessarily what you'd expect it to be. In my case, I expected something resembling a bearded preacher with a fiery stare and little gobs of spit...
When I first started hearing about FEMEN, a Ukrainian women's organization, I got the impression of a curious hybrid between short skirts and progressive politics - an aggressively visual movement...
I was in a downtown Kyiv coffee shop the other day, quietly tapping away on my laptop, drinking tea and (not) minding my own business, when I overheard the same conversation you can hear almost...
This may seem like an odd question to ask in the aftermath of the murder of Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, but please bear with me. The mainstream of Russian society is, I would...
Back when the Soviet Union was crashing around our ears, Michael Jackson was cool. I distinctly remember when, as a pre-schooler, I enraged my parents by refusing to get out of the car mid-song. It...
Already, much of the outside coverage of the upcoming Ukrainian presidential election, scheduled for January 17 2010, has boiled down to the absurd notion that "pro-Western" and "pro-Russia" forces...
Please note that the full version of this particular column is hosted at ArabComment. The regular column will return later this month. When I first met Rana Husseini, I was struck by how forthright...
