Shattered and galvanized
Ukrainian war photographer Julia Kochetova recently wrote on her Instagram: “I hope the war ends before my heart does.” It’s a simple and elegant statement. Like a slap across the face. Both...
Author: Natalia Antonova
Natalia Antonova is a DC-based writer and editor
Cosplaying as a cool guy in a post-apocalyptic wasteland
When it comes to the aesthetics of the apocalypse, human beings have always dreamed vividly about the end of the world. I like to think that this is because we are a world unto ourselves. Awareness...
Fretting my way to hope
All of the tolerable jokes about Chinese spy balloons have already been made. I don’t have any new ones. What I do have is a strange sense of unease. Several people whom I trust and respect predict...
Santos: funny until he’s not
I am catastrophically bad at lying. It’s why I could never be a spy (no matter what awful men with strange fantasies say about me online), or work in politics for that matter. Having said that,...
A fearsome thing
My son has a friend who was forced to leave the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with his family last year. My son’s friend is a serious and studious boy, the kind of child able to excel even in a...
Ukrainian resolve vs. the Russian death cult
This week, the journalist Lauren Wolfe published an article in Foreign Policy about how Russian leadership is afraid of “psychic attacks” from the West. Lauren spoke to me for the article and it...
Zelensky is an ordinary hero
Years ago, when I was in college, a couple of friends of mine ran into Volodymyr Zelensky when buying alcohol for one of our parties, outside of a big supermarket in downtown Kyiv, not far from where...
Gothic heroes
“The whole universe. Alive. And me, a part of it.” So says a dying old man right before he draws his final breath. There are many things to be said about the adaptation of Sarah Perry’s “The...
This country changed me
It’s Thanksgiving week in the United States again, and this year I’m really grateful to be thoroughly in love with this country. It’s not the world’s most ideal relationship and, as the man...
The persistent illusion
Studying the Apocalypse in history and literature is an integral part of staying sane. We are worlds unto ourselves, which is why the world is always ending. The Quran probably explains it best when...