Ukrainian Spaces

DISCLAIMER. This is a public version of the podcast. Our ⁠Patreon family⁠ gets the episodes much earlier, packaged with lots of bonus and backstage content. 

s3e6: Celebrated by some but used by others as an excuse to deny Ukrainians solidarity or even justify their mass murder. The topic of Ukrainian nationalism is divisive but, above all — profoundly confusing and unclear. That's why we called for help from the person who made an internationally-celebrated career on being an expert on Ukrainian identity without allowing her own biases to affect the research. Our featured Ukrainian is a scholar and author of 'The Zelensky Effect' Dr. Olga Onuch. 

DISCLAIMER. This is a public version of the podcast. Our ⁠Patreon family⁠ gets the episodes much earlier, packaged with lots of bonus and backstage content. 

s3e5: 'My mother tongue tastes like ashes. Things scorched by enemy fire, then soaked with rain, touched with rot, smelling of death. I felt the taste of my mother tongue most acutely while driving through Borodianka, Bucha, and Irpin two months after these Ukrainian towns in the Kyiv region were liberated by the Ukrainian army from the Russians’ “brotherly” embrace. Russian is my mother tongue, and liberation means ripping it out of my throat.'

There's so much talk about russian-speaking Ukrainians abroad. But how often have you heard actual russian-speaking Ukrainians being part of those conversations? It is rhetorical. The language issue is at the epicenter of understanding the Ukrainian decolonization journey. And Ukrainians who are or used to speak Russian as their first language are the most critical voices to explain it. We invite back Ukrainian scholar Sasha Dovzhyk to discuss her sensational essay 'Mother Tongue: The Story of a Ukrainian Language Convert' and share truths about russian-speaking Ukrainians with the rest of the world.

DISCLAIMER. This is a public version of the podcast. Our ⁠Patreon family⁠ gets the episodes much earlier, packaged with lots of bonus and backstage content. 

s3e4: During the latest mass pro-democracy protests in Sakartvelo-Georgia, you could see Ukrainian flags and hear 'Slava Ukraïni' everywhere. Why does Ukraine mean so much for Kartvelians-Georgians? This small Eastern European nation doesn't capture as many global headlines as Ukraine. But tightly bonded with Ukraine through centuries of shared history and by a shared colonial abuser, learning about Sakartvelo is crucial for your understanding of why Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine and why the empire will inevitably fall. For another bridge episode, we invited Nodar Rukhadze, a Georgian civil rights activist, journalist, and the founder of the Shame Movement, to educate us about his personal and Sakartvelo's decolonization struggle.

DISCLAIMER. This is a public version of the podcast. Our ⁠Patreon family⁠ gets these episodes much earlier, packaged with lots of bonus and backstage content. 

s3e3: 'There is no future for Ukrainian Jews if they want to go together with the Russian culture,' a Ukrainian Jewish activist ⁠Maria Gershova⁠ tells us. There's a massive identity evolution that most Ukrainians are going through amid this genocide. But also affects all other overlapping identities that we have. We meet Maria at a crucial period in her life - when she is decolonizing and figuring out what being Ukrainian means when you are also Jewish. Do both clash or contradict each other, considering the complicated and tragic history of the Jewish people in Ukraine? Maria has much to share with the rest of the world and fellow Jewish people globally. 

find #UkrainianSpaces on ⁠⁠ukrainianspaces.com⁠⁠ _ ⁠⁠twitter⁠⁠ _⁠⁠insta⁠⁠_

Val’s ⁠⁠twitter⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Insta⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠tiktoks⁠⁠

Maksym’s ⁠⁠twitter⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠insta⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠tiktoks⁠⁠

s3e2: thanks to our generous Patreon family, #UkrainianSpaces is back for season three. We felt big decolonization energy and tried something completely new - a live-audience show. This is part two of our podcast episode recorded in late February in Warsaw during our sold-out event featuring brilliant Ukrainians like:

Our Patreon family has exclusive access to the Q&A session recorded as a bonus podcast episode during this show - available through our Patreon page.

Слава Україні!

s3e1: Thanks to our generous Patreon family, #UkrainianSpaces is back for season three. For this one, we feel big decolonization energy and tried something completely new - a live-audience show. Recorded in late February in Warsaw, a sold-out event featured brilliant Ukrainians like:

Enjoy part one. This show reminds the world that:

Слава Україні!

s2e23: It has been the worst year for every Ukrainian. In a way, it also has been the best one. Those Ukrainians who survived it are transformed forever. Despite the trauma, pain, and heartbreak, they keep dreaming, creating, and daring. Millions of Ukrainian stories can inspire anyone to live in a better world and to be a better person. But for the season two finale, we decided to keep it within the close family, featuring 9 Ukrainians and how they withstood the darkest, coldest winter of our lives.

The episode features (in the order of appearance): Solomiya Petlyak, Mariam Naiem, Stas Olenchenko, Maria Buchelnikova, Romeo Kokriatski, Tetyana Denford (Bisyk), and Alice Zhuravel. 

s2e22: Russian-backed conspiracies about Ukraine and Ukrainians might appear bizarre, entertaining, or even funny. But every piece of anti-Ukrainian propaganda shared abroad, even accidentally or as a hate share, has a specific price in Ukrainian lives. That's why Ukrainians take fact-checking so seriously, and it is universally regarded as important as defending our freedom with actual weapons in the trenches. Mark Kaplan, our featured Ukrainian for this episode, might have a reputation as a funny journalist ridiculing Russian propaganda for a late-night show on Telebachennya Toronto. But he also developed one of the brightest and smartest understandings of how anti-Ukrainian disinformation gets picked up in the West and why it happens. 

s2e21: This is not Russia's first attempt to eradicate Ukrainians. This is not the first time fascism is trying to wipe an entire nation from the face of the Earth, either. Nevertheless, there has never been so much global unity when it comes to helping Ukrainians as today. But does it mean we are finally learning our 'never again' lessons? Let's do a quick rundown of things foreigners historically always get wrong about Ukraine and whether they are still mainstream. Our featured Ukrainian is Andrea Chalupa, a prominent Ukrainian-American journalist, author, and the person behind an absolute must-see Holodomor movie Mr. Jones. 

s2e20: When Ukrainians express discomfort by being pushed into a space with a Russian person without consent, some foreigners label it 'hatred' or 'russophobia.' When Ukrainians talk about Russian society's centuries-old patterns of serial abusive behavior towards their neighbors, we are dismissed as 'emotional' and 'hysterical.' Could it be just a lack of empathy or education? Lia Dostlieva, a Ukrainian artist, anthropologist, and our featured Ukrainian for this episode, wants you all to recognize in this attitude the old Western colonial tradition of marginalizing 'uncomfortable' voices. Together we decided to do a small workshop on talking and listening to Ukrainians without falling into colonial tropes.