One year since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Recommending four groups to donate to: 1. https://www.comebackalive.in.ua/home Come Back Alive or Back and Alive, a well-known and reliable group providing equipment to soldiers. They have been working for many years, before the scale of the war increased and the international community started paying attention.

2. https://voices.org.ua/en/ Voices of Children provides psychological and other aid to children affected by war. They have likewise been working with kids from war-affected Donbas even before 2022. They have a Patreon if you'd like to set up a monthly donation.

3. https://u24.gov.ua/ United 24, the official government platform raising funds for specific projects around the categories of military, medical, and reconstruction. Currently raffling off five signed Star Wars posters by Mark Hamill to donors until March 24th, in case you needed more incentive.

4. https://kyivpride.org/en/ Kyiv Pride fights for the rights of Ukrainian LGBTQ+ people, and if there's anything that annoys Putin more than Ukrainians or LGBTQ+ people, it's Ukrainian LGBTQ+ people. Included on the basis of both queer solidarity and annoying the hell out of that homophobic warmonger.

“why can’t ukraine just give some land to russia?” 20 days in mariupol is on youtube! hope this helps. 😊

link here

“why can’t ukraine just give some land to russia?” 20 days in mariupol is on youtube! hope this helps. 😊

link here

Ukraine's vast forests devastated in hellscape of war

"All that remains of many forests in eastern Ukraine are fields of stripped, broken trunks. Local wildlife, including deer, boars and woodpeckers, have been badly affected by the loss of habitats, the experts said, although it is currently hard to gauge biodiversity loss in forests.

In northern Ukraine’s Chornobyl nature reserve, the pre-war population of over 100 Przewalski's horses - a globally endangered species of wild horse - has been hit hard by the conflict, according to Oleh Lystopad, an ecologist with the ANTS advocacy group who said landmines were making it difficult to extinguish fires.

“Right now, it’s in question to what extent this species can continue to exist there,” Lystopad said."

Tablecloth, 1976, Maria Prymachenko

Medium: gouache,paper

'Consumer passion can steal the soul'

Soviet poster warning against the dangers of consumerism (1983). Artwork by B. Rezanov.

It's actually funny because the Party members at the top and the big wigs running stuff like kolkhozes and factories (same thing really) had A LOT more than this poster shows. It was a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of situation.

Exactly. While the top of the party was living their best lives, ordinary people were standing in lines to get deficit products and party convinced them that that's normal way of life. "Luxury" products that were hard to find included any household appliance, food (meat, sugar, milk, fish, butter, anything), clothes and shoes (not in a "I want to buy 10th jacket and I can't" way, but in a "I need new underwear, but there's none in stores" way), furniture, wtuff for kids. Oranges and bananas were luxury. More than 2 pairs of shoes were luxury. Tights, wallpaper, soap, coffee, condoms, perfumes were luxury. You had to "know a guy" to get something you need.

The generational trauma around new stuff and money and never allowing yourself to buy something is still alive and well, everyone in post-soviet country has a grandma that doesn't allows herself anything good and is putting away every nice thing she is gifted just to preserve it (and most likely won't use that stuff in her lifetime). Everyone has a grandpa that will rather use unusable broken stuff before he buys something new. To the point of completely flat sponges, because "How can I throw it away, I know I have new ones, but I need to save this one", chipped dishes, weird relationship with food, clothes and shoes that are falling apart. And while you guys see it as a "Yasss underconsumption core", I see it as "I wish life was easier on our grandparents and they got to live instead of survive with what they were given".

The underconsumption thing! This never gets talked about. It's like zero waste and upcycling before they got cool/gentrified and often (case in point: my entire family) mutated into hoarding. And people were sick of it and were desperate to shed this way of living on scraps and broken things kept for "the day they'll finally come in handy" and hand-me-downs their entire lives, so the moment communism fell and free market capitalism entered, they swung the other way to wanton, shiny-goods overconsumption. I hate that but it is a trauma response, like gorging yourself on food after being starved. It's in full tilt now, people buy new and shiny and throw away not that old and still PERFECTLY WORKING stuff. I honestly wish the pendulum would quiet down already.

You'll say "awh but dads in the west always have this one hoarding shed". Yeah, well, this is best explained on the neurodivergent website with the "everyone is a little ADHD" meme. Hoarding here was UBIQUITOUS.

But it's all for a reason. The poverty mindset was... immense. Like, keeping chocolate WRAPPERS from Yugoslavian chocolates from the sixties to this day because they were cool and shiny and rare and valuable. Or like my (German but married here) great-grandma keeping, washing and reusing her friend's single-use stockings which the friend discarded when she visited from West Germany (I'm not going to tell you how hard THAT was to arrange). So, whereas modern upcycling comes from fancy shmancy trends and eco virtue signaling, ours comes from poverty trauma.

Grandmas having sets of tea cups only to display them on the shelves and never even imagining actually using them to drink tea. Instead, the cups they use are old and often chipped. Accidentally breaking one is almost a criminal offense.

My grandparents' neighbour once stepped on a nail, and it went all the way through his foot. And he was way more upset about the damage to his boot than to his foot. The injury will heal, he said, but where will I get new boots?

"This suit is priceless! So-and-so brought it all the way from Yugoslavia!"

"See this coat in this photo? We had to pull all our connections, so that so-and-so bought it for us in Vienna".

Even within the USSR, the situation was wildly uneven. When my mum was a kid in the 1970s, in what was then Ukrainian SSR, she and some relatives went to see some distant family in Vilnius (then Lithuanian SSR). Before the trip, all their neighbours made orders for what to buy. A coat for one person, a jacket for someone else, shoes nice enough to hopefully be buried in (but not to actually wear them in life, of course, that would be an excessive luxury), at least one (1) orange so that someone's kids could at least see what it looks like, etc. A lot of orders for food items, at least something, at least for the kids.

All while party officials and upper management of enterprises lived in a completely different world.

They sure did give Zelenskyy a schnoz, considering he has a very regularly sized nose in proportion to his face.

"Putin (is a) dick" from polish football team Legia Warszawa's fans in Warsaw, Poland, 25.02.2022

Still learning acrylics. A skull surrounded by Ukrainian patterns utilizing Zorn palette.

Селяни прямують на косіння сіна, 1929 рік.

Peasants with scythes, 1929

I will never understand the constant hesitation and back and forth bullshit from other countries when it comes to helping Ukraine not be completely fucked over by Russia.

Like Russia is out here getting help and weaponry from other dictatorship nations, be it getting missiles from the Iranian regime or drones from China to literally having help from North Korea in terms of actual having North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine on fucking Ukrainian soil.

But you still got either the U.S and the rest of Western Europe that are still hesitant when comes to giving advanced weaponry to Ukraine and letting them strike back and win this war.

I don’t get it, like do ya'll other countries want Ukraine to win this war or not. Or have Russia/Putin and the rest of these dictatorship nations have a field day fucking up everything in terms of global security in the next couple of decades because they see weakness in Europe and the rest of the West due to the refusal to stand up against tyrannical dictators and stand up for democratic values.

Ukraine is out here seriously trying there all to not have their country be fucked by a authoritarian regime and fighting for their survival and freedom and fighting for Europe security as well.

Yet you got European countries and certain people that are still 'whatever' when it comes to Russia imperialist invasion bullshit and still act like what's Russia is trying to do is still "No Big Deal".

Veronika Kozhushko, young Ukrainian artist, was killed today by russia. This is her last drawing.

this is the art of nika kozhushko, an 18 year old ukranian artist from kharkiv. she was killed by russia yesterday.

by Francisco Seco

Two woman stand next to Ukrainian flags placed in memory of civilians killed during the war at the Independence square in central Kyiv, Thursday, October 20, 2022.

Nothing that the Russians say or do on their television and social media can trigger and frustrate a Ukrainian more than the attitude of the Western world towards the Russians.

I read the morning news and see that Jared Leto on his show in Serbia happily told his Russian fans that he'll come to Russia and Ukraine when these "problems" are over. I go on tumblr and see people I follow reblogging a post about Discord being blocked in Russia, and instructions on how to use the VPN as if literally all Russians don't know it already. This post has over 2k notes! A post about atrocities that Russians willingly commit in Ukraine on a daily basis will get you 60-100 notes, 95% of which will be from other Ukrainians.

This is beyond triggering. How do you live in this Russian-loving world with Russian-induced PTSD?

This is not a "Ukrainian crisis", not "temporary difficulties", not just a "problem" that can go away without a trace. It's an invasion, a Russian war against Ukraine, genocide of Ukrainians. We are not crazy and overdramatic, we see the true face of Russia. The one you will never be able to see through your red square glasses.

That discord post has already more than 10k notes within the span of two days with people: "poor uwu russians do nothing wrong." Not a single post with links helping Ukraine have or will have such amount of notes, attention, and sympathy.

I didn't mention this in my original post, but Discord is/was a primary messenger used by the Russian invaders in Ukraine. Which is why when it was blocked Russian military bloggers started crying that Russia was shooting itself in the foot.

—Oleksandr, engineer and local drone manufacturer in Kherson

Source: ‘Human safari’ – Kherson civilians hunted down by Russian drones