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Recommended podcasts, articles, books, and more to help build understanding of Ukraine and her people, and the situation they find themselves in. Unfortunately, hardly anyone knew what Ukraine was until the 24th February 2022. For the war to be won and greater stability to return to all our lives, the country must be heard.
Free online course
Ukrainian Culture: Understanding the Culture and Its People. Free English-language online course created by Ukrainian Institute, Kyiv, in collaboration with EdEra. 10 lectures on art, values of Ukrainian society, food culture, and more.
Films, documentaries, and videos
BBC Panorama's reports on Ukraine: Putin's War in Ukraine (28 Feb '22), Ukraine's Resistance (21 March 22), Hunting War Criminals (23 May 22), Mariupol, The People's Story (8 Nov 22)
Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom – documentary on Netflix that shows how peaceful student protests in Kyiv, 2013, turned into a revolution against russian influence on the country, and fully fledged civil rights movement. Provides some context to the current motivation and extraordinary self-organisation of Ukrainians.
Channel 4 report from Paraic O'Brien on what the Ukrainians found when they de-occupied Kherson. Also: Gulliver Cragg and Denys Denysov's FRANCE 24 report from then newly de-occupied Balakliya.
russian Media Monitor. Translations from russian state TV by journalist Julia Davis. An insight into the warmongering and genocidal talk of the russians. Also: translation of a typical russian Telegram channel and interview with ordinary russians.
Podcasts
Explaining Ukraine Podcast. Listen to Ukrainians explain events in the war on their own terms in English. Hosted by Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko.
Timothy Snyder's “The Making of Modern Ukraine” Yale University Course – listen as a podcast or watch on Youtube. Snyder is a Yale professor and specialist on Central and Eastern European modern history, as well as leading historian of Ukraine. Snyder argues that Ukraine is at the centre of not just European history but world history: to understand what is going on in our world and why we are where we are, we need to understand Ukraine.
Books
Serhii Plokhy's The Gates of Europe – a short history of Ukraine from its ancient beginnings to modern day.
Articles
An overview of contemporary Ukrainian Literature from Vladislav Davidzon and Kate Tsurkan.
“Human Life Has No Value There”: Baltic Counterintelligence Officers Speak Candidly About Russian Cruelty – The Estonian weekly Eesti Ekspress interviewed the heads and several employees of Estonia’s, Latvia’s, and Lithuania’s state security agencies. This is what they had to say regarding russia.
“The New York Times Misses a Chance To Do Better in Ukraine”, from The Fix. On Western media and its view of Ukraine through a colonial lens. Plus: read this Twitter thread from prominent Ukrainian journalist Maksym Eristavi on his experience writing for Western media about his home country.
Arguments for why Ukraine cannot be pressured into a ceasefire but must fight on with the support of allies until russia has been repelled from the country from Eliot A. Cohen for The Atlantic and Eugene Finkel for the Los Angeles Times. Plus, Twitter threads from Anton Barbashin and from Edward H. Christie on what post-war russian capitulation will look like if russia is to be accepted back into the international community.
Blogs
Timothy Snyder Blog. Thoughts on Ukraine from Yale professor.
Ukrainian Art History. Learn about Ukrainian Art with Oksana Semenik, a Ukrainian journalist, and discover all the artists from Kazymyr Malevych to Vasyl Kandinsky whose Ukrainian heritage has been actively erased from contemporary Western knowledge: in galleries like MOMA and the Tate, they are listed as “russian”.
Documentation of life in Kyiv during blackouts this winter by Ukrainian academic Tymofiy Mylovanov. An insight into the light-less, water-less, and heat-less reality russia is plunging Ukrainians into with every missile strike.
Ukraine Explainers. Weekly lucid explainers on topics that are often misunderstood in the West, offering a Ukrainian perspective.