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Society

The ghosts in the dead city

It in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, in the dead city, that the "stalkers" pass by the days, a term which describes members of roughly organized groups which have become increasingly numerous among young Ukrainians, especially in Kiev.

Society

Chernobyl: the zone

It in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, in the dead city, that the "stalkers" pass by the days, a term which describes members of roughly organized groups which have become increasingly numerous among young Ukrainians, especially in Kiev.

Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky (LaPresse)
Politics

Ukraine’s Profane Comedy

Ukrainians have chosen a comedian to lead them. But the new president, elected amid promises of draining the swamp, may soon discover that swamp water is the lymph and blood of Ukrainian political culture. In late April, five years after...

Politics

For Zelensky, the Hard Work Starts Now

In a campaign that upended the established political system, gags came easy for Ukraine’s president-elect. He is, after all, a comedian. But as Volodymyr Zelensky looks beyond his momentus election victory, he’ll know punchline prowess stands for little. Beset with...

Reportage / Politics

Anarcho Kyiv

One cold night last month in a run down district of Kyiv, far from the glitz of the city centre, a group of anarchists were plotting to drop a political banner over a road bridge. I was stood waiting below....

War

Under Ukrainian Bombings

At around nine in the evening, we put on our helmets and bullet proof vests to go out on patrol towards the remaining trenches. The route is very short. We walk in pitch black, tripping over the rubble, taking the dug-out path in single file. We hear the bullets whistling past our heads while the militiamen next to us repeatedly recite their litany. “No lights, sniper, no lights”. We reach a sort of observatory, on the first floor of a rundown building. The scene we are faced with is both wonderful and terrifying: the entire horizon before us is lit up to daylight by endless bursts of lightning. They look like fireworks but obviously they are something else: a blazing shower of bombs falling ceaselessly on the tragically torn area of Donbass .When at war, the black of night is a strange travelling companion. Soldiers love darkness because it protects them from enemy eyes. But at the same time they fear it: anything can surface from obscurity, and in general it is nothing good.  The blackness was unexpectedly slashed open at fourteen minutes past ten at night, as we sat at the garrison desk, interviewing one of the militiamen. All of a sudden the air was pierced by an extremely powerful hiss. We saw the face of the boy opposite us distorted into an indescribable grimace of terror.  We jumped to our feet and lunged over the bunker threshold. As we toppled down the concrete stairs, an unimaginable blast pounded our ears. The air moved bringing with it a powerful shower of incandescent shrapnel.

Reportage / Environment

The ghosts in the dead city

They are called “stalkers” and they are the inhabitants of the dead city. April 26th 1986: reactor number 4 of the Lenin nuclear power plant exploded in Chernobyl. The radioactive nightmare overwhelmed Europe and made the world tremor. A 2,600-squared-kilometer...

Reportage / War

Ukraine, what lies beneath

Who was the responsible for the massacre of more than 80 policemen and demonstrators in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the independence square of Kiev, heart and symbol – until that February 20th 2014 – of the demonstrations in favor of the agreement...

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