Read all posts for ‘ukraine’

On weekends I often wander around a local flea market in Kyiv. I rarely buy anything but I love examining all the stuff people decide to get rid of to earn a bit of cash. Last weekend I noticed one woman who apparently had brought her tableware to market! I picked […]

  Valentyna is in her 70s. She sells used books on the street right under an old rusty fence. I come closer and pick up an extremely old copy of Boccaccio’s “Decameron”. She doesn’t mind a bit of a chat with me and says that she has been in this […]

“You see a semi-human being before you, what the state has turned me into,” – says Vladimir Vladykin in his shocking Youtube video. “I’ve had a 180 EUR disability pension since 2005, and in 2010 the ruling party cut it down to 64 EUR. They don’t need us alive – […]

10-year old Dayana went out onto a balcony which suddenly collapsed. Her blood splattered all over the yard of the “Youth” tuberculosis sanatorium in Simeyz (on Ukraine’s Сrimean peninsula). After five hours of struggle, the doctors declared her dead. Sounds like a cut from a horror movie, doesn’t it? But […]

Sasha and I were colleagues in university. He was a mediocre student. After graduation I didn’t manage to find any work paying more than 30 euro a month. So I started my “career” as a clerk in a music shop. One day Sasha dropped by and said he was going […]