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Kate Tsurkan photo

Kate Tsurkan

Reporter

Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent and is partially supported by a generous grant from the Nadia Sophie Seiler Fund. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.

k.tsurkan@kyivindependent.com

Articles

The collage of the “The City” by Valerian Pidmohylnyi and the photo of Kyiv between approximately 1890 and 1900.
Culture

One of the greatest 20th century Ukrainian novels, now in English translation

by Kate Tsurkan
Overwhelmed by the buzzing nightlife of Khreshchatyk Street in central Kyiv, Stepan Radchenko, the despondent protagonist of Valerian Pidmohylnyi’s novel “The City,” looks up at the moon for solace and reminds himself: “The city must be conquered, not despised!” A defining novel of 20th-century Ukrainian literature, "The City" has now been brought to English-language readers by Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute in a fresh translation by Maxim Tarnawsky. The novel traces Radchenko's uneasy
Postmodern opera "Gaia-24," Act I - Arkan.
Culture

Art after apocalypse — opera spurred by Russia’s ecocide in Ukraine to return to Kyiv

by Kate Tsurkan
Editor's Note: The Kyiv Independent is a media partner of the "Gaia-24" performance on Nov. 27 in Kyiv. Even in the midst of Russia’s ecocide against Ukraine — where forests are scorched, rivers are poisoned, and crops are torn apart by shellfire — life refuses to end. Nature sends up green shoots through craters — and in the same spirit, art rises through grief. "Gaia-24," the opera inspired by Russia’s 2023 destruction of the Kakhovka Reservoir dam in Kherson Oblast, is set to make its retur
Photos

War up close: How Ukraine’s soldier-photographers document their fight

by Kate Tsurkan
As Ukraine marks Defenders Day on Oct. 1, the work of Ukrainian photographers turned soldiers reminds us that war is not just fought on the battlefield — it is also fought through bearing witness, preserving human experience, and documenting history. In honor of Defenders Day, the Kyiv Independent is highlighting the work of photographers Yevhen Borisovskyi, Roman Zakrevskyi, Dmytro Kuprian, and Oleg Petrasiuk while serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Photography on the front lines of Ukraine’s
Culture

Spies among us? Shaun Walker's new book details Russia’s decades-long international espionage program

by Kate Tsurkan
It could be a scene from a thriller — watching the FBI arrest your own parents for being Russian spies. But for Alexander and Timothy Vavilov, who had known their parents all their lives as Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, it was reality. Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, the real names of the boys’ parents, were two of the Russian sleeper agents apprehended in the U.S. in 2010 as part of the Illegals Program. Their arrest caused a media frenzy, sparking a renewed interest in Cold War–era
Culture

Russia revives Soviet answer to Eurovision in defiance of Western isolation

by Kate Tsurkan
Opening the 2025 Intervision Song Contest in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin framed the event as a celebration of unity through music. But the spectacle carried another message: Russia is unfazed by Western isolation. "Russia has always been, and remains, a country open to communication and constructive cooperation. We cherish our traditions and respect the traditions of others," Putin said in a pre-recorded speech shown to the contest, held on Sept. 20 — the same day at least two peop
Culture

‘I wanted to stand beside soldiers’ — Ai Weiwei on his trip to wartime Ukraine

by Kate Tsurkan
Amid the shadow of war, the world-renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has brought his first-ever exhibition to Kyiv. Commissioned by the non-profit platform RIBBON International, Ai’s installation is a site-specific response to the escalating wars threatening the world of today, and a testament to the possibilities of art in such times. Traveling beyond the Ukrainian capital, to the eastern city of Kharkiv and even the front lines, Ai has sought not only to witness the resilience of
United States

How the right wing in US, Europe is weaponizing murders of Ukrainian refugees

by Kate Tsurkan
Iryna Zarutska and her family fled Ukraine in 2022 to escape the threat of Russia’s full-scale war against her homeland, seeking safety and the promise of a new life in the United States. But that hope was shattered when she was brutally murdered in August on public transit in Charlotte, North Carolina. Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless man with a history of violent crime and mental health issues, was taken into custody shortly after the unprovoked attack and charged with first-degree murder. Lead
Culture

‘No fate but what we make’ — Ukrainians transform storm-destroyed Burning Man installation

by Kate Tsurkan
When a storm in Nevada destroyed a Ukrainian art installation at this year’s Burning Man festival, the Ukrainian team turned a setback into a symbol. Drawing on resilience forged in more than three years of Russia’s full-scale war, they created a new piece out of the remnants within days.   The original installation, “Black Cloud” — 15 meters high, 17 meters wide, and 30 meters long — was meant to symbolize the looming threat of a new world war. The warning comes as Russia, backed by a number
Culture

What Russia stole, these Crimean Tatar authors endeavor to reclaim with literature

by Kate Tsurkan
To much of the world, Crimea is mostly synonymous with the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine — once a precious Black Sea resort, the peninsula was seized at gunpoint in 2014 and transformed into a fortified military outpost. But behind the headlines of Russia’s ongoing occupation of Crimea is a deeper, often overlooked story: that of the Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of the peninsula, who have endured centuries of repression and now face yet another struggle for survival under Russi
Culture

We finally watched ‘Russians at War’ — it's worse than we thought

by Kate Tsurkan
“The majority of Ukrainian people hate Russians — but why, I just can’t understand," a young Russian infantry conscript who goes by the callsign Cartoon declares in the documentary “Russians at War.” Such moments come to define “Russians at War,” which Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova shot while embedded with Russian troops who invaded Ukraine, throughout its more than two-hour runtime — passing, seemingly innocent statements that accumulate into a larger ideological contour. The

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