Culture

Looking for the 10 best Ukraine-related books of 2025? We’ve got you
Culture

Looking for the 10 best Ukraine-related books of 2025? We’ve got you

by Kate Tsurkan

The year 2025 brought us more books about and from Ukraine that carry an inescapable heaviness, with war present on almost every page. Lives once shaped by literary ambitions continue to be cut short on the battlefield or under bombardment. Yet, thanks to the devotion of translators, publishers, and a growing audience of readers who refuse to look away, these voices keep traveling outward. They insist on being heard. From the first days of the full-scale invasion, one imperative has remained co

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Court chief comments on political pressure amid unprecedented challenges for anti-corruption institutions

Few decision makers are interested in making the High Anti-Corruption Court actually work, Vira Mykhailenko, the court's head, said in an interview with the Kyiv Independent. Set up in 2019 as part of a Western-backed reform, the court was designed to rule on cases brought by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). The three institutions were created from scratch to fight top-level corruption instead of traditional courts and l

Vira Mykhailenko, head of Ukraine’s Supreme Anti-Corruption Court in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 31, 2025.

Rediscovering Ukraine’s literary heritage: Ukrainian Institute and Kyiv Independent launch 'The Hidden Canon'

At the initiative of the Ukrainian Institute, the Kyiv Independent announces the launch of "The Hidden Canon: Ukraine's Literary Iconoclasts," a new series celebrating Ukrainian classic literature with the goal of bringing it to a wider international audience. For many readers outside Ukraine, the country's classic literature remains largely untranslated and therefore unfamiliar, often overlooked due to historical and imperial pressures. Yet Ukrainian literature is defined not by silence, but b

About Culture

Our reporting on literature, films, art, and traditions from Ukraine and the latest news on culture in Eastern Europe.

Ukrainian culture
Ukrainian culture has survived centuries of Russian attempts to appropriate Ukrainian art, silence Ukrainian artists, and erase the Ukrainian language. Modern Ukrainian writers, filmmakers, and musicians — some of whom are serving on the front lines — continue to develop Ukrainian culture and fight for Ukraine’s future.

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Just last year, the battlefield in Ukraine was most dangerous when the shooting started. Now it is often the moments before and after, when soldiers change positions under the eyes of prowling drones. For two Ukrainian soldiers — Oleksandr Tishaiev and Oleksandr Aliksieienko — this modern battlefield reality turned what should have been a relatively routine month-long deployment, into a gruelling 165-day battle against not only Russian forces but also starvation, dehydration, and insanity. "We

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