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U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the new pope and leader of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, taking the name Pope Leo XIV, a senior cardinal announced on May 8 to crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, according to Vatican News.

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The Kyiv Independent’s Chris York sat down with author, historian, and Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9, which mark the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II, are one of the country’s biggest public events of the year. President of the Ukrainian Society of Switzerland Andrej Lushnycky who sheds some light on the things Putin would rather you didn’t know about World War II.

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Museum and home of famous Ukrainian painter flooded

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The home of famed Ukrainian painter Polina Raiko is under water as a result of the Kakhovka dam destruction, the project manager of the Polina Raiko Kherson Oblast Charitable Foundation Semen Khramtsov reported on Facebook.

Khramtsov announced on June 7 that  Raiko's home-turned-museum was completely flooded but that the employees of the museum were safe. He added that food, medecine, and water are needed.

The home is located in the city of Oleshky which has faced particularly high flood waters.

Polina Raiko was a self-taught painter and an important figure in Ukrainian naïve artistry. She began painting at the age of 69.  In six years, she covered her house in frescoes, including the gate, garage doors, and fence, as well as the gravestones of her relatives.

Raiko passed away in 2004 at the age of 75 but her home became a museum and a national cultural monument of Ukraine. Polina Raiko Kherson Oblast Charitable Foundation was created in the same year.

‘They are destroying us.’ People plea to escape flooded Russian-occupied areas
Editor’s note: For this story, we spoke to people living or having family in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. For their safety, they are identified by first name only. After destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam and stranding thousands of Ukrainians in the catastrophic flood zone, Russians prevent…
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Rachel Amran

News Editor

Rachel Amran is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked on the Europe and Central Asia team of Human Rights Watch investigating war crimes in Ukraine. Rachel holds a master's degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Regional Studies from Columbia University.

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