Culture

The Hidden Canon: Discover Ukrainian literary classics

A Kyiv Independent project backed by the Ukrainian Institute

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A pair of soldiers stand back-to-back as they hold their rifles in an undated photo.
Culture

Ukraine's wartime action thriller 'Killhouse' reaches global audience on Netflix

by Kate Tsurkan

Ukraine's new action film "Killhouse" is set to reach a global audience, hitting the Netflix streaming platform on June 26 in Ukraine, with international distribution planned for autumn. Few scenes hit as hard in "Killhouse" as when Ukrainian soldiers decide to launch a high-risk mission to rescue a near-death civilian from the gray zone, a territory sandwiched between Ukrainian and Russian lines. In the film, the Russian commander watching them from his position assumes that the civilian bein

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Thanks to Ukraine's new strategy, Russia's grip on Crimea is crumbling

The past month has seen an entire string of successes in Ukraine's war against Russia, with both long-range attacks and swarms of drone strikes slowly turning the tide in Kyiv's favor. Few things, though, have been as successful as Ukraine's efforts to isolate the occupied region of Crimea, forcing Russian authorities to declare a state of emergency as Kyiv continues to bombard the peninsula. The successes, however, haven't been only military. In its months-long campaign to strangle Russia’s h

Buryatia shows what happens when Russia runs out of volunteers

Nikita Malyshev signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry on April 8, the day after his 18th birthday. A little more than two months later, he was dead, becoming the youngest known Russian serviceman killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Malyshev came from Buryatia, a remote Russian republic in eastern Siberia that has supplied some of the highest numbers of contract soldiers and suffered some of the highest losses of any region since the start of the full-scale invasion. Days afte

​​Inside the Zelensky-Fedorov stalemate: Neither side is ready to yield

President Volodymyr Zelensky and former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov remain locked in a political standoff, with neither side willing to compromise as protests over the minister’s dismissal pause for three days, people familiar with the matter told the Kyiv Independent. Days after thousands of people rallied against Fedorov's dismissal, both camps remain committed to their maximalist positions. Zelensky is prepared to replace Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi in an attempt to defuse pu

Ukraine passes IMF's first review of new $15 billion program

The Washington-based lender called Ukraine's performance "broadly satisfactory" in a press release announcing its approval, but emphasized that several conditions of the program were either completed with a delay or missed entirely.

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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While Ukraine intensifies its campaign against Russian military infrastructure in occupied Crimea, underground resistance has been spreading behind Russian lines. As hope of Crimea's eventual liberation increases among Ukrainians there, so does the number of volunteers eager to bring Ukraine's victory closer. The Resistance Movement within Ukraine's Special Operations Forces (SOF) told the Kyiv Independent the number of people contacting it through secure channels increased after successful att

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