UAV2025
Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
I took this photograph in 2013, in my grandparents’ apartment in the city of Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region, South Ukranie. The city of my birth, the city of my childhood. A city I will never see again.
Usually, our parents brought my brother and me here for the summer holidays, but that time I came on my own.
The moon often looked into the window of our bedroom, keeping me awake on hot summer nights. On such nights I usually dreamed about the future, imagined it, imagined myself in 10–20 years, who I would become and what my life would be like.
Sometimes I looked at the glowing windows of the houses standing some distance away across the street and imagined what their residents were doing at that moment, who they were, whether they were happy or sad, what they were thinking and dreaming about.
What I could never have imagined was that a terrible war would break out in my country, that the home of my childhood and the cemetery with the graves of my ancestors would end up under occupation. This is quite a surreal picture for the 21st century.
In the coming days and weeks, Ukraine, and Kyiv in particular, will face intense missile and drone strikes aimed at destroying the remnants of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which was only barely restored with great effort after similar attacks in 2023 and 2024.
This time, the Russians will most likely go further: in addition to thermal power plants and transformer substations, they may also destroy gas storage facilities, and perhaps even damage Ukrainian nuclear power plants, plunging Ukraine back into the 19th century (or worse).
Thus, I may once again disappear for a long time, as I will have neither electricity nor Internet (or will be forced to strictly ration the charge of my phone or the occasionally available Internet). One can only hope for a warm winter (the previous ones were relatively mild) and for some kind of miracle that will suddenly happen and save Ukraine from complete collapse, destruction, and disintegration.
I don’t believe in miracles; my mood is now consistently pessimistic and depressive, both regarding the fate of the Ukrainian people (and my own fate in particular), and what will happen on the planet in the next 10 years. In fact, right now, at the cost of Ukrainian lives, the West is trying to buy time. But I don’t see that the West is really preparing for anything.
Yesterday, I read in the news a statement by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, saying that Germany is not ready for war. Then I checked Germany’s population (98 million as of 2024) and its GDP ($4.66 trillion, which is twice that of Russia). In Ukraine, at best, 25 million people live now (and we have already lost over 1.5 million killed, maimed, captured, or missing), and the GDP is only $190 billion (while the national debt has already exceeded this figure — we are, in fact, a bankrupt country).
Ursula von der Leyen once again repeated her mantra that Ukraine is to be turned into an “iron hedgehog.” But we are not hedgehogs. We are people. And we want peace. If the European Union does not want to fight and cannot really help Ukraine with its armies and weapons, then just stop disrupting the peace process! Stop the hypocrisy, stop buying Russian energy (some states buy oil and gas directly, others do it through various schemes, but they continue to do this).
This is my cry of the soul toward European politicians — globalists (primarily British, German, and French).
As for Donald Trump and the position of the U.S. government — I hope they have the strength and ability to reach an agreement with the countries of the “Global South” to end the war in Ukraine and prevent the next, more global conflict associated with the re-creation of a bipolar world (only now instead of the USSR, the leading force in the “non-democratic bloc” will be China).
At the moment, from my perspective, Trump is not succeeding. And as for Ukraine, he seems simply tired of it, dreaming of shifting the responsibility onto the European “Coalition of the willing but incapable” (as we joke in Ukraine) and forgetting about it like a bad nightmare. But that isn’t working for him either.
Regarding the position of the Ukrainian authorities and my attitude toward them — I will not say anything, since I could be repressed for that. I believe that in Ukraine the question of holding democratic free elections is long overdue. That would change a lot. Two-thirds of Ukrainians, according to the latest Gallup polls, want this horrible, insane war to stop.
So, those are my thoughts. To anyone who read to the end — thank you. I hope we will meet here again. And I wish all good people kindness, peace, and prosperity. See ya! Glory to Ukraine, glory to fallen heroes and to those, who is still holding it.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
I took this photograph in 2013, in my grandparents’ apartment in the city of Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region, South Ukranie. The city of my birth, the city of my childhood. A city I will never see again.
Usually, our parents brought my brother and me here for the summer holidays, but that time I came on my own.
The moon often looked into the window of our bedroom, keeping me awake on hot summer nights. On such nights I usually dreamed about the future, imagined it, imagined myself in 10–20 years, who I would become and what my life would be like.
Sometimes I looked at the glowing windows of the houses standing some distance away across the street and imagined what their residents were doing at that moment, who they were, whether they were happy or sad, what they were thinking and dreaming about.
What I could never have imagined was that a terrible war would break out in my country, that the home of my childhood and the cemetery with the graves of my ancestors would end up under occupation. This is quite a surreal picture for the 21st century.
In the coming days and weeks, Ukraine, and Kyiv in particular, will face intense missile and drone strikes aimed at destroying the remnants of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which was only barely restored with great effort after similar attacks in 2023 and 2024.
This time, the Russians will most likely go further: in addition to thermal power plants and transformer substations, they may also destroy gas storage facilities, and perhaps even damage Ukrainian nuclear power plants, plunging Ukraine back into the 19th century (or worse).
Thus, I may once again disappear for a long time, as I will have neither electricity nor Internet (or will be forced to strictly ration the charge of my phone or the occasionally available Internet). One can only hope for a warm winter (the previous ones were relatively mild) and for some kind of miracle that will suddenly happen and save Ukraine from complete collapse, destruction, and disintegration.
I don’t believe in miracles; my mood is now consistently pessimistic and depressive, both regarding the fate of the Ukrainian people (and my own fate in particular), and what will happen on the planet in the next 10 years. In fact, right now, at the cost of Ukrainian lives, the West is trying to buy time. But I don’t see that the West is really preparing for anything.
Yesterday, I read in the news a statement by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, saying that Germany is not ready for war. Then I checked Germany’s population (98 million as of 2024) and its GDP ($4.66 trillion, which is twice that of Russia). In Ukraine, at best, 25 million people live now (and we have already lost over 1.5 million killed, maimed, captured, or missing), and the GDP is only $190 billion (while the national debt has already exceeded this figure — we are, in fact, a bankrupt country).
Ursula von der Leyen once again repeated her mantra that Ukraine is to be turned into an “iron hedgehog.” But we are not hedgehogs. We are people. And we want peace. If the European Union does not want to fight and cannot really help Ukraine with its armies and weapons, then just stop disrupting the peace process! Stop the hypocrisy, stop buying Russian energy (some states buy oil and gas directly, others do it through various schemes, but they continue to do this).
This is my cry of the soul toward European politicians — globalists (primarily British, German, and French).
As for Donald Trump and the position of the U.S. government — I hope they have the strength and ability to reach an agreement with the countries of the “Global South” to end the war in Ukraine and prevent the next, more global conflict associated with the re-creation of a bipolar world (only now instead of the USSR, the leading force in the “non-democratic bloc” will be China).
At the moment, from my perspective, Trump is not succeeding. And as for Ukraine, he seems simply tired of it, dreaming of shifting the responsibility onto the European “Coalition of the willing but incapable” (as we joke in Ukraine) and forgetting about it like a bad nightmare. But that isn’t working for him either.
Regarding the position of the Ukrainian authorities and my attitude toward them — I will not say anything, since I could be repressed for that. I believe that in Ukraine the question of holding democratic free elections is long overdue. That would change a lot. Two-thirds of Ukrainians, according to the latest Gallup polls, want this horrible, insane war to stop.
So, those are my thoughts. To anyone who read to the end — thank you. I hope we will meet here again. And I wish all good people kindness, peace, and prosperity. See ya! Glory to Ukraine, glory to fallen heroes and to those, who is still holding it.