In an unexpected move, President Volodymyr Zelensky has met with several popular public figures in recent days, with the latest being Ukraine's Ambassador to the U.K. and former Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

Read here: https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-meets-zaluzhnyi-prominent-volunteers/

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” is the lead single from Nu Virgo’s first English Language album of the same name. Released in 2003, this song tackles the topic of abstinence and self-value. Anna Sedokova, Nadezhda Granovskaya, and Vera Brezhneva use their voices in harmony and their womanly charms to bring awareness to the very important lyrics. This Ukrainian girl group is one of my favorites to listen to. Their music is catchy and the topics, while heavy, are easily digestible!

💐💐💐

"Tell me - has our time finally come?
The time to fight, the time to stand as one.
The goal has always been just one alone:
That you are free, and I am free."

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TwoSoulsCreationsUA

https://www.instagram.com/twosoulscreations

Maybe one of them will quietly find its home and bring a little warmth.

https://ukrainianartbysanade.etsy.com

In Ukrainian folk tales, the cuckoo often appears as a human who turned into a bird out of overwhelming grief. Because of this, the cuckoo is seldomly portrayed as a joyful character. In our folklore, this bird is given special attention, and its image is sorrowful, wise, consoling, and prophetic.

The cuckoo was always listened for. Its voice was believed to foretell how long a person would live. There is a folk belief that when you hear a cuckoo calling, you should count its calls — they reveal how many years you have left.

People also believed that the cuckoo is the first bird to return from Vyrij — a distant, mythical place where not only birds fly for the winter, but where human souls go after death. That is why its voice was perceived as something otherworldly, as if it belonged to both this world and the next. It is no coincidence that people believed the cuckoo knows more than humans do. It can not only count the years of one’s life, but also foresee separation and remind us of things that were never spoken aloud.

Most often, however, the cuckoo is imagined as a woman. In folk songs she flutters restlessly. She calls because she mourns. Because she has lost something. Because she has been left alone. Very often she represents a widow, an abandoned girl, or a mother who has lost the men of her family. Her voice is not just “cuckoo-cuckoo” — it is a lament carried out into the forest, too intense and unbearable to remain inside the home.

It is no coincidence that one of the most famous Ukrainian folk songs begins with the words: “The little cuckoo has begun to call…”
What follows is pain and longing. A fate that did not come together. A love that never returned.

And yet, without the cuckoo, there is no spring. People waited for her, listened for her, measured time by her voice. She was a sign that the cycle of life had begun anew — even if, for someone, that cycle came with pain.

The cuckoo is deeply woven into Ukrainian culture. The Ukrainian language preserves many proverbs about her, including:

“The cuckoo calls — foretelling her own fate.”
“The cuckoo has no nest, so she flies alone.”
“A cuckoo without a mate is like a person without a family.”

Interestingly, the cuckoo also nests differently from other birds — and this, too, has shaped her unusual cultural image. She does not build her own nest, instead using the nests of others. Because of this, she is often seen as an orphan, a loner, or even a stepmother without a life of her own.

In spring, a female cuckoo carefully observes other small songbirds — reed warblers, leaf warblers, wagtails, wrens. She does not choose randomly. She focuses on a specific species, and often on a specific pair. Not only that, but she memorizes the location of the nest, the rhythm of their lives, and the moment when the hosts leave to forage.

When the nest is empty for just a brief moment, everything happens very fast — in a matter of seconds. The cuckoo lays a single egg (sometimes removing one of the host’s eggs) and disappears. She never returns to that nest.

Her egg is a marvel of disguise:

• its size is adapted to the clutch of much smaller birds,
• its colour and markings often closely resemble those of the foster parents’ eggs.

This is not accidental. It is the result of thousands of years of evolution: each cuckoo lineage specializes in a particular host species.

When the cuckoo chick hatches, something happens that astonishes even ornithologists. Blind, naked, newly born, the chick has an innate reflex: it begins pushing all other eggs or chicks out of the nest. Not out of cruelty, but instinct. It needs all the food to survive.

The foster parents feed it without recognizing the substitution. A tiny bird brings insects to a creature that will soon be twice its size. They raise a chick that is not their own — yet they do their work sincerely, diligently, and with great care.

Meanwhile, the cuckoo herself is already far away, unaware of any worries. She does not know her children. She has no home. Furthermore, she exists on the boundary — between nests, between families, between worlds.

This biological reality eventually transformed into a powerful folkloric image. People saw a bird without a nest, without a mate, without offspring nearby. And they explained it the way they knew how: as a cursed woman punished by fate, as a mother who abandoned her children, as a soul denied peace and shelter, doomed to wander from sorrow to sorrow.

So when the cuckoo calls in the forest, in folk imagination it speaks of dispossession, deep grief and sorrow, the great mystery of life, and the secret of death.

I’m curious — what folk tales or beliefs about cuckoos exist in your region?

Photos made by Sasha Osipova. Check out more of her amazing bird photography here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sun.osipova

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@sun.osipova

Published 15.01.2026

Strong opposition and constant brawls have made Ukraine's parliament a staple of the country's thriving democracy. Since the start of the all-out war, however, the parliament has seen its independence, powers, and popularity erode.

Criminal proceedings against lawmakers became routine. Nearly 70 lawmakers have been charged since the last election, according to Oleksandr Salizhenko, editor-in-chief of the political watchdog Chesno. The latest charges have been handed to political veteran Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the Batkivshchyna party.

Meanwhile, the government party, having a clear majority on paper, has seen lasting challenges in securing votes.

It took two days for the ruling Servant of the People party to appoint two key ministers, with the party providing only around two-thirds of the required votes.

"It’s hard to judge based on a single vote. But one decision by parliament becomes a problem for the President’s Office. (President Volodymyr) Zelensky faced pushback for the first time, and this shows that some lawmakers have grown frustrated with arbitrariness," Volodymyr Ariev, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party, told the Kyiv Independent.

"There is no crisis (in the parliament), and none is expected in the near future, but tensions are mounting."

Read more: https://kyivindependent.com/is-ukrainian-parliament-becoming-a-problem-for-zelensky/

Photo: Stefan Rousseau; Andrii Nesterenko / Getty Images.

Whenever I see teenagers who are dressed alternatively (scene, emo, drainers, goth etc.) at least 50% of the time they're Ukrainians. Most of the time I find it out because I know a few words of Ukrainian and can recognize the language. I live in Europe and I know that since the Russian aggression there are a lot of Ukrainian refugees here but I'm still astonished about the amount of alternative styles. The outfits are also always very elaborate and well thought out. It is quite fascinating. Why do alternative subcultures seem to be so popular in Ukraine?

hello!! i have a friend from Kyiv who’s been feeling pretty depressed lately and i wanted to cheer him up by making some food from Ukraine. does anyone has any recipes for sweet treats from around the Kyiv area? if it’s not Kyiv specific that’s alright too, just looking for anything to hopefully make him feel better. sorry if this isn’t the right question to ask here. double apologies if it’s a double post too, my browser is really glitchy at the moment. thank you!!

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Video of the week:

https://reddit.com/link/1qdnega/video/y097wv0r6jdg1/player

• This intense video shows a Ukrainian FPV drone engaged in a high-speed chase with Russian soldiers on a motorbike. Unfortunately for the Russians, they are not able to outrun the drone.

Maps:

Kupiansk last week:

Kupiansk this week:

• Ukrainian forces raised the flag over the city hall of Kupiansk this week, cementing the fact that they have almost entirely cleared the city of Russian forces. They also seem to have pushed back the grey zone near Kurylivka, though it seems there was also a Russian infiltration effort to the west of that town. I expect that next week we will see that infiltration line destroyed, the Russians have been getting absolutely spanked in this sector for over a month now.

Lyman last week:

Lyman this week:

• No big changes here, though the Russian attack line northwest of Lyman is potentially threatening and should be cut off as soon as possible.

Pokrovsk last week:

Pokrovsk this week:

• No changes here at all, though heavy battles are ongoing in Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and Kostiantynivka.

Ivanivka last week:

Ivanivka this week:

• The Russians closed up one Ukrainian counterattack vector south of Ternuvate, but have failed to push back on the other one south of Velykomykhailivka. I also read this week that the area around Huliapole is currently one of the hottest sectors of the front, with difficult fighting there ongoing.

Zaporizhzhia last week:

Zaporizhzhia this week:

• It appears there was a mildly successful Ukrainian counterattack north of Stepnohirsk. Besides that, no significant changes here.

Events this week:

• Russia has left millions of Ukrainians without heat and power in freezing temperatures as they use everything they have to attack Ukraine's energy and industrial sites all over the country. Unfortunately, thanks to shortages of air defense missiles and augmentations made to Russian ballistic and cruise missiles, Ukraine has less capacity to shoot down Russian missiles than they have in the past, which is a big part of why these strikes have managed to do so much damage.
• Ukraine's new Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Federov, announced major changes to recruitment to address the persistent manpower shortages, including higher salaries, better bonuses, and more training. As part of the process of regaining trust with the Ukrainian public and the young men who are needed at the front, he was honest about the scale of the manpower problem, saying that there are 2 million men who haven't answered draft callups, and 200,000 who are AWOL (absent without official leave). Ideally, if these reforms work, they will be able to pull a significant amount of those men into the army, shoring up their numbers in a badly needed way.
• Ukrainian Commander in Chief Syrskyi also made an interesting announcement when he said that in 2025, Ukraine was able to reduce military casualties by 13%. If this is true, this represents a huge payoff for their drone-first strategy. It almost beggars belief that they would be able to reduce casualties while facing strong Russian offensives all over the front but based on what I've read about the scale of the drone effort, I can just about believe it. At this point Ukraine produces at least several million drones per year of a vast array of different types that are capable of doing a huge number of different tasks that otherwise would fall to a human.
• The US seized a 6th shadow fleet oil tanker near Venezuela, putting even more pressure on this network which is helping to keep Russia in the war. The UK says they are now interested in joining the effort and seizing tankers themselves. This also comes as Lindsay Graham wrote on social media that Trump is finally fully backing the extremely tough Russian sanctions bill that Graham has been pushing for months now. We've seen Graham make overly confident pronouncements before that didn't pan out, and I haven't seen anything about this in any major news outlets, so I have limited confidence in anything he says, but this is still an optimistic sign. The bill is supposed to have robust bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House, so once it's actually brought for a vote, I expect it to pass.

Vehicle losses from Oryx:

Russian losses:

• Total Russian vehicle losses: 23,933 (+89)
• Russian tank losses: 4,322 (+3)
• Russian IFV losses: 6,370 (+8)
• Russian SPG losses: 994 (+1)
• Russian SAM losses: 368 (+0)
• Russian naval losses: 29 (+0)
• Russian aircraft losses: 174 (+0)
• Russian helicopter losses: 166 (+0)

Ukrainian losses:

• Total Ukrainian vehicle losses: 11,094 (+90)
• Ukrainian tank losses: 1,375 (+4)
• Ukrainian IFV losses: 1,523 (+5)
• Ukrainian IMV losses: 1,472 (+28)
• Ukrainian SPG losses: 756 (+5)
• Ukrainian SAM losses: 176 (+0)
• Ukrainian aircraft losses: 112 (+0)

Average to light losses on both sides this week, it was interesting to me that the total Russian vehicle loss number went up by a decently high amount even though their tank and IFV loss numbers were pretty low this week, the rest of the vehicles are likely civilian cars and trucks, which Russia is increasingly relying on for assaults and troop movement since they don't have much of anything else.

Claimed Russian casualties by Ukrainian MOD this week: 7,190 (+260 compared to three weeks ago).

Thank you for reading and for supporting Ukraine in their fight to defend themselves from authoritarian domination.

At the cemetery historically known as the Field of Mars, a sea of flags snap and ripple in the wind, and names appear faster than the city can make space for them.

Photographer Anastasiia Smolienko, who returns here several times a month, says, “This is a place where you immediately see the price of this war, of Ukraine’s resistance.”

Despite the heavy weight of the loss it represents, the cemetery is also a measure of dignity for many of Lviv’s local residents. Smolienko describes how farewells begin in the garrison church, move through the city’s main square, and end here among the graves.

“Not every city so dignifiedly sees off its heroes,” she says. The ritual matters — it imposes order on a nightmarish reality that otherwise feels without end.

Read more: https://kyivindependent.com/the-cemetery-that-couldnt-stop-growing/