#ukrainian-folk-traditions

#ukrainian-folk-traditions

Maryna, the main heroine of Twenty One, has only one wish that her soldier husband Petro comes back alive. She frantically raises tens of thousands of dollars online to buy drones, weapons and power generators for the front line.

Easter Monday is a legal public holiday nationwide in Austria, treated like other established public holidays such as Whit Monday or St Stephen's Day.

"Bringing this exhibition to Cornell is important because it allows students to encounter Ukrainian culture not only through current events, but through a symbolic language that has been preserved for centuries."

Now in the fourth year of a war sparked by Russia's 2022 invasion, life in Ukraine is challenging in ways that only those that have lived through something similar can even begin to comprehend. It's the loss of a generation of men fighting and dying on the front lines; civilian deaths and injuries caused by indiscriminate drone and missile attacks; acute shortages and the manifold disruptions of everyday life, not least of the hopes and aspirations of young ballet students in a country with a proud tradition in this art form.

A typical Capricorn, so stubborn, says his wife, Sveta. It was 2015, the war in Donbas was growing in intensity. I heard someone on TV complaining that Roma aren't defending their homeland. This pissed me off, and so I volunteered, says Ilchak. In the territorial recruitment centre in Uzhhorod the Ukrainian soldiers were surprised, but they had to take him.

Their gathering still had to be dispersed, but the enthusiasm that Ored Recordings inspires even among enforcers of the law speaks volumes about the power of what Khalilov and his friend and label co-founder Timur Kodzoko call punk ethnography: the recording of religious chants, laments and displacement songs at family gatherings, local festivals, in people's kitchens, to fight against the erasure of Circassian culture.

Adding fermented vegetables to the first course of a meal is common in Ukrainian cuisine, and one of the most popular pickled-vegetable dishes is sauerkraut soup. It might sound a little odd, but trust me it's breathtaking. This recipe is from my cookbook The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen, and is so easy to make that you can prepare it every week throughout the cold season.

Four years into Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine continues to fight a war that has reshaped every aspect of its public and private life. Since returning from my recent brief journey to my home city, I have found myself having the same conversation repeatedly: Lviv is far from the frontlines, so is life simply normal there?

Letting our dogs lick the dishes before we put them in the dishwasher!

At the outset of the Kalevala, Finland's national epic, a singer bemoans his separation from a beloved friend who grew up beside him. Today, the friends rarely meet "näillä raukoilla rajoilla, poloisilla Pohjan mailla" - lines which translator Keith Bosley renders "on these poor borders, the luckless lands of the North." The Kalevala, a poetic masterpiece of nearly 23,000 lines, first appeared in 1835. Now, nearly 200 years later, those "luckless lands of the North" are an increasingly tense border zone.

Four years ago Russian troops were a few kilometres away from Leleka maternity hospital, beyond a pine forest and a lake. Vladimir Putin's plan to conquer Ukraine wrapping it into a new Russian empire began just down the road. They were meant to seize Kyiv and topple Volodymyr Zelenskyy's pro-western government. To the Kremlin's surprise, Ukraine fought back. A Russian armoured column was destroyed in nearby Bucha.

UNESCO expressed "serious concern" about recent Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities "that have caused damage to civilian infrastructures, including heritage sites" in Odesa, Lviv, and Kyiv.