Voices of Ukraine

Since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, Ukrainian musicologist and former director of Kyiv Symphony Orchestra Anna Stavychenko has made it her mission to promote Ukrainian classical music to the world. She’s currently working on a novel about her experiences since Russia’s full-scale invasion, which she started during a Harriman Institute residency for displaced Ukrainian artists at Columbia Global Centers Paris and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Listen to her story. Check out the Winter 2024 issue of Harriman Magazine to read an excerpt from Anna’s novel in progress and other essays and articles about Ukraine. Click here to view a concert from Stavychenko's 1991 Project, hosted in collaboration with Columbia Global Centers | Reid Hall, which includes Maksym Berezovsky's Sonata for violin and harpsichord featured in the episode (23:19). Performed by Antonina Krysa and Olga Vardanyan. And click here to view the 1991 Project's concert featuring Zoltan Almashi's, Suite No. 1 for Cello Solo, performed by Olga Driga (14:14), and Victoria Poleva's Gulf stream for Two Cellos performed by Driga and Nataliia Ivanovska (45:53). Watch the he National Philharmonic of Ukraine’s performance for the Paris Philharmonic in Kyiv.

Zoya Laktionova recalls her Mariupol childhood, her relationship with Ukrainian language and culture, and her journey to become a documentary filmmaker.

Ukrainian writer and journalist Nikita Grigorov was a university student studying Russian literature at Donetsk National University when Russia launched its war in Donbas in 2014. He supported an independent Ukraine and watched in disbelief as friends turned against him, sometimes violently. Then he fled to Kyiv with his father. Listen to his story.

Spanish journalist Argemino Barro was one of the only foreign correspondents in Donbas when Russia ramped up its destabilization efforts there in 2014. He talks about what it was like to cover the story for a Spanish-language audience.

Tanya Kotelnykova was fourteen years old when Russian-backed separatists occupied Horlivka, her hometown in Eastern Ukraine. She was torn away from her family and has been displaced since. Listen to her story.

Christopher Atwood lived in Donetsk in the early 2010s and found himself working in Russia during its initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Listen to his story.

Katia Shraga Davydenko was born in Kyiv in the 1960s. She immigrated to New York in 1992. Since 2014, she has dedicated all her free time to protesting Russia's aggression and volunteering to help Ukrainians.

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Daniel Brennan was a Peace Corps volunteer in Hlukhiv, Ukraine when was forced to evacuate because of the pandemic. He's been trying to go back since, but the war has upended his plans.

Volodymyr Rafeyenko, a Russian-speaking novelist, was living in Donetsk when Russia invaded the Donbas in 2014. He fled to Kyiv, learned Ukrainian and wrote Mondegreen in Ukrainian. Mark Andryczyk translated the novel and was planning to bring Rafeyenko on book tour to the U.S. when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ivan Nebesnyy is a renowned Ukrainian composer whose music we've been using throughout the series. In this episode you'll get an introduction to Ivan and listen to some of his work.

The Kyiv Independent's Contributing Editor Lili Bivings talks about the state of journalism in Ukraine, the implosion of the Kyiv Post, the founding of the Kyiv Independent, and the publication's coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine.

The Kyiv Independent's Deputy Chief Editor Toma Istomina talks with the site's contributing editor Lili Bivings about being included on Forbes 30 under 30 in Europe list, leaving war-torn Ukraine to attend a conference in Norway, and what it's like to cover a war unfolding in your own country.   This episode contains explicit language.

The Kyiv Independent's editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko talks with the site's contributing editor Lili Bivings about her reaction to the Pulitzer citation for Ukrainian journalists and what it's like to cover a war unfolding in your own country.

Many listeners have asked Masha about her pronunciation of Kyiv (it sounds like Cave). She turned to linguist Yuri Shevchuk for a breakdown of the pronunciation and, in the process, ended up getting a lesson in politics and culture.

Olena Martynyuk was seven months pregnant and living in the U.S. when Russia invaded Ukraine. Her parents are in Ukraine and refuse to evacuate.

A podcast from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. Hear stories of lives upended by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Peter Zalmayev grew up in Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine and immigrated to the United States, where he got citizenship. His parents stayed in Ukraine and, in 2014, after Russia invaded Donbas, he had to evacuate them from a war zone. Two years later, Peter moved back to Ukraine, settled in Kyiv, and launched a talk show. After Russia attacked the capital he evacuated his wife and two small children to Western Ukraine and traveled back toward Kyiv to report on the war.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian scholar Antonina Berezovenko stayed in Kyiv in spite of the constant shelling. She is one of the few people left in her building, sheltering in the basement during air raids.

Mariya Chukhnova was born in Lutsk in Western Ukraine in the late 1980s. She participated in the Orange Revolution while she was in college. Then, like many Ukrainians of her generation, she ended up immigrating abroad and watching Ukraine’s transformation, and  now the war, from afar.