02/24/2026
Four years ago today, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I was born in Kharkiv. These photos are from my last site visit back.
A woman I met tried to say something in Ukrainian and got the word wrong. She caught herself, laughed, and said “хай так” — let it be. If you don’t know the history, it’s a small moment. If you do, it will stay with you.
For centuries, the Ukrainian language was formally suppressed — books banned, writers executed, schools converted, an entire generation of Kharkiv’s poets and intellectuals shot in a single forest in the 1930s. The message, across centuries: your language is unnecessary. You don’t exist as something separate. Now this woman, in a city struck every single day for four years, is choosing to speak a language she was never properly taught.
She’s not doing it perfectly. She doesn’t care. Хай так.
My parents grew up in a world where reality itself was constructed — different heroes, different history, different truth. You don’t feel the walls when the walls are all you’ve ever known. What you’re watching in Ukraine right now — the identity reclaimed in real time, the stubborn pride of a people becoming something they were told didn’t exist — this isn’t a side effect of the war. This is what the war is about.
We’ve been quiet for too long. That changes now. More soon.
Today belongs to Ukraine’s defenders — every person in uniform who makes it possible for a woman in Kharkiv to stumble over a word in her own language, laugh, and keep going. To our partners on the ground who never stopped working. To our supporters and friends who believed in this even when we gave you every reason not to — thank you. We carry that with us every single day and we are just getting started.
Four years. Still here. Stronger than ever. 🇺🇦
