Here is my newest translation, Misinformation, Media, and the Social Mood in 20th-Century Civil War-Era Ukraine, from a 1962 autobiographic text by the famous Soviet author and Nobel Prize nominee, Konstantin Paustovsky.
«The newspapers—going mad from all the contradictory rumors—willingly printed all this nonsense…These rumors lost their direct purpose of reporting fictitious “facts”…They turned into a means of self-soothing or a powerful narcotic medicine. Only in rumors, people found hope for the future. Even outwardly, Kiev residents began to resemble morphine addicts.»
Beyond all the parallels of seeking to be absorbed into the EU, when I got to the part about ataman Zeleny (almost sounds like Zelensky), I lost it! 😅