Hi!
My journey on this website is over. As promised, this is the last Sunday Letter I am sending via the Buy Me a Coffee platform. I won't delete my old letters. They will be here.
Please don't buy me a warcoffee anymore. I won't get it anyway.
If you want to continue receiving my letters, my new blog is on Patreon. Sunday Letters will be free as usual, but you can join as a member to support me and get more.
Before we start with the news, I want to thank you for reading my letters here ❤️. It was an honour to be on this journey with you.
What about the photos in this letter? I visited an exhibition, Invisible Gardens. I will show you the video later. The painting in the first photo: Natalia Kohal, Save the Nest, 2023 and A Talk with a Black Bird, 2023. Watercolour on paper.
Let's jump quickly into the news.
I was happy to read that the Group of Seven countries have agreed to allocate $50 billion to Ukraine through a loan, which the proceeds from frozen russian assets will secure.
Also, during his visit to Kyiv, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that Washington had allocated another $400 million security assistance package for Ukraine. This package will include ammunition, military equipment, and weaponry.
Ukraine and France signed an agreement for 200 million euros. Up to 50% of these funds will be used to purchase Ukrainian goods and services for recovery projects.
Natalissa Luna, Inner light, 2024. Mixed technique on canvas; Delnara El, Sunflowers on gold, 2024. Acrylic on canvas
Drone attacks are almost every night here. Our President stated that russia had launched 6,130 shahed-type drones since the start of 2024.
I will mention the Friday attack. In Kyiv, a drone hit a 25-storey building, killing a 14-year-old girl. In Kyiv Oblast, a 13-year-old child was injured, and another person died in the hospital.
In Dnipro, russian forces targeted residential buildings in the city: 5 people died, and 21 others were injured. Among the damaged infrastructure is the hospital.
Dmytro Zhuravel, Moving forward, 2024. Photo collage printed on canvas
Of course, I follow the news about North Korean involvement in this war. Ukrainian intelligence has documented that the first units of the North Korean military have already arrived in the area of hostilities between russia and Ukraine. On October 23, they were spotted in the Kursk region of russia.
vladimir putin did not deny the presence of North Korean troops in russia, recalling the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement with North Korea.
Ukrainian intelligence believes that as early as October 27-28, the North Korean military will be deployed in combat zones against Ukraine.
I highly recommend the article: From Pyongyang to Kursk: Why North Korea is sending troops to fight against Ukraine and what to do about it. You can read it here.
Olena Kishkurno, Out of the blue, 2024. Acrylic on canvas
I do my best not to make my letters long. But it seems I fail every time. Where will I take you in the second part of the letter?
Let's travel back to the late 1920s when the first mass repressions in the USSR started.
The repressions began with the fight against sabotage, a term in Soviet criminal law referring to actions aimed at undermining any sector of the economy or the functioning of state bodies.
The first major demonstrative criminal case in the spring of 1928 was the Case of the Economic Counterrevolution in Donbas, more known as the Shakhty Trial.
The trial, ordered by the USSR leadership, began on May 18 in moscow and lasted until July 6. Arrests occurred during the summer of 1927, starting in Shakhty in eastern Donbas and spreading to other areas. The investigation revealed a counter-revolutionary organization accused of sabotaging mines and allegedly receiving funding from foreign banks.
Fifty-three specialists were convicted of sabotage, espionage, and direct preparation for Western intervention. Of these, 11 were sentenced to death; five were executed, while the sentences of the others were commuted.
It was a fabricated case that served as a model for the Soviet punitive authorities' actions against pseudo-counterrevolutionary organizations.
One of the first political trials in Ukraine was the case of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine in 1930 (I have already talked about it here)
The Soviet authorities created this Union to eliminate the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Forty-five individuals were accused of attempting to separate Ukraine from the USSR and restore capitalism in the region.
Over time, the case of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine became linked to other criminal cases during the 1930s, leading to further convictions. In total, approximately 5,000 people were prosecuted as part of this case.
Lesia Zaitseva, Watercolour, 2024. Paper and ink
In 1931, the case of the Ukrainian National Center was launched.
The organization was accused of planning an armed uprising to overthrow Soviet rule in Ukraine and create a capitalist Ukrainian People's Republic.
The head of the non-existent organization was recognized as Marxist historian Matviy Yavorsky, who was sentenced to camps and then shot. On February 7, 1932, 50 people were imprisoned for 3 to 6 years in this case.
This case was a significant punitive measure by the Bolshevik regime against notable members of the old Ukrainian intelligentsia, marking a crucial point in reducing Ukrainianization.
At the same time, other big tragedies have been walking the land of Ukraine: Holodomor, a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians and Executed Renaissance, a literary and artistic generation of the 1920s and early 1930s in Ukraine that the Soviet government exterminated. As the world knows something about Holodomor, our Executed Renaissance remains forgotten. I will tell you about it soon.
Oh my, these letters are so hard to write. Nonono, I love writing to you, but these words are like knives.
I want to end this letter with something positive. I prepared a short video about the exhibition I mentioned. You can watch it here.
Have a lovely new week!
Sincerely,
Yaroslava
P.S. 🫂 hugs from Kyiv