UPDATE: Friday, Jun 27, 2025 · 5:26:18 PM +00:00
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KyivGuy
I am posting this update to thank all the readers for their kind support and all the nice words in the comments. It feels great to be reminded that my work is appreciated by so many good people here.
My special thanks go to the readers who made the effort to register and follow me on Patreon (over 40 new subscribers, including several paid ones) and on Bluesky (over 100 new connections — I am definitely not feeling myself alone anymore there :)
Also, as requested by many, I will be re-posting my Patreon posts on Ukraine here at Daily Kos — at least those which I consider to be particularly important, or just interesting for a wider foreign audience. Here is the latest, my 25th text on Daily Kos: The wheels of justice: establishing a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
As I said in the comments, I am curious myself, and I write for the curious people — someone who is willing to make a step into an unknown culture, listen to the voices of people living far away, or learn stories that happened hundreds of years ago on the other side of the world. I hope that those voices and stories would make you feel more for Ukraine and Ukrainians, and, hopefully, do more for Ukraine, or keep doing what you already do, until our victory over the invaders.
Thank you all again, and let’s keep in touch!
Hi everyone,
I write this diary to let you know that I have begun posting/writing on Patreon and Bluesky.
For people unfamiliar with me and my writing, please check out the list of my earlier diaries here at Daily Kos.
I have enjoyed my writing on Daily Kos, and particularly, the very supportive, intelligent, and mostly tactful audience here.
However, for my purposes – and my style of writing - Daily Kos has several inconveniences:
- Despite the excellent pro-Ukrainian community here, Daily Kos is understandably more dedicated to the matters of the US politics and other things US; my diaries on Ukraine – unless I am very lucky – get quickly buried under the dozens of competing diaries about the US;
- Lack of statistics on the posts. I do like writing, and I am particularly excited about writing about Ukraine for the foreign audience. But I have other professional and personal commitments, and I need to understand what kind of effect my writing has versus my other work. The only metric Daily Kos offers is the number of recommendations by the registered users (and, to some extent, a number of comments). Even though I was lucky to receive over 300 recommendations for some of my diaries from real people here, it still gets me thinking if that impact is worth a day of my life (which is an average time required to write and research my average diary);
- much less problematic, but still a factor – an obvious and, of course, natural Daily Kos association with Democratic/Progressive Democratic(?) agenda and audience. Before starting to write for Daily Kos, I did not fully realise the level of partisanship in the US society and the way party affiliation affects the life of an average American (though I understand that the Daily Kos audience is far from average) – we definitely do not have that at the same level in Ukraine (especially in time of war for our nation’s survival). Anyway, I want to speak to the US audience of all political affiliations, as well as to the non-partisan people, as long as they are interested – hopefully, positively interested – in Ukraine.
Hence, I decided to shift to a platform that would allow me to do the same thing without the above restrictions. Therefore, I went to Patreon. And to BlueSky for short posts.
The goal of my writing remains the same – to offer my readers a deeper understanding of Ukrainian life; to provide more context; to educate about the Ukrainian history, and to entertain – to the extent that you consider obtaining new information and new perspective an entertainment as I do. Not so much on the Russian stuff blowing up — hat tip to quaoar’s excellent work — but more of the Ukrainian stuff being lived through. And some thoughts on Russia and Russians, as, well, they make us think about them every minute of our lives.
Constant good writing in a foreign language is tough. Accordingly, so far this year, I have written only a couple of authentic “long texts”. At the same time, I found myself posting – and enjoying it – two lighter formats of writing:
- “Meet the Ukrainian voices from the ground”, where I introduce Ukrainian bloggers whose writing and opinion I respect and trust, but who are usually unknown to the English-speaking audience because they mostly write in Ukrainian. I translate and publish samples of their writing on my blog on Patreon;
- “Ukraine’s Classic Art of the Day”, where I post daily a picture by a classic Ukrainian painter with a short note about it – I do it on BlueSky. One of my recent personal findings was that a good quarter, if not more, of the “Classic Russian Art” of the XIX century was made by Ukrainian artists, and/or by artists who lived or studied in Ukraine. To a lesser extent, the same applies to the “Polish” art of the same period.
I have no idea how often I will be able to post, but, for the next few months, I am looking at one Patreon post per two weeks and a daily post on BlueSky.
When you visit my Patreon page, you will notice that there are various levels of paid membership. Do not be scared by that. So far, I plan that 99% of my writing will be publicly available. You don’t even need to be a Patreon member to read them. Paid subscribers may enjoy early access to some writing, and the most expensive subscriptions include perks not related to access to writing, but access to me personally. The Grand Prix is a dinner with traditional Ukrainian cuisine in Kyiv, which may or may not include a brief guided tour around the historical centre of Kyiv.
As impossible as it may seem, since 2023, I have had the pleasure to dine two US Daily Kos readers who reached out and let me know they were travelling to Kyiv. So, there is nothing impossible :)
Since I earn enough from my main job, all money received from Patreon subscribers, after payment of the necessary commissions and taxes, will be donated to the Ukrainian military, at least till the end of the war. And, of course, you may unsubscribe anytime.
I want to use this opportunity to thank once again to everyone here at Daily Kos who recommended, commented and supported my writing here at Daily Kos since 2023. Special thanks to everybody who reached out privately and offered help at certain particularly threatening moments for Ukraine over the last two years. All of that was – and is - much appreciated. Moreover, I caught myself using my writing at Daily Kos as a kind of therapy to vent my anger, pain, and frustration and to know that there are intelligent, reasonable, curious, empathetic people in the US who do care about Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Finally, despite being an amateur writer, I do want to write better, and I want to write things that my audience wants to read. Accordingly, I would appreciate all comments, suggestions, and criticism, as well as shares and subscriptions to my posts.
The Patreon posts so far include:
Welcome to my world!
